[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, author's spelling has been retained.]

INTEGRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES
1940-1965

DEFENSE STUDIES SERIES

INTEGRATION
OF THE ARMED FORCES
1940-1965

by Morris J. MacGregor, Jr.

Defense Historical Studies Committee
(as of 6 April 1979)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

MacGregor, Morris J
Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965.

(Defense studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Supt. of Docs. no.: D 114.2:In 8/940-65
1. Afro-American soldiers. 2. United States—

Department of the Army
Historical Advisory Committee
(as of 6 April 1979)

Foreword

The integration of the armed forces was a momentous event in our military and national history; it represented a milestone in the development of the armed forces and the fulfillment of the democratic ideal. The existence of integrated rather than segregated armed forces is an important factor in our military establishment today. The experiences in World War II and the postwar pressures generated by the civil rights movement compelled all the services—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—to reexamine their traditional practices of segregation. While there were differences in the ways that the services moved toward integration, all were subject to the same demands, fears, and prejudices and had the same need to use their resources in a more rational and economical way. All of them reached the same conclusion: traditional attitudes toward minorities must give way to democratic concepts of civil rights.

If the integration of the armed services now seems to have been inevitable in a democratic society, it nevertheless faced opposition that had to be overcome and problems that had to be solved through the combined efforts of political and civil rights leaders and civil and military officials. In many ways the military services were at the cutting edge in the struggle for racial equality. This volume sets forth the successive measures they and the Office of the Secretary of Defense took to meet the challenges of a new era in a critically important area of human relationships, during a period of transition that saw the advance of blacks in the social and economic order as well as in the military. It is fitting that this story should be told in the first volume of a new Defense Studies Series.

The Defense Historical Studies Program was authorized by the then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Cyrus Vance, in April 1965. It is conducted under the auspices of the Defense Historical Studies Group, an ad hoc body chaired by the Historian of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and consisting of the senior officials in the historical offices of the services and of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Volumes produced under its sponsorship will be interservice histories, covering matters of mutual interest to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The preparation of each volume is entrusted to one of the service historical sections, in this case the Army's Center of Military History. Although the book was written by an Army historian, he was generously given access to the pertinent records of the other services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and this initial volume in the Defense Studies Series covers the experiences of all components of the Department of Defense in achieving integration.

The Author

Morris J. MacGregor, Jr., received the A.B. and M.A. degrees in history from the Catholic University of America. He continued his graduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Paris on a Fulbright grant. Before joining the staff of the U.S. Army Center of Military History in 1968 he served for ten years in the Historical Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has written several studies for military publications including "Armed Forces Integration—Forced or Free?" in The Military and Society: Proceedings of the Fifth Military Symposium of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is the coeditor with Bernard C. Nalty of the thirteen-volume Blacks in the United States Armed Forces: Basic Documents and with Ronald Spector of Voices of History: Interpretations in American Military History. He is currently working on a sequel to Integration of the Armed Forces which will also appear in the Defense Studies Series.

Preface

This book describes the fall of the legal, administrative, and social barriers to the black American's full participation in the military service of his country. It follows the changing status of the black serviceman from the eve of World War II, when he was excluded from many military activities and rigidly segregated in the rest, to that period a quarter of a century later when the Department of Defense extended its protection of his rights and privileges even to the civilian community. To round out the story of open housing for members of the military, I briefly overstep the closing date given in the title.

The work is essentially an administrative history that attempts to measure the influence of several forces, most notably the civil rights movement, the tradition of segregated service, and the changing concept of military efficiency, on the development of racial policies in the armed forces. It is not a history of all minorities in the services. Nor is it an account of how the black American responded to discrimination. A study of racial attitudes, both black and white, in the military services would be a valuable addition to human knowledge, but practically impossible of accomplishment in the absence of sufficient autobiographical accounts, oral history interviews, and detailed sociological measurements. How did the serviceman view his condition, how did he convey his desire for redress, and what was his reaction to social change? Even now the answers to these questions are blurred by time and distorted by emotions engendered by the civil rights revolution. Few citizens, black or white, who witnessed it can claim immunity to the influence of that paramount social phenomenon of our times.

At times I do generalize on the attitudes of both black and white servicemen and the black and white communities at large as well. But I have permitted myself to do so only when these attitudes were clearly pertinent to changes in the services' racial policies and only when the written record supported, or at least did not contradict, the memory of those participants who had been interviewed. In any case this study is largely history written from the top down and is based primarily on the written records left by the administrations of five presidents and by civil rights leaders, service officials, and the press.

Many of the attitudes and expressions voiced by the participants in the story are now out of fashion. The reader must be constantly on guard against viewing the beliefs and statements of many civilian and military officials out of context of the times in which they were expressed. Neither bigotry nor stupidity was the monopoly of some of the people quoted; their statements are important for what they tell us about certain attitudes of our society rather than for what they reveal about any individual. If the methods or attitudes of some of the black spokesmen appear excessively tame to those who have lived through the 1960's, they too should be gauged in the context of the times. If their statements and actions shunned what now seems the more desirable, albeit radical, course, it should be given them that the style they adopted appeared in those days to be the most promising for racial progress.

The words black and Negro have been used interchangeably in the book, with Negro generally as a noun and black as an adjective. Aware of differing preferences in the black community for usage of these words, the author was interested in comments from early readers of the manuscript. Some of the participants in the story strongly objected to one word or the other. "Do me one favor in return for my help," Lt. Comdr. Dennis D. Nelson said, "never call me a black." Rear Adm. Gerald E. Thomas, on the other hand, suggested that the use of the term Negro might repel readers with much to learn about their recent past. Still others thought that the historian should respect the usage of the various periods covered in the story, a solution that would have left the volume with the term colored for most of the earlier chapters and Negro for much of the rest. With rare exception, the term black does not appear in twentieth century military records before the late 1960's. Fashions in words change, and it is only for the time being perhaps that black and Negro symbolize different attitudes. The author has used the words as synonyms and trusts that the reader will accept them as such. Professor John Hope Franklin, Mrs. Sara Jackson of the National Archives, and the historians and officials that constituted the review panel went along with this approach.

The second question of usage concerns the words integration and desegregation. In recent years many historians have come to distinguish between these like-sounding words. Desegregation they see as a direct action against segregation; that is, it signifies the act of removing legal barriers to the equal treatment of black citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution. The movement toward desegregation, breaking down the nation's Jim Crow system, became increasingly popular in the decade after World War II. Integration, on the other hand, Professor Oscar Handlin maintains, implies several things not yet necessarily accepted in all areas of American society. In one sense it refers to the "leveling of all barriers to association other than those based on ability, taste, and personal preference";[1] in other words, providing equal opportunity. But in another sense integration calls for the random distribution of a minority throughout society. Here, according to Handlin, the emphasis is on racial balance in areas of occupation, education, residency, and the like.

From the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the all-black unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation. It constantly used the terms integration and equal treatment and opportunity to describe its racial goals. Rarely, if ever, does one find the word desegregation in military files that include much correspondence from the various civil rights organizations. That the military made the right choice, this study seems to demonstrate, for the racial goals of the Defense Department, as they slowly took form over a quarter of a century, fulfilled both of Professor Handlin's definitions of integration.

The mid-1960's saw the end of a long and important era in the racial history of the armed forces. Although the services continued to encounter racial problems, these problems differed radically in several essentials from those of the integration period considered in this volume. Yet there is a continuity to the story of race relations, and one can hope that the story of how an earlier generation struggled so that black men and women might serve their country in freedom inspires those in the services who continue to fight discrimination.

This study benefited greatly from the assistance of a large number of persons during its long years of preparation. Stetson Conn, chief historian of the Army, proposed the book as an interservice project. His successor, Maurice Matloff, forced to deal with the complexities of an interservice project, successfully guided the manuscript through to publication. The work was carried out under the general supervision of Robert R. Smith, chief of the General History Branch. He and Robert W. Coakley, deputy chief historian of the Army, were the primary reviewers of the manuscript, and its final form owes much to their advice and attention. The author also profited greatly from the advice of the official review panel, which, under the chairmanship of Alfred Goldberg, historian, Office of the Secretary of Defense, included Martin Blumenson; General J. Lawton Collins (USA Ret.); Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. (USAF Ret.); Roy K. Davenport, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army; Stanley L. Falk, chief historian of the Air Force; Vice Adm. E. B. Hooper, Chief of Naval History; Professor Benjamin Quarles; Paul J. Scheips, historian, Center of Military History; Henry I. Shaw, chief historian of the U.S. Marine Corps; Loretto C. Stevens, senior editor of the Center of Military History; Robert J. Watson, chief historian of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Adam Yarmolinsky, former assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

Many of the participants in this story generously shared their knowledge with me and kindly reviewed my efforts. My footnotes acknowledge my debt to them. Nevertheless, two are singled out here for special mention. James C. Evans, former counselor to the Secretary of Defense for racial affairs, has been an endless source of information on race relations in the military. If I sometimes disagreed with his interpretations and assessments, I never doubted his total dedication to the cause of the black serviceman. I owe a similar debt to Lt. Comdr. Dennis D. Nelson (USN Ret.) for sharing his intimate understanding of race relations in the Navy. A resourceful man with a sure social touch, he must have been one hell of a sailor.

I want to note the special contribution of several historians. Martin Blumenson was first assigned to this project, and before leaving the Center of Military History he assembled research material that proved most helpful. My former colleague John Bernard Corr prepared a study on the National Guard upon which my account of the guard is based. In addition, he patiently reviewed many pages of the draft manuscript. His keen insights and sensitive understanding were invaluable to me. Professors Jack D. Foner and Marie Carolyn Klinkhammer provided particularly helpful suggestions in conjunction with their reviews of the manuscript. Samuel B. Warner, who before his untimely death was a historian in the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as a colleague of Lee Nichols on some of that reporter's civil rights investigations, also contributed generously of his talents and lent his support in the early days of my work. Finally, I am grateful for the advice of my colleague Ronald H. Spector at several key points in the preparation of this history.

I have received much help from archivists and librarians, especially the resourceful William H. Cunliffe and Lois Aldridge (now retired) of the National Archives and Dean C. Allard of the Naval Historical Center. Although the fruits of their scholarship appear often in my footnotes, three fellow researchers in the field deserve special mention: Maj. Alan M. Osur and Lt. Col. Alan L. Gropman of the U.S. Air Force and Ralph W. Donnelly, former member of the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center. I have benefited from our exchange of ideas and have had the advantage of their reviews of the manuscript.

I am especially grateful for the generous assistance of my editors, Loretto C. Stevens and Barbara H. Gilbert. They have been both friends and teachers. In the same vein, I wish to thank John Elsberg for his editorial counsel. I also appreciate the help given by William G. Bell in the selection of the illustrations, including the loan of two rare items from his personal collection, and Arthur S. Hardyman for preparing the pictures for publication. I would like to thank Mary Lee Treadway and Wyvetra B. Yeldell for preparing the manuscript for panel review and Terrence J. Gough for his helpful pre-publication review.

Finally, while no friend or relative was spared in the long years I worked on this book, three colleagues especially bore with me through days of doubts and frustrations and shared my small triumphs: Alfred M. Beck, Ernest F. Fisher, Jr., and Paul J. Scheips. I also want particularly to thank Col. James W. Dunn. I only hope that some of their good sense and sunny optimism show through these pages.

Contents

Chapter

[1. INTRODUCTION]
[The Armed forces Before 1940]
[Civil Rights and the Law in 1940]
[To Segregate Is To Discriminate]
[2. WORLD WAR II: THE ARMY]
[A War Policy: Reaffirming Segregation]
[Segregation and Efficiency]
[The Need for Change]
[Internal Reform: Amending Racial Practices]
[Two Exceptions]
[3. WORLD WAR II: THE NAVY]
[Development of a Wartime Policy]
[A Segregated Navy]
[Progressive Experiments]
[Forrestal Takes the Helm]
[4. WORLD WAR II: THE MARINE CORPS AND THE COAST GUARD]
[The First Black Marines]
[New Roles for Black Coast Guardsmen]
[5. A POSTWAR SEARCH]
[Black Demands]
[The Army's Grand Review]
[The Navy's Informal Inspection]
[6. NEW DIRECTIONS]
[The Gillem Board Report]
[Integration of the General Service]
[The Marine Corps]
[7. A PROBLEM OF QUOTAS]
[The Quota in Practice]
[Broader Opportunities]
[Assignments]
[A New Approach]
[The Quota System: An Assessment]
[8. SEGREGATION'S CONSEQUENCES]
[Discipline and Morale Among Black Troops]
[Improving the Status of the Segregated Soldier]
[Discrimination and the Postwar Army]
[Segregation in Theory and Practice]
[Segregation: An Assessment]
[9. THE POSTWAR NAVY]
[The Steward's Branch]
[Black Officers]
[Public Image and the Problem of Numbers]
[10. THE POSTWAR MARINE CORPS]
[Racial Quotas and Assignments]
[Recruitment]
[Segregation and Efficiency]
[Toward Integration]
[11. THE POSTWAR AIR FORCE]
[Segregation and Efficiency]
[Impulse for Change]
[12. THE PRESIDENT INTERVENES]
[The Truman Administration and Civil Rights]
[Civil Rights and the Department of Defense]
[Executive Order 9981]
[13. SERVICE INTERESTS VERSUS PRESIDENTIAL INTENT]
[Public Reaction to Executive Order 9981]
[The Army: Segregation on the Defensive]
[A Different Approach]
[The Navy: Business as Usual]
[Adjustments in the Marine Corps]
[The Air Force Plans for Limited Integration]
[14. THE FAHY COMMITTEE VERSUS THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE]
[The Committee's Recommendations]
[A Summer of Discontent]
[Assignments]
[Quotas]
[An Assessment]
[15. THE ROLE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, 1949-1951]
[Overseas Restrictions]
[Congressional Concerns]
[16. INTEGRATION IN THE AIR FORCE AND THE NAVY]
[The Air Force, 1949-1951]
[The Navy and Executive Order 9981]
[17. THE ARMY INTEGRATES]
[Race and Efficiency: 1950]
[Training]
[Performance of Segregated Units]
[Final Arguments]
[Integration of the Eighth Army]
[Integration of the European and Continental Commands]
[18. INTEGRATION OF THE MARINE CORPS]
[Impetus for Change]
[Assignments]
[19. A NEW ERA BEGINS]
[The Civil Rights Revolution]
[Limitations on Executive Order 9981]
[Integration of Navy Shipyards]
[Dependent Children and Integrated Schools]
[20. LIMITED RESPONSE TO DISCRIMINATION]
[The Kennedy Administration and Civil Rights]
[The Department of Defense, 1961-1963]
[Discrimination Off the Military Reservation]
[Reserves and Regulars: A Comparison]
[21. EQUAL TREATMENT AND OPPORTUNITY REDEFINED]
[The Secretary Makes a Decision]
[The Gesell Committee]
[Reaction to a New Commitment]
[The Gesell Committee: Final Report]
[22. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE MILITARY COMMUNITY]
[Creating a Civil Rights Apparatus]
[Fighting Discrimination Within the Services]
[23. FROM VOLUNTARY COMPLIANCE TO SANCTIONS]
[Development of Voluntary Action Programs]
[Civil Rights, 1964-1966]
[The Civil Rights Act and Voluntary Compliance]
[The Limits of Voluntary Compliance]
[24. CONCLUSION]
[Why the Services Integrated]
[How the Services Integrated, 1946-1954]
[Equal Treatment and Opportunity]
[NOTE ON SOURCES]
[INDEX]

Illustrations

[Crewmen of the USS Miami During the Civil War]
[Buffalo Soldiers]
[Integration in the Army of 1888]
[Gunner's Gang on the USS Maine]
[General John J. (Black Jack) Pershing Inspects Troops]
[Heroes of the 369th Infantry, February 1919]
[Judge William H. Hastie]
[General George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson]
[Engineer Construction Troops in Liberia, July 1942]
[Labor Battalion Troops in the Aleutian Islands, May 1943]
[Sergeant Addressing the Line]
[Pilots of the 332d Fighter Group]
[Service Club, Fort Huachuca]
[93d Division Troops in Bougainville, April 1944]
[Gun Crew of Battery B, 598th Field Artillery, September 1944]
[Tankers of the 761st Medium Tank Battalion Prepare for Action]
[WAAC Replacements]
[Volunteers for Combat in Training]
[Road Repairmen]
[Mess Attendant, First Class, Dorie Miller Addressing Recruits at Camp Smalls]
[Admiral Ernest J. King and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox]
[Crew Members of USS Argonaut, Pearl Harbor, 1942]
[Messmen Volunteer as Gunners, July 1942]
[Electrician Mates String Power Lines]
[Laborers at Naval Ammunition Depot]
[Seabees in the South Pacific]
[Lt. Comdr. Christopher S. Sargent]
[USS Mason]
[First Black Officers in the Navy]
[Lt. (jg.) Harriet Ida Pickens and Ens. Frances Wills]
[Sailors in the General Service]
[Security Watch in the Marianas]
[Specialists Repair Aircraft]
[The 22d Special Construction Battalion Celebrates V-J Day]
[Marines of the 51st Defense Battalion, Montford Point, 1942]
[Shore Party in Training, Camp Lejeune, 1942]
[D-day on Peleliu]
[Medical Attendants at Rest, Peleliu, October 1944]
[Gun Crew of the 52d Defense Battalion]
[Crewmen of USCG Lifeboat Station, Pea Island, North Carolina]
[Coast Guard Recruits at Manhattan Beach Training Station, New York]
[Stewards at Battle Station on the Cutter Campbell]
[Shore Leave in Scotland]
[Lt. Comdr. Carlton Skinner and Crew of the USS Sea Cloud]
[Ens. Joseph J. Jenkins and Lt. (jg.) Clarence Samuels]
[President Harry S. Truman Addressing the NAACP Convention]
[Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy]
[Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War Truman K. Gibson]
[Company I, 370th Infantry, 92d Division, Advances Through Cascina, Italy]
[92d Division Engineers Prepare a Ford for Arno River Traffic]
[Lester Granger Interviewing Sailors]
[Granger With Crewmen of a Naval Yard Craft]
[Lt. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, U.S. Army]
[Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson]
[Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, U.S. Navy]
[General Gerald C. Thomas, U.S. Marine Corps]
[Lt. Gen. Willard S. Paul]
[Adviser to the Secretary of War Marcus Ray]
[Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger Inspects 24th Infantry Troops]
[Army Specialists Report for Airborne Training]
[Bridge Players, Seaview Service Club, Tokyo, Japan, 1948]
[24th Infantry Band, Gifu, Japan, 1947]
[Lt. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner Inspects the 529th Military Police Company]
[Reporting to Kitzingen]
[Inspection by the Chief of Staff]
[Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.]
[Shore Leave in Korea]
[Mess Attendants, USS Bushnell, 1918]
[Mess Attendants, USS Wisconsin, 1953]
[Lt. Comdr. Dennis D. Nelson II]
[Naval Unit Passes in Review, Naval Advanced Base, Bremerhaven, Germany]
[Submariner]
[Marine Artillery Team]
[2d Lt. and Mrs. Frederick C. Branch]
[Training Exercises]
[Damage Inspection]
[Col. Noel F. Parrish]
[Officers' Softball Team]
[Checking Ammunition]
[Squadron F, 318th AAF Battalion, in Review]
[Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Commander, 477th Composite Group, 1945]
[Lt. Gen. Idwal H. Edwards]
[Col. Jack F. Marr]
[Walter F. White]
[Truman's Civil Rights Campaign]
[A. Philip Randolph]
[National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 April 1948]
[MP's Hitch a Ride]
[Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall Reviews Military Police Battalion]
[Spring Formal Dance, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, 1952]
[Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal]
[General Clifton B. Cates]
[1st Marine Division Drill Team on Exhibition]
[Secretary of the Air Force W. Stuart Symington]
[Secretary of Defense Louis C. Johnson]
[Fahy Committee With President Truman and Armed Services Secretaries]
[E. W. Kenworthy]
[Charles Fahy]
[Roy K. Davenport]
[Press Notice]
[Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray]
[Chief of Staff of the Army J. Lawton Collins]
["No Longer a Dream"]
[Navy Corpsman in Korea]
[25th Division Troops in Japan]
[Assistant Secretary of Defense Anna M. Rosenberg]
[Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Eugene M. Zuckert]
[Music Makers]
[Maintenance Crew, 462d Strategic Fighter Squadron]
[Jet Mechanics]
[Christmas in Korea, 1950]
[Rearming at Sea]
[Broadening Skills]
[Integrated Stewards Class Graduates, Great Lakes, 1953]
[WAVE Recruits, Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, Maryland, 1953]
[Rear Adm. Samuel L. Gravely, Jr.]
[Moving Up]
[Men of Battery A, 159th Field Artillery Battalion]
[Survivors of an Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon, 24th Infantry]
[General Matthew B. Ridgway, Far East Commander]
[Machine Gunners of Company L, 14th Infantry, Hill 931, Korea]
[Color Guard, 160th Infantry, Korea, 1952]
[Visit With the Commander]
[Brothers Under the Skin]
[Marines on the Kansas Line, Korea]
[Marine Reinforcements]
[Training Exercises on Iwo Jima, March 1954]
[Marines From Camp Lejeune]
[Lt. Col. Frank E. Petersen, Jr.]
[Sergeant Major Edgar R. Huff]
[Clarence Mitchell]
[Congressman Adam Clayton Powell]
[Secretary of the Navy Robert B. Anderson]
[Reading Class in the Military Dependents School, Yokohama]
[Civil Rights Leaders at the White House]
[President John F. Kennedy and President Jorge Allessandri]
[Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara]
[Adam Yarmolinsky]
[James C. Evans]
[The Gesell Committee Meets With the President]
[Alfred B. Fitt]
[Arriving in Vietnam]
[Digging In]
[Listening to the Squad Leader]
[Supplying the Seventh Fleet]
[USAF Ground Crew, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam]
[Fighter Pilots on the Line]
[Medical Examination]
[Auto Pilot Shop]
[Submarine Tender Duty]
[First Aid]
[Vietnam Patrol]
[Marine Engineers in Vietnam]
[Loading a Rocket Launcher]
[American Sailors Help Evacuate a Vietnamese Child]
[Booby Trap Victim from Company B, 47th Infantry]
[Camaraderie ]

All illustrations are from the files of the Department of Defense and the National Archives and Records Service with the exception of the pictures on pages 6 and 10, courtesy of William G. Bell; on page 20, by Fabian Bachrach, courtesy of Judge William H. Hastie; on page 120, courtesy of Carlton Skinner; on page 297, courtesy of the Washington Star, on page 361, courtesy of the Afro-American Newspapers; on page 377, courtesy of the Sengstacke Newspapers; and on page 475, courtesy of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Tables

No.

1. [Classification of All Men Tested From March 1941 Through December 1942]
2. [AGCT Percentages in Selected World War II Divisions]
3. [Percentage of Black Enlisted Men and Women]
4. [Disposition of Black Personnel at Eight Air Force Bases, 1949]
5. [Racial Composition of Air Force Units]
6. [Black Strength in the Air Force]
7. [Racial Composition of the Training Command, December 1949]
8. [Black Manpower, U.S. Navy]
9. [Worldwide Distribution of Enlisted Personnel by Race, October 1952]
10. [Distribution of Black Enlisted Personnel by Branch and Rank, 31 October 1952]
11. [Black Marines, 1949-1955]
12. [Defense Installations With Segregated Public Schools]
13. [Black Strength in the Armed Forces for Selected Years]
14. [Estimated Percentage Distribution of Draft-Age Males in U.S. Population by AFQT Groups]
15. [Rate of Men Disqualified for Service in 1962]
16. [Rejection Rates for Failure To Pass Armed Forces Mental Test, 1962]
17. [Nonwhite Inductions and First Enlistments, Fiscal Years 1953-1962]
18. [Distribution of Enlisted Personnel in Each Major Occupation, 1956]
19. [Occupational Group Distribution by Race, All DOD, 1962]
20. [Occupational Group Distribution of Enlisted Personnel by Length of Service, and Race]
21. [Percentage Distribution of Navy Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups and Occupational Areas, and Length of Service, 1962]
22. [Percentage Distribution of Blacks and Whites by Pay Grade, All DOD, 1962]
23. [Percentage Distribution of Navy Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups, Pay Grade, and Length of Service, 1962]
24. [Black Percentages, 1962-1968]
25. [Rates for First Reenlistments, 1964-1967]
26. [Black Attendance at the Military Academies, July 1968]
27. [Army and Air Force Commissions Granted at Predominately Black Schools]
28. [Percentage of Negroes in Certain Military Ranks, 1964-1966]
29. [Distribution of Servicemen in Occupational Groups by Race, 1967]

INTEGRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES 1940-1965

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In the quarter century that followed American entry into World War II, the nation's armed forces moved from the reluctant inclusion of a few segregated Negroes to their routine acceptance in a racially integrated military establishment. Nor was this change confined to military installations. By the time it was over, the armed forces had redefined their traditional obligation for the welfare of their members to include a promise of equal treatment for black servicemen wherever they might be. In the name of equality of treatment and opportunity, the Department of Defense began to challenge racial injustices deeply rooted in American society.

For all its sweeping implications, equality in the armed forces obviously had its pragmatic aspects. In one sense it was a practical answer to pressing political problems that had plagued several national administrations. In another, it was the services' expression of those liberalizing tendencies that were permeating American society during the era of civil rights activism. But to a considerable extent the policy of racial equality that evolved in this quarter century was also a response to the need for military efficiency. So easy did it become to demonstrate the connection between inefficiency and discrimination that, even when other reasons existed, military efficiency was the one most often evoked by defense officials to justify a change in racial policy.

The Armed Forces Before 1940

Progress toward equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces was an uneven process, the result of sporadic and sometimes conflicting pressures derived from such constants in American society as prejudice and idealism and spurred by a chronic shortage of military manpower. In his pioneering study of race relations, Gunnar Myrdal observes that ideals have always played a dominant role in the social dynamics of America.[1-1] By extension, the ideals that helped involve the nation in many of its wars also helped produce important changes in the treatment of Negroes by the armed forces. The democratic spirit embodied in the Declaration of Independence, for example, opened the Continental Army to many Negroes, holding out to them the promise of eventual freedom.[1-2]

Yet the fact that the British themselves were taking large numbers of Negroes into their ranks proved more important than revolutionary idealism in creating a place for Negroes in the American forces. Above all, the participation of both slaves and freedmen in the Continental Army and the Navy was a pragmatic response to a pressing need for fighting men and laborers. Despite the fear of slave insurrection shared by many colonists, some 5,000 Negroes, the majority from New England, served with the American forces in the Revolution, often in integrated units, some as artillerymen and musicians, the majority as infantrymen or as unarmed pioneers detailed to repair roads and bridges.

Again, General Jackson's need for manpower at New Orleans explains the presence of the Louisiana Free Men of Color in the last great battle of the War of 1812. In the Civil War the practical needs of the Union Army overcame the Lincoln administration's fear of alienating the border states. When the call for volunteers failed to produce the necessary men, Negroes were recruited, generally as laborers at first but later for combat. In all, 186,000 Negroes served in the Union Army. In addition to those in the sixteen segregated combat regiments and the labor units, thousands also served unofficially as laborers, teamsters, and cooks. Some 30,000 Negroes served in the Navy, about 25 percent of its total Civil War strength.

The influence of the idealism fostered by the abolitionist crusade should not be overlooked. It made itself felt during the early months of the war in the demands of Radical Republicans and some Union generals for black enrollment, and it brought about the postwar establishment of black units in the Regular Army. In 1866 Congress authorized the creation of permanent, all-black units, which in 1869 were designated the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry.

Crewmen of the USS Miami During the Civil War

Military needs and idealistic impulses were not enough to guarantee uninterrupted racial progress; in fact, the status of black servicemen tended to reflect the changing patterns in American race relations. During most of the nineteenth century, for example, Negroes served in an integrated U.S. Navy, in the latter half of the century averaging between 20 and 30 percent of the enlisted strength.[1-3] But the employment of Negroes in the Navy was abruptly curtailed after 1900. Paralleling the rise of Jim Crow and legalized segregation in much of America was the cutback in the number of black sailors, who by 1909 were mostly in the galley and the engine room. In contrast to their high percentage of the ranks in the Civil War and Spanish-American War, only 6,750 black sailors, including twenty-four women reservists (yeomanettes), served in World War I; they constituted 1.2 percent of the Navy's total enlistment.[1-4] Their service was limited chiefly to mess duty and coal passing, the latter becoming increasingly rare as the fleet changed from coal to oil.

Buffalo Soldiers.
(Frederick Remington's 1888 sketch.)]

When postwar enlistment was resumed in 1923, the Navy recruited Filipino stewards instead of Negroes, although a decade later it reopened the branch to black enlistment. Negroes quickly took advantage of this limited opportunity, their numbers rising from 441 in 1932 to 4,007 in June 1940, when they constituted 2.3 percent of the Navy's 170,000 total.[1-5] Curiously enough, because black reenlistment in combat or technical specialties had never been barred, a few black gunner's mates, torpedomen, machinist mates, and the like continued to serve in the 1930's.

Although the Army's racial policy differed from the Navy's, the resulting limited, separate service for Negroes proved similar. The laws of 1866 and 1869 that guaranteed the existence of four black Regular Army regiments also institutionalized segregation, granting federal recognition to a system racially separate and theoretically equal in treatment and opportunity a generation before the Supreme Court sanctioned such a distinction in Plessy v. Ferguson.[1-6] So important to many in the black community was this guaranteed existence of the four regiments that had served with distinction against the frontier Indians that few complained about segregation. In fact, as historian Jack Foner has pointed out, black leaders sometimes interpreted demands for integration as attempts to eliminate black soldiers altogether.[1-7]

The Spanish-American War marked a break with the post-Civil War tradition of limited recruitment. Besides the 3,339 black regulars, approximately 10,000 black volunteers served in the Army during the conflict. World War I was another exception, for Negroes made up nearly 11 percent of the Army's total strength, some 404,000 officers and men.[1-8] The acceptance of Negroes during wartime stemmed from the Army's pressing need for additional manpower. Yet it was no means certain in the early months of World War I that this need for men would prevail over the reluctance of many leaders to arm large groups of Negroes. Still remembered were the 1906 Brownsville affair, in which men of the 25th Infantry had fired on Texan civilians, and the August 1917 riot involving members of the 24th Infantry at Houston, Texas.[1-9] Ironically, those idealistic impulses that had operated in earlier wars were operating again in this most Jim Crow of administrations.[1-10] Woodrow Wilson's promise to make the world safe for democracy was forcing his administration to admit Negroes to the Army. Although it carefully maintained racially separate draft calls, the National Army conscripted some 368,000 Negroes, 13.08 percent of all those drafted in World War I.[1-11]

Black assignments reflected the opinion, expressed repeatedly in Army staff studies throughout the war, that when properly led by whites, blacks could perform reasonably well in segregated units. Once again Negroes were called on to perform a number of vital though unskilled jobs, such as construction work, most notably in sixteen specially formed pioneer infantry regiments. But they also served as frontline combat troops in the all-black 92d and 93d Infantry Divisions, the latter serving with distinction among the French forces.

Established by law and tradition and reinforced by the Army staff's conviction that black troops had not performed well in combat, segregation survived to flourish in the postwar era.[1-12] The familiar practice of maintaining a few black units was resumed in the Regular Army, with the added restriction that Negroes were totally excluded from the Air Corps. The postwar manpower retrenchments common to all Regular Army units further reduced the size of the remaining black units. By June 1940 the number of Negroes on active duty stood at approximately 4,000 men, 1.5 percent of the Army's total, about the same proportion as Negroes in the Navy.[1-13]

Civil Rights and the Law in 1940

The same constants in American society that helped decide the status of black servicemen in the nineteenth century remained influential between the world wars, but with a significant change.[1-14] Where once the advancing fortunes of Negroes in the services depended almost exclusively on the good will of white progressives, their welfare now became the concern of a new generation of black leaders and emerging civil rights organizations. Skilled journalists in the black press and counselors and lobbyists presenting such groups as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, and the National Negro Congress took the lead in the fight for racial justice in the United States. They represented a black community that for the most part lacked the cohesion, political awareness, and economic strength which would characterize it in the decades to come. Nevertheless, Negroes had already become a recognizable political force in some parts of the country. Both the New Deal politicians and their opponents openly courted the black vote in the 1940 presidential election.

These politicians realized that the United States was beginning to outgrow its old racial relationships over which Jim Crow had reigned, either by law or custom, for more than fifty years. In large areas of the country where lynchings and beatings were commonplace, white supremacy had existed as a literal fact of life and death.[1-15] More insidious than the Jim Crow laws were the economic deprivation and dearth of educational opportunity associated with racial discrimination. Traditionally the last hired, first fired, Negroes suffered all the handicaps that came from unemployment and poor jobs, a condition further aggravated by the Great Depression. The "separate but equal" educational system dictated by law and the realities of black life in both urban and rural areas, north and south, had proved anything but equal and thus closed to Negroes a traditional avenue to advancement in American society.

In these circumstances, the economic and humanitarian programs of the New Deal had a special appeal for black America. Encouraged by these programs and heartened by Eleanor Roosevelt's public support of civil rights, black voters defected from their traditional allegiance to the Republican Party in overwhelming numbers. But the civil rights leaders were already aware, if the average black citizen was not, that despite having made some considerable improvements Franklin Roosevelt never, in one biographer's words, "sufficiently challenged Southern traditions of white supremacy to create problems for himself."[1-16] Negroes, in short, might benefit materially from the New Deal, but they would have to look elsewhere for advancement of their civil rights.

Men like Walter F. White of the NAACP and the National Urban League's T. Arnold Hill sought to use World War II to expand opportunities for the black American. From the start they tried to translate the idealistic sentiment for democracy stimulated by the war and expressed in the Atlantic Charter into widespread support for civil rights in the United States. At the same time, in sharp contrast to many of their World War I predecessors, they placed a price on black support for the war effort: no longer could the White House expect this sizable minority to submit to injustice and yet close ranks with other Americans to defeat a common enemy. It was readily apparent to the Negro, if not to his white supporter or his enemy, that winning equality at home was just as important as advancing the cause of freedom abroad. As George S. Schuyler, a widely quoted black columnist, put it: "If nothing more comes out of this emergency than the widespread understanding among white leaders that the Negro's loyalty is conditional, we shall not have suffered in vain."[1-17] The NAACP spelled out the challenge even more clearly in its monthly publication, The Crisis, which declared itself "sorry for brutality, blood, and death among the peoples of Europe, just as we were sorry for China and Ethiopia. But the hysterical cries of the preachers of democracy for Europe leave us cold. We want democracy in Alabama, Arkansas, in Mississippi and Michigan, in the District of Columbia—in the Senate of the United States."[1-18]

This sentiment crystallized in the black press's Double V campaign, a call for simultaneous victories over Jim Crow at home and fascism abroad. Nor was the Double V campaign limited to a small group of civil rights spokesmen; rather, it reflected a new mood that, as Myrdal pointed out, was permeating all classes of black society.[1-19] The quickening of the black masses in the cause of equal treatment and opportunity in the pre-World War II period and the willingness of Negroes to adopt a more militant course to achieve this end might well mark the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.

Integration in the Army of 1888.
The Army Band at Fort Duchesne, Utah, composed of soldiers from the black 9th Cavalry and the white 21st Infantry.

Historian Lee Finkle has suggested that the militancy advocated by most of the civil rights leaders in the World War II era was merely a rhetorical device; that for the most part they sought to avoid violence over segregation, concentrating as before on traditional methods of protest.[1-20] This reliance on traditional methods was apparent when the leaders tried to focus the new sentiment among Negroes on two war-related goals: equality of treatment in the armed forces and equality of job opportunity in the expanding defense industries. In 1938 the Pittsburgh Courier, the largest and one of the most influential of the nation's black papers, called upon the President to open the services to Negroes and organized the Committee for Negro Participation in the National Defense Program. These moves led to an extensive lobbying effort that in time spread to many other newspapers and local civil rights groups. The black press and its satellites also attracted the support of several national organizations that were promoting preparedness for war, and these groups, in turn, began to demand equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces.[1-21]

The government began to respond to these pressures before the United States entered World War II. At the urging of the White House the Army announced plans for the mobilization of Negroes, and Congress amended several mobilization measures to define and increase the military training opportunities for Negroes.[1-22] The most important of these legislative amendments in terms of influence on future race relations in the United States were made to the Selective Service Act of 1940. The matter of race played only a small part in the debate on this highly controversial legislation, but during congressional hearings on the bill black spokesmen testified on discrimination against Negroes in the services.[1-23] These witnesses concluded that if the draft law did not provide specific guarantees against it, discrimination would prevail.

Gunner's Gang on the USS Maine.

