A Black Navy veteran spent decades uncovering forgotten military heroes. Now he’s fighting a new battle

Lt. Cmdr. Reuben Keith Green says the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate DEI-related materials threaten to deepen longstanding gaps in the nation’s military history.

When the Trump administration began removing thousands of photographs, articles, and other historical materials from the Pentagon’s public-facing websites in 2025, Lt. Cmdr. Reuben Keith Green was hardly surprised.

The retired naval officer who hails from Florida had served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who were both staunchly against affirmative action, and he listened to Donald Trump’s rhetoric during his first presidential campaign along similar themes. 

“I said, ‘If this man wins the presidency, we’re going to have a lot of turmoil in the military because he is saying things that give people license to believe that Black people are inferior or Black people shouldn’t have jobs that they’ve earned,’” Green, author of the memoir “Black Officer, White Navy,” told theGrio by phone on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

He added, “I anticipated what was coming.

Long before the Trump administration began removing materials, the retired officer realized just how much of that history was already missing from the public record and endeavored to correct that, starting with his own story. 

“When I retired, I was ruminating on my experiences, some of the stuff I went through, and I started looking around for memoirs written by Black service members, and there just really weren’t very many,” he recalled.

“There were none written by a Black service member who actually served in Vietnam when I started looking,” he continued. “So I said, if I can’t find it, I’m just going to tell my story and then fill in the blanks as best I can with information that I’ve been able to glean, you know, on my own.”

The result was “Black Officer, White Navy,” a memoir chronicling the racism Green encountered throughout his 22-year naval career, which began when he enlisted at 17 and eventually earned an officer’s commission. Since retiring, the former lieutenant commander has expanded his efforts to researching overlooked Black military pioneers, advocating for their recognition, and encouraging fellow veterans to document their experiences. His work has taken on renewed urgency as the Trump administration’s campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) threatens to make an already incomplete historical record even harder to access.

In February 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the armed forces to remove online content promoting DEI, prompting a review that flagged more than 26,000 photographs and posts for possible removal, according to the Associated Press. Materials documenting the Tuskegee Airmen, Jackie Robinson, and Black Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers were among those affected, although some were subsequently restored.

The veteran has spent years searching military records, tracking down obscure books, and corresponding with families to recover stories rarely included in conventional accounts of American military history. One discovery began with an unexpected call from a white man in Indiana who believed his great-great-uncle, Garrison Payne, had been a pioneering Black naval officer.

Initially skeptical, Green examined the documents the man sent him and began piecing together Payne’s career. His research led him to publish an article making the case for Payne’s recognition as an early Black commissioned naval officer and Navy Cross recipient.

According to the author, the Navy’s All Hands magazine had been preparing an article about Payne before the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives took effect, but the piece never appeared. After years of advocating for the officer’s recognition, he remains frustrated by the lack of acknowledgment.

“I just have no idea why,” he said. “It’s almost as though they’re afraid to acknowledge the reality, and that’s unfortunate because this is a major story as far as I’m concerned.”

His research has also brought attention to retired Navy Capt. Gail Harris, a pioneering Black woman in naval intelligence whose memoir, “A Woman’s War,” recounts the racism and sexism she encountered throughout her career. Another figure is Lt. Cmdr. William S. Norman, who served as an adviser on minority affairs to Adm. Elmo Zumwalt and helped advance equal opportunity reforms within the Navy, contributions Green has urged the Naval History and Heritage Command to recognize.

Their stories demonstrate that Black military history is in no short supply, even if its recognition has been. The accomplishments of these service members helped shape the armed forces, often without the acknowledgment afforded to their white counterparts.

However, preserving that history also means documenting the racism Black service members endured and the consequences when military leadership failed to adequately confront it. During his own career, the former officer recalled an incident aboard his second ship when sailors who resented taking orders from a Black man abandoned their posts, nearly causing him to fall into the water from the ship’s brow.

“I was so traumatized by that, I didn’t even tell my commanding officer what had happened,” he recalled. “I didn’t even put that in my first book because it was too traumatic to think of.”

The stakes extend outside the armed forces, too. Military service has provided generations of Black Americans with access to education, careers, and benefits that helped expand economic opportunities, even as they encountered racial barriers within the institution itself.

“They risk [not] understanding how significant the military has been to increasing the middle-class lives of Black people, as far as education, as far as careers in the military, post careers in the military,” he explained.

This is part of why he’s encouraging other veterans to preserve their experiences, maintaining a questionnaire on LinkedIn to help former service members begin writing memoirs and urging them to save photographs, documents, and recollections.

In the meantime, the retired officer hopes these efforts will help future generations recognize Black military contributions while understanding the discrimination that shaped them. More importantly, he wants that knowledge to inspire people to confront injustice rather than repeat it.

“When Black people talk about discrimination, they’re not just talking about what happened to them. They’re talking about what they know has happened to other people,” he said. “They’re trying to enlighten people so that when you see someone being discriminated against, you should intervene. You should do something as a leader to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“I said that these men should be a priority in filling in the blanks because the Navy doesn’t know its own history.”