In Glory’s Shadow: Shannon Faulkner, The Citadel, and a Changing America

In 1993, Shannon Faulkner -- then a high school senior -- filed suit against The Citadel, the public all-male military college in Charleston, South Carolina. She claimed that by refusing to admit her as a cadet, the school was defying the Constitution. For three years an ugly battle raged inside and outside the courtroom. The author covered the landmark battle for the New York Times at the time; now she presents the story behind the story, which started in the antebellum South in 1822, when members of the white minority, terrified by the narrowly averted Denmark Vesey slave revolt, called for a citadel and hastily organized a private militia. The author recounts how the school grew in size and reputation through two world wars until the last few decades, when, as America wrestled with chaotic calls to power from blacks, women, immigrants and homosexuals, The Citadel took the path the country as a whole was rejecting and proudly marched in place. The cadets clung to antique hierarchies born of slavery and war, employing careful courtesies in public while practicing archaic and often brutal rituals within their barracks. This is the world Shannon Falkner challenged.