A majority in both houses of Congress seemed to agree. During floor debate on the Selective Service Act, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York proposed an amendment to guarantee to Negroes and other racial minorities the privilege of voluntary enlistment in the armed forces. He sought in this fashion to correct evils described some ten days earlier by Rayford W. Logan, chairman of the Committee for Negro Participation in the National Defense, in testimony before the House Committee on Military Affairs. The Wagner proposal triggered critical comments and questions. Senators John H. Overton and Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana viewed the Wagner amendment as a step toward "mixed" units. Overton, Ellender, and Senator Lister Hill of Alabama proposed that the matter should be "left to the Army." Hill also attacked the amendment because it would allow the enlistment of Japanese-Americans, some of whom he claimed were not loyal to the United States.[1-24]

General Pershing, AEF Commander, Inspects Troops
of the 802d (Colored) Pioneer Regiment in France, 1918.

No filibuster was attempted, and the Wagner amendment passed the Senate easily, 53 to 21. It provided

that any person between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five regardless of race or color shall be afforded an opportunity voluntarily to enlist and be inducted into the land and naval forces (including aviation units) of the United States for the training and service prescribed in subsection (b), if he is acceptable to the land or naval forces for such training and service.[1-25]

The Wagner amendment was aimed at volunteers for military service. Congressman Hamilton Fish, also of New York, later introduced a similar measure in the House aimed at draftees. The Fish amendment passed the House by a margin of 121 to 99 and emerged intact from the House-Senate conference. The law finally read that in the selection and training of men and execution of the law "there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race or color."[1-26]

Heroes of the 369th Infantry.
Winners of the Croix de Guerre arrive in New York Harbor, February 1919.

The Fish amendment had little immediate impact upon the services' racial patterns. As long as official policy permitted separate draft calls for blacks and whites and the officially held definition of discrimination neatly excluded segregation—and both went unchallenged in the courts—segregation would remain entrenched in the armed forces. Indeed, the rigidly segregated services, their ranks swollen by the draft, were a particular frustration to the civil rights forces because they were introducing some black citizens to racial discrimination more pervasive than any they had ever endured in civilian life. Moreover, as the services continued to open bases throughout the country, they actually spread federally sponsored segregation into areas where it had never before existed with the force of law. In the long run, however, the 1940 draft law and subsequent draft legislation had a strong influence on the armed forces' racial policies. They created a climate in which progress could be made toward integration within the services. Although not apparent in 1940, the pressure of a draft-induced flood of black conscripts was to be a principal factor in the separate decisions of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to integrate their units.

To Segregate Is To Discriminate

As with all the administration's prewar efforts to increase opportunities for Negroes in the armed forces, the Selective Service Act failed to excite black enthusiasm because it missed the point of black demands. Guarantees of black participation were no longer enough. By 1940 most responsible black leaders shared the goal of an integrated armed forces as a step toward full participation in the benefits and responsibilities of American citizenship.

The White House may well have thought that Walter White of the NAACP singlehandedly organized the demand for integration in 1939, but he was merely applying a concept of race relations that had been evolving since World War I. In the face of ever-worsening discrimination, White's generation of civil rights advocates had rejected the idea of the preeminent black leader Booker T. Washington that hope for the future lay in the development of a separate and strong black community. Instead, they gradually came to accept the argument of one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, William E. B. DuBois, that progress was possible only when Negroes abandoned their segregated community to work toward a society open to both black and white. By the end of the 1930's this concept had produced a fundamental change in civil rights tactics and created the new mood of assertiveness that Myrdal found in the black community. The work of White and others marked the beginning of a systematic attack against Jim Crow. As the most obvious practitioner of Jim Crow in the federal government, the services were the logical target for the first battle in a conflict that would last some thirty years.

This evolution in black attitudes was clearly demonstrated in correspondence in the 1930's between officials of the NAACP and the Roosevelt administration over equal treatment in the armed forces. The discussion began in 1934 with a series of exchanges between Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur and NAACP Counsel Charles H. Houston and continued through the correspondence between White and the administration in 1937. The NAACP representatives rejected MacArthur's defense of Army policy and held out for a quota guaranteeing that Negroes would form at least 10 percent of the nation's military strength. Their emphasis throughout was on numbers; during these first exchanges, at least, they fought against disbandment of the existing black regiments and argued for similar units throughout the service.[1-27]

Yet the idea of integration was already strongly implied in Houston's 1934 call for "a more united nation of free citizens,"[1-28] and in February 1937 the organization emphasized the idea in an editorial in The Crisis, asking why black and white men could not fight side by side as they had in the Continental Army.[1-29] And when the Army informed the NAACP in September 1939 that more black units were projected for mobilization, White found this solution unsatisfactory because the proposed units would be segregated.[1-30] If democracy was to be defended, he told the President, discrimination must be eliminated from the armed forces. To this end, the NAACP urged Roosevelt to appoint a commission of black and white citizens to investigate discrimination in the Army and Navy and to recommend the removal of racial barriers.[1-31]

The White House ignored these demands, and on 17 October the secretary to the President, Col. Edwin M. Watson, referred White to a War Department report outlining the new black units being created under presidential authorization. But the NAACP leaders were not to be diverted from the main chance. Thurgood Marshall, then the head of the organization's legal department, recommended that White tell the President "that the NAACP is opposed to the separate units existing in the armed forces at the present time."[1-32]

When his associates failed to agree on a reply to the administration, White decided on a face-to-face meeting with the President.[1-33] Roosevelt agreed to confer with White, Hill of the Urban League, and A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the session finally taking place on 27 September 1940. At that time the civil rights officials outlined for the President and his defense assistants what they called the "important phases of the integration of the Negro into military aspects of the national defense program." Central to their argument was the view that the Army and Navy should accept men without regard to race. According to White, the President had apparently never considered the use of integrated units, but after some discussion he seemed to accept the suggestion that the Army could assign black regiments or batteries alongside white units and from there "the Army could 'back into' the formation of units without segregation."[1-34]

Nothing came of these suggestions. Although the policy announced by the White House subsequent to the meeting contained concessions regarding the employment and distribution of Negroes in the services, it did not provide for integrated units. The wording of the press release on the conference implied, moreover, that the administration's entire program had been approved by White and the others. To have their names associated with any endorsement of segregation was particularly infuriating to these civil rights leaders, who immediately protested to the President.[1-35] The White House later publicly absolved the leaders of any such endorsement, and Press Secretary Early was forced to retract the "damaging impression" that the leaders had in any way endorsed segregation. The President later assured White, Randolph, and Hill that further policy changes would be made to insure fair treatment for Negroes.[1-36]

Presidential promises notwithstanding, the NAACP set out to make integration of the services a matter of overriding interest to the black community during the war. The organization encountered opposition at first when some black leaders were willing to accept segregated units as the price for obtaining the formation of more all-black divisions. The NAACP stood firm, however, and demanded at its annual convention in 1941 an immediate end to segregation.

In a related move symbolizing the growing unity behind the campaign to integrate the military, the leaders of the March on Washington Movement, a group of black activists under A. Philip Randolph, specifically demanded the end of segregation in the Army and Navy. The movement was the first since the days of Marcus Garvey to involve the black masses; in fact Negroes from every social and economic class rallied behind Randolph, ready to demonstrate for equal treatment and opportunity. Although some black papers objected to the movement's militancy, the major civil rights organization showed no such hesitancy. Roy Wilkins, a leader of the NAACP, later claimed that Randolph could supply only about 9,000 potential demonstrators and that the NAACP had provided the bulk of the movement's participants.[1-37]

Although Randolph was primarily interested in fair employment practices, the NAACP had been concerned with the status of black servicemen since World War I. Reflecting the degree of NAACP support, march organizers included a discussion of segregation in the services when they talked with President Roosevelt in June 1941. Randolph and the others proposed ways to abolish the separate racial units in each service, charging that integration was being frustrated by prejudiced senior military officials.[1-38]

The President's meeting with the march leaders won the administration a reprieve from the threat of a mass civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital, but at the price of promising substantial reform in minority hiring for defense industries and the creation of a federal body, the Fair Employment Practices Committee, to coordinate the reform. While it prompted no similar reform in the racial policies of the armed forces, the March on Washington Movement was nevertheless a significant milestone in the services' racial history.[1-39] It signaled the beginning of a popularly based campaign against segregation in the armed forces in which all the major civil rights organizations, their allies in Congress and the press, and many in the black community would hammer away on a single theme: segregation is unacceptable in a democratic society and hypocritical during a war fought in defense of the four freedoms.

CHAPTER 2

World War II: The Army

Civil rights leaders adopted the "Double V" slogan as their rallying cry during World War II. Demanding victory against fascism abroad and discrimination at home, they exhorted black citizens to support the war effort and to fight for equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes everywhere. Although segregation was their main target, their campaign was directed against all forms of discrimination, especially in the armed forces. They flooded the services with appeals for a redress of black grievances and levied similar demands on the White House, Congress, and the courts.

Black leaders concentrated on the services because they were public institutions, their officials sworn to uphold the Constitution. The leaders understood, too, that disciplinary powers peculiar to the services enabled them to make changes that might not be possible for other organizations; the armed forces could command where others could only persuade. The Army bore the brunt of this attention, but not because its policies were so benighted. In 1941 the Army was a fairly progressive organization, and few institutions in America could match its record. Rather, the civil rights leaders concentrated on the Army because the draft law had made it the nation's largest employer of minority groups.

For its part, the Army resisted the demands, its spokesmen contending that the service's enormous size and power should not be used for social experiment, especially during a war. Further justifying their position, Army officials pointed out that their service had to avoid conflict with prevailing social attitudes, particularly when such attitudes were jealously guarded by Congress. In this period of continuous demand and response, the Army developed a racial policy that remained in effect throughout the war with only superficial modifications sporadically adopted to meet changing conditions.

A War Policy: Reaffirming Segregation

The experience of World War I cast a shadow over the formation of the Army's racial policy in World War II.[2-1] The chief architects of the new policy, and many of its opponents, were veterans of the first war and reflected in their judgments the passions and prejudices of that era.[2-2] Civil rights activists were determined to eliminate the segregationist practices of the 1917 mobilization and to win a fair representation for Negroes in the Army. The traditionalists of the Army staff, on the other hand, were determined to resist any radical change in policy. Basing their arguments on their evaluation of the performance of the 92d Division and some other black units in World War I, they had made, but not publicized, mobilization plans that recognized the Army's obligation to employ black soldiers yet rigidly maintained the segregationist policy of World War I.[2-3] These plans increased the number of types of black units to be formed and even provided for a wide distribution of the units among all the arms and services except the Army Air Forces and Signal Corps, but they did not explain how the skilled Negro, whose numbers had greatly increased since World War I, could be efficiently used within the limitations of black units. In the name of military efficiency the Army staff had, in effect, devised a social rather than a military policy for the employment of black troops.

The White House tried to adjust the conflicting demands of the civil rights leaders and the Army traditionalists. Eager to placate and willing to compromise, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought an accommodation by directing the War Department to provide jobs for Negroes in all parts of the Army. The controversy over integration soon became more public, the opponents less reconcilable; in the weeks following the President's meeting with black representatives on 27 September 1940 the Army countered black demands for integration with a statement released by the White House on 9 October. To provide "a fair and equitable basis" for the use of Negroes in its expansion program, the Army planned to accept Negroes in numbers approximate to their proportion in the national population, about 10 percent. Black officers and enlisted men were to serve, as was then customary, only in black units that were to be formed in each major branch, both combatant and noncombatant, including air units to be created as soon as pilots, mechanics, and technical specialists were trained. There would be no racial intermingling in regimental organizations because the practice of separating white and black troops had, the Army staff said, proved satisfactory over a long period of time. To change would destroy morale and impair preparations for national defense. Since black units in the Army were already "going concerns, accustomed through many years to the present system" of segregation, "no experiments should be tried ... at this critical time."[2-4]

The President's "OK, F.D.R." on the War Department statement transformed what had been a routine prewar mobilization plan into a racial policy that would remain in effect throughout the war. In fact, quickly elevated in importance by War Department spokesmen who made constant reference to the "Presidential Directive," the statement would be used by some Army officials as a presidential sanction for introducing segregation in new situations, as, for example, in the pilot training of black officers in the Army Air Corps. Just as quickly, the civil rights leaders, who had expected more from the tone of the President's own comments and more also from the egalitarian implications of the new draft law, bitterly attacked the Army's policy.

Black criticism came at an awkward moment for President Roosevelt, who was entering a heated campaign for an unprecedented third term and whose New Deal coalition included the urban black vote. His opponent, the articulate Wendell L. Willkie, was an unabashed champion of civil rights and was reportedly attracting a wide following among black voters. In the weeks preceding the election the President tried to soften the effect of the Army's announcement. He promoted Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., to brigadier general, thereby making Davis the first Negro to hold this rank in the Regular Army. He appointed the commander of reserve officers' training at Howard University, Col. Campbell C. Johnson, Special Aide to the Director of Selective Service. And, finally, he named Judge William H. Hastie, dean of the Howard University Law School, Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War.

A successful lawyer, Judge Hastie entered upon his new assignment with several handicaps. Because of his long association with black causes, some civil rights organizations assumed that Hastie would be their man in Washington and regarded his duties as an extension of their crusade against discrimination. Hastie's War Department superiors, on the other hand, assumed that his was a public relations job and expected him to handle all complaints and mobilization problems as had his World War I predecessor, Emmett J. Scott. Both assumptions proved false. Hastie was evidently determined to break the racial logjam in the War Department, yet unlike many civil rights advocates he seemed willing to pay the price of slow progress to obtain lasting improvement. According to those who knew him, Hastie was confident that he could demonstrate to War Department officials that the Army's racial policies were both inefficient and unpatriotic.[2-5]

Judge Hastie spent his first ten months in office observing what was happening to the Negro in the Army. He did not like what he saw. To him, separating black soldiers from white soldiers was a fundamental error. First, the effect on black morale was devastating. "Beneath the surface," he wrote, "is widespread discontent. Most white persons are unable to appreciate the rancor and bitterness which the Negro, as a matter of self-preservation, has learned to hide beneath a smile, a joke, or merely an impassive face." The inherent paradox of trying to inculcate pride, dignity, and aggressiveness in a black soldier while inflicting on him the segregationist's concept of the Negro's place in society created in him an insupportable tension. Second, segregation wasted black manpower, a valuable military asset. It was impossible, Hastie charged, to employ skilled Negroes at maximum efficiency within the traditionally narrow limitations of black units. Third, to insist on an inflexible separation of white and black soldiers was "the most dramatic evidence of hypocrisy" in America's professed concern for preserving democracy.

Although he appreciated the impossibility of making drastic changes overnight, Judge Hastie was disturbed because he found "no apparent disposition to make a beginning or a trial of any different plan." He looked for some form of progressive integration by which qualified Negroes could be classified and assigned, not by race, but as individuals, according to their capacities and abilities.[2-6]

Judge Hastie

Judge Hastie gained little support from the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, or the Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, when he called for progressive integration. Both considered the Army's segregated units to be in accord with prevailing public sentiment against mixing the races in the intimate association of military life. More to the point, both Stimson and Marshall were sensitive to military tradition, and segregated units had been a part of the Army since 1863. Stimson embraced segregation readily. While conveying to the President that he was "sensitive to the individual tragedy which went with it to the colored man himself," he nevertheless urged Roosevelt not to place "too much responsibility on a race which was not showing initiative in battle."[2-7] Stimson's attitude was not unusual for the times. He professed to believe in civil rights for every citizen, but he opposed social integration. He never tried to reconcile these seemingly inconsistent views; in fact, he probably did not consider them inconsistent. Stimson blamed what he termed Eleanor Roosevelt's "intrusive and impulsive folly" for some of the criticism visited upon the Army's racial policy, just as he inveighed against the "foolish leaders of the colored race" who were seeking "at bottom social equality," which, he concluded, was out of the question "because of the impossibility of race mixture by marriage."[2-8] Influenced by Under Secretary Robert P. Patterson, Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy, and Truman K. Gibson, Jr., who was Judge Hastie's successor, but most of all impressed by the performance of black soldiers themselves, Stimson belatedly modified his defense of segregation. But throughout the war he adhered to the traditional arguments of the Army's professional staff.

General Marshall and Secretary Stimson

General Marshall was a powerful advocate of the views of the Army staff. He lived up to the letter of the Army's regulations, consistently supporting measures to eliminate overt discrimination in the wartime Army. At the same time, he rejected the idea that the Army should take the lead in altering the racial mores of the nation. Asked for his views on Hastie's "carefully prepared memo,"[2-9] General Marshall admitted that many of the recommendations were sound but said that Judge Hastie's proposals

would be tantamount to solving a social problem which has perplexed the American people throughout the history of this nation. The Army cannot accomplish such a solution and should not be charged with the undertaking. The settlement of vexing racial problems cannot be permitted to complicate the tremendous task of the War Department and thereby jeopardize discipline and morale.[2-10]

As Chief of Staff, Marshall faced the tremendous task of creating in haste a large Army to deal with the Axis menace. Since for several practical reasons the bulk of that Army would be trained in the south where its conscripts would be subject to southern laws, Marshall saw no alternative but to postpone reform. The War Department, he said, could not ignore the social relationship between blacks and whites, established by custom and habit. Nor could it ignore the fact that the "level of intelligence and occupational skill" of the black population was considerably below that of whites. Though he agreed that the Army would reach maximum strength only if individuals were placed according to their abilities, he concluded that experiments to solve social problems would be "fraught with danger to efficiency, discipline, and morale." In sum, Marshall saw no reason to change the policy approved by the President less than a year before.[2-11]

The Army's leaders and the secretary's civilian aide had reached an impasse on the question of policy even before the country entered the war. And though the use of black troops in World War I was not entirely satisfactory even to its defenders,[2-12] there appeared to be no time now, in view of the larger urgency of winning the war, to plan other approaches, try other solutions, or tamper with an institution that had won victory in the past. Further ordering the thoughts of some senior Army officials was their conviction that wide-scale mixing of the races in the services might, as Under Secretary Patterson phrased it, foment social revolution.[2-13]

These opinions were clearly evident on 8 December 1941, the day the United States entered World War II, when the Army's leaders met with a group of black publishers and editors. Although General Marshall admitted that he was not satisfied with the department's progress in racial matters and promised further changes, the conference concluded with a speech by a representative of The Adjutant General who delivered what many considered the final word on integration during the war.

The Army is made up of individual citizens of the United States who have pronounced views with respect to the Negro just as they have individual ideas with respect to other matters in their daily walk of life. Military orders, fiat, or dicta, will not change their viewpoints. The Army then cannot be made the means of engendering conflict among the mass of people because of a stand with respect to Negroes which is not compatible with the position attained by the Negro in civil life.... The Army is not a sociological laboratory; to be effective it must be organized and trained according to the principles which will insure success. Experiments to meet the wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency, discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat.[2-14]

The civil rights advocates refused to concede that the discussion was over. Judge Hastie, along with a sizable segment of the black press, believed that the beginning of a world war was the time to improve military effectiveness by increasing black participation in that war.[2-15] They argued that eliminating segregation was part of the struggle to preserve democracy, the transcendent issue of the war, and they viewed the unvarying pattern of separate black units as consonant with the racial theories of Nazi Germany.[2-16] Their continuing efforts to eliminate segregation and discrimination eventually brought Hastie a sharp reminder from John J. McCloy. "Frankly, I do not think that the basic issues of this war are involved in the question of whether colored troops serve in segregated units or in mixed units and I doubt whether you can convince people of the United States that the basic issues of freedom are involved in such a question." For Negroes, he warned sternly, the basic issue was that if the United States lost the war, the lot of the black community would be far worse off, and some Negroes "do not seem to be vitally concerned about winning the war." What all Negroes ought to do, he counseled, was to give unstinting support to the war effort in anticipation of benefits certain to come after victory.[2-17]

Thus very early in World War II, even before the United States was actively engaged, the issues surrounding the use of Negroes in the Army were well defined and the lines sharply drawn. Was segregation, a practice in conflict with the democratic aims of the country, also a wasteful use of manpower? How would modifications of policy come—through external pressure or internal reform? Could traditional organizational and social patterns in the military services be changed during a war without disrupting combat readiness?

Segregation and Efficiency

In the years before World War II, Army planners never had to consider segregation in terms of manpower efficiency. Conditioned by the experiences of World War I, when the nation had enjoyed a surplus of untapped manpower even at the height of the war, and aware of the overwhelming manpower surplus of the depression years, the staff formulated its mobilization plans with little regard for the economical use of the nation's black manpower. Its decision to use Negroes in proportion to their percentage of the population was the result of political pressures rather than military necessity. Black combat units were considered a luxury that existed to indulge black demands. When the Army began to mobilize in 1940 it proceeded to honor its pledge, and one year after Pearl Harbor there were 399,454 Negroes in the Army, 7.4 percent of the total and 7.95 percent of all enlisted troops.[2-18]

The effect of segregation on manpower efficiency became apparent only as the Army tried to translate policy into practice. In the face of rising black protest and with direct orders from the White House, the Army had announced that Negroes would be assigned to all arms and branches in the same ratio as whites. Several forces, however, worked against this equitable distribution. During the early months of mobilization the chiefs of those arms and services that had traditionally been all white accepted less than their share of black recruits and thus obliged some organizations, the Quartermaster Corps and the Engineer Corps in particular, to absorb a large percentage of black inductees. The imbalance worsened in 1941. In December of that year Negroes accounted for 5 percent of the Infantry and less than 2 percent each of the Air Corps, Medical Corps, and Signal Corps. The Quartermaster Corps was 15 percent black, the Engineer Corps 25 percent, and unassigned and miscellaneous detachments were 27 percent black.

The rejection of black units could not always be ascribed to racism alone. With some justification the arms and services tried to restrict the number and distribution of Negroes because black units measured far below their white counterparts in educational achievement and ability to absorb training, according to the Army General Classification Test (AGCT). The Army had introduced this test system in March 1941 as its principal instrument for the measurement of a soldier's learning ability. Five categories, with the most gifted in category I, were used in classifying the scores made by the soldiers taking the test (Table 1). The Army planned to take officers and enlisted specialists from the top three categories and the semiskilled soldiers and laborers from the two lowest.

Table 1—Classification of All Men Tested
From March 1941 Through December 1942

Source: Tab A, Memo, G-3 for CofS, 10 Apr 43, AG 201.2 (19 Mar 43) (1).

Although there was considerable confusion on the subject, basically the Army's mental tests measured educational achievement rather than native intelligence, and in 1941 educational achievement in the United States hinged more on geography and economics than color. Though black and white recruits of comparable educations made comparable scores, the majority of Negroes came from areas of the country where inferior schools combined with economic and cultural poverty to put them at a significant disadvantage.[2-19] Many whites suffered similar disadvantages, and in absolute numbers more whites than blacks appeared in the lower categories. But whereas the Army could distribute the low-scoring white soldiers throughout the service so that an individual unit could easily absorb its few illiterate and semiliterate white men, the Army was obliged to assign an almost equal number of low-scoring Negroes to the relatively few black units where they could neither be absorbed nor easily trained. By the same token, segregation penalized the educated Negro whose talents were likely to be wasted when he was assigned to service units along with the unskilled.

Segregation further hindered the efficient use of black manpower by complicating the training of black soldiers. Although training facilities were at a premium, the Army was forced to provide its training and replacement centers with separate housing and other facilities. With an extremely limited number of Regular Army Negroes to draw from, the service had to create cadres for the new units and find officers to lead them. Black recruits destined for most arms and services were assured neither units, billets, nor training cadres. The Army's solution to the problem: lower the quotas for black inductees.

The use of quotas to regulate inductees by race was itself a source of tension between the Army and the Bureau of Selective Service.[2-20] Selective Service questioned the legality of the whole procedure whereby white and black selectees were delivered on the basis of separate calls; in many areas of the country draft boards were under attack for passing over large numbers of Negroes in order to fill these racial quotas. With the Navy depending exclusively on volunteers, Selective Service had by early 1943 a backlog of 300,000 black registrants who, according to their order numbers, should have been called to service but had been passed over. Selective Service wanted to eliminate the quota system altogether. At the very least it demanded that the Army accept more Negroes to adjust the racial imbalance of the draft rolls. The Army, determined to preserve the quota system, tried to satisfy the Selective Service's minimum demands, making room for more black inductees by forcing its arms and services to create more black units. Again the cost to efficiency was high.

Under the pressure of providing sufficient units for Negroes, the organization of units for the sake of guaranteeing vacancies became a major goal. In some cases, careful examination of the usefulness of the types of units provided was subordinated to the need to create units which could receive Negroes. As a result, several types of units with limited military value were formed in some branches for the specific purpose of absorbing otherwise unwanted Negroes. Conversely, certain types of units with legitimate and important military functions were filled with Negroes who could not function efficiently in the tasks to which they were assigned.[2-21]

Engineer Construction Troops in Liberia, July 1942

The practice of creating units for the specific purpose of absorbing Negroes was particularly evident in the Army Air Forces.[2-22] Long considered the most recalcitrant of branches in accepting Negroes, the Air Corps had successfully exempted itself from the allotment of black troops in the 1940 mobilization plans. Black pilots could not be used, Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps, explained, "since this would result in having Negro officers serving over white enlisted men. This would create an impossible social problem."[2-23] And this situation could not be avoided, since it would take several years to train black mechanics; meanwhile black pilots would have to work with white ground crews, often at distant bases outside their regular chain of command. The Air Corps faced strong opposition when both the civil rights advocates and the rest of the Army attacked this exclusion. The civil rights organizations wanted a place for Negroes in the glamorous Air Corps, but even more to the point the other arms and services wanted this large branch of the Army to absorb its fair share of black recruits, thus relieving the rest of a disproportionate burden.

Labor Battalion Troops in the Aleutian Islands, May 1943.
Stevedores pause for a hot meal at Massacre Bay.

Sergeant Addressing the Line.
Aviation squadron standing inspection, 1943.

When the War Department supported these demands the Army Air Forces capitulated. Its 1941 mobilization plans provided for the formation of nine separate black aviation squadrons which would perform the miscellaneous tasks associated with the upkeep of airfields. During the next year the Chief of Staff set the allotment of black recruits for the air arm at a rate that brought over 77,500 Negroes into the Air Corps by 1943. On 16 January 1941 Under Secretary Patterson announced the formation of a black pursuit squadron, but the Army Air Forces, bowing to the opposition typified by General Arnold's comments of the previous year, trained the black pilots in separate facilities at Tuskegee, Alabama, where the Army tried to duplicate the expensive training center established for white officers at Maxwell Field, just forty miles away.[2-24] Black pilots were at first trained exclusively for pursuit flying, a very difficult kind of combat for which a Negro had to qualify both physically and technically or else, in Judge Hastie's words, "not fly at all."[2-25] The 99th Fighter Squadron was organized at Tuskegee in 1941 and sent to the Mediterranean theater in April 1943. By then the all-black 332d Fighter Group with three additional fighter squadrons had been organized, and in 1944 it too was deployed to the Mediterranean.

Pilots of the 332d Fighter Group Being Briefed
for combat mission in Italy.

These squadrons could use only a limited number of pilots, far fewer than those black cadets qualified for such training. All applicants in excess of requirements were placed on an indefinite waiting list where many became overage or were requisitioned for other military and civilian duties. Yet when the Army Air Forces finally decided to organize a black bomber unit, the 477th Bombardment Group, in late 1943, it encountered a scarcity of black pilots and crewmen. Because of the lack of technical and educational opportunities for Negroes in America, fewer blacks than whites were included in the manpower pool, and Tuskegee, already overburdened with its manifold training functions and lacking the means to train bomber crews, was unable to fill the training gap. Sending black cadets to white training schools was one obvious solution; the Army Air Forces chose instead to postpone the operational date of the 477th until its pilots could be trained at Tuskegee. In the end, the 477th was not declared operational until after the war. Even then some compromise with the Army Air Forces' segregation principles was necessary, since Tuskegee could not accommodate B-25 pilot transition and navigator-bombardier training. In 1944 black officers were therefore temporarily assigned to formerly all-white schools for such training. Tuskegee's position as the sole and separate training center for black pilots remained inviolate until its closing in 1946, however, and its graduates, the "Tuskegee Airmen," continued to serve as a powerful symbol of armed forces segregation.[2-26]

Training for black officer candidates other than flyers, like that of most officer candidates throughout the Army, was integrated. At first the possibility of integrated training seemed unlikely, for even though Assistant Secretary of War for Air Robert A. Lovett had assured Hastie that officer candidate training would be integrated, the Technical Training Command announced plans in 1942 for a segregated facility. Although the plans were quickly canceled the command's announcement was the immediate cause for Hastie's resignation from the War Department. The Air staff assured the Assistant Secretary of War in January of 1943 that qualified Negroes were being sent to officer candidate schools and to training courses "throughout the school system of the Technical Training Command."[2-27] In fact, Negroes did attend the Air Forces' officer candidate school at Miami Beach, although not in great numbers. In spite of their integrated training, however, most of these black officers were assigned to the predominantly black units at Tuskegee and Godman fields.

The Army Air Forces found it easier to absorb the thousands of black enlisted men than to handle the black flying squadrons. For the enlisted men it created a series of units with vaguely defined duties, usually common labor jobs operating for the most part under a bulk allotment system that allowed the Air Forces to absorb great numbers of new men. Through 1943 hundreds of these aviation training squadrons, quartermaster truck companies, and engineer aviation and air base security battalions were added to the Air Forces' organization tables. Practically every American air base in the world had its contingent of black troops performing the service duties connected with air operations.

The Air Corps, like the Armor and the Artillery branches, was able to form separate squadrons or battalions for black troops, but the Infantry and Cavalry found it difficult to organize the growing number of separate black battalions and regiments. The creation of black divisions was the obvious solution, although this arrangement would run counter to current practice, which was based in part on the Army's experience with the 92d Division in World War I. Convinced of the poor performance of that unit in 1918, the War Department had decided in the 1920's not to form any more black divisions. The regiment would serve as the basic black unit, and from time to time these regiments would be employed as organic elements of divisions whose other regiments and units would be white. In keeping with this decision, the black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments were combined in October 1940 with white regiments to form the 2d Cavalry Division.

Before World War II most black leaders had agreed with the Army's opposition to all-black divisions, but for different reasons. They considered that such divisions only served to strengthen the segregation pattern they so opposed. In the early weeks of the war a conference of black editors, including Walter White, pressed for the creation of an experimental integrated division of volunteers. White argued that such a unit would lift black morale, "have a tremendous psychological effect upon white America," and refute the enemy's charge that "the United States talks about democracy but practices racial discrimination and segregation."[2-28] The NAACP organized a popular movement in support of the idea, which was endorsed by many important individuals and organizations.[2-29] Yet this experiment was unacceptable to the Army. Ignoring its experience with all-volunteer paratroopers and other special units, the War Department declared that the volunteer system was "an ineffective and dangerous" method of raising combat units. Admitting that the integrated division might be an encouraging gesture toward certain minorities, General Marshall added that "the urgency of the present military situation necessitates our using tested and proved methods of procedure, and using them with all haste."[2-30]

Even though it rejected the idea of a volunteer, integrated division, the Army staff reviewed in the fall of 1942 a proposal for the assignment of some black recruits to white units. The Organization-Mobilization Group of G-3, headed by Col. Edwin W. Chamberlain, argued that the Army General Classification Test scores proved that black soldiers in groups were less useful to the Army than white soldiers in groups. It was a waste of manpower, funds, and equipment, therefore, to organize the increasingly large numbers of black recruits into segregated units. Not only was such organization wasteful, but segregation "aggravated if not caused in its entirety" the racial friction that was already plaguing the Army. To avoid both the waste and the strife, Chamberlain recommended that the Army halt the activation of additional black units and integrate black recruits in the low-score categories, IV and V, into white units in the ratio of one black to nine whites. The black recruits would be used as cooks, orderlies, and drivers, and in other jobs which required only the minimum basic training and which made up 10 to 20 percent of those in the average unit. Negroes in the higher categories, I through III, would be assigned to existing black units where they could be expected to improve the performance of those units. Chamberlain defended his plan against possible charges of discrimination by pointing out that the Negroes would be assigned wholly on the basis of native capacity, not race, and that this plan would increase the opportunities for Negroes to participate in the war effort. To those who objected on the grounds that the proposal meant racial integration, Chamberlain replied that there was no more integration involved than in "the employment of Negroes as servants in a white household."[2-31]

The Chamberlain Plan and a variant proposed the following spring prompted discussion in the Army staff that clearly revealed general dissatisfaction with the current policy. Nonetheless, in the face of opposition from the service and ground forces, the plan was abandoned. Yet because something had to be done with the mounting numbers of black draftees, the Army staff reversed the decision made in its prewar mobilization plans and turned once more to the concept of the all-black division. The 93d Infantry Division was reactivated in the spring of 1942 and the 92d the following fall. The 2d Cavalry Division was reconstituted as an all-black unit and reactivated in February 1943. These units were capable of absorbing 15,000 or more men each and could use men trained in the skills of practically every arm and service.

This absorbency potential became increasingly important in 1943 when the chairman of the War Manpower Commission, Paul V. McNutt, began to attack the use of racial quotas in selecting inductees. He considered the practice of questionable legality, and the commission faced mounting public criticism as white husbands and fathers were drafted while single healthy Negroes were not called.[2-32] Secretary Stimson defended the legality of the quota system. He did not consider the current practice "discriminatory in any way" so long as the Army accepted its fair percentage of Negroes. He pointed out that the Selective Service Act provided that no man would be inducted "unless and until" he was acceptable to the services, and Negroes were acceptable "only at a rate at which they can be properly assimilated."[2-33] Stimson later elaborated on this theme, arguing that the quota system would be necessary even after the Army reached full strength because inductions would be limited to replacement of losses. Since there were few Negroes in combat, their losses would be considerably less than those of whites. McNutt disagreed with Stimson's interpretation of the law and announced plans to abandon it as soon as the current backlog of uninducted Negroes was absorbed, a date later set for January 1944.[2-34]

A crisis over the quota system was averted when, beginning in the spring of 1943, the Army's monthly manpower demands outran the ability of the Bureau of Selective Service to provide black inductees. So long as the Army requested more Negroes than the bureau could supply, little danger existed that McNutt would carry out his threat.[2-35] But it was no victory for the Army. The question of the quota's legality remained unanswered, and it appeared that the Army might be forced to abandon the system at some future time when there was a black surplus.

There were many reasons for the sudden shortage of black inductees in the spring of 1943. Since more Negroes were leaving the service for health or other reasons, the number of calls for black draftees had increased. In addition, local draft boards were rejecting more Negroes. But the basic reason for the shortage was that the magnitude of the war had finally turned the manpower surpluses of the 1930's into manpower shortages, and the shortages were appearing in black as well as white levies for the armed forces. The Negro was no longer a manpower luxury. The quota calls for Negroes rose in 1944, and black strength stood at 701,678 men in September, approximately 9.6 percent of the whole Army. [2-36] The percentage of black women in the Army stayed at less than 6 percent of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps—after July 1943 the Women's Army Corps—throughout the war. Training and serving under the same racial policy that governed the employment of men, the women's corps also had a black recruitment goal of 10 percent, but despite the active efforts of recruiters and generally favorable publicity from civil rights groups, the volunteer organization was unable to overcome the attitude among young black women that they would not be well received at Army posts.[2-37]

Faced with manpower shortages, the Army began to reassess its plan to distribute Negroes proportionately throughout the arms and services. The demand for new service units had soared as the size of the overseas armies grew, while black combat units, unwanted by overseas commanders, had remained stationed in the United States. The War Department hoped to ease the strain on manpower resources by converting black combat troops into service troops. A notable example of the wholesale conversion of such combat troops and one that received considerable notice in the press was the inactivation of the 2d Cavalry Division upon its arrival in North Africa in March 1944. Victims of the change included the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments, historic combat units that had fought with distinction in the Indian wars, with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, and in the Philippine Insurrection.[2-38]

By trying to justify the conversion, Secretary Stimson only aggravated the controversy. In the face of congressional questions and criticism in the black press, Stimson declared that the decision stemmed from a study of the relative abilities and status of training of the troops in the units available for conversion. If black units were particularly affected, it was because "many of the Negro units have been unable to master efficiently the techniques of modern weapons."[2-39] Thus, by the end of 1944, the Army had abandoned its attempt to maintain a balance between black combat and service units, and during the rest of the war most Negroes were assigned to service units.

