David Carlisle; Fought for Black Soldiers’ Reputation

David K. Carlisle, 72, one of the first black graduates of West Point, who strove to correct the official Army history of an all-black infantry unit in the Korean War. A Los Angeles native, Carlisle graduated from West Point in 1950 and saw active duty in Korea as an officer in the 77th Engineer Combat Company of the Army Corps of Engineers, one of the Army’s last segregated fighting units. He later earned a master’s degree in civil engineering from MIT and worked for such organizations as Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Litton Industries and Whittaker Corp. A historian at heart, Carlisle spent much of his life fighting for accurate portrayals of African American soldiers’ combat performance. For years he was the lone voice complaining about mistreatment of the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment in the Army’s official account of the Korean War. That regiment had been assigned in the early days of the war to defend a section of the Pusan Perimeter near the town of Haman. The battle to protect Hill 665, or Battle Mountain, was described in the official Army account as a debacle in which the black troops--repeatedly called “an all-Negro regiment”--were seized with “mass hysteria” and fled often before an enemy shot was fired. Carlisle, who served in close proximity to the 24th Regiment, and other black veterans of the war argued that black troops in that battle performed no better and no worse than white outfits in the same engagements. “It’s the product of racist-tending historians goaded on by racist senior army commanders,” Carlisle said in 1989. After 30 years of persistent complaints, Carlisle, who was a lieutenant during the Korean War and won a Bronze Star for valor with his company, finally succeeded in forcing the Army to reconsider its disparaging version of the black regiment’s performance in 1988. The dispute over the portrayal is still unresolved. On Saturday in Los Angeles.