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Even though Fulton steamed the Clermont up the Hudson River in 1810, theNavy’s sail-to-steam MTR did not begin for another generation with the commissioningof the first steamships in the 1830s, the foundation of the Naval Academyin 1845, and the Monitor-Virginia clash in 1862. Even then, the sail-to-steamRMC did not truly begin until CAPT Mahan’s book, The Influence of Seapoweron History, began to reorient the Navy in the 1880s, leading to the true steamNavy with President Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet and the first Naval Academysteamship summer cruise after the turn of the century. Thus it took steamshiptechnology almost a century before it became an integral part of Navy culture. 81A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponentsand making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventuallydie, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.Max PlanckWhy the resistance to change? Why does it take generations for a true RMC?It appears that most people solidify their worldview and way of thinking beforethey leave school. Whatever they learned in growing up and in formal classes,they later put into practice for the remainder of their careers.Example two is the segregation-to-integration revolution in the U.S. Navy. 82President Roosevelt moved to integrate the Navy in 1942, but even then integrationonly started at the Naval Academy under duress in 1945 with the admissionof the first Black Midshipman, Wesley Brown, who graduated from the U.S.Naval Academy in 1948. Even though the color-barrier was supposedly broken, itwasn’t until 1969 that the fiftieth Black Midshipman graduated. And even then,by 1999, the Naval Academy could only boast of four Black graduates who hadbeen promoted to Admiral.Again it took several generations to go from RMA, with Roosevelt’s order tointegrate, to RMC with a totally integrated Navy. President Truman reiterated theintegration goal with an executive order in 1948, establishing a policy of equaltreatment and opportunity in the armed forces, but integration at the Academy didnot really occur until the 1970s where the number of Black graduates rose fromonly three in 1971 to over sixty in 1977. Academy graduates from the first onpaperintegrated classes in the late 1940s finally became the Navy’s senior leadership—theAdmirals with about thirty years service—in the mid 1970s. They werethe first Naval Officers to spend an entire career with an official policy of integra-81 Sea Power: A Naval History, 162, 174, 192-193.82 John W. Bodnar, “How Long Does It Take to Change a Culture? Integration at the U.S. NavalAcademy,’’ Armed Forces and Society 25, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 286. Cited hereafter as Bodnar.170