According to the War Department, the relationship between Negroes and the Army was a mutual obligation. Negroes had the right and duty to serve their country to the best of their abilities; the Army had the right and the duty to see that they did so. True, the use of black troops was made difficult because their schooling had been largely inferior and their work therefore chiefly unskilled. Nevertheless, the Army staff concluded, all races were equally endowed for war and most of the less mentally alert could fight if properly led.[2-40] A manual on leadership observed:

War Department concern with the Negro is focused directly and solely on the problem of the most effective use of colored troops ... the Army has no authority or intention to participate in social reform as such but does view the problem as a matter of efficient troop utilization. With an imposed ceiling on the maximum strength of the Army it is the responsibility of all officers to assure the most efficient use of the manpower assigned.[2-41]

But the best efforts of good officers could not avail against poor policy. Although the Army maintained that Negroes had to bear a proportionate share of the casualties, by policy it assigned the majority to noncombat units and thus withheld the chance for them to assume an equal risk. Subscribing to the advantage of making full use of individual abilities, the Army nevertheless continued to consider Negroes as a group and to insist that military efficiency required racially segregated units. Segregation in turn burdened the service with the costly provision of separate facilities for the races. Although a large number of Negroes served in World War II, their employment was limited in opportunity and expensive for the service.

The Need for Change

If segregation weakened the Army's organization for global war, it had even more serious effects on every tenth soldier, for as it deepened the Negro's sense of inferiority it devastated his morale. It was a major cause of the poor performance and the disciplinary problems that plagued so many black units. And it made black soldiers blame their personal difficulties and misfortunes, many the common lot of any soldier, on racial discrimination.[2-42]

Deteriorating morale in black units and pressure from a critical audience of articulate Negroes and their sympathizers led the War Department to focus special attention on its race problem. Early in the war Secretary Stimson had agreed with a General Staff recommendation that a permanent committee be formed to evaluate racial incidents, propose special reforms, and answer questions involving the training and assignment of Negroes.[2-43] On 27 August 1942 he established the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, with Assistant Secretary McCloy as chairman.[2-44] Caught in the cross fire of black demands and Army traditions, the committee contented itself at first with collecting information on the racial situation and acting as a clearinghouse for recommendations on the employment of black troops.[2-45]

Service Club, Fort Huachuca

Serious racial trouble was developing by the end of the first year of the war. The trouble was a product of many factors, including the psychological effects of segregation which may not have been so obvious to the committee or even to the black soldier. Other factors, however, were visible to all and begged for remedial action. For example, the practice of using racially separated facilities on military posts, which was not sanctioned in the Army's basic plan for black troops, took hold early in the war. Many black units were located at camps in the south, where commanders insisted on applying local laws and customs inside the military reservations. This practice spread rapidly, and soon in widely separated sections of the country commanders were separating the races in theaters, post exchanges, service clubs, and buses operating on posts. The accommodations provided Negroes were separate but rarely equal, and substandard recreational and housing facilities assigned to black troops were a constant source of irritation. In fact the Army, through the actions of local commanders, actually introduced Jim Crow in some places at home and abroad. Negroes considered such practices in violation of military regulations and inconsistent with the announced principles for which the United States was fighting. Many believed themselves the victims of the personal prejudices of the local commander. Judge Hastie reported their feelings: "The traditional mores of the South have been widely accepted and adopted by the Army as the basis of policy and practice affecting the Negro soldier.... In tactical organization, in physical location, in human contacts, the Negro soldier is separated from the white soldier as completely as possible."[2-46]

In November 1941 another controversy erupted over the discovery that the Red Cross had established racially segregated blood banks. The Red Cross readily admitted that it had no scientific justification for the racial separation of blood and blamed the armed services for the decision. Despite the evidence of science and at risk of demoralizing the black community, the Army's Surgeon General defended the controversial practice as necessary to insure the acceptance of a potentially unpopular program. Ignoring constant criticism from the NAACP and elements of the black press, the armed forces continued to demand segregated blood banks throughout the war. Negroes appreciated the irony of the situation, for they were well aware that a black doctor, Charles R. Drew, had been a pioneer researcher in the plasma extraction process and had directed the first Red Cross blood bank.[2-47]

Black morale suffered further in the leadership crisis that developed in black units early in the war. The logic of segregated units demanded a black officer corps, but there were never enough black officers to command all the black units. In 1942 only 0.35 percent of the Negroes in the Army were officers, a shortcoming that could not be explained by poor education alone.[2-48] But when the number of black officers did begin to increase, obstacles to their employment appeared: some white commanders, assuming that Negroes did not possess leadership ability and that black troops preferred white officers, demanded white officers for their units. Limited segregated recreational and living facilities for black officers prevented their assignment to some bases, while the active opposition of civilian communities forced the Army to exclude them from others. The Army staff practice of forbidding Negroes to outrank or command white officers serving in the same unit not only limited the employment and restricted the rank of black officers but also created invidious distinctions between white and black officers in the same unit. It tended to convince enlisted men that their black leaders were not full-fledged officers. Thus restricted in assignment and segregated socially and professionally, his ability and status in question, the black officer was often an object of scorn to himself and to his men.

The attitude and caliber of white officers assigned to black units hardly compensated for the lack of black officers. In general, white officers resented their assignment to black units and were quick to seek transfer. Worse still, black units, where sensitive and patient leaders were needed to create an effective military force, often became, as they had in earlier wars, dumping grounds for officers unwanted in white units.[2-49] The Army staff further aggravated black sensibilities by showing a preference for officers of southern birth and training, believing them to be generally more competent to exercise command over Negroes. In reality many Negroes, especially those from the urban centers, particularly resented southern officers. At best these officers appeared paternalistic, and Negroes disliked being treated as a separate and distinct group that needed special handling and protection. As General Davis later circumspectly reported, "many colored people of today expect only a certain line of treatment from white officers born and reared in the South, namely, that which follows the southern pattern, which is most distasteful to them."[2-50]

Some of these humiliations might have been less demeaning had the black soldier been convinced that he was a full partner in the crusade against fascism. As news of the conversion of black units from combat to service duties and the word that no new black combat units were being organized became a matter of public knowledge, the black press asked: Will any black combat units be left? Will any of those left be allowed to fight? In fact, would black units ever get overseas?

Actually, the Army had a clear-cut plan for the overseas employment of both black service and combat units. In May 1942 the War Department directed the Army Air Forces, Ground Forces, and Service Forces to make sure that black troops were ordered overseas in numbers not less than their percentage in each of these commands. Theater commanders would be informed of orders moving black troops to their commands, but they would not be asked to agree to their shipment beforehand. Since troop shipments to the British Isles were the chief concern at that time, the order added that "there will be no positive restrictions on the use of colored troops in the British Isles, but shipment of colored units to the British Isles will be limited, initially, to those in the service categories."[2-51]

The problem here was not the Army's policy but the fact that certain foreign governments and even some commanders in American territories wanted to exclude Negroes. Some countries objected to black soldiers because they feared race riots and miscegenation. Others with large black populations of their own felt that black soldiers with their higher rates of pay might create unrest. Still other countries had national exclusion laws. In the case of Alaska and Trinidad, Secretary Stimson ordered, "Don't yield." Speaking of Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador, he commented, "Pretty cold for blacks." To the request of Panamanian officials that a black signal construction unit be withdrawn from their country he replied, "Tell them [the black unit] they must complete their work—it is ridiculous to raise such objections when the Panama Canal itself was built with black labor." As for Chile and Venezuela's exclusion of Negroes he ruled that "As we are the petitioners here we probably must comply."[2-52] Stimson's rulings led to a new War Department policy: henceforth black soldiers would be assigned without regard to color except that they would not be sent to extreme northern areas or to any country against its will when the United States had requested the right to station troops in that country.[2-53]

Ultimately, theater commanders decided which troops would be committed to action and which units would be needed overseas; their decisions were usually respected by the War Department where few believed that Washington should dictate such matters. Unwilling to add racial problems to their administrative burdens, some commanders had been known to cancel their request for troops rather than accept black units. Consequently, very few Negroes were sent overseas in the early years of the war.

Black soldiers were often the victims of gross discrimination that transcended their difficulties with the Army's administration. For instance, black soldiers, particularly those from more integrated regions of the country, resented local ordinances governing transportation and recreation facilities that put them at a great disadvantage in the important matters of leave and amusement. Infractions of local rules were inevitable and led to heightened racial tension and recurring violence.[2-54] At times black soldiers themselves, reflecting the low morale and lack of discipline in their units, instigated the violence. Whoever the culprits, the Army's files are replete with cases of discrimination charged, investigations launched, and exonerations issued or reforms ordered.[2-55] An incredible amount of time and effort went into handling these cases during the darkest days of the war—cases growing out of a policy created in the name of military efficiency.

Nor was the violence limited to the United States. Racial friction also developed in Great Britain where some American troops, resenting their black countrymen's social acceptance by the British, tried to export Jim Crow by forcing the segregation of recreational facilities. Appreciating the treatment they were receiving from the British, the black soldiers fought back, and the clashes grew at times to riot proportions. General Davis considered discrimination and prejudice the cause of trouble, but he placed the immediate blame on local commanders. Many commanders, convinced that they had little jurisdiction over racial disputes in the civilian community or simply refusing to accept responsibility, delegated the task of keeping order to their noncommissioned officers and military police.[2-56] These men, rarely experienced in handling racial disturbances and often prejudiced against black soldiers, usually managed to exacerbate the situation.

In an atmosphere charged with rumors and counterrumors, personal incidents involving two men might quickly blow up into riots involving hundreds. In the summer of 1943 the Army began to reap what Ulysses Lee called the "harvest of disorder." Race riots occurred at military reservations in Mississippi, Georgia, California, Texas, and Kentucky. At other stations, the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies somberly warned, there were indications of unrest ready to erupt into violence.[2-57] By the middle of the war, violence over racial issues at home and abroad had become a source of constant concern for the War Department.

Internal Reform: Amending Racial Practices

Concern over troop morale and discipline and the attendant problem of racial violence did not lead to a substantial revision of the Army's racial policy. On the contrary, the Army staff continued to insist that segregation was a national issue and that the Army's task was to defend the country, not alter its social customs. Until the nation changed its racial practices or until Congress ordered such changes for the armed forces, racially separated units would remain.[2-58] In 1941 the Army had insisted that debate on the subject was closed,[2-59] and, in fact, except for discussion of the Chamberlain Plan there was no serious thought of revising racial policy in the Army staff until after the war.

Had the debate been reopened in 1943, the traditionalists on the Army staff would have found new support for their views in a series of surveys made of white and black soldiers in 1942 and 1943. These surveys supported the theory that the Army, a national institution composed of individual citizens with pronounced views on race, would meet massive disobedience and internal disorder as well as national resistance to any substantial change in policy. One extensive survey, covering 13,000 soldiers in ninety-two units, revealed that 88 percent of the whites and 38 percent of the Negroes preferred segregated units. Among the whites, 85 percent preferred separate service clubs and 81 percent preferred separate post exchanges. Almost half of the Negroes thought separate service clubs and post exchanges were a good idea.[2-60] These attitudes merely reflected widely held national views as suggested in a 1943 survey of five key cities by the Office of War Information.[2-61] The survey showed that 90 percent of the whites and 25 percent of the blacks questioned supported segregation.

Some Army officials considered justification by statistics alone a risky business. Reviewing the support for segregation revealed in the surveys, for example, the Special Services Division commented: "Many of the Negroes and some of the whites who favor separation in the Army indicate by their comments that they are opposed to segregation in principle. They favor separation in the Army to avoid trouble or unpleasantness." Its report added that the longer a Negro remained in the Army, the less likely he was to support segregation.[2-62] Nor did it follow from the overwhelming support for segregation that a policy of integration would result in massive resistance. As critics later pointed out, the same surveys revealed that almost half the respondents expressed a strong preference for civilian life, but the Army did not infer that serious disorders would result if these men were forced to remain in uniform.[2-63]

By 1943 Negroes within and without the War Department had just about exhausted arguments for a policy change. After two years of trying, Judge Hastie came to believe that change was possible only in response to "strong and manifest public opinion." He concluded that he would be far more useful as a private citizen who could express his views freely and publicly than he was as a War Department employee, bound to conform to official policy. Quitting the department, Hastie joined the increasingly vocal black organizations in a sustained attack on the Army's segregation policy, an attack that was also being translated into political action by the major civil rights organizations. In 1943, a full year before the national elections, representatives of twenty-five civil rights groups met and formulated the demands they would make of the presidential candidates: full integration (some groups tempered this demand by calling for integrated units of volunteers); abolition of racial quotas; abolition of segregation in recreational and other Army facilities; abolition of blood plasma segregation; development of an educational program in race relations in the Army; greater black participation in combat forces; and the progressive removal of black troops from areas where they were subject to disrespect, abuse, and even violence.[2-64]

The Army could not afford to ignore these demands completely, as Truman K. Gibson, Jr., Judge Hastie's successor, pointed out.[2-65] The political situation indicated that the racial policy of the armed forces would be an issue in the next national election. Recalling the changes forced on the Army as a result of political pressures applied before the 1940 election, Gibson predicted that actions that might now seem impolitic to the Army and the White House might not seem so during the next campaign when the black vote could influence the outcome in several important states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan. Already the Chicago Tribune and other anti-administration groups were trying to encourage black protest in terms not always accurate but nonetheless believable to the black voter. Gibson suggested that the Army act before the political pressure became even more intense.[2-66]

Caught between the black demands and War Department traditions, the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies launched an attack—much too late and too weak, its critics agreed—on what it perceived as the causes of the Army's racial disorders. Some of the credit for this attack must go to Truman Gibson. No less dedicated to abolition of racial segregation than Hastie, Gibson eschewed the grand gesture and emphasized those practical changes that could be effected one step at a time. For all his zeal, Gibson was admirably detached.[2-67] He knew that his willingness to recognize that years of oppression and injustice had marred the black soldier's performance would earn for him the scorn of many civil rights activists, but he also knew that his fairness made him an effective advocate in the War Department. He worked closely with McCloy's committee, always describing with his alternatives for action their probable effect upon the Army, the public, and the developing military situation. As a result of the close cooperation between the Advisory Committee and Gibson, the Army for the first time began to agree on practical if not policy changes.

The Advisory Committee's first campaign was directed at local commanders. After a long review of the evidence, the committee was convinced that the major cause of racial disorder was the failure of commanders in some echelons to appreciate the seriousness of racial unrest and their own responsibility for dealing with the discipline, morale, and welfare of their men. Since it found that most disturbances began with real or fancied incidents of discrimination, the committee concluded that there should be no discrimination against Negroes in the matter of privileges and accommodations and none in favor of Negroes that compromised disciplinary standards. The committee wanted local commanders to be reminded that maintaining proper discipline and good order among soldiers, and between soldiers and civilians, was a definite command responsibility.[2-68]

General Marshall incorporated the committee's recommendations in a letter to the field. He concluded by saying that "failure on the part of any commander to concern himself personally and vigorously with this problem will be considered as evidence of lack of capacity and cause for reclassification and removal from assignment."[2-69] At the same time, the Chief of Staff did not adopt several of the committee's specific recommendations. He did not require local commanders to recommend changes in War Department policy on the treatment of Negroes and the organization and employment of black units. Nor did he require them to report on steps taken by them to follow the committee's recommendations. Moreover, he did not order the dispatch of black combat units to active theaters although the committee had pointed to this course as "the most effective means of reducing tension among Negro troops."

Next, the Advisory Committee turned its attention to the black press. Judge Hastie and the representatives of the senior civil rights organizations were judicious in their criticism and accurate in their charges, but this statement could not be made for much of the black press. Along with deserving credit for spotlighting racial injustices and giving a very real impetus to racial progress, a segment of the black press had to share the blame for fomenting racial disorder by the frequent publication of inaccurate and inflammatory war stories. Some field commanders charged that the constant criticism was detrimental to troop morale and demanded that the War Department investigate and even censor particular black newspapers. In July 1943 the Army Service Forces recommended that General Marshall officially warn the editors against printing inciting and untrue stories and suggested that if this caution failed sedition proceedings be instituted against the culprits.[2-70] General Marshall followed a more moderate course suggested by Assistant Secretary McCloy.[2-71] The Army staff amplified and improved the services of the Bureau of Public Relations by appointing Negroes to the bureau and by releasing more news items of special interest to black journalists. The result was a considerable increase in constructive and accurate stories on black participation in the war, although articles and editorials continued to be severely critical of the Army's segregation policy.

The proposal to send black units into combat, rejected by Marshall when raised by the Advisory Committee in 1943, became the preeminent racial issue in the Army during the next year.[2-72] It was vitally necessary, the Advisory Committee reasoned, that black troops not be wasted by leaving them to train endlessly in camps around the country, and that the War Department begin making them a "military asset." In March 1944 it recommended to Secretary Stimson that black units be introduced into combat and that units and training schedules be reorganized if necessary to insure that this deployment be carried out as promptly as possible. Elaborating on the committee's recommendation, Chairman McCloy added:

There has been a tendency to allow the situation to develop where selections are made on the basis of efficiency with the result that the colored units are discarded for combat service, but little is done by way of studying new means to put them in shape for combat service.

With so large a portion of our population colored, with the example of the effective use of colored troops (of a much lower order of intelligence) by other nations, and with the many imponderables that are connected with the situation, we must, I think, be more affirmative about the use of our Negro troops. If present methods do not bring them to combat efficiency, we should change those methods. That is what this resolution purports to recommend.[2-73]

Stimson agreed, and on 4 March 1944 the Advisory Committee met with members of the Army staff to decide on combat assignments for regimental combat teams from the 92d and 93d Divisions. In order that both handpicked soldiers and normal units might be tested, the team from the 93d would come from existing units of that division, and the one from the 92d would be a specially selected group of volunteers. General Marshall and his associates continued to view the commitment of black combat troops as an experiment that might provide documentation for the future employment of Negroes in combat.[2-74] In keeping with this experiment, the Army staff suggested to field commanders how Negroes might be employed and requested continuing reports on the units' progress.

The belated introduction of major black units into combat helped alleviate the Army's racial problems. After elements of the 93d Division were committed on Bougainville in March 1944 and an advanced group of the 92d landed in Italy in July, the Army staff found it easier to ship smaller supporting units to combat theaters, either as separate units or as support for larger units, a course that reduced the glut of black soldiers stationed in the United States. Recognizing that many of these units had poor leaders, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, head of the Army Ground Forces, ordered that, "if practicable," all leaders of black units who had not received "excellent" or higher in their efficiency ratings would be replaced before the units were scheduled for overseas deployment.[2-75] Given the "if practicable" loophole, there was little chance that all the units would go overseas with "excellent" commanders.

93d Division Troops in Bougainville, April 1944.
Men, packing mortar shells, cross the West Branch Texas River.

A source of pride to the black community, the troop commitments also helped to reduce national racial tensions, but they did little for the average black soldier who remained stationed in the United States. He continued to suffer discrimination within and without the gates of the camp. The committee attributed that discrimination to the fact that War Department policy was not being carried out in all commands. In some instances local commanders were unaware of the policy; in others they refused to pay sufficient attention to the seriousness of what was, after all, but one of many problems facing them. For some time committee members had been urging the War Department to write special instructions, and finally in February 1944 the department issued a pamphlet designed to acquaint local commanders with an official definition of Army racial policy and to improve methods of developing leaders in black units. Command of Negro Troops was a landmark publication.[2-76] Its frank statement of the Army's racial problems, its scholarly and objective discussion of the disadvantages that burdened the black soldier, and its outline of black rights and responsibilities clearly revealed the committee's intention to foster racial harmony by promoting greater command responsibility. The pamphlet represented a major departure from previous practice and served as a model for later Army and Navy statements on race.[2-77]

But pamphlets alone would not put an end to racial discrimination; the committee had to go beyond its role of instructor. Although the War Department had issued a directive on 10 March 1943 forbidding the assignment of any recreational facility, "including theaters and post exchanges," by race and requiring the removal of signs labeling facilities for "white" and "colored" soldiers, there had been little alteration in the recreational situation. The directive had allowed the separate use of existing facilities by designated units and camp areas, so that in many places segregation by unit had replaced separation by race, and inspectors and commanders reported that considerable confusion existed over the War Department's intentions. On other posts the order to remove the racial labels from facilities was simply disregarded. On 8 July 1944 the committee persuaded the War Department to issue another directive clearly informing commanders that facilities could be allocated to specific areas or units, but that all post exchanges and theaters must be opened to all soldiers regardless of race. All government transportation, moreover, was to be available to all troops regardless of race. Nor could soldiers be restricted to certain sections of government vehicles on or off base, regardless of local customs.[2-78]

Little dramatic change ensued in day-to-day life on base. Some commanders, emphasizing that part of the directive which allowed the designation of facilities for units and areas, limited the degree of the directive's application to post exchanges and theaters and ignored those provisions concerned with individual rights. This interpretation only added to the racial unrest that culminated in several incidents, of which the one at the officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana, was the most widely publicized.[2-79] After this incident the committee promptly asked for a revision of WD Pamphlet 20-6 on the command of black troops that would clearly spell out the intention of the authors of the directive to apply its integration provisions explicitly to "officers' clubs, messes, or similar social organizations."[2-80] In effect the War Department was declaring that racial separation applied to units only. For the first time it made a clear distinction between Army race policy to be applied on federal military reservations and local civilian laws and customs to be observed by members of the armed forces when off post. In Acting Secretary Patterson's words:

The War Department has maintained throughout the emergency and present war that it is not an appropriate medium for effecting social readjustments but has insisted that all soldiers, regardless of race, be afforded equal opportunity to enjoy the recreational facilities which are provided at posts, camps and stations. The thought has been that men who are fulfilling the same obligation, suffering the same dislocation of their private lives, and wearing the identical uniform should, within the confines of the military establishment, have the same privileges for rest and relaxation.[2-81]

Widely disseminated by the black press as the "anti-Jim Crow law," the directive and its interpretation by senior officials produced the desired result. Although soldiers most often continued to frequent the facilities in their own base areas, in effect maintaining racial separation, they were free to use any facilities, and this knowledge gradually dispelled some of the tensions on posts where restrictions of movement had been a constant threat to good order.

With some pride, Assistant Secretary McCloy claimed on his Advisory Committee's first birthday that the Army had "largely eliminated discrimination against the Negroes within its ranks, going further in this direction than the country itself."[2-82] He was a little premature. Not until the end of 1944 did the Advisory Committee succeed in eliminating the most glaring examples of discrimination within the Army. Even then race remained an issue, and isolated racial incidents continued to occur.

Two Exceptions

Departmental policy notwithstanding, a certain amount of racial integration was inevitable during a war that mobilized a biracial army of eight million men. Through administrative error or necessity, segregation was ignored on many occasions, and black and white soldiers often worked and lived together in hospitals,[2-83] rest camps, schools, and, more rarely, units. But these were isolated cases, touching relatively few men, and they had no discernible effect on racial policy. Of much more importance was the deliberate integration in officer training schools and in the divisions fighting in the European theater in 1945. McCloy referred to these deviations from policy as experiments "too limited to afford general conclusions."[2-84] But if they set no precedents, they at least challenged the Army's cherished assumptions on segregation and strengthened the postwar demands for change.

The Army integrated its officer candidate training in an effort to avoid the mistakes of the World War I program. In 1917 Secretary of War Newton D. Baker had established a separate training school for black officer candidates at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, with disappointing results. To fill its quotas the school had been forced to lower its entrance standards, and each month an arbitrary number of black officer candidates were selected and graduated with little regard for their qualifications. Many World War I commanders agreed that the black officers produced by the school proved inadequate as troop commanders, and postwar staff studies generally opposed the future use of black officers. Should the Army be forced to accept black officers in the future, these commanders generally agreed, they should be trained along with whites.[2-85]

Gun Crew of Battery B, 598th Field Artillery,
moving into position near the Arno River, Italy, September 1944.

Despite these criticisms, mobilization plans between the wars all assumed that black officers would be trained and commissioned, although, as the 1937 mobilization plan put it, their numbers would be limited to those required to provide officers for organizations authorized to have black officers.[2-86] No detailed plans were drawn up on the nature of this training, but by the eve of World War II a policy had become fixed: Negroes were to be chosen and trained according to the same standards as white officers, preferably in the same schools.[2-87] The War Department ignored the subject of race when it established the officer candidate schools in 1941. "The basic and predominating consideration governing selections to OCS," The Adjutant General announced, would be "outstanding qualities of leadership as demonstrated by actual services in the Army."[2-88] General Davis, who participated in the planning conferences, reasoned that integrated training would be vital for the cooperation that would be necessary in battle. He agreed with the War Department's silence on race, adding, "you can't have Negro, white, or Jewish officers, you've got to have American officers."[2-89]

Tankers of the 761st Medium Tank Battalion
prepare for action in the European theater, August 1944.

The Army's policy failed to consider one practical problem: if race was ignored in War Department directives, would black candidates ever be nominated and selected for officer training? Early enrollment figures suggested they would not. Between July 1941, when the schools opened, and October 1941, only seventeen out of the 1,997 students enrolled in candidate schools were Negroes. Only six more Negroes entered during the next two months.[2-90]

Some civil rights spokesmen argued for the establishment of a quota system, and a few Negroes even asked for a return to segregated schools to insure a more plentiful supply of black officers. Even before the schools opened, Judge Hastie warned Secretary Stimson that any effective integration plan "required a directive to Corps Area Commanders indicating that Negroes are to be selected in numbers exactly or approximately indicated for particular schools."[2-91] But the planners had recommended the integrated schools precisely to avoid a quota system. They were haunted by the Army's 1917 experience, although the chief of the Army staff's Organizations Division did not allude to these misgivings when he answered Judge Hastie. He argued that a quota could not be defended on any grounds "except those of a political nature" and would be "race discrimination against the whites."[2-92]

General Marshall agreed that racial parity could not be achieved at the expense of commissioning unqualified men, but he was equally adamant about providing equal opportunity for all qualified candidates, black and white. He won support for his position from some of the civil rights advocates.[2-93] These arguments may not have swayed Hastie, but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. He concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the Negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates was to be chosen. Hastie's recommendation was ignored, but the widespread refusal of local commanders to approve or transmit applications of Negroes, or even to give them access to appropriate forms, halted when Secretary Stimson and the Army staff made it plain that they expected substantial numbers of Negroes to be sent to the schools.[2-94]

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People meanwhile moved quickly to prove that the demand for a return to segregated schools, made by Edgar G. Brown, president of the United States Government Employees, and broadcaster Fulton Lewis, Jr., enjoyed little backing in the black community. "We respectfully submit," Walter White informed Stimson and Roosevelt, "that no leader considered responsible by intelligent Negro or white Americans would make such a request."[2-95] In support of its stand the NAACP issued a statement signed by many influential black leaders.

WAAC Replacements
training at Fort Huachuca, December 1942.

The segregationists attacked integration of the officer candidate schools for the obvious reasons. A group of Florida congressmen, for example, protested to the Army against the establishment of an integrated Air Corps school at Miami Beach. The War Department received numerous complaints when living quarters at the schools were integrated. The president of the White Supremacy League complained that young white candidates at Fort Benning "have to eat and sleep with Negro candidates," calling it "the most damnable outrage that was ever perpetrated on the youth of the South." To all such complaints the War Department answered that separation was not always possible because of the small number of Negroes involved.[2-96]

In answering these complaints the Army developed its ultimate justification for integrated officer schools: integration was necessary on the grounds of efficiency and economy. As one Army spokesman put it, "our objection to separate schools is based primarily on the fact that black officer candidates are eligible from every branch of the Army, including the Armored Force and tank destroyer battalions, and it would be decidedly uneconomical to attempt to gather in one school the materiel and instructor personnel necessary to give training in all these branches."[2-97]

Officer candidate training was the Army's first formal experiment with integration. Many blacks and whites lived together with a minimum of friction, and, except in flight school, all candidates trained together.[2-98] Yet in some schools the number of black officer candidates made racially separate rooms feasible, and Negroes were usually billeted and messed together. In other instances Army organizations were slow to integrate their officer training. The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, for example, segregated black candidates until late 1942 when Judge Hastie brought the matter to McCloy's attention.[2-99] Nevertheless, the Army's experiment was far more important than its immediate results indicated. It proved that even in the face of considerable opposition the Army was willing to abandon its segregation policy when the issues of economy and efficiency were made sufficiently clear and compelling.

The Army's second experiment with integration came in part from the need for infantry replacements during the Allied advance across Western Europe in the summer and fall of 1944.[2-100] The Ground Force Replacement Command had been for some time converting soldiers from service units to infantry, and even as the Germans launched their counterattack in the Ardennes the command was drawing up plans to release thousands of soldiers in Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee's Communications Zone and train them as infantrymen. These plans left the large reservoir of black manpower in the theater untapped until General Lee suggested that General Dwight D. Eisenhower permit black service troops to volunteer for infantry training and eventual employment as individual replacements. General Eisenhower agreed, and on 26 December Lee issued a call to the black troops for volunteers to share "the privilege of joining our veteran units at the front to deliver the knockout blow." The call was limited to privates in the upper four categories of the Army General Classification Test who had had some infantry training. If noncommissioned officers wanted to apply, they had to accept a reduction in grade. Although patronizing in tone, the plan was a bold departure from War Department policy: "It is planned to assign you without regard to color or race to the units where assistance is most needed, and give you the opportunity of fighting shoulder to shoulder to bring about victory.... Your relatives and friends everywhere have been urging that you be granted this privilege."[2-101]

The revolutionary nature of General Lee's plan was not lost on Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. Arguing that the circular promising integrated service would embarrass the Army, Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, the chief of staff, recommended that General Eisenhower warn the War Department that civil rights spokesmen might seize on this example to demand wider integration. To avoid future moves that might compromise Army policy, Smith wanted permission to review any Communications Zone statements on Negroes before they were released.

General Eisenhower compromised. Washington was not consulted, and Eisenhower himself revised the circular, eliminating the special call for black volunteers and the promise of integration on an individual basis. He substituted instead a general appeal for volunteers, adding the further qualification that "in the event that the number of suitable negro volunteers exceeds the replacement needs of negro combat units, these men will be suitably incorporated in other organizations so that their service and their fighting spirit may be efficiently utilized."[2-102] This statement was disseminated throughout the European theater.

The Eisenhower revision needed considerable clarification. It mentioned the replacement needs of black combat units, but there were no black infantry units in the theater;[2-103] and the replacement command was not equipped to retrain men for artillery, tank, and tank destroyer units, the types of combat units that did employ Negroes in Europe. The revision also called for volunteers in excess of these needs to be "suitably incorporated in other organizations," but it did not indicate how they would be organized. Eisenhower later made it clear that he preferred to organize the volunteers in groups that could replace white units in the line, but again the replacement command was geared to train individual, not unit, replacements. After considerable discussion and compromise, Eisenhower agreed to have Negroes trained "as members of Infantry rifle platoons familiar with the Infantry rifle platoon weapons." The platoons would be sent for assignment to Army commanders who would provide them with platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and, if needed, squad leaders.

Unaware of how close they had come to being integrated as individuals, so many Negroes volunteered for combat training and duty that the operations of some service units were threatened. To prevent disrupting these vital operations, the theater limited the number to 2,500, turning down about 3,000 men. Early in January 1945 the volunteers assembled for six weeks of standard infantry conversion training. After training, the new black infantrymen were organized into fifty-three platoons, each under a white platoon leader and sergeant, and were dispatched to the field, two to work with armored divisions and the rest with infantry divisions. Sixteen were shipped to the 6th Army Group, the rest to the 12th Army Group, and all saw action with a total of eleven divisions in the First and Seventh Armies.

Volunteers for Combat in Training,
47th Reinforcement Depot, February 1945.

In the First Army the black platoons were usually assigned on the basis of three to a division, and the division receiving them normally placed one platoon in each regiment. At the company level, the black platoon generally served to augment the standard organization of three rifle platoons and one heavy weapons platoon. In the Seventh Army, the platoons were organized into provisional companies and attached to infantry battalions in armored divisions. General Davis warned the Seventh Army commander, Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, that the men had not been trained for employment as company units and were not being properly used. The performance of the provisional companies failed to match the performance of the platoons integrated into white companies and their morale was lower.[2-104] At the end of the war the theater made clear to the black volunteers that integration was over. Although a large group was sent to the 69th Infantry Division to be returned home, most were reassigned to black combat or service units in the occupation army.

The experiment with integration of platoons was carefully scrutinized. In May and June 1945, the Research Branch of the Information and Education Division of Eisenhower's theater headquarters made a survey solely to discover what white company-grade officers and platoon sergeants thought of the combat performance of the black rifle platoons. Trained interviewers visited seven infantry divisions and asked the same question of 250 men—all the available company officers and a representative sample of platoon sergeants in twenty-four companies that had had black platoons. In addition, a questionnaire, not to be signed, was submitted to approximately 1,700 white enlisted men in other field forces for the purpose of discovering what their attitudes were toward the use of black riflemen. No Negro was asked his opinion.

More than 80 percent of the white officers and noncommissioned officers who were interviewed reported that the Negroes had performed "very well" in combat; 69 percent of the officers and 83 percent of the noncommissioned officers saw no reason why black infantrymen should not perform as well as white infantrymen if both had the same training and experience. Most reported getting along "very well" with the black volunteers; the heavier the combat shared, the closer and better the relationships. Nearly all the officers questioned admitted that the camaraderie between white and black troops was far better than they had expected. Most enlisted men reported that they had at first disliked and even been apprehensive at the prospect of having black troops in their companies, but three-quarters of them had changed their minds after serving with Negroes in combat, their distrust turning into respect and friendliness. Of the officers and noncommissioned officers, 77 percent had more favorable feelings toward Negroes after serving in close proximity to them, the others reported no change in attitude; not a single individual stated that he had developed a less favorable attitude. A majority of officers approved the idea of organizing Negroes in platoons to serve in white companies; the practice, they said, would stimulate the spirit of competition between races, avoid friction with prejudiced whites, eliminate discrimination, and promote interracial understanding. Familiarity with Negroes dispersed fear of the unknown and bred respect for them among white troops; only those lacking experience with black soldiers were inclined to be suspicious and hostile.[2-105]

General Brehon B. Somervell, commanding general of the Army Service Forces, questioned the advisability of releasing the report. An experiment involving 1,000 volunteers—his figure was inaccurate, actually 2,500 were involved—was hardly, he believed, a conclusive test. Furthermore, organizations such as the NAACP might be encouraged to exert pressure for similar experiments among troops in training in the United States and even in the midst of active operations in the Pacific theater—pressure, he believed, that might hamper training and operations. What mainly concerned Somervell were the political implications. Many members of Congress, newspaper editors, and others who had given strong support to the War Department were, he contended, "vigorously opposed" to integration under any conditions. A strong adverse reaction from this influential segment of the nation's opinion-makers might alienate public support for a postwar program of universal military training.[2-106]

General Omar N. Bradley, the senior American field commander in Europe, took a different tack. Writing for the theater headquarters and drawing upon such sources of information as the personal observations of some officers, General Bradley disparaged the significance of the experiment. Most of the black platoons, he observed, had participated mainly in mopping-up operations or combat against a disorganized enemy. Nor could the soldiers involved in the experiment be considered typical, in Bradley's opinion. They were volunteers of above average intelligence according to their commanders.[2-107] Finally, Bradley contended that, while no racial trouble emerged during combat, the mutual friendship fostered by fighting a common enemy was threatened when the two races were closely associated in rest and recreational areas. Nevertheless, he agreed that the performance of the platoons was satisfactory enough to warrant continuing the experiment but recommended the use of draftees with average qualifications. At the same time, he drew away from further integration by suggesting that the experiment be expanded to include employment of entire black rifle companies in white regiments to avoid some of the social difficulties encountered in rest areas.[2-108]

General Marshall, the Chief of Staff, agreed with both Somervell and Bradley. Although he thought that the possibility of integrating black units into white units should be "followed up," he believed that the survey should not be made public because "the conditions under which the [black] platoons were organized and employed were most unusual."[2-109] Too many of the circumstances of the experiment were special—the voluntary recruitment of men for frontline duty, the relatively high number of noncommissioned officers among the volunteers, and the fact that the volunteers were slightly older and scored higher in achievement tests than the average black soldier. Moreover, throughout the experiment some degree of segregation, with all its attendant psychological and morale problems, had been maintained.

The platoon experiment was illuminating in several respects. The fact that so late in the war thousands of Negroes volunteered to trade the safety of the rear for duty at the front said something about black patriotism and perhaps something about the Negro's passion for equality. It also demonstrated that, when properly trained and motivated and treated with fairness, blacks, like whites, performed with bravery and distinction in combat. Finally, the experiment successfully attacked one of the traditionalists' shibboleths, that close association of the races in Army units would cause social dissension.

Road Repairmen,
Company A, 279th Engineer Battalion, near Rimberg, Germany, December 1944.

It is now apparent that World War II had little immediate effect on the quest for racial equality in the Army. The Double V campaign against fascism abroad and racism at home achieved considerably less than the activists had hoped. Although Negroes shared in the prosperity brought by war industries and some 800,000 of them served in uniform, segregation remained the policy of the Army throughout the war, just as Jim Crow still ruled in large areas of the country. Probably the campaign's most important achievement was that during the war the civil rights groups, in organizing for the fight against discrimination, began to gather strength and develop techniques that would be useful in the decades to come. The Army's experience with black units also convinced many that segregation was a questionable policy when the country needed to mobilize fully.

For its part the Army defended the separation of the races in the name of military efficiency and claimed that it had achieved a victory over racial discrimination by providing equal treatment and job opportunity for black soldiers. But the Army's campaign had also been less than completely successful. True, the Army had provided specialist training and opened job opportunities heretofore denied to thousands of Negroes, and it had a cadre of potential leaders in the hundreds of experienced black officers. For the times, the Army was a progressive minority employer. Even so, as an institution it had defended the separate but equal doctrine and had failed to come to grips with segregation. Under segregation the Army was compelled to combine large numbers of undereducated and undertrained black soldiers in units that were often inefficient and sometimes surplus to its needs. This system in turn robbed the Army of the full services of the educated and able black soldier, who had every reason to feel restless and rebellious.

The Army received no end of advice on its manpower policy during the war. Civil rights spokesmen continually pointed out that segregation itself was discriminatory, and Judge Hastie in particular hammered on this proposition before the highest officials of the War Department. In fact Hastie's recommendations, criticisms, and arguments crystallized the demands of civil rights leaders. The Army successfully resisted the proposition when its Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies under John McCloy modified but did not appreciably alter the segregation policy. It was a predictable course. The Army's racial policy was more than a century old, and leaders considered it dangerous if not impossible to revise traditional ways during a global war involving so many citizens with pronounced and different views on race.

What both the civil rights activists and the Army's leaders tended to ignore during the war was that segregation was inefficient. The myriad problems associated with segregated units, in contrast to the efficient operation of the integrated officer candidate schools and the integrated infantry platoons in Europe, were overlooked in the atmosphere of charges and denials concerning segregation and discrimination. John McCloy was an exception. He had clearly become dissatisfied with the inefficiency of the Army's policy, and in the week following the Japanese surrender he questioned Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal on the Navy's experiments with integration. "It has always seemed to me," he concluded, "that we never put enough thought into the matter of making a real military asset out of the very large cadre of Negro personnel we received from the country."[2-110] Although segregation persisted, the fact that it hampered military efficiency was the hope of those who looked for a change in the Army's policy.

CHAPTER 3

World War II: The Navy

The period between the world wars marked the nadir of the Navy's relations with black America. Although the exclusion of Negroes that began with a clause introduced in enlistment regulations in 1922 lasted but a decade, black participation in the Navy remained severely restricted during the rest of the inter-war period. In June 1940 the Navy had 4,007 black personnel, 2.3 percent of its nearly 170,000-man total.[3-1] All were enlisted men, and with the exception of six regular rated seamen, lone survivors of the exclusion clause, all were steward's mates, labeled by the black press "seagoing bellhops."

The Steward's Branch, composed entirely of enlisted Negroes and oriental aliens, mostly Filipinos, was organized outside the Navy's general service. Its members carried ratings up to chief petty officer, but wore distinctive uniforms and insignia, and even chief stewards never exercised authority over men rated in the general naval service. Stewards manned the officers' mess and maintained the officers' billets on board ship, and, in some instances, took care of the quarters of high officials in the shore establishment. Some were also engaged in mess management, menu planning, and the purchase of supplies. Despite the fact that their enlistment contracts restricted their training and duties, stewards, like everyone else aboard ship, were assigned battle stations, including positions at the guns and on the bridge. One of these stewards, Dorie (Doris) Miller, became a hero on the first day of the war when he manned a machine gun on the burning deck of the USS Arizona and destroyed two enemy planes.[3-2]

By the end of December 1941 the number of Negroes in the Navy had increased by slightly more than a thousand men to 5,026, or 2.4 percent of the whole, but they continued to be excluded from all positions except that of steward.[3-3] It was not surprising that civil rights organizations and their supporters in Congress demanded a change in policy.

Development of a Wartime Policy

At first the new secretary, Frank Knox, and the Navy's professional leaders resisted demands for a change. Together with Secretary of War Stimson, Knox had joined the cabinet in July 1940 when Roosevelt was attempting to defuse a foreign policy debate that threatened to explode during the presidential campaign.[3-4] For a major cabinet officer, Knox's powers were severely circumscribed. He had little knowledge of naval affairs, and the President, himself once an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, often went over his head to deal directly with the naval bureaus on shipbuilding programs and manpower problems as well as the disposition of the fleet. But Knox was a personable man and a forceful speaker, and he was particularly useful to the President in congressional liaison and public relations. Roosevelt preferred to work through the secretary in dealing with the delicate question of black participation in the Navy. Knox himself was fortunate in his immediate official family. James V. Forrestal became under secretary in August 1940; during the next year Ralph A. Bard, a Chicago investment banker, joined the department as assistant secretary, and Adlai E. Stevenson became special assistant.

Able as these men were, Frank Knox, like most new secretaries unfamiliar with the operations and traditions of the vast department, was from the beginning heavily dependent on his naval advisers. These were the chiefs of the powerful bureaus and the prominent senior admirals of the General Board, the Navy's highest advisory body.[3-5] Generally these men were ardent military traditionalists, and, despite the progressive attitude of the secretary's highest civilian advisers, changes in the racial policy of the Navy were to be glacially slow.

Dorie Miller

The Bureau of Navigation, which was charged with primary responsibility for all personnel matters, was opposed to change in the racial composition of the Navy. Less than two weeks after Knox's appointment, it prepared for his signature a letter to Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti of New York defending the Navy's policy. The bureau reasoned that since segregation was impractical, exclusion was necessary. Experience had proved, the bureau claimed, that when given supervisory responsibility the Negro was unable to maintain discipline among white subordinates with the result that teamwork, harmony, and ship's efficiency suffered. The Negro, therefore, had to be segregated from the white sailor. All-black units were impossible, the bureau argued, because the service's training and distribution system demanded that a man in any particular rating be available for any duty required of that rating in any ship or activity in the Navy. The Navy had experimented with segregated crews after World War I, manning one ship with an all-Filipino crew and another with an all-Samoan crew, but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and reasoned that ships with black crews would be no more satisfactory.[3-6]

During the next weeks Secretary Knox warmed to the subject, speaking of the difficulty faced by the Navy when men had to live aboard ship together. He was convinced that "it is no kindness to Negroes to thrust them upon men of the white race," and he suggested that the Negro might make his major contribution to the armed forces in the Army's black regimental organizations.[3-7] Confronted with widespread criticism of this policy, however, Knox asked the Navy's General Board in September 1940 to give him "some reasons why colored persons should not be enlisted for general service."[3-8] He accepted the board's reasons for continued exclusion of Negroes—generally an extension of the ones advanced in the Poletti letter—and during the next eighteen months these reasons, endorsed by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Bureau of Navigation, were used as the department's standard answer to questions on race.[3-9] They were used at the White House conference on 18 June 1941 when, in the presence of black leaders, Knox told President Roosevelt that the Navy could do nothing about taking Negroes into the general service "because men live in such intimacy aboard ship that we simply can't enlist Negroes above the rank of messman."[3-10]

Admiral King and Secretary Knox
on the USS Augusta.

The White House conference revealed an interesting contrast between Roosevelt and Knox. Whatever his personal feelings, Roosevelt agreed with Knox that integration of the Navy was an impractical step in wartime, but where Knox saw exclusion from general service as the alternative to integration Roosevelt sought a compromise. He suggested that the Navy "make a beginning" by putting some "good Negro bands" aboard battleships. Under such intimate living conditions white and black would learn to know and respect each other, and "then we can move on from there."[3-11] In effect the President was trying to lead the Navy toward a policy similar to that announced by the Army in 1940. While his suggestion about musicians was ignored by Secretary Knox, the search for a middle way between exclusion and integration had begun.

The general public knew nothing of this search, and in the heightened atmosphere of early war days, charged with unending propaganda about the four freedoms and the forces of democracy against fascism, the administration's racial attitudes were being questioned daily by civil rights spokesmen and by some Democratic politicians.[3-12] As protest against the Navy's racial policy mounted, Secretary Knox turned once again to his staff for reassurance. In July 1941 he appointed a committee consisting of Navy and Marine Corps personnel officers and including Addison Walker, a special assistant to Assistant Secretary Bard, to conduct a general investigation of that policy. The committee took six months to complete its study and submitted both a majority and minority report.

The majority report marshaled a long list of arguments to prove that exclusion of the Negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the Navy as a whole." It concluded that no change in policy was necessary since "within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain races, the enlisted personnel of the Naval Establishment is representative of all the citizens of the United States."[3-13] The majority invoked past experience, efficiency, and patriotism to support the status quo, but its chorus of reasons for excluding Negroes sounded incongruous amid the patriotic din and call to colors that followed Pearl Harbor.

Crew Members of Uss Argonaut
relax and read mail, Pearl Harbor, 1942.

Demonstrating changing social attitudes and also reflecting the compromise solution suggested by the President in June, Addison Walker's minority report recommended that a limited number of Negroes be enlisted for general duty "on some type of patrol or other small vessel assigned to a particular yard or station." While the enlistments could frankly be labeled experiments, Walker argued that such a step would mute black criticism by promoting Negroes out of the servant class. The program would also provide valuable data in case the Navy was later directed to accept Negroes through Selective Service. Reasoning that a man's right to fight for his country was probably more fundamental than his right to vote, Walker insisted that the drive for the rights and privileges of black citizens was a social force that could not be ignored by the Navy. Indeed, he added, "the reconciliation of social friction within our own country" should be a special concern of the armed forces in wartime.[3-14]

Although the committee's majority won the day, its arguments were overtaken by events that followed Pearl Harbor. The NAACP, viewing the Navy's rejection of black volunteers in the midst of the intensive recruiting campaign, again took the issue to the White House. The President, in turn, asked the Fair Employment Practices Committee to consider the case.[3-15] Committee chairman Mark Ethridge conferred with Assistant Secretary Bard, pointing out that since Negroes had been eligible for general duty in World War I, the Navy had actually taken a step backward when it restricted them to the Messman's Branch. The committee was even willing to pay the price of segregation to insure the Negro's return to general duty. Ethridge recommended that the Navy amend its policy and accept Negroes for use at Caribbean stations or on harbor craft.[3-16] Criticism of Navy policy, hitherto emanating almost exclusively from the civil rights organizations and a few congressmen, now broadened to include another government agency. As President Roosevelt no doubt expected, the Fair Employment Practices Committee had come out in support of his compromise solution for the Navy.

But the committee had no jurisdiction over the armed services, and Secretary Knox continued to assert that with a war to win he could not risk "crews that are impaired in efficiency because of racial prejudice." He admitted to his friend, conservationist Gifford Pinchot, that the problem would have to be faced someday, but not during a war. Seemingly in response to Walker and Ethridge, he declared that segregated general service was impossible since enough men with the skills necessary to operate a war vessel were unavailable even "if you had the entire Negro population of the United States to choose from." As for limiting Negroes to steward duties, he explained that this policy avoided the chance that Negroes might rise to command whites, "a thing which instantly provokes serious trouble."[3-17] Faced in wartime with these arguments for efficiency, Assistant Secretary Bard could only promise Ethridge that black enlistment would be taken under consideration.

At this point the President again stepped in. On 15 January 1942 he asked his beleaguered secretary to consider the whole problem once more and suggested a course of action: "I think that with all the Navy activities, BuNav might invent something that colored enlistees could do in addition to the rating of messman."[3-18] The secretary passed the task on to the General Board, asking that it develop a plan for recruiting 5,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-19]

When the General Board met on 23 January to consider the secretary's request, it became apparent that the minority report on the role of Negroes in the Navy had gained at least one convert among the senior officers. One board member, the Inspector General of the Navy, Rear Adm. Charles P. Snyder, repeated the arguments lately advanced by Addison Walker. He suggested that the board consider employing Negroes in some areas outside the servant class: in the Musician's Branch, for example, because "the colored race is very musical and they are versed in all forms of rhythm," in the Aviation Branch where the Army had reported some success in employing Negroes, and on auxiliaries and minor vessels, especially transports. Snyder noted that these schemes would involve the creation of training schools, rigidly segregated at first, and that the whole program would be "troublesome and require tact, patience, and tolerance" on the part of those in charge. But, he added, "we have so many difficulties to surmount anyhow that one more possibly wouldn't swell the total very much." Foreseeing that segregation would become the focal point of black protest, he argued that the Navy had to begin accepting Negroes somewhere, and it might as well begin with a segregated general service.

Adamant in its opposition to any change in the Navy's policy, the Bureau of Navigation ignored Admiral Snyder's suggestions. The spokesman for the bureau warned that the 5,000 Negroes under consideration were just an opening wedge. "The sponsors of the program," Capt. Kenneth Whiting contended, "desire full equality on the part of the Negro and will not rest content until they obtain it." In the end, he predicted, Negroes would be on every man-of-war in direct proportion to their percentage of the population. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, echoed the bureau's sentiments. He viewed the issue of black enlistments as crucial.

If we are defeated we must not close our eyes to the fact that once in they [Negroes] will be strengthened in their effort to force themselves into every activity we have. If they are not satisfied to be messmen, they will not be satisfied to go into the construction or labor battalions. Don't forget the colleges are turning out a large number of well-educated Negroes. I don't know how long we will be able to keep them out of the V-7 class. I think not very long.

The commandant called the enlistment of Negroes "absolutely tragic"; Negroes had every opportunity, he added, "to satisfy their aspiration to serve in the Army," and their desire to enter the naval service was largely an effort "to break into a club that doesn't want them."

The board heard similar sentiments from representatives of the Bureau of Aeronautics, the Bureau of Yards and Docks, and, with reservations, from the Coast Guard. Confronted with such united opposition from the powerful bureaus, the General Board capitulated. On 3 February it reported to the secretary that it was unable to submit a plan and strongly recommended that the current policy be allowed to stand. The board stated that "if, in the opinion of higher authority, political pressure is such as to require the enlistment of these people for general service, let it be for that." If restriction of Negroes to the Messman's Branch was discrimination, the board added, "it was but part and parcel of a similar discrimination throughout the United States."[3-20]

Secretary Knox was certainly not one to dispute the board's findings, but it was a different story in the White House. President Roosevelt refused to accept the argument that the only choice lay between exclusion in the Messman's Branch and total integration in the general service. His desire to avoid the race issue was understandable; the war was in its darkest days, and whatever his aspirations for American society, the President was convinced that, while some change was necessary, "to go the whole way at one fell swoop would seriously impair the general average efficiency of the Navy."[3-21] He wanted the board to study the question further, noting that there were some additional tasks and some special assignments that could be worked out for the Negro that "would not inject into the whole personnel of the Navy the race question."[3-22]

Messmen Volunteer As Gunners,
Pacific task force, July 1942.

The Navy got the message. Armed with these instructions from the White House, the General Board called on the bureaus and other agencies to furnish lists of stations or assignments where Negroes could be used in other than the Messman's Branch, adding that it was "unnecessary and inadvisable" to emphasize further the undesirability of recruiting Negroes. Freely interpreting the President's directive, the board decided that its proposals had to provide for segregation in order to prevent the injection of the race issue into the Navy. It rejected the idea of enlisting Negroes in such selected ratings as musician and carpenter's mate or designating a branch for Negroes (the possibility of an all-black aviation department for a carrier was discussed). Basing its decision on the plans quickly submitted by the bureaus, the General Board recommended a course that it felt offered "least disadvantages and the least difficulty of accomplishment as a war measure": the formation of black units in the shore establishment, black crews for naval district local defense craft and selected Coast Guard cutters, black regiments in the Seabees, and composite battalions in the Marine Corps. The board asked that the Navy Department be granted wide latitude in deciding the number of Negroes to be accepted as well as their rate of enlistment and the method of recruiting, training, and assignment.[3-23] The President agreed to the plan, but balked at the board's last request. "I think this is a matter," he told Secretary Knox, "to be determined by you and me."[3-24]

The two-year debate over the admission of Negroes ended just in time, for the opposition to the Navy's policy was enlisting new allies daily. The national press made the expected invidious comparisons when Joe Louis turned over his share of the purse from the Louis-Baer fight to Navy Relief, and Wendell Willkie in a well-publicized speech at New York's Freedom House excoriated the Navy's racial practices as a "mockery" of democracy.[3-25] But these were the last shots fired. On 7 April 1942 Secretary Knox announced the Navy's capitulation. The Navy would accept 277 black volunteers per week—it was not yet drafting anyone—for enlistment in all ratings of the general service of the reserve components of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. Their actual entry would have to await the construction of suitable, meaning segregated, facilities, but the Navy's goal for the first year was 14,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-26]

Members of the black community received the news with mixed emotions. Some reluctantly accepted the plan as a first step; the NAACP's Crisis called it "progress toward a more enlightened point of view." Others, like the National Negro Congress, complimented Knox for his "bold, patriotic action."[3-27] But almost all were quick to point out that the black sailor would be segregated, limited to the rank of petty officer, and, except as a steward, barred from sea duty.[3-28] The Navy's plan offered all the disadvantages of the Army's system with none of the corresponding advantages for participation and advancement. The NAACP hammered away at the segregation angle, informing its public that the old system, which had fathered inequalities and humiliations in the Army and in civilian life, was now being followed by the Navy. A. Philip Randolph complained that the change in Navy policy merely "accepts and extends and consolidates the policy of Jim-Crowism in the Navy as well as proclaims it as an accepted, recognized government ideology that the Negro is inferior to the white man."[3-29] The editors of the National Urban League's Opportunity concluded that, "faced with the great opportunity to strengthen the forces of Democracy, the Navy Department chose to affirm the charge that Japan is making against America to the brown people ... that the so-called Four Freedoms enunciated in the great 'Atlantic Charter' were for white men only."[3-30]

A Segregated Navy

With considerable alacrity the Navy set a practical course for the employment of its black volunteers. On 21 April 1942 Secretary Knox approved a plan for training Negroes at Camp Barry, an isolated section of the Great Lakes Training Center. Later renamed Camp Robert Smalls after a black naval hero of the Civil War, the camp not only offered the possibility of practically unlimited expansion but, as the Bureau of Navigation put it, made segregation "less obvious" to recruits. The secretary also approved the use of facilities at Hampton Institute, the well-known black school in Virginia, as an advanced training school for black recruits.[3-31]

Black enlistments began on 1 June 1942, and black volunteers started entering Great Lakes later that month in classes of 277 men. At the same time the Navy opened enlistments for an unlimited number of black Seabees and messmen. Lt. Comdr. Daniel Armstrong commanded the recruit program at Camp Smalls. An Annapolis graduate, son of the founder of Hampton Institute, Armstrong first came to the attention of Knox in March 1942 when he submitted a plan for the employment of black sailors that the secretary considered practical.[3-32] Under Armstrong's energetic leadership, black recruits received training that was in some respects superior to that afforded whites. For all his success, however, Armstrong was strongly criticized, especially by educated Negroes who resented his theories of education. Imbued with the paternalistic attitude of Tuskegee and Hampton, Armstrong saw the Negro as possessing a separate culture more attuned to vocational training. He believed that Negroes needed special treatment and discipline in a totally segregated environment free from white competition. Educated Negroes, on the other hand, saw in this special treatment another form of discrimination.[3-33]

Electrician Mates
string power lines in the Central Pacific.

During the first six months of the new segregated training program, before the great influx of Negroes from the draft, the Navy set the training period at twelve weeks. Later, when it had reluctantly abandoned the longer period, the Navy discovered that the regular eight-week course was sufficient. Approximately 31 percent of those graduating from the recruit course were qualified for Class A schools and entered advanced classes to receive training that would normally lead to petty officer rating for the top graduates and prepare men for assignment to naval stations and local defense and district craft. There they would serve in such class "A" specialties as radioman, signalman, and yeoman and the other occupational specialties such as machinist, mechanic, carpenter, electrician, cook, and baker.[3-34] Some of these classes were held at Hampton, but, as the number of black recruits increased, the majority remained at Camp Smalls for advanced training.

The rest of the recruit graduates, those unqualified for advanced schooling, were divided. Some went directly to naval stations and local defense and district craft where they relieved whites as seaman, second class, and fireman, third class, and as trainees in specialties that required no advanced schooling; the rest, approximately eighty men per week, went to naval ammunition depots as unskilled laborers.[3-35]

The Navy proceeded to assimilate the black volunteers along these lines, suffering few of the personnel problems that plagued the Army in the first months of the war. In contrast to the Army's chaotic situation, caused by the thousands of black recruits streaming in from Selective Service, the Navy's plans for its volunteers were disrupted only because qualified Negroes showed little inclination to flock to the Navy standard, and more than half of those who did were rejected. The Bureau of Naval Personnel[3-36] reported that during the first three weeks of recruitment only 1,261 Negroes volunteered for general service, and 58 percent of these had to be rejected for physical and other reasons. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Adm. Randall Jacobs, was surprised at the small number of volunteers, a figure far below the planners' expectations, and his surprise turned to concern in the next months as the seventeen-year-old volunteer inductees, the primary target of the armed forces recruiters, continued to choose the Army over the Navy at a ratio of 10 to 1.[3-37] The Navy's personnel officials agreed that they had to attract their proper share of intelligent and able Negroes but seemed unable to isolate the cause of the disinterest. Admiral Jacobs blamed it on a lack of publicity; the bureau's historians, perhaps unaware of the Navy's nineteenth century experience with black seamen, later attributed it to Negroes' "relative unfamiliarity with the sea or the large inland waters and their consequent fear of the water."[3-38]

The fact was, of course, that Negroes shunned the Navy because of its recent reputation as the exclusive preserve of white America. Only when the Navy began assigning black recruiting specialists to the numerous naval districts and using black chief petty officers, reservists from World War I general service, at recruiting centers to explain the new opportunities for Negroes in the Navy was the bureau able to overcome some of the young men's natural reluctance to volunteer. By 1 February 1943 the Navy had 26,909 Negroes (still 2 percent of the total enlisted): 6,662 in the general service; 2,020 in the Seabees; and 19,227, over two-thirds of the total, in the Steward's Branch.[3-39]

The smooth and efficient distribution of black recruits was short-lived. Under pressure from the Army, the War Manpower Commission, and in particular the White House, the Navy was forced into a sudden and significant expansion of its black recruit program. The Army had long objected to the Navy's recruitment method, and as early as February 1942 Secretary Stimson was calling the volunteer recruitment system a waste of manpower.[3-40] He was even more direct when he complained to President Roosevelt that through voluntary recruiting the Navy had avoided acceptance of any considerable number of Negroes. Consequently, the Army was now faced with the possibility of having to accept an even greater proportion of Negroes "with adverse effect on its combat efficiency." The solution to this problem, as Stimson saw it, was for the Navy to take its recruits from Selective Service.[3-41] Stimson failed to win his point. The President accepted the Navy's argument that segregation would be difficult to maintain on board ship. "If the Navy living conditions on board ship were similar to the Army living conditions on land," he wrote Stimson, "the problem would be easier but the circumstances ... being such as they are, I feel that it is best to continue the present system at this time."[3-42]

But the battle over racial quotas was only beginning. The question of the number of Negroes in the Navy was only part of the much broader considerations and conflicts over manpower policy that finally led the President, on 5 December 1942, to direct the discontinuance in all services of volunteer enlistment of men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight.[3-43] Beginning in February 1943 all men in this age group would be obtained through Selective Service. The order also placed Selective Service under the War Manpower Commission.

The Navy issued its first call for inductees from Selective Service in February 1943, adopting the Army's policy of placing its requisition on a racial basis and specifying the number of whites and blacks needed for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The Bureau of Naval Personnel planned to continue its old monthly quota of about 1,200 Negroes for general service and 1,500 for the Messman's Branch. Secretary Knox explained to the President that it would be impossible for the Navy to take more Negroes without resorting to mixed crews in the fleet, which, Knox reminded Roosevelt, was a policy "contrary to the President's program." The President agreed with Knox and told him so to advise Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service.[3-44]

The problem of drafting men by race was a major concern of the Bureau of Selective Service and its parent organization, the War Manpower Commission. At a time when a general shortage of manpower was developing and industry was beginning to feel the effects of the draft, Negroes still made up only 6 percent of the armed forces, a little over half their percentage of the population, and almost all of these were in the Army. The chairman of the War Manpower Commission, Paul V. McNutt, explained to Secretary Knox as he had to Secretary Stimson that the practice of placing separate calls for white and black registrants could not be justified. Not only were there serious social and legal implications in the existing draft practices, he pointed out, but the Selective Service Act itself prohibited racial discrimination. It was necessary, therefore, to draft men by order number and not by color.[3-45]

On top of this blow, the Navy came under fire from another quarter. The President was evidently still thinking about Negroes in the Navy. He wrote to the secretary on 22 February:

I guess you were dreaming or maybe I was dreaming if Randall Jacobs is right in regard to what I am supposed to have said about employment of negroes in the Navy. If I did say that such employment should be stopped, I must have been talking in my sleep. Most decidedly we must continue the employment of negroes in the Navy, and I do not think it the least bit necessary to put mixed crews on the ships. I can find a thousand ways of employing them without doing so.

The point or the thing is this. There is going to be a great deal of feeling if the Government in winning this war does not employ approximately 10% of negroes—their actual percentage to the total population. The Army is nearly up to this percentage but the Navy is so far below it that it will be deeply criticized by anybody who wants to check into the details.

Perhaps a check by you showing exactly where all white enlisted men are serving and where all colored enlisted men are serving will show you the great number of places where colored men could serve, where they are not serving now—shore duty of all kinds, together with the handling of many kinds of yard craft.

You know the headache we have had about this and the reluctance of the Navy to have any negroes. You and I have had to veto that Navy reluctance and I think we have to do it again.[3-46]

In an effort to save the quota concept, the Bureau of Naval Personnel ground out new figures that would raise the current call of 2,700 Negroes per month to 5,000 in April and 7,350 for each of the remaining months of 1943. Armed with these figures, Secretary Knox was able to promise Commissioner McNutt that 10 percent of the men inducted for the rest of 1943 would be Negroes, although separate calls had to be continued for the time being to permit adjusting the flow of Negroes to the expansion of facilities.[3-47] In other words, the secretary promised to accept 71,900 black draftees in 1943; he did not promise to increase the black strength of the Navy to 10 percent of the total.

Commissioner McNutt understood the distinction and found the Navy's offer wanting for two reasons. The proposed schedule was inadequate to absorb the backlog of black registrants who should have been inducted into the armed services, and it did not raise the percentage of Negroes in the Navy to a figure comparable to their strength in the national population. McNutt wanted the Navy to draft at least 125,000 Negroes before January 1944, and he insisted that the practice of placing separate calls be terminated "as soon as feasible."[3-48] The Navy finally struck a compromise with the commission, agreeing that up to 14,150 Negroes a month would be inducted for the rest of 1943 to reach the 125,000 figure by January 1944.[3-49] The issue of separate draft calls for Negroes and whites remained in abeyance while the services made common cause against the commission by insisting that the orderly absorption of Negroes demanded a regular program that could only be met by maintaining the quota system.

Total black enlistments never reached 10 percent of the Navy's wartime enlisted strength but remained nearer the 5 percent mark. But this figure masks the Navy's racial picture in the later years of the war after it became dependent on Selective Service. The Navy drafted 150,955 Negroes during the war, 11.1 percent of all the men it drafted. In 1943 alone the Navy placed calls with Selective Service for 116,000 black draftees. Although Selective Service was unable to fill the monthly request completely, the Navy received 77,854 black draftees (versus 672,437 whites) that year, a 240 percent rise over the 1942 black enlistment rate.[3-50]

Although it wrestled for several months with the problem of distributing the increased number of black draftees, the Bureau of Naval Personnel could invent nothing new. The Navy, Knox told President Roosevelt, would continue to segregate Negroes and restrict their service to certain occupations. Its increased black strength would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black Seabee battalions, in which Negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for harbor craft and local defense forces; and in billets for cooks and port hands. The rest would be sent to shore stations for guard and miscellaneous duties in concentrations up to about 50 percent of the total station strength. The President approved the Navy's proposals, and the distribution of Negroes followed these lines.[3-51]

To smooth the racial adjustments implicit in these plans, the Bureau of Naval Personnel developed two operating rules: Negroes would be assigned only where need existed, and, whenever possible, those from northern communities would not be used in the south. These rules caused some peculiar adjustments in administration. Negroes were not assigned to naval districts for distribution according to the discretion of the commander, as were white recruits. Rather, after conferring with local commanders, the bureau decided on the number of Negroes to be included in station complements and the types of jobs they would fill. It then assigned the men to duty accordingly, and the districts were instructed not to change the orders without consulting the bureau. Subsequently the bureau reinforced this rule by enjoining the commanders to use Negroes in the ratings for which they had been trained and by sending bureau representatives to the various commands to check on compliance.

Some planners feared that the concentration of Negroes at shore stations might prove detrimental to efficiency and morale. Proposals were circulated in the Bureau of Naval Personnel for the inclusion of Negroes in small numbers in the crews of large combat ships—for example, they might be used as firemen and ordinary seamen on the new aircraft carriers—but Admiral Jacobs rejected the recommendations.[3-52] The Navy was not yet ready to try integration, it seemed, even though racial disturbances were becoming a distinct possibility in 1943. For as Negroes became a larger part of the Navy, they also became a greater source of tension. The reasons for the tension were readily apparent. Negroes were restricted for the most part to shore duty, concentrated in large groups and assigned to jobs with little prestige and few chances of promotion. They were excluded from the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Nurse Corps, and the commissioned ranks. And they were rigidly segregated.

Although the Navy boasted that Negroes served in every rating and at every task, in fact almost all were used in a limited range of occupations. Denied general service assignments on warships, trained Negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the harbor defense, district, and small craft service. Although assigning Negroes to these duties met the President's request for variety of opportunity, the small craft could employ only 7,700 men at most, a minuscule part of the Navy's black strength.

Most Negroes performed humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs remained in the Negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for that separate duty. Often recruiters took in many as stewards who were equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local naval stations the result was often dismaying. The Navy thus received poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a segregated servants' branch. In an effort to standardize the training of messmen, the Bureau of Naval Personnel established a stewards school in the spring of 1943 at Norfolk and later one at Bainbridge, Maryland. The change in training did little to improve the standards of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among many stewards.

Laborers at Naval Ammunition Depot.
Sailors passing 5-inch canisters, St. Julien's Creek, Virginia.

Another 12,000 Negroes served as artisans and laborers at overseas bases. Over 7,000 of these were Seabees, who, with the exception of two regular construction battalions that served with distinction in the Pacific, were relegated to "special" battalions stevedoring cargo and supplies. The rest were laborers in base companies assigned to the South Pacific area. These units were commanded by white officers, and almost all the petty officers were white.

Approximately half the Negroes in the Navy were detailed to shore billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]

Seabees in the South Pacific
righting an undermined water tank.

While some billets existed in practically every important rating for graduates of the segregated specialty schools, these jobs were so few that black specialists were often assigned instead to unskilled laboring jobs.[3-55] Some of these men were among the best educated Negroes in the Navy, natural leaders capable of articulating their dissatisfaction. They resented being barred from the fighting, and their resentment, spreading through the thousands of Negroes in the shore establishment, was a prime cause of racial tension.

No black women had been admitted to the Navy. Race was not mentioned in the legislation establishing the WAVES in 1942, but neither was exclusion on account of color expressly forbidden. The WAVES and the Women's Reserve of both the Coast Guard (SPARS) and the Marine Corps therefore celebrated their second birthday exclusively white. The Navy Nurse Corps was also totally white. In answer to protests passed to the service through Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy admitted in November 1943 that it had a shortage of 500 nurses, but since another 500 white nurses were under indoctrination and training, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery explained, "the question relative to the necessity for accepting colored personnel in this category is not apparent."[3-56]

Another major cause of unrest among black seamen was the matter of rank and promotion. With the exception of the Coast Guard, the naval establishment had no black officers in 1943, and none were contemplated. Nor was there much opportunity for advancement in the ranks. Barred from service in the fleet, the nonrated seamen faced strong competition for the limited number of petty officer positions in the shore establishment. In consequence, morale throughout the ranks deteriorated.

The constant black complaint, and the root of the Navy's racial problem, was segregation. It was especially hard on young black recruits who had never experienced legal segregation in civilian life and on the "talented tenth," the educated Negroes, who were quickly frustrated by a policy that decided opportunity and assignment on the basis of color. They particularly resented segregation in housing, messing, and recreation. Here segregation off the job, officially sanctioned, made manifest by signs distinguishing facilities for white and black, and enforced by military as well as civilian police, was a daily reminder for the Negro of the Navy's discrimination.

Such discrimination created tension in the ranks that periodically released itself in racial disorder. The first sign of serious unrest occurred in June 1943 when over half the 640 Negroes of the Naval Ammunition Depot at St. Julien's Creek, Virginia, rioted against alleged discrimination in segregated seating for a radio show. In July, 744 Negroes of the 80th Construction Battalion staged a protest over segregation on a transport in the Caribbean. Yet, naval investigators cited leadership problems as a major factor in these and subsequent incidents, and at least one commanding officer was relieved as a consequence.[3-57]

Progressive Experiments

Commander Sargent

Since the inception of black enlistment there had been those in the Bureau of Naval Personnel who argued for the establishment of a group to coordinate plans and policies on the training and use of black sailors. Various proposals were considered, but only in the wake of the racial disturbances of 1943 did the bureau set up a Special Programs Unit in its Planning and Control Activity to oversee the whole black enlistment program. In the end the size of the unit governed the scope of its program. Originally the unit was to monitor all transactions involving Negroes in the bureau's operating divisions, thus relieving the Enlisted Division of the critical task of distributing billets for Negroes. It was also supposed to advise local commanders on race problems and interpret departmental policies for them. When finally established in August 1943, the unit consisted of only three officers, a size which considerably limited its activities. Still, the unit worked diligently to improve the lot of the black sailor, and eventually from this office would emerge the plans that brought about the integration of the Navy.

The Special Programs Unit's patron saint and the guiding spirit of the Navy's liberalizing race program was Lt. Comdr. Christopher S. Sargent. He never served in the unit himself, but helped find the two lieutenant commanders, Donald O. VanNess and Charles E. Dillon, who worked under Capt. Thomas F. Darden in the Plans and Operations Section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel and acted as liaison between the Special Programs Unit and its civilian superiors. A legendary figure in the bureau, the 31-year-old Sargent arrived as a lieutenant, junior grade, from Dean Acheson's law firm, but his rank and official position were no measure of his influence in the Navy Department. By birth and training he was used to moving in the highest circles of American society and government, and he had wide-ranging interests and duties in the Navy. Described by a superior as "a philosopher who could not tolerate segregation,"[3-58] Sargent waged something of a moral crusade to integrate the Navy. He was convinced that a social change impossible in peacetime was practical in war. Not only would integration build a more efficient Navy, it might also lead the way to changes in American society that would bridge the gap between the races.[3-59] In effect, Sargent sought to force the generally conservative Bureau of Naval Personnel into making rapid and sweeping changes in the Navy's racial policy.

During its first months of existence the Special Programs Unit tried to quiet racial unrest by a rigorous application of the separate but equal principle. It began attacking the concentration of Negroes in large segregated groups in the naval districts by creating more overseas billets. Toward the end of 1943, Negroes were being assigned in greater numbers to duty in the Pacific at shore establishments and aboard small defense, district, and yard craft. The Bureau of Naval Personnel also created new specialties for Negroes in the general service. One important addition was the creation of black shore patrol units for which a school was started at Great Lakes. The Special Programs Unit established a remedial training center for illiterate draftees at Camp Robert Smalls, drawing the faculty from black servicemen who had been educators in civilian life. The twelve-week course gave the students the equivalent of a fifth grade education in addition to regular recruit training. Approximately 15,000 Negroes took this training before the school was consolidated with a similar organization for whites at Bainbridge, Maryland, in the last months of the war.[3-60]

At the other end of the spectrum, the Special Programs Unit worked for the efficient use of black Class A school graduates by renewing the attack on improper assignments. The bureau had long held that the proper assignment of black specialists was of fundamental importance to morale and efficiency, and in July 1943 it had ordered that all men must be used in the ratings and for the types of work for which they had been trained.[3-61] But the unit discovered considerable deviation from this policy in some districts, especially in the south, where there was a tendency to regard Negroes as an extra labor source above the regular military complement. In December 1943 the Special Programs Unit got the bureau to rule in the name of manpower efficiency that, with the exception of special units in the supply departments at South Boston and Norfolk, no black sailor could be assigned to such civilian jobs as maintenance work and stevedoring in the continental United States.[3-62]

These reforms were welcome, but they ignored the basic dilemma: the only way to abolish concentrations of shore-based Negroes was to open up positions for them in the fleet. Though many black sailors were best suited for unskilled or semiskilled billets, a significant number had technical skills that could be properly used only if these men were assigned to the fleet. To relieve the racial tension and to end the waste of skilled manpower engendered by the misuse of these men, the Special Programs Unit pressed for a chance to test black seamanship. Admiral King agreed, and in early 1944 the Bureau of Naval Personnel assigned 196 black enlisted men and 44 white officers and petty officers to the USS Mason, a newly commissioned destroyer escort, with the understanding that all enlisted billets would be filled by Negroes as soon as those qualified to fill them had been trained. It also assigned 53 black rated seamen and 14 white officers and noncommissioned officers to a patrol craft, the PC 1264.[3-63] Both ships eventually replaced their white petty officers and some of their officers with Negroes. Among the latter was Ens. Samuel Gravely, who was to become the Navy's first black admiral.

USS Mason.
Sailors look over their new ship.

Although both ships continued to operate with black crews well into 1945, the Mason on escort duty in the Atlantic, only four other segregated patrol craft were added to the fleet during the war.[3-64] The Mason passed its shakedown cruise test, but the Bureau of Naval Personnel was not satisfied with the crew. The black petty officers had proved competent in their ratings and interested in their work, but bureau observers agreed that the rated men in general were unable to maintain discipline. The nonrated men tended to lack respect for the petty officers, who showed some disinclination to put their men on report. The Special Programs Unit admitted the truth of these charges but argued that the experiment only proved what the Navy already knew: black sailors did not respond well when assigned to all-black organizations under white officers.[3-65] On the other hand, the experiment demonstrated that the Navy possessed a reservoir of able seamen who were not being efficiently employed, and—an unexpected dividend from the presence of white noncommissioned officers—that integration worked on board ship. The white petty officers messed, worked, and slept with their men in the close contact inevitable aboard small ships, with no sign of racial friction.

Opportunity for advancement was as important to morale as assignment according to training and skill, and the Special Programs Unit encouraged the promotion of Negroes according to their ability and in proportion to their number. Although in July 1943 the Bureau of Naval Personnel had warned commanders that it would continue to order white enlisted men to sea with the expectation that they would be replaced in shore jobs by Negroes,[3-66] the Special Programs Unit discovered that rating and promotion of Negroes was still slow. At the unit's urging, the bureau advised all naval districts that it expected Negroes to be rated upward "as rapidly as practicable" and asked them to report on their rating of Negroes.[3-67] It also authorized stations to retain white petty officers for up to two weeks to break in their black replacements, but warned that this privilege must not be abused. The bureau further directed that all qualified general service candidates be advanced to ratings for which they were eligible regardless of whether their units were authorized enough spaces to take care of them. This last directive did little for black promotions at first because many local commanders ruled that no Negroes could be "qualified" since none were allowed to perform sea duties. In January 1944 the bureau had to clarify the order to make sure that Negroes were given the opportunity to advance.[3-68]

Despite these evidences of command concern, black promotions continued to lag in the Navy. Again at the Special Programs Unit's urging, the Bureau of Naval Personnel began to limit the number of rated men turned out by the black training schools so that more nonrated men already on the job might have a better chance to win ratings. The bureau instituted a specialist leadership course for rated Negroes at Great Lakes and recommended in January 1944 that two Negroes so trained be included in each base company sent out of the country. It also selected twelve Negroes with backgrounds in education and public relations and assigned them to recruiting duty around the country. The bureau expanded the black petty officer program because it was convinced by the end of 1943 that the presence of more black leaders, particularly in the large base companies, would improve discipline and raise morale. It was but a short step from this conviction to a realization that black commissioned officers were needed.

Despite its 100,000 enlisted Negroes, the absence of black commissioned officers in the fall of 1943 forced the Navy to answer an increasing number of queries from civil rights organizations and Congress.[3-69] Several times during 1942 suggestions were made within the Bureau of Naval Personnel that the instructors at the Hampton specialist school and seventy-five other Negroes be commissioned for service with the large black units, but nothing happened. Secretary Knox himself thought that the Navy would have to develop a considerable body of black sailors before it could even think about commissioning black officers.[3-70] But the secretary failed to appreciate the effect of the sheer number of black draftees that overwhelmed the service in the spring of 1943, and he reckoned without the persuasive arguments of his special assistant, Adlai Stevenson.[3-71]

Secretary Knox often referred to Adlai Stevenson as "my New Dealer," and, as the expression suggested, the Illinois lawyer was in an excellent position to influence the secretary's thinking.[3-72] Although not so forceful an advocate as Christopher Sargent, Stevenson lent his considerable intelligence and charm to the support of those in the department who sought equal opportunity for the Negro. He was an invaluable and influential ally for the Special Programs Unit. Stevenson knew Knox well and understood how to approach him. He was particularly effective in getting Negroes commissioned. In September 1943 he pointed out that, with the induction of 12,000 Negroes a month, the demand for black officers would be mounting in the black community and in the government as well. The Navy could not and should not, he warned, postpone much longer the creation of some black officers. Suspicion of discrimination was one reason the Navy was failing to get the best qualified Negroes, and Stevenson believed it wise to act quickly. He recommended that the Navy commission ten or twelve Negroes from among "top notch civilians just as we procure white officers" and a few from the ranks. The commissioning should be treated as a matter of course without any special publicity. The news, he added wryly, would get out soon enough.[3-73]

There were in fact three avenues to a Navy commission: the Naval Academy, the V-12 program, and direct commission from civilian life or the enlisted ranks. But Annapolis had no Negroes enrolled at the time Stevenson spoke, and only a dozen Negroes were enrolled in V-12 programs at integrated civilian colleges throughout the country.[3-74] The lack of black students in the V-12 program could be attributed in part to the belief of many black trainees that the program barred Negroes. Actually, it never had, and in December 1943 the bureau publicized this fact. It issued a circular letter emphasizing to all commanders that enlisted men were entitled to consideration for transfer to the V-12 program regardless of race.[3-75] Despite this effort it was soon apparent that the program would produce only a few black officers, and the Bureau of Naval Personnel, at the urging of its Special Programs Unit, agreed to follow Stevenson's suggestion and concentrate on the direct commissioning of Negroes. Unlike Stevenson the bureau preferred to obtain most of the men from the enlisted ranks, and only in the case of certain specially trained men did the Navy commission civilians.

First Black Officers in the Navy.
From left to right: (top row) John W. Reagan, Jesse W. Arbor, Dalton L. Baugh;
(second row) Graham E. Martin, W. O. Charles B. Lear, Frank C. Sublett;
(third row) Phillip S. Barnes, George Cooper, Reginald Goodwin;
(bottom row) James E. Hare, Samuel E. Barnes, W. Sylvester White, Dennis D. Nelson II.

The Bureau of Naval Personnel concluded that, since many units were substantially or wholly manned by Negroes, black officers could be used without undue difficulty, and when Secretary Knox, prodded by Stevenson, turned to the bureau, it recommended that the Navy commission twelve line and ten staff officers from a selected list of enlisted men.[3-76] Admiral King endorsed the bureau's recommendation and on 15 December 1943 Knox approved it, although he conditioned his approval by saying: "After you have commissioned the twenty-two officers you suggest, I think this matter should again be reviewed before any additional colored officers are commissioned."[3-77]

On 1 January 1944 the first sixteen black officer candidates, selected from among qualified enlisted applicants, entered Great Lakes for segregated training. All sixteen survived the course, but only twelve were commissioned. In the last week of the course, three candidates were returned to the ranks, not because they had failed but because the Bureau of Naval Personnel had suddenly decided to limit the number of black officers in this first group to twelve. The twelve entered the U.S. Naval Reserve as line officers on 17 March. A thirteenth man, the only candidate who lacked a college degree, was made a warrant officer because of his outstanding work in the course.

Two of the twelve new ensigns were assigned to the faculty at Hampton training school, four others to yard and harbor craft duty, and the rest to training duty at Great Lakes. All carried the label "Deck Officers Limited—only," a designation usually reserved for officers whose physical or educational deficiencies kept them from performing all the duties of a line officer. The Bureau of Naval Personnel never explained why the men were placed in this category, but it was clear that none of them lacked the physical requirements of a line officer and all had had business or professional careers in civil life.

Operating duplicate training facilities for officer candidates was costly, and the bureau decided shortly after the first group of black candidates was trained that future candidates of both races would be trained together. By early summer ten more Negroes, this time civilians with special professional qualifications, had been trained with whites and were commissioned as staff officers in the Medical, Dental, Chaplain, Civil Engineer, and Supply Corps. These twenty-two men were the first of some sixty Negroes to be commissioned during the war.

Since only a handful of the Negroes in the Navy were officers, the preponderance of the race problems concerned relations between black enlisted men and their white officers. The problem of selecting the proper officers to command black sailors was a formidable one never satisfactorily solved during the war. As in the Army, most of the white officers routinely selected for such assignments were southerners, chosen by the Bureau of Naval Personnel for their assumed "understanding" of Negroes rather than for their general competency. The Special Programs Unit tried to work with these officers, assembling them for conferences to discuss the best techniques and procedures for dealing with groups of black subordinates. Members of the unit sought to disabuse the officers of preconceived biases, constantly reminding them that "our prejudices must be subordinated to our traditional unfailing obedience to orders."[3-78] Although there was ample proof that many Negroes actively resented the paternalism exhibited by many of even the best of these officers, this fact was slow to filter through the naval establishment. It was not until January 1944 that an officer who had compiled an enviable record in training Seabee units described how his organization had come to see the light:

We in the Seabees no longer follow the precept that southern officers exclusively should be selected for colored battalions. A man may be from the north, south, east or west. If his attitude is to do the best possible job he knows how, regardless of what the color of his personnel is, that is the man we want as an officer for our colored Seabees. We have learned to steer clear of the "I'm from the South—I know how to handle 'em variety." It follows with reference to white personnel, that deeply accented southern whites are not generally suited for Negro battalions.[3-79]

Further complicating the task of selecting suitable officers for black units was the fact that when the Bureau of Naval Personnel asked unit commanders to recommend men for such duty many commanders used the occasion to rid themselves of their least desirable officers. The Special Programs Unit then tried to develop its own source of officers for black units. It discovered a fine reservoir of talent among the white noncommissioned officers who ran the physical training and drill courses at Great Lakes. These were excellent instructors, mature and experienced in dealing with people. In January 1944 arrangements were made to commission them and to assign them to black units.

Improvement in the quality of officers in black units was especially important because the attitude of local commanders was directly related to the degree of segregation in living quarters and recreational facilities, and such segregation was the most common source of racial tension. Although the Navy's practice of segregating units clearly invited separate living and recreational facilities, the rules were unwritten, and local commanders had been left to decide the extent to which segregation was necessary. Thus practices varied greatly and policy depended ultimately on the local commanders. Rather than attack racial practices at particular bases, the unit decided to concentrate on the officers. It explained to these leaders the Navy's policy of equal treatment and opportunity, a concept basically incompatible with many of their practices.

This conclusion was embodied in a pamphlet entitled Guide to the Command of Negro Naval Personnel and published by the Bureau of Naval Personnel in February 1944.[3-80] The Special Programs Unit had to overcome much opposition within the bureau to get the pamphlet published. Some thought the subject of racial tension was best ignored; others objected to the "sociological" content of the work, considering this approach outside the Navy's province. The unit argued that racial tension in the Navy was a serious problem that could not be ignored, and since human relations affected the Navy's mission the Navy should deal with social matters objectively and frankly.[3-81]

Scholarly and objective, the pamphlet was an important document in the history of race relations in the Navy. In language similar to that used in the War Department's pamphlet on race, the Bureau of Naval Personnel stated officially for the first time that discrimination flowed of necessity out of the doctrine of segregation:

The idea of compulsory racial segregation is disliked by almost all Negroes, and literally hated by many. This antagonism is in part a result of the fact that as a principle it embodies a doctrine of racial inferiority. It is also a result of the lesson taught the Negro by experience that in spite of the legal formula of "separate but equal" facilities, the facilities open to him under segregation are in fact usually inferior as to location or quality to those available to others.[3-82]

The guide also foreshadowed the end of the old order of things: "The Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance."[3-83]

Forrestal Takes the Helm

The Navy got a leader sympathetic to the proposition of equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes, and possessed of the bureaucratic skills to achieve reforms, when President Roosevelt appointed Under Secretary James Forrestal to replace Frank Knox, who died suddenly on 28 April 1944. During the next five years Forrestal, a brilliant, complex product of Wall Street, would assume more and more responsibility for directing the integration effort in the defense establishment. Although no racial crusader, Forrestal had been for many years a member of the National Urban League, itself a pillar of the civil rights establishment. He saw the problem of employing Negroes as one of efficiency and simple fair play, and as the months went by he assumed an active role in experimenting with changes in the Navy's policy.[3-84]

His first experiment was with sea duty for Negroes. After the experience of the Mason and the other segregated ships which actually proved very little, sentiment for a partial integration of the fleet continued to grow in the Bureau of Naval Personnel. As early as April 1943, officers in the Planning and Control Activity recommended that Negroes be included in small numbers in the crews of the larger combat ships. Admiral Jacobs, however, was convinced that "you couldn't dump 200 colored boys on a crew in battle,"[3-85] so this and similar proposals later in the year never survived passage through the bureau.

Forrestal accepted Jacob's argument that as long as the war continued any move toward integrating the fighting ships was impractical. At the same time, he agreed with the Special Programs Unit that large concentrations of Negroes in shore duties lowered efficiency and morale. Forrestal compromised by ordering the bureau to prepare as an experiment a plan for the integration of some fleet auxiliary ships. On 20 May 1944 he outlined the problem for the President:

"From a morale standpoint, the Negroes resent the fact that they are not assigned to general service billets at sea, and white personnel resent the fact that Negroes have been given less hazardous assignments." He explained that at first Negroes would be used only on the large auxiliaries, and their number would be limited to not more than 10 percent of the ship's complement. If this step proved workable, he planned to use Negroes in small numbers on other types of ships "as necessity indicates." The White House answered: "OK, FDR."[3-86]

Secretary Forrestal also won the support of the Chief of Naval Operations for the move, but Admiral King still considered integration in the fleet experimental and was determined to keep strict control until the results were known. On 9 August 1944 King informed the commanding officers of twenty-five large fleet auxiliaries that Negroes would be assigned to them in the near future. As Forrestal had suggested, King set the maximum number of Negroes at 10 percent of the ship's general service. Of this number, 15 percent would be third-class petty officers from shore activities, selected as far as possible from volunteers and, in any case, from those who had served the longest periods of shore duty. Of the remainder, 43 percent would be from Class A schools and 42 percent from recruit training. The basic 10 percent figure proved to be a theoretical maximum; no ship received that many Negroes.

Admiral King insisted that equal treatment in matters of training, promotion, and duty assignments must be accorded all hands, but he left the matter of berthing to the commanding officers, noting that experience had proved that in the shore establishment, when the percentage of blacks to whites was small, the two groups could be successfully mingled in the same compartments. He also pointed out that a thorough indoctrination of white sailors before the arrival of the Negroes had been useful in preventing racial friction ashore.[3-87]

King asked all commanders concerned in the experiment to report their experiences.[3-88] Their judgment: integration in the auxiliary fleet worked. As one typical report related after several months of integrated duty:

The crew was carefully indoctrinated in the fact that Negro personnel should not be subjected to discrimination of any sort and should be treated in the same manner as other members of the crew.

The Negro personnel when they came aboard were berthed indiscriminately throughout the crew's compartments in the same manner as if they had been white. It is felt that the assimilation of the general service Negro personnel aboard this ship has been remarkably successful. To the present date there has been no report of any difficulty which could be laid to their color. It is felt that this is due in part, at least, to the high calibre of Negroes assigned to this ship.[3-89]

The comments of his commanders convinced King that the auxiliary vessels in the fleet could be integrated without incident. He approved a plan submitted by the Chief of Naval Personnel on 6 March 1945 for the gradual assignment of Negroes to all auxiliary vessels, again in numbers not to exceed 10 percent of the general service billets in any ship's complement.[3-90] A month later Negroes were being so assigned in an administratively routine manner.[3-91] The Bureau of Naval Personnel then began assigning black officers to sea duty on the integrated vessels. The first one went to the Mason in March, and in succeeding months others were sent in a routine manner to auxiliary vessels throughout the fleet.[3-92] These assignments were not always carried out according to the bureau's formula. The commander of the USS Chemung, for example, told a young black ensign:

I'm a Navy Man, and we're in a war. To me, it's that stripe that counts—and the training and leadership that it is supposed to symbolize. That's why I never called a meeting of the crew to prepare them, to explain their obligation to respect you, or anything like that. I didn't want anyone to think you were different from any other officer coming aboard.[3-93]

Admitting Negroes to the WAVES was another matter considered by the new secretary in his first days in office. In fact, the subject had been under discussion in the Navy Department for some two years. Soon after the organization of the women's auxiliary, its director, Capt. Mildred H. McAfee, had recommended that Negroes be accepted, arguing that their recruitment would help to temper the widespread criticism of the Navy's restrictive racial policy. But the traditionalists in the Bureau of Naval Personnel had opposed the move on the grounds that WAVES were organized to replace men, and since there were more than enough black sailors to fill all billets open to Negroes there was no need to recruit black women.

Actually, both arguments served to mask other motives, as did Knox's rejection of recruitment on the grounds that integrating women into the Navy was difficult enough without taking on the race problem.[3-94] In April 1943 Knox "tentatively" approved the "tentative" outline of a bureau plan for the induction of up to 5,000 black WAVES, but nothing came of it.[3-95] Given the secretary's frequent protestation that the subject was under constant review,[3-96] and his statement to Captain McAfee that black WAVES would be enlisted "over his dead body,"[3-97] the tentative outline and approval seems to have been an attempt to defer the decision indefinitely.

Secretary Knox's delay merely attracted more attention to the problem and enabled the protestors to enlist powerful allies. At the time of his death, Knox was under siege by a delegation from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) demanding a reassessment of the Navy's policy on the women's reserve.[3-98] His successor turned for advice to Captain McAfee and to the Bureau of Naval Personnel where, despite Knox's "positive and direct orders" against recruiting black WAVES, the Special Programs Unit had continued to study the problem.[3-99] Convinced that the step was just and inevitable, the unit also agreed that the WAVES should be integrated. Forrestal approved, and on 28 July 1944 he recommended to the President that Negroes be trained in the WAVES on an integrated basis and assigned "wherever needed within the continental limits of the United States, preferably to stations where there are already Negro men." He concluded by reiterating a Special Programs Unit warning: "I consider it advisable to start obtaining Negro WAVES before we are forced to take them."[3-100]

To avoid the shoals of racial controversy in the midst of an election year, Secretary Forrestal did trim his recommendations to the extent that he retained the doctrine of separate but equal living quarters and mess facilities for the black WAVES. Despite this offer of compromise, President Roosevelt directed Forrestal to withhold action on the proposal.[3-101] Here the matter would probably have stood until after the election but for Thomas E. Dewey's charge in a Chicago speech during the presidential campaign that the White House was discriminating against black women. The President quickly instructed the Navy to admit Negroes into the WAVES.[3-102]

Lieutenant Pickens and Ensign Wills.
First black WAVE officers,
members of the final graduating class at Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School (WR), Northhampton, Massachusetts.

The first two black WAVE officers graduated from training at Smith College on 21 December, and the enlistment of black women began a week later. The program turned out to be more racially progressive than initially outlined by Forrestal. He had explained to the President that the women would be quartered separately, a provision interpreted in the Bureau of Naval Personnel to mean that black recruits would be organized into separate companies. Since a recruit company numbered 250 women, and since it quickly became apparent that such a large group of black volunteers would not soon be forthcoming, some of the bureau staff decided that the Navy would continue to bar black women. In this they reckoned without Captain McAfee who insisted on a personal ruling by Forrestal. She warned the secretary that his order was necessary because the concept "was so strange to Navy practice."[3-103] He agreed with her that the Negroes would be integrated along with the rest of the incoming recruits, and the Bureau of Naval Personnel subsequently ordered that the WAVES be assimilated without making either special or separate arrangements.[3-104]

By July 1945 the Navy had trained seventy-two black WAVES at Hunter College Naval Training School in a fully integrated and routine manner. Although black WAVES were restricted somewhat in specialty assignments and a certain amount of separate quartering within integrated barracks prevailed at some duty stations, the Special Programs Unit came to consider the WAVE program, which established a forceful precedent for the integration of male recruit training, its most important wartime breakthrough, crediting Captain McAfee and her unbending insistence on equal treatment for the achievement.

Forrestal won the day in these early experiments, but he was a skillful administrator and knew that there was little hope for any fundamental social change in the naval service without the active cooperation of the Navy's high-ranking officers. His meeting with Admiral King on the subject of integration in the summer of 1944 has been reported by several people. Lester Granger, who later became Forrestal's special representative on racial matters, recalled:

He [Forrestal] said he spoke to Admiral King, who was then chief of staff, and said, "Admiral King, I'm not satisfied with the situation here—I don't think that our Navy Negro personnel are getting a square break. I want to do something about it, but I can't do anything about it unless the officers are behind me. I want your help. What do you say?" He said that Admiral King sat for a moment, and looked out the window and then said reflectively, "You know, we say that we are a democracy and a democracy ought to have a democratic Navy. I don't think you can do it, but if you want to try, I'm behind you all the way." And he told me, "And Admiral King was behind me, all the way, not only he but all of the Bureau of Personnel, BuPers. They've been bricks."[3-105] Admiral Jacobs, the Chief of Naval Personnel, also pledged his support.[3-106]

Sailors in the General Service Move Ammunition

As news of the King-Forrestal conversation filtered through the department, many of the programs long suggested by the Special Programs Unit and heretofore treated with indifference or disapproval suddenly received respectful attention.[3-107] With the high-ranking officers cooperating, the Navy under Forrestal began to attack some of the more obvious forms of discrimination and causes of racial tension. Admiral King led the attack, personally directing in August 1944 that all elements give close attention to the proper selection of officers to command black sailors. As he put it: "Certain officers will be temperamentally better suited for such commands than others."[3-108] The qualifications of these officers were to be kept under constant review. In December he singled out the commands in the Pacific area, which had a heavy concentration of all-black base companies, calling for a reform in their employment and advancement of Negroes.[3-109]

Security Watch in the Marianas.
Ratings of these men guarding an ammunition depot include boatswain, second class, seaman, first class, and fireman, first class.

The Bureau of Naval Personnel also stepped up the tempo of its reforms. In March 1944 it had already made black cooks and bakers eligible for duty in all commissary branches of the Navy.[3-110] In June it got Forrestal's approval for putting all rated cooks and stewards in chief petty officer uniforms.[3-111] (While providing finally for the proper uniforming of the chief cooks and stewards, this reform set their subordinates, the rated cooks and stewards, even further apart from their counterparts in the general service who of course continued to wear the familiar bell bottoms.) The bureau also began to attack the concentration of Negroes in ammunition depots and base companies. On 21 February 1945 it ordered that all naval magazines and ammunition depots in the United States and, wherever practical, overseas limit their black seamen to 30 percent of the total employed.[3-112] It also organized twenty logistic support companies to replace the formless base companies sent to the Pacific in the early months of the recruitment program. Organized to perform supply functions, each company consisted of 250 enlisted men and five officers, with a flexible range of petty officer billets.

In the reform atmosphere slowly permeating the Bureau of Naval Personnel, the Special Programs Unit found it relatively easy to end segregation in the specialist training program.[3-113] From the first, the number of Negroes eligible for specialist training had been too small to make costly duplication of equipment and services practical. In 1943, for example, the black aviation metalsmith school at Great Lakes had an average enrollment of eight students. The school was quietly closed and its students integrated with white students. Thus, when the Mason's complement was assembled in early 1944, Negroes were put into the destroyer school at Norfolk side by side with whites, and the black and white petty officers were quartered together. As a natural consequence of the decision to place Negroes in the auxiliary fleet, the Bureau of Naval Personnel opened training in seagoing rates to Negroes on an integrated basis. Citing the practicality of the move, the bureau closed the last of the black schools in June 1945.[3-114]

Despite these reforms, the months following Forrestal's talk with King saw many important recommendations of the Special Programs Unit wandering uncertainly through the bureaucratic desert. For example, a proposal to make the logistic support companies interracial, or at least to create comparable white companies to remove the stigma of segregated manual labor, failed to survive the objections of the enlisted personnel section. The Bureau of Naval Personnel rejected a suggestion that Negroes be assigned to repair units on board ships and to LST's, LCI's, and LCT's during the expansion of the amphibious program. On 30 August 1944 Admiral King rejected a bureau recommendation that the crews of net tenders and mine ships be integrated. He reasoned that these vessels were being kept in readiness for overseas assignment and required "the highest degree of experienced seamanship and precision work" by the crews. He also cited the crowded living quarters and less experienced officers as further reasons for banning Negroes.[3-115]

There were other examples of backsliding in the Navy's racial practices. Use of Negroes in general service had created a shortage of messmen, and in August 1944 the Bureau of Naval Personnel authorized commanders to recruit among black seamen for men to transfer to the Steward's Branch. The bureau suggested as a talking point the fact that stewards enjoyed more rapid advancement, shorter hours, and easier work than men in the general service.[3-116] And, illustrating that a move toward integration was sometimes followed by a step backward, a bureau representative reported in July 1945 that whereas a few black trainees at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center had been integrated in the past, many now arriving were segregated in all-black companies.[3-117]

There were reasons for the inconsistent stance in Washington. The Special Programs Unit had for some time been convinced that only full integration would eliminate discrimination and dissolve racial tensions in the Navy, and it had understood Forrestal's desire "to do something" for the Negro to mean just that. Some senior commanders and their colleagues in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, on the other hand, while accepting the need for reform and willing to accept some racial mixing, nevertheless rejected any substantial change in the policy of restricted employment of Negroes on the grounds that it might disrupt the wartime fleet. Both sides could argue with assurance since Forrestal and King had not made their positions completely clear. Whatever the secretary's ultimate intention, the reforms carried out in 1944 were too little and too late. Perhaps nothing would have been sufficient, for the racial incidents visited upon the Navy during the last year of the war were symptomatic of the overwhelming dissatisfaction Negroes felt with their lot in the armed forces. There had been incidents during the Knox period, but investigation had failed to isolate any "single, simple cause," and troubles continued to occur during 1944.[3-118]

Three of these incidents gained national prominence.[3-119] The first was a mutiny at Mare Island, California, after an explosion destroyed two ammunition ships loading at nearby Port Chicago on 17 July 1944. The explosion killed over 300 persons, including 250 black seamen who had toiled in large, segregated labor battalions. The survivors refused to return to work, and fifty of them were convicted of mutiny and sentenced to prison. The incident became a cause celebre. Finally, through the intervention of the black press and black organizations and the efforts of Thurgood Marshall and Lester Granger, the convictions were set aside and the men restored to active duty.

A riot on Guam in December 1944 was the climax of months of friction between black seamen and white marines. A series of shootings in and around the town of Agana on Christmas Eve left a black and a white marine dead. Believing one of the killed a member of their group, black sailors from the Naval Supply Depot drove into town to confront the outnumbered military police. No violence ensued, but the next day two truckloads of armed Negroes went to the white Marine camp. A riot followed and forty-three Negroes were arrested, charged with rioting and theft of the trucks, and sentenced to up to four years in prison. The authorities also recommended that several of the white marines involved be court-martialed. These men too were convicted of various offenses and sentenced.[3-120] Walter White went to Guam to investigate the matter and appeared as a principal witness before the Marine Court of Inquiry. There he pieced together for officials the long history of discrimination suffered by men of the base company. This situation, combined with poor leadership in the unit, he believed, caused the trouble. His efforts and those of other civil rights advocates led to the release of the black sailors in early 1946.[3-121]

Specialists Repair Aircraft,
Naval Air Station, Seattle, Washington, 1945.

A hunger strike developed as a protest against discrimination in a Seabee battalion at Port Hueneme, California, in March 1945. There was no violence. The thousand strikers continued to work but refused to eat for two days. The resulting publicity forced the Navy to investigate the charges; as a result, the commanding officer, the focus of the grievance, was replaced and the outfit sent overseas.

The riots, mutinies, and other incidents increased the pressure for further modifications of policy. Some senior officers became convinced that the only way to avoid mass rebellion was to avert the possibility of collective action, and collective action was less likely if Negroes were dispersed among whites. As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet and an eloquent proponent of the theory that integration was a practical means of avoiding trouble, explained to the captain of an attack cargo ship who had just received a group of black crewmen and was segregating their sleeping quarters: "If you put all the Negroes together they'll have a chance to share grievances and to plot among themselves, and this will damage discipline and morale. If they are distributed among other members of the crew, there will be less chance of trouble. And when we say we want integration, we mean integration."[3-122] Thus integration grew out of both idealism and realism.

If racial incidents convinced the admirals that further reforms were necessary, they also seem to have strengthened Forrestal's resolve to introduce a still greater change in his department's policy. For months he had listened to the arguments of senior officials and naval experts that integration of the fleet, though desirable, was impossible during the war. Yet Forrestal had seen integration work on the small patrol craft, on fleet auxiliaries, and in the WAVES. In fact, integration was working smoothly wherever it had been tried. Although hard to substantiate, the evidence suggests that it was in the weeks after the Guam incident that the secretary and Admiral King agreed on a policy of total integration in the general service. The change would be gradual, but the progress would be evident and the end assured—Negroes were going to be assigned as individuals to all branches and billets in the general service.[3-123]

Forrestal and King received no end of advice. In December 1944 a group of black publicists called upon the secretary to appoint a civilian aide to consider the problems of the Negro in the Navy. The group also added its voice to those within the Navy who were suggesting the appointment of a black public relations officer to disseminate news of particular interest to the black press and to improve the Navy's relations with the black community.[3-124] One of Forrestal's assistants proposed that an intradepartmental committee be organized to standardize the disparate approaches to racial problems throughout the naval establishment; another recommended the appointment of a black civilian to advise the Bureau of Naval Personnel; and still another recommended a white assistant on racial affairs in the office of the under secretary.[3-125]

These ideas had merit. The Special Programs Unit had for some time been urging a public relations effort, pointing to the existence of an influential black press as well as to the desirability of fostering among whites a greater knowledge of the role of Negroes in the war. Forrestal brought two black officers to Washington for possible assignment to public relations work, and he asked the director of public relations to arrange for black newsmen to visit vessels manned by black crewmen. Finally, in June 1945, a black officer was added to the staff of the Navy's Office of Public Relations.[3-126]

Appointment of a civilian aide on racial affairs was under consideration for some time, but when no agreement could be reached on where best to assign the official, Forrestal, who wanted someone he could "casually talk to about race relations,"[3-127] invited the Executive Secretary of the National Urban League to "give us some of your time for a period."[3-128] Thus in March 1945 Lester B. Granger began his long association with the Department of Defense, an association that would span the military's integration effort.[3-129] Granger's assignment was straightforward. From time to time he would make extensive trips representing the secretary and his special interest in racial problems at various naval stations.

Forrestal was sympathetic to the Urban League's approach to racial justice, and in Granger he had a man who had developed this approach into a social philosophy. Granger believed in relating the Navy's racial problems not to questions of fairness but to questions of survival, comfort, and security for all concerned. He assumed that if leadership in any field came to understand that its privilege or its security were threatened by denial of fairness to the less privileged, then a meeting of minds was possible between the two groups. They would begin to seek a way to eliminate insecurity, and from the process of eliminating insecurity would come fairness. As Granger explained it, talk to the commander about his loss of efficient production, not the shame of denying a Negro a man's right to a job. Talk about the social costs that come from denial of opportunity and talk about the penalty that the privileged pay almost in equal measure to what the Negro pays, but in different coin. Only then would one begin to get a hearing. On the other hand, talk to Negroes not about achieving their rights but about making good on an opportunity. This would lead to a discussion of training, of ways to override barriers "by maintaining themselves whole."[3-130] The Navy was going to get a lesson in race relations, Urban League style.

At Forrestal's request, Granger explained how he viewed the special adviser's role. He thought he could help the secretary by smoothing the integration process in the general service through consultations with local commanders and their men in a series of field visits. He could also act as an intermediary between the department and the civil rights organizations and black press. Granger urged the formation of an advisory council, which would consist of ranking representatives from the various branches, to interpret and administer the Navy's racial policy. The need for such intradepartmental coordination seemed fairly obvious. Although in 1945 the Bureau of Naval Personnel had increased the resources of its Special Programs Unit, still the only specialized organization dealing with race problems, that group was always too swamped with administrative detail to police race problems outside Washington. Furthermore, the Seabees and the Medical and Surgery Department were in some ways independent of the bureau, and their employment of black sailors was different from that of other branches—a situation that created further confusion and conflict in the application of race policy.[3-131]

Assuming that the advisory council would require an executive agent, Granger suggested that the secretary have a full-time assistant for race relations in addition to his own part-time services. He wanted the man to be black and he wanted him in the secretary's office, which would give him prestige in the black community and increase his power to deal with the bureaus. Forrestal rejected the idea of a council and a full-time assistant, pleading that he must avoid creating another formal organization. Instead he decided to assemble an informal committee, which he invited Granger to join, to standardize the Navy's handling of Negroes.[3-132]

It was obvious that Forrestal, convinced that the Navy's senior officials had made a fundamental shift in their thinking on equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Navy, was content to let specific reforms percolate slowly throughout the department. He would later call the Navy's wartime reforms "a start down a long road."[3-133] In these last months of the war, however, more barriers to equal treatment of Negroes were quietly falling. In March 1945, after months of prodding by Forrestal, the Surgeon General announced that the Navy would accept a "reasonable" number of qualified black nurses and was now recruiting for them.[3-134] In June the Bureau of Naval Personnel ordered the integration of recruit training, assigning black general service recruits to the nearest recruit training command "to obtain the maximum utilization of naval training and housing facilities."[3-135] Noting that this integration was at variance with some individual attitudes, the bureau justified the change on the grounds of administrative efficiency. Again at the secretary's urging, plans were set in motion in July for the assignment of Negroes to submarine and aviation pilot training.[3-136] At the same time Lester Granger, acting as the secretary's personal representative, was visiting the Navy's continental installations, prodding commanders and converting them to the new policy.[3-137]

The 22d Special Construction Battalion Celebrates V-J Day

The Navy's wartime progress in race relations was the product of several forces. At first Negroes were restricted to service as messmen, but political pressure forced the Navy to open general service billets to them. In this the influence of the civil rights spokesmen was paramount. They and their allies in Congress and the national political parties led President Roosevelt to demand an end to exclusion and the Navy to accept Negroes for segregated general service. The presence of large numbers of black inductees and the limited number of assignments for them in segregated units prevented the Bureau of Naval Personnel from providing even a semblance of separate but equal conditions. Deteriorating black morale and the specter of racial disturbance drove the bureau to experiment with all-black crews, but the experiment led nowhere. The Navy could never operate a separate but equal fleet. Finally in 1944 Forrestal began to experiment with integration in seagoing assignments.

The influence of the civil rights forces can be overstated. Their attention tended to focus on the Army, especially in the later years of the war; their attacks on the Navy were mostly sporadic and uncoordinated and easily deflected by naval spokesmen. Equally important to race reform was the fact that the Navy was developing its own group of civil rights advocates during the war, influential men in key positions who had been dissatisfied with the prewar status of the Negro and who pressed for racial change in the name of military efficiency. Under the leadership of a sympathetic secretary, himself aided and abetted by Stevenson and other advisers in his office and in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, the Navy was laying plans for a racially integrated general service when Japan capitulated.

To achieve equality of treatment and opportunity, however, takes more than the development of an integration policy. For one thing, the liberalization of policy and practices affected only a relatively small percentage of the Negroes in the Navy. On V-J day the Navy could count 164,942 enlisted Negroes, 5.37 percent of its total enlisted strength.[3-138] More than double the prewar percentage, this figure was still less than half the national ratio of blacks to whites. In August 1945 the Navy had 60 black officers, 6 of whom were women (4 nurses and 2 WAVES), and 68 enlisted WAVES who were not segregated. The integration of the Navy officer corps, the WAVES, and the nurses had an immediate effect on only 128 people. Figures for black enlisted men show that they were employed in some sixty-seven ratings by the end of the war, but steward and steward's mate ratings accounted for some 68,000 men, about 40 percent of the total black enlistment. Approximately 59,000 others were ordinary seamen, some were recruits in training or specialists striking for ratings, but most were assigned to the large segregated labor units and base companies.[3-139] Here again integrated service affected only a small portion of the Navy's black recruits during World War II.

Furthermore, a real chance existed that even this limited progress might prove to be temporary. On V-J day the Regular Navy had 7,066 Negroes, just 2.14 percent of its total.[3-140] Many of these men could be expected to stay in the postwar Navy, but the overwhelming majority of them were in the separate Steward's Branch and would remain there after the war. Black reservists in the wartime general service would have to compete with white regulars and reservists for the severely reduced number of postwar billets and commissions in a Navy in which almost all members would have to be regulars. Although Lester Granger had stressed this point in conversations with James Forrestal, neither the secretary nor the Bureau of Naval Personnel took the matter up before the end of the war. In short, after setting in motion a number of far-reaching reforms during the war, the Navy seemed in some danger of settling back into its old prewar pattern.

Still, the fact that reforms had been attempted in a service that had so recently excluded Negroes was evidence of progress. Secretary Forrestal was convinced that the Navy's hierarchy had swung behind the principle of equal treatment and opportunity, but the real test was yet to come. Hope for a permanent change in the Navy's racial practices lay in convincing its tradition-minded officers that an integrated general service with a representative share of black officers and men was a matter of military efficiency.

CHAPTER 4

World War II: The Marine Corps and the Coast Guard

The racial policies of both the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard were substantially the same as the Navy policy from which they were derived, but all three differed markedly from each other in their practical application. The differences arose partly from the particular mission and size of these components of the wartime Navy, but they were also governed by the peculiar legal relationship that existed in time of war between the Navy and the other two services.

By law the Marine Corps was a component of the Department of the Navy, its commandant subordinate to the Secretary of the Navy in such matters as manpower and budget and to the Chief of Naval Operations in specified areas of military operations. In the conduct of ordinary business, however, the commandant was independent of the Navy's bureaus, including the Bureau of Naval Personnel. The Marine Corps had its own staff personnel officer, similar to the Army's G-1, and, more important for the development of racial policy, it had a Division of Plans and Policies that was immediately responsible to the commandant for manpower planning. In practical terms, the Marine Corps of World War II was subject to the dictates of the Secretary of the Navy for general policy, and the secretary's 1942 order to enlist Negroes applied equally to the Marine Corps, which had no Negroes in its ranks, and to the Navy, which did. At the same time, the letters and directives of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Naval Personnel implementing the secretary's order did not apply to the corps. In effect, the Navy Department imposed a racial policy on the corps, but left it to the commandant to carry out that policy as he saw fit. These legal distinctions would become more important as the Navy's racial policy evolved in the postwar period.

The Coast Guard's administrative position had early in the war become roughly analogous to that of the Marine Corps. At all times a branch of the armed forces, the Coast Guard was normally a part of the Treasury Department. A statute of 1915, however, provided that during wartime or "whenever the President may so direct" the Coast Guard would operate as part of the Navy, subject to the orders of the Secretary of the Navy.[4-1] At the direction of the President, the Coast Guard passed to the control of the Secretary of the Navy on 1 November 1941 and so remained until 1 January 1946.[4-2]

At first a division under the Chief of Naval Operations, the headquarters of the Coast Guard was later granted considerably more administrative autonomy. In March 1942 Secretary Knox carefully delineated the Navy's control over the Coast Guard, making the Chief of Naval Operations responsible for the operation of those Coast Guard ships, planes, and stations assigned to the naval commands for the "proper conduct of the war," but specifying that assignments be made with "due regard for the needs of the Coast Guard," which must continue to carry out its regular functions. Such duties as providing port security, icebreaking services, and navigational aid remained under the direct control and supervision of the commandant, the local naval district commander exercising only "general military control" of these activities in his area.[4-3] Important to the development of racial policy was the fact that the Coast Guard also retained administrative control of the recruitment, training, and assignment of personnel. Like the Marine Corps, it also had a staff agency for manpower planning, the Commandant's Advisory Board, and one for administration, the Personnel Division, independent of the Navy's bureaus.[4-4] In theory, the Coast Guard's manpower policy, at least in regard to those segments of the service that operated directly under Navy control, had to be compatible with the racial directives of the Navy's Bureau of Naval Personnel. In practice, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, like his colleague in the Marine Corps, was left free to develop his own racial policy in accordance with the general directives of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations.

The First Black Marines

These legal distinctions had no bearing on the Marine Corps' prewar racial policy, which was designed to continue its tradition of excluding Negroes. The views of the commandant, Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, on the subject of race were well known in the Navy. Negroes did not have the "right" to demand a place in the corps, General Holcomb told the Navy's General Board when that body was considering the expansion of the corps in April 1941. "If it were a question of having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes, I would rather have the whites."[4-5] He was more circumspect but no more reasonable when he explained the racial exclusion publicly. Black enlistment was impractical, he told one civil rights group, because the Marine Corps was too small to form racially separate units.[4-6] And, if some Negroes persisted in trying to volunteer after Pearl Harbor, there was another deterrent, described by at least one senior recruiter: the medical examiner was cautioned to disqualify the black applicant during the enlistment physical.[4-7]

Such evasions could no longer be practiced after President Roosevelt decided to admit Negroes to the general service of the naval establishment. According to Secretary Knox the President wanted the Navy to handle the matter "in a way that would not inject into the whole personnel of the Navy the race question."[4-8] Under pressure to make some move, General Holcomb proposed the enlistment of 1,000 Negroes in the volunteer Marine Corps Reserve for duty in the general service in a segregated composite defense battalion. The battalion would consist primarily of seacoast and antiaircraft artillery, a rifle company with a light tank platoon, and other weapons units and components necessary to make it a self-sustaining unit.[4-9] To inject the subject of race "to a less degree than any other known scheme," the commandant planned to train the unit in an isolated camp and assign it to a remote station.[4-10] The General Board accepted this proposal, explaining to Secretary Knox that Negroes could not be used in the Marine Corps' amphibious units because the inevitable replacement and redistribution of men in combat would "prevent the maintenance of necessary segregation." The board also mentioned that experienced noncommissioned officers were at a premium and that diverting them to train a black unit would be militarily inefficient.[4-11]

Although the enlistment of black marines began on 1 June 1942, the corps placed the reservists on inactive status until a training-size unit could be enlisted and segregated facilities built at Montford Point on the vast training reservation at Marine Barracks, New River (later renamed Camp Lejeune), North Carolina.[4-12] On 26 August the first contingent of Negroes began recruit training as the 51st Composite Defense Battalion at Montford Point under the command of Col. Samuel A. Woods, Jr. The corps had wanted to avoid having to train men as typists, truck drivers, and the like—specialist skills needed in the black composite unit. Instead, the commandant established black quotas for three of the four recruiting divisions, specifying that more than half the recruits qualify in the needed skills.[4-13]

Marines of the 51st Defense Battalion
await turn on rifle range, Montford Point, 1942.

The enlistment process proved difficult. The commandant reported that despite predictions of black educators to the contrary the corps had netted only sixty-three black recruits capable of passing the entrance examinations during the first three weeks of recruitment.[4-14] As late as 29 October the Director of Plans and Policies was reporting that only 647 of the scheduled 1,200 men (the final strength figure decided upon for the all-black unit) had been enlisted. He blamed the occupational qualifications for the delay, adding that it was doubtful "if even white recruits" could be procured under such strictures. The commandant approved his plan for enlisting Negroes without specific qualifications and instituting a modified form of specialist training. Black marines would not be sent to specialist schools "unless there is a colored school available," but instead Marine instructors would be sent to teach in the black camp.[4-15] In the end many of these first black specialists received their training in nearby Army installations.

Segregation was the common practice in all the services in 1942, as indeed it was throughout much of American society. If this practice appeared somehow more restrictive in the Marine Corps than it did in the other services, it was because of the corps' size and traditions. The illusion of equal treatment and opportunity could be kept alive in the massive Army and Navy with their myriad units and military occupations; it was much more difficult to preserve in the small and specialized Marine Corps. Given segregation, the Marine Corps was obliged to put its few black marines in its few black units, whose small size limited the variety of occupations and training opportunities.

Yet the size of the corps would undergo considerable change, and on balance it was the Marine Corps' tradition of an all-white service, not its restrictive size, that proved to be the most significant factor influencing racial policy. Again unlike the Army and Navy, the Marine Corps lacked the practical experience with black recruits that might have countered many of the alarums and prejudices concerning Negroes that circulated within the corps during the war. The importance of this experience factor comes out in the reminiscences of a senior official in the Division of Plans and Policies who looked back on his 1942 experiences:

It just scared us to death when the colored were put on it. I went over to Selective Service and saw Gen. Hershey, and he turned me over to a lieutenant colonel [Campbell C. Johnson]—that was in April—and he was one grand person. I told him, "Eleanor [Mrs. Roosevelt] says we gotta take in Negroes, and we are just scared to death, we've never had any in, we don't know how to handle them, we are afraid of them." He said, "I'll do my best to help you get good ones. I'll get the word around that if you want to die young, join the Marines. So anybody that joins is got to be pretty good!" And it was the truth. We got some awfully good Negroes.[4-16]

Unfortunately for the peace of mind of the Marine Corps' personnel planner, the conception of a carefully limited and isolated black contingent was quickly overtaken by events. The President's decision to abolish volunteer enlistments for the armed forces in December 1942 and the subsequent establishment of a black quota for each component of the naval establishment meant that in the next year some 15,400 more Negroes, 10 percent of all Marine Corps inductees, would be added to the corps.[4-17] As it turned out the monthly draft calls were never completely filled, and by December 1943 only 9,916 of the scheduled black inductions had been completed, but by the time the corps stopped drafting men in 1946 it had received over 16,000 Negroes through the Selective Service. Including the 3,129 black volunteers, the number of Negroes in the Marine Corps during World War II totaled 19,168, approximately 4 percent of the corps' enlisted men.

The immediate problem of what to do with this sudden influx of Negroes was complicated by the fact that many of the draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. Where black volunteers had to pass the corps' rigid entrance requirements, draftees had only to meet the lowest selective service standards. An exact breakdown of black Marine Corps draftees by General Classification Test category is unavailable for the war period. A breakdown of some 15,000 black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after V-J day and included many of those drafted during the war. Category I represents the most gifted men:[4-18]

If these figures are used as a base, slightly more than 70 percent of all black enlisted men, more than 11,000, scored in the two lowest categories, a meaningless racial statistic in terms of actual numbers because the smaller percentage of the much larger group of white draftees in these categories gave the corps more whites than blacks in groups IV and V. Yet the statistic was important because low-scoring Negroes, unlike the low-scoring whites who could be scattered throughout the corps' units, had to be concentrated in a small number of segregated units to the detriment of those units. Conversely, the corps had thousands of Negroes with the mental aptitude to serve in regular combat units and a small but significant number capable of becoming officers. Yet these men were denied the opportunity to serve in combat or as officers because the segregation policy dictated that Negroes could not be assigned to a regular combat unit unless all the billets in that unit as well as all replacements were black—a practical impossibility during World War II.

Segregation, not the draft, forced the Marine Corps to devise new jobs and units to absorb the black inductees. A plan circulated in the Division of Plans and Policies called for more defense battalions, a branch for messmen, and the assignment of large black units to local bases to serve as chauffeurs, messengers, clerks, and janitors. Referring to the janitor assignment, one division official admitted that "I don't think we can get away with this type duty."[4-19] In the end the Negroes were not used as chauffeurs, messengers, clerks, and janitors. Instead the corps placed a "maximum practical number" in defense battalions. The number of these units, however, was limited, as Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt, the acting commandant, explained in March 1943, by the number of black noncommissioned officers available. Black noncommissioned officers were necessary, he continued, because in the Army's experience "in nearly all cases to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same organization" led to "trouble and disorder."[4-20] Demonstrating his own and the Marine Corps' lack of experience with black troops, the acting commandant went on to provide his commanders with some rather dubious advice based on what he perceived as the Army's experience: black units should be commanded by men "who thoroughly knew their [Negroes'] individual and racial characteristics and temperaments," and Negroes should be assigned to work they preferred.

Shore Party in Training, Camp Lejeune, 1942

The points emphasized in General Schmidt's letter to Marine commanders—a rigid insistence on racial separation and a willingness to work for equal treatment of black troops—along with an acknowledgement of the Marine Corps' lack of experience with racial problems were reflected in Commandant Holcomb's basic instruction on the subject of Negroes two months later: "All Marines are entitled to the same rights and privileges under Navy Regulations," and black marines could be expected "to conduct themselves with propriety and become a credit to the Marine Corps." General Holcomb was aware of the adverse effect of white noncommissioned officers on black morale, and he wanted them removed from black units as soon as possible. Since the employment of black marines was in itself a "new departure," he wanted to be informed periodically on how Negroes adapted to Marine Corps life, what their off-duty experience was with recreational facilities, and what their attitude was toward other marines.[4-21]

D-day on Peleliu.
Support troops participate in the landing of 1st Marine Division.

These were generally progressive sentiments, evidence of the commandant's desire to provide for the peaceful assimilation and advancement of Negroes in the corps. Unfortunately for his reputation among the civil rights advocates, General Holcomb seemed overly concerned with certain social implications of rank and color. Undeterred by a lack of personal experience with interracial command, he was led in the name of racial harmony to an unpopular conclusion. "It is essential," he told his commanders, "that in no case shall there be colored noncommissioned officers senior to white men in the same unit, and desirable that few, if any be of the same rank."[4-22] He was particularly concerned with the period when white instructors and noncommissioned officers were being phased out of black units. He wanted Negroes up for promotion to corporal transferred, before promotion, out of any unit that contained white corporals.

Medical Attendants at Rest, Peleliu, October, 1944

The Division of Plans and Policies tried to follow these strictures as it set about organizing the new black units. Job preference had already figured in the organization of the new Messman's Branch established in January 1943. At that time Secretary Knox had approved the reconstitution of the corps' all-white Mess Branch as the Commissary Branch and the organization of an all-black Messman's Branch along the lines of the Navy's Steward's Branch.[4-23] In authorizing the new branch, which was quickly redesignated the Steward's Branch to conform to the Navy model, Secretary Knox specified that the members must volunteer for such duty. Yet the corps, under pressure to produce large numbers of stewards in the early months of the war, showed so little faith in the volunteer system that Marine recruiters were urged to induce half of all black recruits to sign on as stewards.[4-24] Original plans called for the assignment of one steward for every six officers, but the lack of volunteers and the needs of the corps quickly caused this estimate to be scaled down.[4-25] By 5 July 1944 the Steward's Branch numbered 1,442 men, roughly 14 percent of the total black strength of the Marine Corps.[4-26] It remained approximately this size for the rest of the war.

The admonition to employ black marines to the maximum extent practical in defense battalions was based on the mobilization planners' belief that each of these battalions, with its varied artillery, infantry, and armor units, would provide close to a thousand black marines with varied assignments in a self-contained, segregated unit. But the realities of the Pacific war and the draft quickly rendered these plans obsolete. As the United States gained the ascendancy, the need for defense battalions rapidly declined, just as the need for special logistical units to move supplies in the forward areas increased. The corps had originally depended on its replacement battalions to move the mountains of supply involved in amphibious assaults, but the constant flow of replacements to battlefield units and the need for men with special logistical skill had led in the middle of the war to the organization of pioneer battalions. To supplement the work of these shore party units and to absorb the rapidly growing number of black draftees, the Division of Plans and Policies eventually created fifty-one separate depot companies and twelve separate ammunition companies manned by Negroes. The majority of these new units served in base and service depots, handling ammunition and hauling supplies, but a significant number of them also served as part of the shore parties attached to the divisional assault units. These units often worked under enemy fire and on occasion joined in the battle as they moved supplies, evacuated the wounded, and secured the operation's supply dumps.[4-27] Nearly 8,000 men, about 40 percent of the corps' black enlistment, served in this sometimes hazardous combat support duty. The experience of these depot and ammunition companies provided the Marine Corps with an interesting irony. In contrast to Negroes in the other services, black marines trained for combat were never so used. Those trained for the humdrum labor tasks, however, found themselves in the thick of the fighting on Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and elsewhere, suffering combat casualties and winning combat citations for their units.

The increased allotment of black troops entering the corps and the commandant's call for replacing all white noncommissioned officers with blacks as quickly as they could be sufficiently trained caused problems for the black combat units. The 51st Defense Battalion in particular suffered many vicissitudes in its training and deployment. The 51st was the first black unit in the Marine Corps, a doubtful advantage considering the frequent reorganization and rapid troop turnover that proved its lot. At first the reception and training of all black inductees fell to the battalion, but in March 1943 a separate Headquarters Company, Recruit Depot Battalion, was organized at Montford Point.[4-28] Its cadre was drawn from the 51st, as were the noncommissioned officers and key personnel of the newly organized ammunition and depot companies and the black security detachments organized at Montford Point and assigned to the Naval Ammunition Depot, McAlester, Oklahoma, and the Philadelphia Depot of Supplies.

In effect, the 51st served as a specialist training school for the black combat units. When the second black defense battalion, the 52d, was organized in December 1943 its cadre, too, was drawn from the 51st. By the time the 51st was actually deployed, it had been reorganized several times and many of its best men had been siphoned off as leaders for new units. To compound these losses of experienced men, the battalion was constantly receiving large influxes of inexperienced and educationally deficient draftees and sometimes there was infighting among its officers.[4-29]

Training for black units only emphasized the rigid segregation enforced in the Marine Corps. After their segregated eight-week recruit training, the men were formed into companies at Montford Point; those assigned to the defense battalions were sent for specialist training in the weapons and equipment employed in such units, including radar, motor transport, communications, and artillery fire direction. Each of the ammunition companies sent sixty of its men to special ammunition and camouflage schools where they would be promoted to corporal when they completed the course. In contrast to the depot companies and elements of the defense battalions, the ammunition units would have white staff sergeants as ordnance specialists throughout the war. This exception to the rule of black noncommissioned officers for black units was later justified on the grounds that such units required experienced supervisors to emphasize and enforce safety regulations.[4-30] On the whole specialist training was segregated; whenever possible even the white instructors were rapidly replaced by blacks.

Before being sent overseas, black units underwent segregated field training, although the length of this training varied considerably according to the type of unit. Depot companies, for example, were labor units pure and simple, organized to perform simple tasks, and many of them were sent to the Pacific less than two weeks after activation. In contrast, the 51st Defense Battalion spent two months in hard field training, scarcely enough considering the number of raw recruits, totally unfamiliar with gunnery, that were being fed regularly into what was essentially an artillery battalion.

Gun Crew of the 52d Defense Battalion
on duty, Central Pacific, 1945.

The experience of the two defense battalions demonstrates that racial consideration governed their eventual deployment just as it had decided their organization. With no further strategic need for defense battalions, the Marine Corps began to dismantle them in 1944, just as the two black units became operational and were about to be sent to the Central and South Pacific. The eighteen white defense battalions were subsequently reorganized as antiaircraft artillery battalions for use with amphibious groups in the forward areas. While the two black units were similarly reorganized, only they and one of the white units retained the title of defense battalion. Their deployment was also different. The policy of self-contained, segregated service was, in the case of a large combat unit, best followed in the rear areas, and the two black battalions were assigned to routine garrison duties in the backwaters of the theater, the 51st at Eniwetok in the Marshalls, the 52d at Guam. The latter unit saw nearly half its combat-trained men detailed to work as stevedores. It was not surprising that the morale in both units suffered.[4-31]

Even more explicitly racial was the warning of a senior combat commander to the effect that the deployment of black depot units to the Polynesian areas of the Pacific should be avoided. The Polynesians, he explained, were delightful people, and their "primitively romantic" women shared their intimate favors with one and all. Mixture with the white race had produced "a very high-class half-caste," mixture with the Chinese a "very desirable type," but the union of black and "Melanesian types ... produces a very undesirable citizen." The Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Charles F. B. Price continued, had a special moral obligation and a selfish interest in protecting the population of American Samoa, especially, from intimacy with Negroes; he strongly urged therefore that any black units deployed to the Pacific should be sent to Micronesia where they "can do no racial harm."[4-32]

General Price must have been entertaining second thoughts, since two depot companies were already en route to Samoa at his request. Nevertheless, because of the "importance" of his reservations the matter was brought to the attention of the Director of Plans and Policies.[4-33] As a result, the assignment of the 7th and 8th Depot Companies to Samoa proved short-lived. Arriving on 13 October 1943, they were redeployed to the Ellice Islands in the Micronesia group the next day.

Thanks to the operations of the ammunition and depot companies, a large number of black marines, serving in small, efficient labor units, often exposed to enemy fire, made a valuable contribution. That so many black marines participated, at least from time to time, in the fighting may explain in part the fact that relatively few racial incidents took place in the corps during the war. But if many Negroes served in forward areas, they were all nevertheless severely restricted in opportunity. Black marines were excluded from the corps' celebrated combat divisions and its air arm. They were also excluded from the Women's Reserve, and not until the last months of the war did the corps accept its first black officer candidates. Marine spokesmen justified the latter exclusion on the grounds that the corps lacked facilities—that is, segregated facilities—for training black officers.[4-34]

These exclusions did not escape the attention of the civil rights spokesmen who took their demands to Secretary Knox and the White House.[4-35] It was to little avail. With the exception of the officer candidates in 1945, the separation of the races remained absolute, and Negroes continued to be excluded from the main combat units of the Marine Corps.

Crewmen of USCG Lifeboat Station, Pea Island, North Carolina,
ready surf boat for launching.

Personal prejudices aside, the desire for social harmony and the fear of the unknown go far toward explaining the Marine Corps' wartime racial policy. A small, specialized, and racially exclusive organization, the Marine Corps reacted to the directives of the Secretary of the Navy and the necessities of wartime operation with a rigid segregation policy, its black troops restricted to about 4 percent of its enlisted strength. A large part of this black strength was assigned to labor units where Negroes performed valuable and sometimes dangerous service in the Pacific war. Complaints from civil rights advocates abounded, but neither protests nor the cost to military efficiency of duplicating training facilities were of sufficient moment to overcome the sentiment against significant racial change, which was kept to a minimum. Judged strictly in terms of keeping racial harmony, the corps policy must be considered a success. Ironically this very success prevented any modification of that policy during the war.

New Roles for Black Coast Guardsmen

The Coast Guard's pre-World War II experience with Negroes differed from that of the other branches of the naval establishment. Unlike the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard could boast a tradition of black enlistment stretching far back into the previous century. Although it shared this tradition with the Navy, the Coast Guard, unlike the Navy, had always severely restricted Negroes both in terms of numbers enlisted and jobs assigned. A small group of Negroes manned a lifesaving station at Pea Island on North Carolina's outer banks. Negroes also served as crewmen at several lighthouses and on tenders in the Mississippi River basin; all were survivors of the transfer of the Lighthouse Service to the Coast Guard in 1939. These guardsmen were almost always segregated, although a few served in integrated crews or even commanded large Coast Guard vessels and small harbor craft.[4-36] They also served in the separate Steward's Branch, although it might be argued that the small size of most Coast Guard vessels integrated in fact men who were segregated in theory.

Coast Guard Recruits
at Manhattan Beach Training Station, New York.

The lot of the black Coast Guardsman on a small cutter was not necessarily a happy one. To a surprising extent the enlisted men of the prewar Coast Guard were drawn from the eastern shore and outer banks region of the Atlantic coast where service in the Coast Guard had become a strong family tradition among a people whose attitude toward race was rarely progressive. Although these men tolerated an occasional small black Coast Guard crew or station, they might well resist close service with individual Negroes. One commander reported that racial harassment drove the solitary black in the prewar crew of the cutter Calypso out of the service.[4-37]

Coast Guard officials were obviously mindful of such potential troubles when, at Secretary Knox's bidding, they joined in the General Board's discussion of the expanded use of Negroes in the general service in January 1942. In the name of the Coast Guard, Commander Lyndon Spencer agreed with the objections voiced by the Navy and the Marine Corps, adding that the Coast Guard problem was "enhanced somewhat by the fact that our units are small and contacts between the men are bound to be closer." He added that while the Coast Guard was not "anxious to take on any additional problems at this time, if we have to we will take some of them [Negroes]."[4-38]

When President Roosevelt made it clear that Negroes were to be enlisted, Coast Guard Commandant Rear Adm. Russell R. Waesche had a plan ready. The Coast Guard would enlist approximately five hundred Negroes in the general service, he explained to the chairman of the General Board, Vice Adm. Walton R. Sexton. Some three hundred of these men would be trained for duty on small vessels, the rest for shore duty under the captain of the port of six cities throughout the United States. Although his plan made no provision for the training of black petty officers, the commandant warned Admiral Sexton that 50 to 65 percent of the crew in these small cutters and miscellaneous craft held such ratings, and it followed that Negroes would eventually be allowed to try for such ratings.[4-39]

Further refining the plan for the General Board on 24 February, Admiral Waesche listed eighteen vessels, mostly buoy tenders and patrol boats, that would be assigned black crews. All black enlistees would be sent to the Manhattan Beach Training Station, New York, for a basic training "longer and more extensive" than the usual recruit training. After recruit training the men would be divided into groups according to aptitude and experience and would undergo advanced instruction before assignment. Those trained for ship duty would be grouped into units of a size to enable them to go aboard and assume all but the petty officer ratings of the designated ships. The commandant wanted to initiate this program with a group of 150 men. No other Negroes would be enlisted until the first group had been trained and assigned to duty for a period long enough to permit a survey of its performance. Admiral Waesche warned that the whole program was frankly new and untried and was therefore subject to modification as it evolved.[4-40]

The plan was a major innovation in the Coast Guard's manpower policy. For the first time a number of Negroes, approximately 1.6 percent of the guard's total enlisted complement, would undergo regular recruit and specialized training.[4-41] More than half would serve aboard ship at close quarters with their white petty officers. The rest would be assigned to port duty with no special provision for segregated service. If the provision for segregating nonrated Coast Guardsmen when they were at sea was intended to prevent the development of racial antagonism, the lack of a similar provision for Negroes ashore was puzzling; but whatever the Coast Guard's reasoning in the matter, the General Board was obviously concerned with the provisions for segregation in the plan. Its chairman told Secretary Knox that the assignment of Negroes to the captains of the ports was a practical use of Negroes in wartime, since these men could be segregated in service units. But their assignment to small vessels, Admiral Sexton added, meant that "the necessary segregation and limitation of authority would be increasingly difficult to maintain" and "opportunities for advancement would be few." For that reason, he concluded, the employment of such black crews was practical but not desirable.[4-42]

The General Board was overruled, and the Coast Guard proceeded to recruit its first group of 150 black volunteers, sending them to Manhattan Beach for basic training in the spring of 1942. The small size of the black general service program precluded the establishment of a separate training station, but the Negroes were formed into a separate training company at Manhattan Beach. While training classes and other duty activities were integrated, sleeping and messing facilities were segregated. Although not geographically separated as were the black sailors at Camp Smalls or the marines at Montford Point, the black recruits of the separate training company at Manhattan Beach were effectively impressed with the reality of segregation in the armed forces.[4-43]

After taking a four-week basic course, those who qualified were trained as radiomen, pharmacists, yeomen, coxswains, fire controlmen, or in other skills in the seaman branch.[4-44] Those who did not so qualify were transferred for further training in preparation for their assignment to the captains of the ports. Groups of black Coast Guardsmen, for example, were sent to the Pea Island Station after their recruit training for several weeks' training in beach duties. Similar groups of white recruits were also sent to the Pea Island Station for training under the black chief boatswain's mate in charge.[4-45] By August 1942 some three hundred Negroes had been recruited, trained, and assigned to general service duties under the new program. At the same time the Coast Guard continued to recruit hundreds of Negroes for its separate Steward's Branch.

The commandant's program for the orderly induction and assignment of a limited number of black volunteers was, as in the case of the Navy and Marine Corps, abruptly terminated in December 1942 when the President ended volunteer enlistment for most military personnel. For the rest of the war the Coast Guard, along with the Navy and Marine Corps, came under the strictures of the Selective Service Act, including its racial quota system. The Coast Guard, however, drafted relatively few men, issuing calls for a mere 22,500 and eventually inducting only 15,296. But more than 12 percent of its calls (2,500 men between February and November 1943) and 13 percent of all those drafted (1,667) were Negro. On the average, 137 Negroes and 1,000 whites were inducted each month during 1943.[4-46] Just over 5,000 Negroes served as Coast Guardsmen in World War II.[4-47]

As it did for the Navy and Marine Corps, the sudden influx of Negroes from Selective Service necessitated a revision of the Coast Guard's personnel planning. Many of the new men could be assigned to steward duties, but by January 1943 the Coast Guard already had some 1,500 stewards and the branch could absorb only half of the expected black draftees. The rest would have to be assigned to the general service.[4-48] And here the organization and mission of the Coast Guard, far more so than those of the Navy and Marine Corps, militated against the formation of large segregated units. The Coast Guard had no use for the amorphous ammunition and depot companies and the large Seabee battalions of the rest of the naval establishment. For that reason the large percentage of its black seamen in the general service (approximately 37 percent of all black Coast Guardsmen) made a considerable amount of integration inevitable; the small number of Negroes in the general service (1,300 men, less than 1 percent of the total enlisted strength of the Coast Guard) made integration socially acceptable.

The majority of black Coast Guardsmen were only peripherally concerned with this wartime evolution of racial policy. Some 2,300 Negroes served in the racially separate Steward's Branch, performing the same duties in officer messes and quarters as stewards in the Navy and Marine Corps. But not quite, for the size of Coast Guard vessels and their crews necessitated the use of stewards at more important battle stations. For example, a group of stewards under the leadership of a black gun captain manned the three-inch gun on the afterdeck of the cutter Campbell and won a citation for helping to destroy an enemy submarine in February 1943.[4-49] The Personnel Division worked to make the separate Steward's Branch equal to the rest of the service in terms of promotion and emoluments, and there were instances when individual stewards successfully applied for ratings in general service.[4-50] Again, the close quarters aboard Coast Guard vessels made the talents of stewards for general service duties more noticeable to officers.[4-51] The evidence suggests, however, that the majority of the black stewards, about 63 percent of all the Negroes in the Coast Guard, continued to function as servants throughout the war. As in the rest of the naval establishment, the stewards in the Coast Guard were set apart not only by their limited service but also by different uniforms and the fact that chief stewards were not regarded as chief petty officers. In fact, the rank of chief steward was not introduced until the war led to an enlargement of the Coast Guard.[4-52]

Stewards at Battle Station
on the afterdeck of the cutter Campbell.

The majority of black guardsmen in general service served ashore under the captains of the ports, local district commanders, or at headquarters establishments. Men in these assignments included hundreds in security and labor details, but more and more served as yeomen, radio operators, storekeepers, and the like. Other Negroes were assigned to local Coast Guard stations, and a second all-black station was organized during the war at Tiana Beach, New York. Still others participated in the Coast Guard's widespread beach patrol operations. Organized in 1942 as outposts and lookouts against possible enemy infiltration of the nation's extensive coastlines, the patrols employed more than 11 percent of all the Coast Guard's enlisted men. This large group included a number of horse and dog patrols employing only black guardsmen.[4-53] In all, some 2,400 black Coast Guardsmen served in the shore establishment.

Shore Leave in Scotland.
(The distinctive uniform of the Coast Guard steward is shown.)

The assignment of so many Negroes to shore duties created potential problems for the manpower planners, who were under orders to rotate sea and shore assignments periodically.[4-54] Given the many black general duty seamen denied sea duty because of the Coast Guard's segregation policy but promoted into the more desirable shore-based jobs to the detriment of whites waiting for rotation to such assignments, the possibility of serious racial trouble was obvious.

At least one officer in Coast Guard headquarters was concerned enough to recommend that the policy be revised. With two years' service in Greenland waters, the last year as executive officer of the USCGC Northland, Lt. Carlton Skinner had firsthand experience with the limitations of the Coast Guard's racial policy. While on the Northland Skinner had recommended that a skilled black mechanic, then serving as a steward's mate, be awarded a motor mechanic petty officer rating only to find his recommendation rejected on racial grounds. The rating was later awarded after an appeal by Skinner, but the incident set the stage for the young officer's later involvement with the Coast Guard's racial traditions. On shore duty at Coast Guard headquarters in June 1943, Skinner recommended to the commandant that a group of black seamen be provided with some practical seagoing experience under a sympathetic commander in a completely integrated operation. He emphasized practical experience in an integrated setting, he later revealed, because he was convinced that men with high test scores and specialized training did not necessarily make the best sailors, especially when their training was segregated. Skinner envisioned a widespread distribution of Negroes throughout the Coast Guard's seagoing vessels. His recommendation was no "experiment in social democracy," he later stressed, but was a design for "an efficient use of manpower to help win a war."[4-55]

Although Skinner's immediate superior forwarded the recommendation as "disapproved," Admiral Waesche accepted the idea. In November 1943 Skinner found himself transferred to the USS Sea Cloud (IX 99), a patrol ship operating in the North Atlantic as part of Task Force 24 reporting on weather conditions from four remote locations in northern waters.[4-56] The commandant also arranged for the transfer of black apprentice seamen, mostly from Manhattan Beach, to the Sea Cloud in groups of about twenty men, gradually increasing the number of black seamen in the ship's complement every time it returned to home station. Skinner, promoted to lieutenant commander and made captain of the Sea Cloud on his second patrol, later decided that the commandant had "figured he could take a chance on me and the Sea Cloud."[4-57]

It was a chance well taken. Before decommissioning in November 1944, the Sea Cloud served on ocean weather stations off the coasts of Greenland, Newfoundland, and France. It received no special treatment and was subject to the same tactical, operating, and engineering requirements as any other unit in the Navy's Atlantic Fleet. It passed two Atlantic Fleet inspections with no deficiencies and was officially credited with helping to sink a German submarine in June 1944. The Sea Cloud boasted a completely integrated operation, its 4 black officers and some 50 black petty officers and seamen serving throughout the ship's 173-man complement.[4-58] No problems of a racial nature arose on the ship, although its captain reported that his crew experienced some hostility in the various departments of the Boston Navy Yard from time to time. Skinner was determined to provide truly integrated conditions. He personally introduced his black officers into the local white officers' club, and he saw to it that when his men were temporarily detached for shore patrol duty they would go in integrated teams. Again, all these arrangements were without sign of racial incident.[4-59]

Commander Skinner and Crew of the Uss Sea Cloud.
Skinner officiates at awards ceremony.

It is difficult to assess the reasons for the commandant's decision to organize an integrated crew. One senior personnel officer later suggested that the Sea Cloud was merely a public relations device designed to still the mounting criticism by civil rights spokesmen of the lack of sea duty for black Coast Guardsmen.[4-60] The public relations advantage of an integrated ship operating in the war zone must have been obvious to Admiral Waesche, although the Coast Guard made no effort to publicize the Sea Cloud. In fact, this absence of special attention had been recommended by Skinner in his original proposal to the commandant. Such publicity, he felt, would disrupt the military experiment and make it more difficult to apply generally the experience gained.

Ensign Jenkins and Lieutenant Samuels,
first black Coast Guard officers, on board the Sea Cloud.

The success of the Sea Cloud experiment did not lead to the widespread integration implied in Commander Skinner's recommendation. The only other extensively integrated Coast Guard vessel assigned to a war zone was the destroyer escort Hoquim, operating in 1945 out of Adak in the Aleutian Islands, convoying shipping along the Aleutian chain. Again, the commander of the ship was Skinner. Nevertheless the practical reasons for Skinner's first recommendation must also have been obvious to the commandant, and the evidence suggests that the Sea Cloud project was but one of a series of liberalizing moves the Coast Guard made during the war, not only to still the criticism in the black community but also to solve the problems created by the presence of a growing number of black seamen in the general service. There is also reason to believe that the Coast Guard's limited use of racially mixed crews influenced the Navy's decision to integrate the auxiliary fleet in 1945. Senior naval officials studied a report on the Sea Cloud, and one of Secretary Forrestal's assistants consulted Skinner on his experiences and their relation to greater manpower efficiency.[4-61]

Throughout the war the Coast Guard never exhibited the concern shown by the other services for the possible disruptive effects if blacks outranked whites. As the war progressed, more and more blacks advanced into petty officer ranks; by August 1945 some 965 Negroes, almost a third of their total number, were petty or warrant officers, many of them in the general service. Places for these trained specialists in any kind of segregated general service were extremely limited, and by the last year of the war many black petty officers could be found serving in mostly white crews and station complements. For example, a black pharmacist, second class, and a signalman, third class, served on the cutter Spencer, a black coxswain served on a cutter in the Greenland patrol, and other black petty officers were assigned to recruiting stations, to the loran program, and as instructors at the Manhattan Beach Training Station.[4-62]

The position of instructor at Manhattan Beach became the usual avenue to a commission for a Negro. Joseph C. Jenkins went from Manhattan Beach to the officer candidate school at the Coast Guard Academy, graduating as an ensign in the Coast Guard Reserve in April 1943, almost a full year before Negroes were commissioned in the Navy. Clarence Samuels, a warrant officer and instructor at Manhattan Beach, was commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade) and assigned to the Sea Cloud in 1943. Harvey C. Russell was a signal instructor at Manhattan Beach in 1944 when all instructors were declared eligible to apply for commissions. At first rejected by the officer training school, Russell was finally admitted at the insistence of his commanding officer, graduated as an ensign, and was assigned to the Sea Cloud.[4-63]

These men commanded integrated enlisted seamen throughout the rest of the war. Samuels became the first Negro in this century to command a Coast Guard vessel in wartime, first as captain of Lightship No. 115 and later of the USCGC Sweetgum in the Panama Sea Frontier. Russell was transferred from the integrated Hoquim to serve as executive officer on a cutter operating out of the Philippines in the western Pacific, assuming command of the racially mixed crew shortly after the war.

At the behest of the White House, the Coast Guard also joined with the Navy in integrating its Women's Reserve. In the fall of 1944 it recruited five black women for the SPARS. Only token representation, but understandable since the SPARS ceased all recruitment except for replacements on 23 November 1944, just weeks after the decision to recruit Negroes was announced. Nevertheless the five women trained at Manhattan Beach and were assigned to various Coast Guard district offices without regard to race.[4-64]

This very real progress toward equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Coast Guard must be assessed with the knowledge that the progress was experienced by only a minuscule group. Negroes never rose above 2.1 percent of the Coast Guard's wartime population, well below the figures for the other services. This was because the other services were forced to obtain draft-age men, including a significant number of black inductees from Selective Service, whereas the Coast Guard ceased all inductions in early 1944.

Despite their small numbers, however, the black Coast Guardsmen enjoyed a variety of assignments. The different reception accorded this small group of Negroes might, at least to some extent, be explained by the Coast Guard's tradition of some black participation for well over a century. To a certain extent this progress could also be attributed to the ease with which the directors of a small organization can reorder its policies.[4-65] But above all, the different reception accorded Negroes in the Coast Guard was a small organization's practical reaction to a pressing assimilation problem dictated by the manpower policies common throughout the naval establishment.

CHAPTER 5

A Postwar Search

The nation's military leaders and the leaders of the civil rights movement were in rare accord at the end of World War II. They agreed that despite considerable wartime improvement the racial policies of the services had proved inadequate for the development of the full military potential of the country's largest minority as well as the efficient operation and management of the nation's armed forces. Dissatisfaction with the current policy of the armed forces was a spearpoint of the increasingly militant and powerful civil rights movement, and this dissatisfaction was echoed to a great extent by the services themselves. Intimate association with minority problems had convinced the Army's Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies and the Navy's Special Programs Unit that new policies had to be devised and new directions sought. Confronted with the incessant demands of the civil rights advocates and presented by their own staffs with evidence of trouble, civilian leaders of the services agreed to review the status of the Negro. As the postwar era opened, both the Army and the Navy were beginning the interminable investigations that augured a change in policy.

Unfortunately, the services and the civil rights leaders had somewhat different ends in mind. Concerned chiefly with military efficiency but also accustomed to racial segregation or exclusion, most military leaders insisted on a rigid appraisal of the performance of segregated units in the war and ignored the effects of segregation on that performance. Civil rights advocates, on the other hand, seeing an opportunity to use the military as a vehicle for the extension of social justice, stressed the baneful effects of segregation on the black serviceman's morale. They were inclined to ignore the performance of the large segregated units and took issue with the premise that desegregation of the armed forces in advance of the rest of American society would threaten the efficient execution of the services' military mission. Neither group seemed able to appreciate the other's real concerns, and their contradictory conclusions promised a renewal of the discord in their wartime relationship.

Black Demands

World War II marked the beginning of an important step in the evolution of the civil rights movement. Until then the struggle for racial equality had been sustained chiefly by the "talented tenth," the educated, middle-class black citizens who formed an economic and political alliance with white supporters. Together they fought to improve the racial situation with some success in the courts, but with little progress in the executive branch and still less in the legislative. The efforts of men like W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White, and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Lester Granger of the National Urban League were in the mainstream of the American reform movement, which stressed an orderly petitioning of government for a redress of grievances.

But there was another facet to the American reform tradition, one that stressed mass action and civil disobedience, and the period between the March on Washington Movement in 1940 and the threat of a black boycott of the draft in 1948 witnessed the beginnings of a shift in the civil rights movement to this kind of reform tactic. The articulate leaders of the prewar struggle were still active, and in fact would make their greatest contribution in the fight that led to the Supreme Court's pronouncement on school segregation in 1954. But their quiet methods were already being challenged by A. Philip Randolph and others who launched a sustained demand for equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces during the early postwar period. Randolph and leaders of his persuasion relied not so much on legal eloquence in their representations to the federal government as on an understanding of bloc voting in key districts and the implicit threat of civil disobedience. The civil rights campaign, at least in the effort to end segregation in the armed forces, had the appearance of a mass movement a full decade before a weary Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery bus and set off the all-embracing crusade of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The growing political power of the Negro and the threat of mass action in the 1940's were important reasons for the breakthrough on the color front that began in the armed forces in the postwar period. For despite the measure of good will and political acumen that characterized his social programs, Harry S. Truman might never have made the effort to achieve racial equality in the services without the constant pressure of civil rights activists.

The reasons for the transformation that was beginning in the civil rights struggle were varied and complex.[5-1] Fundamental was the growing urbanization of the Negro. By 1940 almost half the black population lived in cities. As the labor shortage became more acute during the next five years, movement toward the cities continued, not only in the south but in the north and west. Attracted by economic opportunities in Los Angeles war industries, for example, over 1,000 Negroes moved to that city each month during the war. Detroit, Seattle, and San Francisco, among others, reported similar migrations. The balance finally shifted during the war, and the 1950 census showed that 56 percent of the black population resided in metropolitan areas, 32 percent in cities of the north and west.[5-2]

This mass migration, especially to cities outside the south, was of profound importance to the future of American race relations. It meant first that the black masses were separating themselves from the archaic social patterns that had ruled their lives for generations. Despite virulent discrimination and prejudice in northern and western cities, Negroes could vote freely and enjoy some protection of the law and law-enforcement machinery. They were free of the burden of Jim Crow. Along with white citizens they were given better schooling, a major factor in improving status. The mass migration also meant that this part of America's peasantry was rapidly joining America's proletariat. The wartime shortage of workers, coupled with the efforts of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and other government agencies, opened up thousands of jobs previously denied black Americans. The number of skilled craftsmen, foremen, and semiskilled workers among black Americans rose from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 during the war, while the number of Negroes working for the federal government increased from 60,000 to 200,000.[5-3]

Though much of the increase in black employment was the result of temporarily expanded wartime industries, black workers gained valuable training and experience that enabled them to compete more effectively for postwar jobs. Employment in unionized industries strengthened their position in the postwar labor movement. The severity of inevitable postwar cuts in black employment was mitigated by continued prosperity and the sustained growth of American industry. Postwar industrial development created thousands of new upper-level jobs, allowing many black workers to continue their economic advance without replacing white workers and without the attendant development of racial tensions.

The armed forces played their part in this change. Along with better food, pay, and living conditions provided by the services, many Negroes were given new work experiences. Along with many of their white fellows, they acquired new skills and a new sophistication that prepared them for the different life of the postwar industrial world. Most important, military service in World War II divorced many Negroes from a society whose traditions had carefully defined their place, and exposed them for the first time to a community where racial equality, although imperfectly realized, was an ideal. Out of this experience many Negroes came to understand that their economic and political position could be changed. Ironically, the services themselves became an early target of this rising self-awareness. The integration of the armed forces, immediate and total, was a popular goal of the newly franchised voting group, which was turning away from leaders of both races who preached a philosophy of gradual change.

The black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the Negro, so was the civil rights movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh Courier was but one of many black papers and journals that developed a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that it was "no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights during World War II."[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied the opposition to segregation during and after the war.

Much of the black unrest and dissatisfaction dramatized by the press continued to be mobilized through the efforts of such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality. The NAACP, for example, revitalized by a new and broadened appeal to the black masses, had some 1,200 branches in forty-three states by 1946 and boasted a membership of more than half a million. While the association continued to fight for minority rights in the courts, to stimulate black political participation, and to improve the conditions of Negroes generally, its most popular activity during the 1940's was its effort to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces. The files of the services and the White House are replete with NAACP complaints, requests, demands, and charges that involved the military departments in innumerable investigations and justifications. If the complaints effected little immediate change in policy, they at least dramatized the plight of black servicemen and mobilized demands for reform.[5-5]

Not all racial unrest was so constructively channeled during the war. Riots and mutinies in the armed services were echoed around the country. In Detroit competition between blacks and whites, many recently arrived from the south seeking jobs, culminated in June 1943 in the most serious riot of the decade. The President was forced to declare a state of emergency and dispatch 6,000 troops to patrol the city. The Detroit riot was only the most noticeable of a number of racial incidents that inevitably provoked an ugly reaction, and the postwar period witnessed an increase in antiblack sentiment and violence in the United States.[5-6] Testifying to the black community's economic and political progress during the war as well as a corresponding increase in white awareness of and protest against the mistreatment of black citizens, this antiblack sentiment was only the pale ghost of a similar phenomenon after World War I.

President Truman Addressing the NAACP Convention,
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., June 1947.
Seated at the President's left are Walter White, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Senator Wayne Morse;
visible in the rear row are Admiral of the Fleet Chester W. Nimitz, Attorney General Tom C. Clark, and Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson.

Nevertheless, the sentiment was widespread. Traveling cross-country in a train during Christmastime, 1945, the celebrated American essayist Bernard De Voto was astonished to hear expressions of antiblack sentiment. In Wisconsin, "a state where I think I had never before heard the word 'nigger,' that [dining] car was full of talk about niggers and what had to be done about them."[5-7] A white veteran bore out the observation. "Anti-Negro talk ... is cropping up in many places ... the assumption [being] that there is more prejudice, never less.... Throughout the war the whites were segregated from the Negroes (why not say it this way for a change?) so that there were almost no occasions for white soldiers to get any kind of an impression of Negroes, favorable or otherwise." There had been some race prejudice among servicemen, but, the veteran asked, "What has caused this anti-Negro talk among those who stayed at home?"[5-8] About the same time, a U.S. senator was complaining to the Secretary of War that white and black civilians at Kelly Field, Texas, shared the same cafeterias and other facilities. He hoped the secretary would look into the matter to prevent disturbances that might grow out of a policy of this sort.[5-9]

Nor did the armed forces escape the rise in racial tension. For example, the War Department received many letters from the public and members of Congress when black officers, nearly the base's entire contingent of four hundred, demonstrated against the segregation of the officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana, in April 1945. The question at issue was whether a post commander had the authority to exclude individuals on grounds of race from recreational facilities on an Army post. The Army Air Forces supported the post commander and suggested a return to a policy of separate and equal facilities for whites and blacks, primarily because a club for officers was a social center for the entire family. Since it was hardly an accepted custom in the country for the races to intermingle, officials argued, the Army had to follow rather than depart from custom, and, further, the wishes of white officers as well as those of Negroes deserved consideration.[5-10]

The controversy reached the desk of John McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, who considered the position taken by the Army Air Forces a backward step, a reversal of the War Department position in an earlier and similar case at Selfridge Field, Michigan. McCloy's contention prevailed—that the commander's administrative discretion in these matters fell short of authority to exclude individuals from the right to enjoy recreational facilities provided by the federal government or maintained with its funds. Secretary of War Stimson agreed to amend the basic policy to reflect this clarification.[5-11]

In December 1945 the press reported and the War and Navy Departments investigated an incident at Le Havre, France, where soldiers were embarking for the United States for demobilization. Officers of a Navy escort carrier objected to the inclusion of 123 black enlisted men on the grounds that the ship was unable to provide separate accommodations for Negroes. Army port authorities then substituted another group that included only one black officer and five black enlisted men who were placed aboard over the protests of the ship's officers.[5-12] The Secretary of the Navy had already declared that the Navy did not differentiate between men on account of race, and on 12 December 1945 he reiterated his statement, adding that it applied to members of all the armed forces.[5-13] Demonstrating the frequent gap between policy and practice, Forrestal's order was ignored six months later by port officials when a group of black officers and men was withdrawn from a shipping list at Bremerhaven, Germany, on the grounds that "segregation is a War Department policy."[5-14]

Overt antiblack behavior and social turbulence in the civilian community also reached into the services. In February 1946 Issac Woodard, Jr., who had served in the Army for fifteen months in the Pacific, was ejected from a commercial bus and beaten by civilian police. Sergeant Woodard had recently been discharged from the Army at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and was still in uniform at the time of the brutal attack that blinded him. His case was quickly taken up by the NAACP and became the centerpiece of a national protest.[5-15] Not only did the civil rights spokesmen protest the sadistic blinding, they also charged that the Army was incapable of protecting its own members in the community.

While service responsibility for countering off-base discrimination against servicemen was still highly debatable in 1946, the right of men on a military base to protection was uncontestable. Yet even service practices on military bases were under attack as racial conflicts and threats of violence multiplied. "Dear Mother," one soldier stationed at Sheppard Field, Texas, felt compelled to write in early 1946, "I don't know how long I'll stay whole because when those Whites come over to start [trouble] again I'll be right with the rest of the fellows. Nothing to worry about. Love,..."[5-16] If the soldier's letter revealed continuing racial conflict in the service, it also testified to a growing racial unity among black servicemen that paralleled the trend in the black community. When Negroes could resolve with a new self-consciousness to "be right with the rest of the fellows," their cause was immeasurably strengthened and their goals brought appreciably nearer.

Assistant Secretary McCloy

Civil rights spokesmen had several points to make regarding the use of Negroes in the postwar armed forces. Referring to the fact that World War II began with Negroes fighting for the right to fight, they demanded that the services guarantee a fair representation of Negroes in the postwar forces. Furthermore, to avoid the frustration suffered by Negroes trained for combat and then converted into service troops, they demanded that Negroes be trained and employed in all military specialties. They particularly stressed the correlation between poor leaders and poor units. The services' command practices, they charged, had frequently led to the appointment of the wrong men, either black or white, to command black units. Their principal solution was to provide for the promotion and proper employment of a proportionate share of competent black officers and noncommissioned officers. Above all, they pointed to the humiliations black soldiers suffered in the community outside the limits of the base.[5-17] One particularly telling example of such discrimination that circulated in the black press in 1945 described German prisoners of war being fed in a railroad restaurant while their black Army guards were forced to eat outside. But such discrimination toward black servicemen was hardly unique, and the civil rights advocates were quick to point to the connection between such practices and low morale and performance. For them there was but one answer to such discrimination: all men must be treated as individuals and guaranteed equal treatment and opportunity in the services. In a word, the armed forces must integrate. They pointed with pride to the success of those black soldiers who served in integrated units in the last months of the European war, and they repeatedly urged the complete abolition of segregation in the peacetime Army and Navy.[5-18]

When an executive of the National Urban League summed up these demands for President Truman at the end of the war, he clearly indicated that the changes in military policy that had brought about the gradual improvement in the lot of black servicemen during the war were now beside the point.[5-19] The military might try to ignore this fact for a little while longer; a politically sensitive President was not about to make such an error.

The Army's Grand Review

In the midst of this intensifying sentiment for integration, in fact a full year before the war ended, the Army began to search for a new racial policy. The invasion of Normandy and the extraordinary advance to Paris during the summer of 1944 had led many to believe that the war in Europe would soon be over, perhaps by fall. As the Allied leaders at the Quebec Conference in September discussed arrangements to be imposed on a defeated Germany, American officials in Washington began to consider plans for the postwar period. Among them was Assistant Secretary of War McCloy. Dissatisfied with the manner in which the Army was using black troops, McCloy believed it was time to start planning how best to employ them in the postwar Army, which, according to current assumptions, would be small and professional and would depend upon a citizen reserve to augment it in an emergency.

Truman Gibson

McCloy concluded that despite a host of prewar studies by the General Staff, the Army War College, and other military agencies, the Army was unprepared during World War II to deal with and make the most efficient use of the large numbers of Negroes furnished by Selective Service. Policies for training and employing black troops had developed in response to specific problems rather than in accordance with a well thought out and comprehensive plan. Because of "inadequate preparation prior to the period of sudden expansion," McCloy believed a great many sources of racial irritation persisted. To develop a "definite, workable policy, for the inclusion and utilization in the Army of minority racial groups" before postwar planning crystallized and solidified, McCloy suggested to his assistants that the War Department General Staff review existing practices and experiences at home and abroad and recommend changes.[5-20]

The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, continued to insist that the Army's racial problem was but part of a larger national problem and, as McCloy later recalled, had no strong views on a solution.[5-21] Whatever his personal feelings, Marshall, like most Army staff officers, always emphasized efficiency and performance to the exclusion of social concerns. While he believed that the limited scope of the experiment with integrated platoons toward the end of the war in Europe made the results inconclusive, Marshall still wanted the platoons' performance considered in the general staff study.[5-22]

The idea of a staff study on the postwar use of black troops also found favor with Secretary Stimson, and a series of conferences and informal discussions on the best way to go about it took place in the highest echelons of the Army during the early months of 1945. The upshot was a decision to ask the senior commanders at home and overseas for their comments. How did they train and use their black troops? What irritations, frictions, and disorders arising from racial conflicts had hampered their operations? What were their recommendations on how best to use black troops after the war? Two weeks after the war ended in Europe, a letter with an attached questionnaire was sent to senior commanders.[5-23] The questionnaire asked for such information as: "To what extent have you maintained segregation beyond the actual unit level, and what is your recommendation on this subject? If you have employed Negro platoons in the same company with white platoons, what is your opinion of the practicability of this arrangement?"

Not everyone agreed that the questionnaire was the best way to review the performance of Negroes in World War II. Truman Gibson, for one, doubted the value of soliciting information from senior commanders, feeling that these officers would offer much subjective material of little real assistance. Referring to the letter to the major senior commanders, he said:

Mere injunctions of objectivity do not work in the racial field where more often than not decisions are made on a basis of emotion, prejudice or pre-existing opinion.... Much of the difficulty in the Army has arisen from improper racial attitudes on both sides. Indeed, the Army's basic policy of segregation is said to be based principally on the individual attitudes and desires of the soldiers.

But who knew what soldiers' attitudes were? Why not, he suggested, make some scientific inquiries? Why not try to determine, for example, how far public opinion and pressure would permit the Army to go in developing policies for black troops?[5-24]

Gibson had become, perforce, an expert on public opinion. During the last several months he had suffered the slings and arrows of an outraged black press for his widely publicized analysis of the performance of black troops. Visiting black units and commanders in the Mediterranean and European theaters to observe, in McCloy's words, "the performance of Negro troops, their attitudes, and the attitudes of their officers toward them,"[5-25] Gibson had arrived in Italy at the end of February 1945 to find theater officials concerned over the poor combat record of the 92d Infantry Division, the only black division in the theater and one of three activated by the War Department. After a series of discussions with senior commanders and a visit to the division, Gibson participated in a press conference in Rome during which he spoke candidly of the problems of the division's infantry units.[5-26] Subsequent news reports of the conference stressed Gibson's confirmation of the division's disappointing performance, but neglected the reasons he advanced to explain its failure. The reports earned a swift and angry retort from the black community. Many organizations and journals condemned Gibson's evaluation of the 92d outright. Some seemed less concerned with the possible accuracy of his statement than with the effects it might have on the development of future military policy. The NAACP's Crisis, for example, charged that Gibson had "carried the ball for the War Department," and that "probably no more unfortunate words, affecting the representatives of the entire race, were ever spoken by a Negro in a key position in such a critical hour. We seem destined to bear the burden of Mr. Gibson's Rome adventure for many years to come."[5-27]

Other black journals took a more detached view of the situation, asserting that Gibson's remarks revealed nothing new and that the problem was segregation, of which the 92d was a notable victim. Gibson took this tack in his own defense, pointing to the irony of a situation in which "some people can, on the one hand, argue that segregation is wrong, and on the other ... blindly defend the product of that segregation."[5-28]

Gibson had defenders in the Army whose comments might well apply to all the large black units in the war. At one extreme stood the Allied commander in Italy, General Mark W. Clark, who attributed the 92d's shortcomings to "our handling of minority problems at home." Most of all, General Clark thought, black soldiers needed the incentive of feeling that they were fighting for home and country as equals. But his conclusion—"only the proper environment in his own country can provide such an incentive"—neatly played down Army responsibility for the division's problems.[5-29]

Another officer, who as commander of a divisional artillery unit was intimately acquainted with the division's shortcomings, delineated an entirely different set of causes. The division was doomed to mediocrity and worse, Lt. Col. Marcus H. Ray concluded, from the moment of its activation. Undercurrents of racial antipathy as well as distrust and prejudice, he believed, infected the organization from the outset and created an unhealthy beginning. The practice of withholding promotion from deserving black officers along with preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. The basic misconception was that southern white officers understood Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect—necessary attributes of leadership—were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "I was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who preceded us to place their own lives in a hazardous position in order to have tractable Negroes around them."[5-30] In short, the men of the 92d who fought and died bravely should be honored, but their unit, which on balance did not perform well, should be considered a failure of white leadership.

Company I, 370th Infantry,
92d Division, advances through Cascina, Italy.

Lt. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., then Fifth Army commander in Italy, disagreed. Submitting the proceedings of a board of review that had investigated the effectiveness of black officers and enlisted men in the 92d Division, he was sympathetic to the frustrations encountered by the division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond. "In justice to those splendid officers"—a reference to the white senior commanders and staff members of the division—"who have devoted themselves without stint in an endeavor to produce a combat division with Negro personnel and who have approached this problem without prejudice," Truscott endorsed the board's hard view that many infantrymen in the division "would not fight."[5-31] This conclusion was in direct conflict with the widely held and respected truism that competent leadership solved all problems, from which it followed that the answer to the problem of Negroes in combat was command. Good commanders prevented friction, performed their mission effectively, and achieved success no matter what the obstacles—a view put forth in a typical report from World War II that "the efficiency of Negro units depends entirely on the leadership of officers and NCO's."[5-32]

In fact, General Truscott's analysis of the 92d Division's problems seemed at variance with his analysis of command problems in other units, as illustrated by his later attention to problems in the all-white 34th Infantry Division.[5-33] The habit of viewing unit problems as command problems was also demonstrated by General Jacob L. Devers, who was deputy Allied commander in the Mediterranean when the 92d arrived in Italy. Reflecting later upon the 92d Division, General Devers agreed that its engineer and armor unit performed well, but the infantry did not "because their commanders weren't good enough."[5-34]

Years later General Almond, the division's commander, was to claim that the 92d Division had done "many things well and some things poorly." It fought in extremely rugged terrain against a determined enemy over an exceptionally broad front. The division's artillery as well as its technical and administrative units performed well. Negroes also excelled in intelligence work and in dealing with the Italian partisans. On the other hand, General Almond reported, infantry elements were unable to close with the enemy and destroy him. Rifle squads, platoons, and companies tended "to melt away" when confronted by determined opposition. Almond blamed this on "a lack of dedication to purpose, pride of accomplishment and devotion to duty and teammates by the majority of black riflemen assigned to Infantry Units."[5-35]

Similar judgments were expressed concerning the combat capability of the other major black unit, the 93d Infantry Division.[5-36] When elements of the 93d, the 25th Regimental Combat Team in particular, participated in the Bougainville campaign in the Solomon Islands, their performance was the subject of constant scrutiny by order of the Chief of Staff.[5-37] The combat record of the 25th included enough examples of command and individual failure to reinforce the War Department's decision in mid-1944 to use the individual units of the division in security, laboring, and training duties in quiet areas of the theater, leaving combat to more seasoned units.[5-38] During the last year of the war the 93d performed missions that were essential but not typical for combat divisions.

Analyses of the division's performance ran along familiar lines. The XIV Corps commander, under whom the division served, rated the performance of the 25th Regimental Combat Team infantry as fair and artillery as good, but found the unit, at least those parts commanded by black officers, lacking in initiative, inadequately trained, and poorly disciplined. Other reports tended to agree. All of them, along with reports on the 24th Infantry, another black unit serving in the area, were assembled in Washington for Assistant Secretary McCloy. While he admitted important limitations in the performance of the units, McCloy nevertheless remained encouraged. Not so the Secretary of War. "I do not believe," he told McCloy, "they can be turned into really effective combat troops without all officers being white."[5-39]

Black officers of the 93d, however, entertained a different view. They generally cited command and staff inefficiencies as the major cause of the division's discipline and morale problems. One respondent, a company commander in the 25th Infantry, singled out the "continuous dissension and suspicion characterizing the relations between white and colored officers of the division." All tended to stress what they considered inadequate jungle training, and, like many white observers, they all agreed the combat period was too brief to demonstrate the division's developing ability.[5-40]

92d Division Engineers Prepare a Ford for Arno River Traffic

Despite the performance of some individuals and units praised by all, the combat performance of the 92d and 93d Infantry Divisions was generally considered less than satisfactory by most observers. A much smaller group of commentators, mostly black journalists, never accepted the prevailing view. Pointing to the decorations and honors received by individuals in the two divisions, they charged that the adverse reports were untrue, reflections of the prejudices of white officers. Such an assertion presupposed that hundreds of officers and War Department officials were so consumed with prejudice that they falsified the record. And the argument from decorations, as one expert later pointed out, faltered once it was understood that the 92d and 93d Infantry Divisions combined a relatively high number of decorations with relatively few casualties.[5-41]

Actually, there was little doubt that the performance of the black divisions in World War II was generally unacceptable. Beyond that common conclusion, opinions diverged widely. Commanders tended to blame undisciplined troops and lack of initiative and control by black officers and noncommissioned officers as the primary cause of the difficulty. Others, particularly black observers, cited the white officers and their lack of racial sensitivity. In fact, as Ulysses Lee points out with careful documentation, all these factors were involved, but the underlying problem usually overlooked by observers was segregation. Large, all-black combat units submerged able soldiers in a sea of men with low aptitude and inadequate training. Segregation also created special psychological problems for junior black officers. Carefully assigned so that they never commanded white officers or men, they were often derided by white officers whose attitudes were quickly sensed by the men to the detriment of good discipline. Segregation was also a factor in the rapid transfer of men in and out of the divisions, thus negating the possible benefits of lengthy training. Furthermore, the divisions were natural repositories for many dissatisfied or inadequate white officers, who introduced a host of other problems.

Truman Gibson was quick to point out how segregation had intensified the problem of turning civilians into soldiers and groups into units. The "dissimilarity in the learning profiles" between black and white soldiers as reflected in their AGCT scores was, he explained to McCloy, primarily a result of inferior black schooling, yet its practical effect on the Army was to burden it with several large units of inferior combat ability (Table 2). In addition to the fact that large black units had a preponderance of slow learners, Gibson emphasized that nearly all black soldiers were trained near "exceedingly hostile" communities. This hostile atmosphere, he believed, had played a decisive role in their adjustment to Army life and adversely affected individual motivation. Gibson also charged the Army with promoting some black officers who lacked leadership qualifications and whose performance, consequently, was under par. He recommended a single measure of performance for officers and a single system for promotion, even if this system reduced promotions for black officers. Promotions on any basis other than merit, he concluded, deprived the Army of the best leadership and inflicted weak commanders on black units.

Table 2—AGCT Percentages in Selected World War II Divisions

Source: Tables submitted by The Adjutant General to the Gillem Board, 1945.

Gibson was not trying to magnify the efficiency of segregated units. He made a special effort to compare the performance of the 92d Division with that of the integrated black platoons in Germany because such a comparison would demonstrate, he believed, that the Army's segregation policy was in need of critical reexamination. He cited "many officers" who believed that the problems connected with large segregated combat units justified their abolition in favor of the integration of black platoons into larger white units. Although such unit integration would not abolish segregation completely, Gibson concluded, it would permit the Army to use men and small units on the basis of ability alone.[5-42]

The flexibility Gibson detected among many Army officers was not apparent in the answers to the McCloy questionnaire that flowed into the War Department during the summer and fall of 1945. With few exceptions, the senior officers queried expressed uniform reactions. They reiterated a story of frustration and difficulty in training and employing black units, characterized black soldiers as unreliable and inefficient, and criticized the performance of black officers and noncommissioned officers. They were particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, they believed, were not only the work of racial agitators but also the result of poor morale and a sense of discrimination among black troops. Yet they wanted to retain segregation, albeit in units of smaller size, and they wanted to depend, for the most part, on white officers to command these black units. Concerned with performance, pragmatic rather than reflective in their habits, the commanders showed little interest in or understanding of the factors responsible for the conditions of which they complained. Many believed that segregation actually enhanced black pride.[5-43]

These responses were summarized by the commanding generals of the major force commands at the request of the War Department's Special Planning Division.[5-44] For example, the study prepared by the Army Service Forces, which had employed a high proportion of black troops in its technical services during the war, passed on the recommendations made by these far-flung commands and touched incidentally on several of the points raised by Gibson.[5-45] Like Gibson, the Army Service Forces recommended that Negroes of little or no education be denied induction or enlistment and that no deviation from normal standards for the sake of maintaining racial quotas in the officer corps be tolerated. The Army Service Forces also wanted Negroes employed in all major forces, participating proportionately in all phases of the Army's mission, including overseas and combat assignments, but not in every occupation. For the Army Service Forces had decided that Negroes performed best as truck drivers, ammunition handlers, stevedores, cooks, bakers, and the like and should be trained in these specialties rather than more highly skilled jobs such as armorer or machinist. Even in the occupations they were best suited to, Negroes should be given from a third more to twice as much training as whites, and black units should have 25 to 50 percent more officers than white units. At the same time, the Army Service Forces wanted to retain segregated units, although it recommended limiting black service units to company size. Stating in conclusion that it sought only "to insure the most efficient training and utilization of Negro manpower" and would ignore the question of racial equality or the "wisdom of segregation in the social sense," the Army Service Forces overlooked the possibility that the former could not be attained without consideration of the latter.

The Army Ground Forces, which trained black units for all major branches of the field forces, also wanted to retain black units, but its report concluded that these units could be of battalion size. The organization of black soldiers in division-size units, it claimed, only complicated the problem of training because of the difficulty in developing the qualified black technicians, noncommissioned officers, and field grade officers necessary for such large units and finding training locations as well as assignment areas with sufficient off-base recreational facilities for large groups of black soldiers. The Army Ground Forces considered the problem of finding and training field grade officers particularly acute since black units employing black officers, at least in the case of infantry, had proved ineffective. Yet white officers put in command of black troops felt they were being punished, and their presence added to the frustration of the blacks.

The Army Ground Forces was also particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, it believed, stemmed from conflicting white and black concepts of the Negro's place in the social pattern. The Army Ground Forces saw no military solution for a problem that transcended the contemporary national emergency, and its conclusion—that the solution lay in society at large and not primarily in the armed forces—had the effect, whether or not so intended, of neatly exonerating the Army. In fact, the detailed conclusions and recommendations of the Army Ground Forces were remarkably similar to those of the Army Service Forces, but the Ground Forces study, more than any other, was shot full with blatant racism. The study quoted a 1925 War College study to the effect that the black officer was "still a Negro with all the faults and weaknesses of character inherent in the Negro race." It also discussed the "average Negro" and his "inherent characteristics" at great length, dwelling on his supposed inferior mentality and weakness of character, and raising other racial shibboleths. Burdened with these prejudices, the Army Ground Forces study concluded

that the conception that negroes should serve in the military forces, or in particular parts of the military forces, or sustain battle losses in proportion to their population in the United States, may be desirable but is impracticable and should be abandoned in the interest of a logical solution to the problem of the utilization of negroes in the armed forces.[5-46]

The Army Air Forces, another large employer of black servicemen, reported a slightly different World War II experience. Conforming with departmental policies on utilizing black soldiers, it had selected Negroes for special training on the same basis as whites with the exception of aviation cadets. Negroes with a lower stanine (aptitude) had been accepted in order to secure enough candidates to meet the quota for pilots, navigators, and bombardiers in the black units. In its preliminary report to the War Department on the employment of Negroes, the Army Air Forces admitted that individuals of both races with similar aptitudes and test scores had the same success in technical schools, could be trained as pilots and technicians in the same period of time, and showed the same degree of mechanical proficiency. Black units, on the other hand, required considerably more time in training than white units, sometimes simply because they were understrength and their performance was less effective. At the same time the Air Forces admitted that even after discounting the usual factors, such as time in service and job assignment, whites advanced further than blacks. No explanation was offered. Nevertheless, the commanding general of the Air Forces reported very little racial disorder or conflict overseas. There had been a considerable amount in the United States, however; many Air Forces commanders ascribed this to the unwillingness of northern Negroes to accept southern laws or social customs, the insistence of black officers on integrated officers' clubs, and the feeling among black fliers that command had been made an exclusive prerogative of white officers rather than a matter depending on demonstrated qualification.

In contrast to the others, the Army Air Forces revealed a marked change in sentiment over the post-World War I studies of black troops. No more were there references to congenital inferiority or inherent weaknesses, but everywhere a willingness to admit that Negroes had been held back by the white majority.

The commanding general of the Army Air Forces recommended Negroes be apportioned among the three major forces—the Army Ground Forces, the Army Service Forces, and the Army Air Forces—but that their numbers in no case exceed 10 percent of any command; that black servicemen be trained exactly as whites; and that Negroes be segregated in units not to exceed air group size. Unlike the others, the Army Air Forces wanted black units to have black commanders as far as possible and recommended that the degree of segregation in messing, recreation, and social activities conform to the custom of the surrounding community. It wanted Negroes assigned overseas in the same proportion as whites, and in the United States, to the extent practicable, only to those areas considered favorable to their welfare. Finally, the Air Forces wanted Negroes to be neither favored nor discriminated against in disciplinary matters.[5-47]

Among the responses of the subordinate commands were some exceptions to the generalizations found in those of the major forces. One commander, for example, while concluding that segregation was desirable, admitted that it was one of the basic causes of the Army's racial troubles and would have to be dealt with "one way or the other."[5-48] Another recommended dispersing black troops, one or two in a squad, throughout all-white combat units.[5-49] Still another pointed out that the performance of black officers and noncommissioned officers in terms of resourcefulness, aggressiveness, sense of responsibility, and ability to make decisions was comparable to the performance of white soldiers when conditions of service were nearly equal. But the Army failed to understand this truth, the commander of the 1st Service Command charged, and its separate and unequal treatment discriminated in a way that would affect the efficiency of any man. The performance of black troops, he concluded, depended on how severely the community near a post differentiated between the black and white soldier and how well the Negro's commander demonstrated the fairness essential to authority. The Army admitted that black units needed superior leadership, but, he added, it misunderstood what this leadership entailed. All too often commanders of black units acted under the belief that their men were different and needed special treatment, thus clearly suggesting racial inferiority. The Army, he concluded, should learn from its wartime experience the deleterious effect of segregation on motivation and ultimately on performance.[5-50]

Truman Gibson took much the same approach when he summed up for McCloy his estimate of the situation facing the Army. After rehearsing the recent history of segregation in the armed forces, he suggested that it was not enough to compare the performance of black and white troops; the reports of black performance should be examined to determine whether the performance would be improved or impaired by changing the policy of segregation. Any major Army review, he urged, should avoid the failure of the old studies on race that based differences in performance on racial characteristics and should question instead the efficiency of segregation. For him, segregation was the heart of the matter, and he counseled that "future policy should be predicated on an assumption that civilian attitudes will not remain static. The basic policy of the Army should, therefore, not itself be static and restrictive, but should be so framed as to make further progress possible on a flexible basis."[5-51]

Before passing Gibson's suggestions to the Assistant Secretary of War, McCloy's executive assistant, Lt. Col. Davidson Sommers, added some ideas of his own. Since it was "pretty well recognized," he wrote, that the Army had not found the answer to the efficient use of black manpower, a first-class officer or group of officers of high rank, supplemented perhaps with a racially mixed group of civilians, should be designated to prepare a new racial policy. But, he warned, their work would be ineffectual without specific directions from Army leaders. He wanted the Army to make "eventual nonsegregation" its goal. Complete integration, Sommers felt, was impossible to achieve at once. Classification test scores alone refuted the claim that "Negroes in general make as good soldiers as whites." But he thought there was no need "to resort to racial theories to explain the difference," for the lack of educational, occupational, and social opportunities was sufficient.[5-52]

Sommers had, in effect, adopted Gibson's gradualist approach to the problem, suggesting an inquiry to determine "the areas in which nonsegregation can be attempted first and the methods by which it can be introduced ... instead of merely generalizing, as in the past, on the disappointing and not very relevant experiences with large segregated units." He foresaw difficulties: a certain amount of social friction and perhaps a considerable amount of what he called "professional Negro agitation" because Negroes competing with whites would probably not achieve comparable ranks or positions immediately. But Sommers saw no cause for alarm. "We shall be on firm ground," he concluded, "and will be able to defend our actions by relying on the unassailable position that we are using men in accordance with their ability."

Competing with these calls for gradual desegregation was the Army's growing concern with securing some form of universal military training. Congress would discuss the issue during the summer and fall of 1945, and one of the questions almost certain to arise in the congressional hearings was the place contemplated for Negroes. Would the Army use Negroes in combat units? Would the Army train and use Negroes in units together with whites? Upon the answers to these questions hinged the votes of most, if not all, southern congressmen. Prudence dictated that the Army avoid any innovations that might jeopardize the chance for universal military training. In other words, went the prevalent view, what was good for the Army—and universal military training was in that category—had to come before all else.[5-53]

Even among officers troubled by the contradictory aspects of an issue clouded by morality, many felt impelled to give their prime allegiance to the Army as it was then constituted. The Army's impressive achievement during the war, they reasoned, argued for its continuation in conformance with current precepts, particularly in a world still full of hostilities. The stability of the Army came first; changes would have to be made slowly, without risking the menace of disruption. An attempt to mix the races in the Army seemed to most officers a dangerous move bordering on irresponsibility. Furthermore, the majority of Army officers, dedicated to the traditions of the service, saw the Army as a social as well as a military institution. It was a way of life that embraced families, wives and children. The old manners and practices were comfortable because they were well known and understood, had produced victory, and had represented a life that was somewhat isolated and insulated—particularly in the field—from the currents and pressures of national life. Why then should the old patterns be modified; why exchange comfort for possible chaos? Why should the Army admit large numbers of Negroes; what had Negroes contributed to winning World War II; what could they possibly contribute to the postwar Army?

Although opinion among Army officials on the future role of Negroes in the Army was diverse and frankly questioning in tone, opinion on the past performance of black units was not. Commanders tended to agree that with certain exceptions, particularly small service and combat support units, black units performed below the Army average during the war and considerably below the best white units. The commanders also generally agreed that black units should be made more efficient and usually recommended they be reduced in size and filled with better qualified men. Most civil rights spokesmen and their allies in the Army, on the other hand, viewed segregation as the underlying cause of poor performance. How, then, could the conflicting advice be channeled into construction of an acceptable postwar racial policy? The task was clearly beyond the powers of the War Department's Special Planning Division, and in September 1945 McCloy adopted the recommendation of Sommers and Gibson and urged the Secretary of War to turn over this crucial matter to a board of general officers. Out of this board's deliberations, influenced in great measure by opinions previously expressed, would emerge the long-awaited revision of the Army's policy for its black minority.

The Navy's Informal Inspection

In contrast to the elaborate investigation conducted by the Army, the Navy's search for a policy consisted mainly of an informal intradepartmental review and an inspection of its black units by a civilian representative of the Secretary of the Navy. In general this contrast may be explained by the difference in the services' postwar problems. The Army was planning for the enlistment of a large cross section of the population through some form of universal military training; the Navy was planning for a much smaller peacetime organization of technically trained volunteers. Moreover, the Army wanted to review the performance of its many black combat units, whereas the naval establishment, which had excluded most of its Negroes from combat, had little to gain from measuring their wartime performance.

The character and methods of the Secretary of the Navy had an important bearing on policy. Forrestal believed he had won the senior officers to his view of equal treatment and opportunity, and to be assured of success he wanted to convince lower commanders and the ranks as well. He wrote in July 1945: "We are making every effort to give more than lip service to the principles of democracy in the treatment of the Negro and we are trying to do it with the minimum of commotion.... We would rather await the practical demonstration of the success of our efforts.... There is still a long road to travel but I am confident we have made a start."[5-54]

Forrestal's wish for a racially democratic Navy did not noticeably conflict with the traditionalists' plan for a small, technically elite force, so while the Army launched a worldwide quest in anticipation of an orthodox policy review, the Navy started an informal investigation designed primarily to win support for the racial program conceived by the Secretary of the Navy.

The Navy's search began in the last months of the war when Secretary Forrestal approved the formation of an informal Committee on Negro Personnel. Although Lester Granger, the secretary's adviser on racial matters, had originally proposed the establishment of such a committee to "help frame sound and effective racial policies,"[5-55] the Chief of Naval Personnel, a preeminent representative of the Navy's professionals, saw an altogether different reason for the group. He endorsed the idea of a committee, he told a member of the secretary's staff, "not because there is anything wrong or backward about our policies," but because "we need greater cooperation from the technical Bureaus in order that those policies may succeed."[5-56] Forrestal did little to define the group's purpose when on 16 April 1945 he ordered Under Secretary Bard to organize a committee "to assure uniform policies" and see that all subdivisions of the Navy were familiar with each other's successful and unsuccessful racial practices.[5-57]

By pressing for the uniform treatment of Negroes, Forrestal doubtless hoped to pull backward branches into line with more liberal ones so that the progressive reforms of the past year would be accepted throughout the Navy. But if Forrestal's ultimate goal was plain, his failure to give clear-cut directions to his informal committee was characteristic of his handling of racial policy. He carefully followed the recommendations of the Chief of Naval Personnel, who wanted the committee to be a military group, despite having earlier expressed his intention of inviting Granger to chair the committee. As announced on 25 April, the committee was headed by a senior official of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, Capt. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, with another of the bureau's officers serving as committee recorder.[5-58] Restricting the scope of the inquiry, Forrestal ordered that "whenever practical" the committee should assign each of its members to investigate the racial practices in his own organization.

Nevertheless when the committee got down to work it quickly went beyond the limited concept of its mission as advanced by the Chief of Naval Personnel. Not only did it study statistics gathered from all sections of the department and review the experiences of various commanders of black units, it also studied Granger's immediate and long-range recommendations for the department, an extension of his earlier wartime work for Forrestal. Specifically, Granger had called for the formulation of a definite integration policy and for a strenuous public relations campaign directed toward the black community. He had also called for the enlistment and commissioning of a significant number of Negroes in the Regular Navy, and he wanted commanders indoctrinated in their racial responsibilities. Casting further afield, Granger had warned that discriminatory policies and practices in shipyards and other establishments must be eliminated, and employment opportunities for black civilians in the department broadened.[5-59]

The committee deliberated on all these points, and, after meeting several times, announced in May 1945 its findings and recommendations. It found that the Navy's current policies were sound and when properly executed produced good results. At the same time it saw a need for periodic reviews to insure uniform application of policy and better public relations. Such findings could be expected from a body headed by a senior official of the personnel bureau, but the committee then came up with the unexpected—a series of recommendations for sweeping change. Revealing the influence of the Special Programs Unit, the committee asked that Negroes be declared available for assignment to all types of ships and shore stations in all classifications, with selections made solely on merit. Since wholesale reassignments were impractical, the committee recommended well-planned, gradual assimilation—it avoided the word integration—as the best policy for ending the concentration of Negroes at shore activities. It also attacked the Steward's Branch as the conspicuous symbol of the Negroes' second-class status and called for the assignment of white stewards and allowing qualified stewards to transfer to general service.

The committee wanted the Judge Advocate General to assign legal advisers to all major trials, especially those involving minorities, to prevent errors in courts-martial that might be construed as discrimination. It further recommended that Negroes be represented in the secretary's public relations office; that news items concerning Negroes be more widely disseminated through bureau bulletins; and, finally, that all bureaus as well as the Coast Guard and Marine Corps be encouraged to enroll commanders in special indoctrination programs before they were assigned to units with substantial numbers of Negroes.[5-60]

Granger Interviewing Sailors
on inspection tour in the Pacific.

The committee's recommendations, submitted to Under Secretary Bard on 22 May 1945, were far more than an attempt to unify the racial practices of the various subdivisions of the Navy Department. For the first time, senior representatives of the department's often independent branches accepted the contention of the Special Programs Unit that segregation was militarily inefficient and a gradual but complete integration of the Navy's general service was the solution to racial problems.

Yet as a formula for equal treatment and opportunity in the Navy, the committee's recommendations had serious omissions. Besides overlooking the dearth of black officers and the Marine Corps' continued strict segregation, the committee had ignored Granger's key proposal that Negroes be guaranteed a place in the Regular Navy. Almost without exception, Negroes in the Navy's general service were reservists, products of wartime volunteer enlistment or the draft. All but a few of the black regulars were stewards. Without assurance that many of these general service reservists would be converted to regulars or that provision would be made for enlistment of black regulars, the committee's integration recommendations lacked substance. Secretary Forrestal must have been aware of these omissions, but he ignored them. Perhaps the problem of the Negro in the postwar Navy seemed remote during this last, climactic summer of the war.

Granger With Crewmen of a Naval Yard Craft

To document the status of the Negro in the Navy, Forrestal turned again to Lester Granger. Granger had acted more than once as the secretary's eyes and ears on racial matters, and the association between the two men had ripened from mutual respect to close rapport.[5-61] During August 1945 Granger visited some twenty continental installations for Forrestal, including large depots and naval stations on the west coast, the Great Lakes Training Center, and bases and air stations in the south. Shortly after V-J day Granger launched a more ambitious tour of inspection that found him traveling among the 45,000 Negroes assigned to the Pacific area.

Unlike the Army staff, whose worldwide quest for information stressed black performance in the familiar lessons-learned formula and only incidentally treated those factors that affected performance, Granger, a civilian, never really tried to assess performance. He was, however, a race relations expert, and he tried constantly to discover how the treatment accorded Negroes in the Navy affected their performance and to pass on his findings to local commanders. He later explained his technique. First, he called on the commanding officer for facts and opinions on the performance and morale of the black servicemen. Then he proceeded through the command, unaccompanied, interviewing Negroes individually as well as in small and large groups. Finally, he returned to the commanding officer to pass along grievances reported by the men and his own observations on the conditions under which they served.[5-62]

Granger always related the performance of enlisted men to their morale. He pointed out to the commanders that poor morale was at the bottom of the Port Chicago mass mutiny and the Guam riot, and his report to the secretary confirmed the experiences of the Special Programs Unit: black performance was deeply affected by the extent to which Negroes felt victimized by racial discrimination or handicapped by segregation, especially in housing, messing, and military and civilian recreational facilities. Although no official policy on segregated living quarters existed, Granger found such segregation widely practiced at naval bases in the United States. Separate housing meant in most cases separate work crews, thereby encouraging voluntary segregation in mess halls. In some cases the Navy's separate housing was carried over into nearby civilian communities where no segregation existed before. In others shore patrols forced segregation on civilian places of entertainment, even when state laws forbade it. On southern bases, especially, many commanders willingly abandoned the Navy's ban against discrimination in favor of the racial practices of local communities. There enforced segregation was widespread, often made explicit with "colored" and "white" signs.

Yet Granger found encouraging exceptions which he passed along to local commanders elsewhere. At Camp Perry, Virginia, for example, there was a minimum of segregation, and the commanding officer had intervened to see that Virginia's segregated bus laws did not apply to Navy buses operating between the camp and Norfolk. This situation was unusual for the Navy although integrated busing had been standard practice in the Army since mid-1944. He found Camp Perry "a pleasant contrast" to other southern installations, and from his experiences there he concluded that the attitude of the commanding officer set the pace. "There is practically no limit," Granger said, "to the progressive changes in racial attitudes and relationships which can be made when sufficiently enlightened and intelligent officer leadership is in command." The development of hard and fast rules, he concluded, was unnecessary, but the Bureau of Naval Personnel must constantly see to it that commanders resisted the "influence of local conventions."

At Pearl Harbor Granger visited three of the more than two hundred auxiliary ships manned by mixed crews. On two the conditions were excellent. The commanding officer in each case had taken special pains to avoid racial differentiation in ratings, assignments, quarters, and messes; efficiency was superior, morale was high, and racial conflict was absent. On the third ship Negroes were separated; they were specifically assigned to a special bunk section in the general crew compartment and to one end of the chow table. Here there was dissatisfaction among Negroes and friction with whites.

At the naval air bases in Hawaii performance and morale were good because Negroes served in a variety of ratings that corresponded to their training and ability. The air station in Oahu, for example, had black radar operators, signalmen, yeomen, machinist mates, and others working amiably with whites; the only sign of racial separation visible was the existence of certain barracks, no different from the others, set aside for Negroes.

Morale was lowest in black base companies and construction battalions. In several instances able commanding officers had availed themselves of competent black leaders to improve race relations, but in most units the racial situation was generally poor. Granger regarded the organization of the units as "badly conceived from the racial standpoint." Since base companies were composed almost entirely of nonrated men, spaces for black petty officers were lacking. In such units the scaffold of subordinate leadership necessary to support and uphold the authority of the officers was absent, as were opportunities for individual advancement. Some units had been provisionally re-formed into logistic support companies, and newly authorized ratings were quickly filled. This partial remedy had corrected some deficiencies, but left unchanged a number of the black base companies in the Pacific area. Although construction battalions had workers of both races, Granger reported them to be essentially segregated because whites were assigned to headquarters or to supervisory posts. Some officers had carried this arbitrary segregation into off-duty areas, one commander contending that strict segregation was the civilian pattern and that everyone was accustomed to it.

The Marine Corps lagged far behind the rest of the naval establishment, and there was little pretense of conforming with the Navy's racial policy. Black marines remained rigidly segregated and none of the few black officer candidates, all apparently well qualified, had been commissioned. Furthermore, some black marines who wanted to enlist as regulars were waiting word whether they could be included in the postwar Marine Corps. Approximately 85 percent of the black marines in the Pacific area were in depot and ammunition companies and steward groups. In many cases their assignments failed to match their qualifications and previous training. Quite a few specialists complained of having been denied privileges ordinarily accorded white men of similar status—for example, opportunities to attend schools for first sergeants, musicians, and radar operators. Black technicians were frequently sent to segregated and hastily constructed schools or detached to Army installations for schooling rather than sent to Marine Corps schools. Conversely, some white enlisted men, assigned to black units for protracted periods as instructors, were often accorded the unusual privilege of living in officers' quarters and eating in the officers' mess in order to preserve racial segregation.

Most black servicemen, Granger found, resented the white fleet shore patrols in the Pacific area which they considered biased in handling disciplinary cases and reporting offenders. The commanding officer of the shore patrol in Honolulu defended the practice because he believed the use of Negroes in this duty would be highly dangerous. Granger disagreed, pointing to the successful employment of black shore patrols in such fleet liberty cities as San Diego and Miami. He singled out the situation in Guam, which was patrolled by an all-white Marine Corps guard regarded by black servicemen as racist in attitude. Frequently, racial clashes occurred, principally over the attentions of native women, but it was the concentration of Negroes in the naval barracks at Guam, Granger concluded, along with the lack of black shore patrols, that intensified racial isolation, induced a suspicion of racial policies, and aggravated resentment.

At every naval installation Granger heard vigorous complaints over the contrast between black and white ratings and promotions. Discrepancies could be explained partly by the fact that, since the general service had been opened to Negroes fairly late in the war, many white men had more than two years seniority over any black. But Granger found evidence that whites were transferred into units to receive promotions and ratings due eligible black members. In many cases, he found "indisputable racial discrimination" by commanding officers, with the result that training was wasted, trained men were prevented from acquiring essential experience and its rewards, and resentment smoldered.

Evidence of overt prejudice aside, Granger stressed again and again that the primary cause of the Navy's racial problems was segregation. Segregation was "impractical and inefficient," he pointed out, because racial isolation bred suspicion, which in turn inflamed resentment, and finally provoked insubordination. The best way to integrate Negroes, Granger felt, was to take the most natural course, that is, eliminate all special provisions, conditions, or cautions regarding their employment. "There should be no exceptional approach to problems involving Negroes," he counseled, "for the racial factor in naval service will disappear only when problems involving Negroes are accepted as part of the Navy's general program for insuring efficient performance and first-class discipline."

Despite his earlier insistence on a fair percentage of Negroes in the postwar Regular Navy, Granger conceded that the number and proportion would probably decrease during peacetime. It was hardly likely, he added, that black enlistment would exceed 5 percent of the total strength, a manageable proportion. He even saw some advantages in smaller numbers, since, as the educational standards for all enlistees rose, the integration of relatively few but better qualified Negroes would "undoubtedly make for greater racial harmony and improved naval performance."

Despite the breadth and acuity of his observations, Granger suggested remarkedly few changes. Impressed by the progress made in the treatment of Negroes during the war, he apparently expected it to continue uninterrupted. Although his investigations uncovered basic problems that would continue to trouble the Navy, he did not recognize them as such. For his part, Forrestal sent Granger's voluminous reports with their few recommendations to his military staff and thanked the Urban League official for his contribution.[5-63]

Although different in approach and point of view, Granger's observations neatly complemented the findings and recommendations of the Committee on Negro Personnel. Both reinforced the secretary's postwar policy aims and both supported his gradualist approach to racial reform. Granger cited segregation, in particular the concentration of masses of black sailors, as the principal cause of racial unrest and poor morale among Negroes. The committee urged the gradual integration of the general service in the name of military efficiency. Granger and the committee also shared certain blind spots. Both were encouraged by the progress toward full-scale integration that occurred during the war, but this improvement was nominal at best, a token bow to changing conditions. Their assumption that integration would spread to all branches of the Navy neglected the widespread and deeply entrenched opposition to integration that would yield only to a strategy imposed by the Navy's civilian and military leaders. Finally, the hope that integration would spread ignored the fact that after the war few Negroes except stewards would be able to meet the enlistment requirements for the Regular Navy. In short, the postwar Navy, so far as Negroes were concerned, was likely to resemble the prewar Navy.

The search for a postwar racial policy led the Army and Navy down some of the same paths. The Army manpower planners decided that the best way to avoid the inefficient black divisions was to organize Negroes into smaller, and therefore, in their view, more efficient segregated units in all the arms and services. At the same time Secretary Forrestal's advisers decided that the best way to avoid the concentration of Negroes who could not be readily assimilated in the general service was to integrate the small remnant of black specialists and leave the majority of black sailors in the separate Steward's Branch. In both instances the experiences of World War II had successfully demonstrated to the traditionalists that large-scale segregated units were unacceptable, but neither service was yet ready to accept large-scale integration as an alternative.

CHAPTER 6

New Directions

All the services developed new racial policies in the immediate postwar period. Because these policies were responses to racial stresses peculiar to each service and were influenced by the varied experiences of each, they were, predictably, disparate in both substance and approach; because they were also reactions to a common set of pressures on the services they proved to be, perhaps not so predictably, quite similar in practical consequences. One pressure felt by all the services was the recently acquired knowledge that the nation's military manpower was not only variable but also limited in quantity. Military efficiency demanded, therefore, that the services not only make the most effective use of available manpower, but also improve its quality. Since Negroes, who made up approximately 10 percent of the population, formed a substantial part of the nation's manpower, they could no longer be considered primarily a source of unskilled labor. They too must be employed appropriately, and to this end a higher proportion of Negroes in the services must be qualified for specialized jobs.

Continuing demands by civil rights groups added to the pressure on the services to employ Negroes according to their abilities. Arguing that Negroes had the right to enjoy the privileges and share the responsibilities of citizenship, civil rights spokesmen appeared determined to test the constitutionality of the services' wartime policies in the courts. Their demands placed the Truman administration on the defensive and served warning on the armed forces that never again could they look to the exclusion of black Americans as a long-term solution to their racial problems.

In addition to such pressures, the services had to reckon with a more immediate problem. Postwar black reenlistment, particularly among service men stationed overseas, was climbing far beyond expectation. As the armed forces demobilized in late 1945 and early 1946, the percentage of Negroes in the Army rose above its wartime high of 9.68 percent of the enlisted strength and was expected to reach 15 percent and more by 1947. Aside from the Marine Corps, which experienced a rapid drop in black enlistment, the Navy also expected a rise in the percentage of Negroes, at least in the near future. The increase occurred in part because Negroes, who had less combat time than whites and therefore fewer eligibility points for discharge, were being separated from service later and more slowly. The rise reflected as well the Negro's expectation that the national labor market would deteriorate in the wake of the war. Although greater opportunities for employment had developed for black Americans, civilians already filled the posts and many young Negroes preferred the job security of a military career. But there was another, more poignant reason why many Negroes elected to remain in uniform: they were afraid to reenter what seemed a hostile society and preferred life in the armed forces, imperfect as that might be. The effect of this increase on the services, particularly the largest service, the Army, was sharp and direct. Since many Negroes were poorly educated, they were slow to learn the use of sophisticated military equipment, and since the best educated and qualified men, black and white, tended to leave, the services faced the prospect of having a large proportion of their enlisted strength black and unskilled.

The Gillem Board Report

Clearly, a new policy was necessary, and soon after the Japanese surrender Assistant Secretary McCloy sent to the recently appointed Secretary of War the accumulated pile of papers on the subject of how best to employ Negroes in the postwar Army. Along with the answers to the questionnaires sent to major commanders and a collection of interoffice memos went McCloy's reminder that the matter ought to be dealt with soon. McCloy wanted to form a committee of senior officers to secure "an objective professional view" to be used as a base for attacking the whole race problem. But while he considered it important to put this professional view on record, he still expected it to be subject to civilian review.[6-1]

Robert P. Patterson became Secretary of War on 27 September 1945, after serving with Henry Stimson for five years, first as assistant and later as under secretary. Intimately concerned with racial matters in the early years of the war, Patterson later became involved in war procurement, a specialty far removed from the complex and controversial racial situation that faced the Army. Now as secretary he once again assumed an active role in the Army's black manpower problems and quickly responded to McCloy's request for a policy review.[6-2] In accordance with Patterson's oral instructions, General Marshall appointed a board, under the chairmanship of Lt. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem, Jr., which met on 1 October 1945. Three days later a formal directive signed by the Deputy Chief of Staff and approved by the Secretary of War ordered the board to "prepare a policy for the use of the authorized Negro manpower potential during the postwar period including the complete development of the means required to derive the maximum efficiency from the full authorized manpower of the nation in the event of a national emergency."[6-3] On this group, to be known as the Gillem Board, would fall the responsibility for formulating a policy, preparing a directive, and planning the use of Negroes in the postwar Army.

General Gillem

None of the board members was particularly prepared for the new assignment. General Gillem, a Tennessean, had come up through the ranks to command the XIII Corps in Europe during World War II. Although he had written one of the 1925 War College studies on the use of black troops and had many black units in his corps, Gillem probably owed his appointment to the fact that he was a three-star general, available at the moment, and had recently been selected by the Chief of Staff to direct a Special Planning Division study on the use of black troops that had been superseded by the new board.[6-4] Burdened with the voluminous papers collected by McCloy, Gillem headed a board composed of Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick, a Virginian who had built the Ledo Road in the China-Burma-India theater; Brig. Gen. Winslow C. Morse of Michigan, who had served in a variety of assignments in the Army Air Forces culminating in wartime duties in China; and Brig. Gen. Aln D. Warnock, the recorder without vote, a Texan who began his career in the Arizona National Guard and had served in Iceland during World War II.[6-5] These men had broad and diverse experience and gave the board a certain geographical balance. Curiously enough, none was a graduate of West Point.[6-6]

Although new to the subject, the board members worked quickly. Less than a month after their first session, Gillem informed the Chief of Staff that they had already reached certain conclusions. They recognized the need to build on the close relationships developed between the races during the war by introducing progressive measures that could be put into operation promptly and would provide for the assignment of black troops on the basis of individual merit and ability alone. After studying and comparing the racial practices of the other services, the board decided that the Navy's partial integration had stimulated competition which improved black performance without causing racial friction. By contrast, strict segregation in the Marine Corps required longer training periods and closer supervision for black marines. In his memorandum Gillem refrained from drawing the logical conclusion and simply went on to note that the Army had, for example, integrated its black and white patients in hospitals because of the greater expense, inefficiency, and general impracticality of duplicating complex medical equipment and installations.[6-7] By inference the same disadvantages applied to maintaining separate training facilities, operational units, and the rest of the apparatus of the shrinking Army establishment. At one point in his progress report, Gillem seemed close to recommending integration, at least to the extent already achieved in the Navy. But stated explicitly such a recommendation would have been a radical step, out of keeping with the climate of opinion in the country and in the Army itself.

On 17 November 1945 the Gillem Board finished the study and sent its report to the Chief of Staff.[6-8] In six weeks the board had questioned more than sixty witnesses, consulted a mass of documentary material, and drawn up conclusions and recommendations on the use of black troops. The board declared that its recommendations were based on two complementary principles: black Americans had a constitutional right to fight, and the Army had an obligation to make the most effective use of every soldier. But the board also took into account reports of the Army's wartime experience with black units. It referred constantly to this experience, citing the satisfactory performance of the black service units and some of the smaller black combat units, in particular the artillery and tank battalions. It also described the black infantry platoons integrated into white companies in Europe as "eminently successful." At the same time large black combat units had not been satisfactory, most often because their junior officers and noncommissioned officers lacked the ability to lead. The difficulties the Army encountered in properly placing its black troops during the war, the board decided, stemmed to some extent from inadequate staff work and improper planning. Poor staff work allowed a disproportionate number of Negroes with low test scores to be allocated to combat elements. Lack of early planning, constant reorganization and regrouping of black units, and continuous shifting of individuals from one type of training to another had confused and bewildered black troops, who sometimes doubted that the Army intended to commit them to combat at all.

It was necessary, the board declared, to avoid repetition of this experience. Advance planning was needed to develop a broader base of trained men among black troops to provide cadres and leaders to meet national emergencies more efficiently. The Army had to realize and take advantage of the advances made by Negroes in education, industry, and government service. The wide range of skills attained by Negroes had enhanced their military value and made possible a broader selectivity with consequent benefit to military efficiency. Thus, the Army had to adopt a racial policy that provided for the progressive and flexible use of black manpower "within proportions corresponding to those in the civilian population." This policy, it added, must "be implemented promptly ... must be objective by nature ... must eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race ... and should point towards the immediate objective of an evaluation of the Negro on the basis of individual merit and ability."

The board made eighteen specific recommendations, of which the following were the most important.

"That combat and service units be organized and activated from the Negro manpower available in the postwar Army to meet the requirements of training and expansion and in addition qualified individuals be utilized in appropriate special and overhead units." The use of qualified Negroes in overhead units was the first break with the traditional policy of segregation, for though black enlisted men would continue to eat and sleep in segregated messes and barracks, they would work alongside white soldiers and perform the same kind of duty in the same unit.

"The proportion of Negro to white manpower as exists in the civil population be the accepted ratio for creating a troop basis in the postwar Army."[6-9]

"That Negro units organized or activated for the postwar Army conform in general to other units of the postwar Army but the maximum strength of type [sic] units should not exceed that of an infantry regiment or comparable organization." Here the board wanted the Army to avoid the division-size units of World War II but retain separate black units which would be diversified enough to broaden the professional base of Negroes in the Regular Army by offering them a larger selection of military occupations.

"That in the event of universal training in peacetime additional officer supervision is supplied to units which have a greater than normal percentage of personnel falling into A.G.C.T. classifications IV and V." Such a policy had existed in World War II, but was never carried out.

"That a staff group of selected officers whose background has included commanding troops be formed within the G-1 Division of the staffs of the War Department and each major command of the Army to assist in the planning, promulgation, implementation and revision of policies affecting all racial minorities." This was the administrative machinery the board wanted to facilitate the prompt and efficient execution of the Army's postwar racial policies.

"That reenlistment be denied to regular Army soldiers who meet only the minimum standards." This provision was in line with the concept that the peacetime Army was a cadre to be expanded in time of emergency. As long as the Army accepted all reenlistments regardless of aptitude and halted black enlistments when black strength exceeded 10 percent, it would deny enlistment to many qualified Negroes. It would also burden the Army with low-scoring men who would never rise above the rank of private and whose usefulness in a peacetime cadre, which had the function of training for wartime expansion, would be extremely limited.

"That surveys of manpower requirements conducted by the War Department include recommendations covering the positions in each installation of the Army which could be filled by Negro military personnel." This suggestion complemented the proposal to use Negroes in overhead positions on an individual basis. By opening more positions to Negroes, the Army would foster leadership, maintain morale, and encourage a competitive spirit among the better qualified. By forcing competition with whites "on an individual basis of merit," the Army would become more attractive as a career to superior Negroes, who would provide many needed specialists as a "nucleus for rapid expansion of Army units in time of emergency."

"That groupings of Negro units with white units in composite organizations be continued in the postwar Army as a policy." Since World War II demonstrated that black units performed satisfactorily when grouped or operated with white combat units, the inclusion of a black service company in a white regiment or a heavy weapons company in an infantry battalion could perhaps be accomplished "without encountering insurmountable difficulties." Such groupings would build up a professional relationship between blacks and whites, but, the board warned, experimentation must not risk "the disruption of civilian racial relationships."

"That there be accepted into the Regular Army an unspecified number of qualified Negro officers ... that all officers, regardless of race, be required to meet the same standard for appointment ... be accorded equal rights and opportunities for advancement and professional improvement; and be required to meet the same standard for appointment, promotion and retention in all components of the Army." The board set no limit on the number of black officers in the Army, nor did it suggest that black officers be restricted to service in black units.

Its report rendered, the board remained in existence ready to make revisions "as may be warranted" by the comments of the many individuals and agencies that were to review the policy in conformance with a directive of the Secretary of War.[6-10]

No two individuals were more intimately concerned with the course of events that led to the Gillem Board Report than John J. McCloy and Truman Gibson, and although both were about to leave government service, each gave the new Secretary of War his opinion of the report.[6-11] McCloy called the report a "fine achievement" and a "great advance over previous studies." It was most important, he said, that the board had stated the problem in terms of manpower efficiency. At the same time both men recognized ambiguities in the board's recommendations, and their criticisms were strong, precise, and, considering the conflicts that developed in the Army over these issues, remarkedly acute. Both agreed the report needed a clear statement on the basic issue of segregation, and they wanted the board to eliminate the quota. Gibson pointed out that the board proposed as a long-range objective the utilization of all persons on the basis of individual ability alone. "This means, of course," he announced with more confidence than was warranted, "a completely integrated Army." In the interest of eventually achieving an integrated Army he was willing to settle for less than immediate and total integration, but nevertheless he attacked the board for what he called the vagueness of its recommendations. Progressive and planned integration, he told Secretary Patterson, demanded a clear and explicit policy stating that segregation was outmoded and integration inevitable, and the Army should move firmly and steadily from one to the other.

On some fundamental issues McCloy thought the board did "not speak with the complete clarity necessary," but he considered the ambiguity unintentional. Experience showed, he reminded the secretary, "that we cannot get enforcement of policies that permit of any possibility of misconstruction." Directness, he said, was required in place of equivocation based on delicacy. If the Gillem Board intended black officers to command white officers and men, it should have said so flatly. If it meant the Army should try unsegregated and mixed units, it should have said so. Its report, McCloy concluded, should have put these matters beyond doubt. He was equally forthright in his rejection of the quota, which he found impractical because it deprived the Army of many qualified Negroes who would be unable to enlist when the quota was full. Even if the quota was meant as a floor rather than a ceiling, McCloy thought it objectionable. "I do not see any place," he wrote, "for a quota in a policy that looks to utilize Negroes on the basis of ability."

If the Gillem Board revealed the Army's willingness to compromise in treating a pressing efficiency problem, detailed comments by interested staff agencies revealed how military traditionalists hoped to avoid a pressing social problem. For just as McCloy and Gibson criticized the board for failing to spell out concrete procedures toward integration, other staff experts generally approved the board's report precisely because its ambiguities committed them to very little. Their specific criticisms, some betraying the biases of the times, formed the basis of the standard traditionalist defense of the racial status quo for the next five years.

Comments from the staff's personnel organization set the tone of this criticism.[6-12] The Assistant Chief of Staff for Personnel, G-1, Maj. Gen. Willard S. Paul, approved the board's recommendations, calling them a "logical solution to the problem of effective utilization of Negro manpower." Although he thought the report "sufficiently detailed to permit intelligent, effective planning," he passed along without comment the criticisms of his subordinates. He was opposed to the formation of a special staff group. "We must soon reach the point," he wrote, "where our general staff must be able to cope with such problems without the formation of ad hoc committees or groups."[6-13]

The Assistant Chief of Staff for Organization and Training, G-3, Maj. Gen. Idwal H. Edwards, was chiefly concerned with the timing of the new policy. In trying to employ black manpower on a broader professional scale, he warned, the Army must recognize the "ineptitude and limited capacity of the Negro soldier." He wanted various phases of the new policy timed "with due consideration for all factors such as public opinion, military requirements and the military situation." If the priority given public opinion in the sequence of these factors reflected Edwards's view of their importance, the list is somewhat curious. Edwards concurred in the recommendations, although he wanted the special staff group established in the personnel office rather than in his organization, and he rejected any arbitrary percentage of black officers. More black officers could be obtained through expansion of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, he suggested, but he rejected the board's call for special classification of all enlistees in reception and training centers, on grounds that the centers were not adequate for the task.[6-14]

The chief of the General Staff's Operations Division, Lt. Gen. John E. Hull, dismissed the Gillem report with several blunt statements: black enlisted men should be assigned to black units capable of operational use within white units at the rate of one black battalion per division; a single standard of professional proficiency should be followed for white and black officers; and "no Negro officer be given command of white troops."[6-15]

The deputy commander of the Army Air Forces, Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker, agreed with the board that the Army should not be "a testing ground for problems in race relationships." Neither did he think the Air Forces should organize units for the sole purpose of "advancing the prestige of one race, especially when it is necessary to utilize personnel that do not have the proper qualifications in order to keep these units up to strength." Black combat units should be limited by the 10 percent quota and by the small number of Negroes qualified for tactical training. Most Negroes should be placed in Air Forces service units, where "their wartime record was the best," even though such placement would leave the Air Forces open to charges of discrimination. The idea of experimental groupings of black and white units in composite organizations might prove "impractical," Eaker wrote to the Chief of Staff, because an Air Forces group operated as an integral unit rather than as three or four separate squadrons; units often exchanged men and equipment, and common messes were used. Composite organizations were practical "only when it is not necessary for the units to intermingle continually in order to carry on efficiently." Why intermingling could not be synonymous with efficiency, he failed to explain. The inference was clear that segregation was not only normal but best.

Yet he advocated continuing integrated flying schools and agreed that Negroes should be stationed where community attitudes were favorable. He cited the difficulties involved in stationing. For more than two years the Army Air Forces had tried to find a suitable base for its only black tactical group. Even in northern cities with large black communities—Syracuse, New York, Columbus, Ohio, and Windsor Locks, Connecticut, among others—officials had vehemently protested against having the black group.

The War Department, Eaker concluded, "should never be ahead of popular opinion on this subject; otherwise it will put itself in a position of stimulating racial disorders rather than overcoming them." Along these lines, and harking back to the Freeman Field incident, he protested against regulations reaffirmed by the Gillem Board for the joint use of clubs, theaters, post exchanges, and the like at stations in localities where such use was contrary to civilian practices.[6-16]

The Army Ground Forces headquarters concurred generally with the Gillem Board's conclusions and recommendations but suggested the Army not act alone. The headquarters recommended a policy be formulated for the entire military establishment; only then should individual elements of the armed forces come forward with their own policies. The idea that Negroes should serve in numbers proportionate to their percentage of the population and bear their share of battle losses "may be desirable but is impracticable and should be abandoned in the interest of a logical solution."[6-17] Since the abilities of Negroes were limited, the report concluded, their duties should be restricted.

The commanding general of the Army Service Forces claimed the Gillem Board Report was advocating substantially the same policy his organization had followed during the war. The Army Service Forces had successfully used an even larger percentage of Negroes than the Gillem Board contemplated. Concurring generally with the board's recommendations, he cautioned that the War Department should not dictate the use of Negroes in the field; to do so would be a serious infringement of command prerogatives that left each commander free to select and assign his men. As for the experimental groupings of black and white units, the general believed that such mixtures were appropriate for combat units but not for the separate small units common to the Army Service Forces. Separate, homogeneous companies or battalions formed during the war worked well, and experience proved mixed units impractical below group and regimental echelons.

The Service Forces commander called integration infeasible "for the present and foreseeable future." It was unlawful in many areas, he pointed out, and not common practice elsewhere, and requiring soldiers to follow a different social pattern would damage morale and defeat the Army's effort to increase the opportunities and effectiveness of black soldiers. He did not try to justify his contention, but his meaning was clear. It would be a mistake for the Army to attempt to lead the nation in such reforms, especially while reorganization, unification, and universal military training were being considered.[6-18]

Reconvened in January 1946 to consider the comments on its original report, the Gillem Board deliberated for two more weeks, heard additional witnesses, and stood firm in its conclusions and recommendations.[6-19] The policy it proposed, the board emphasized, had one purpose, the attainment of maximum manpower efficiency in time of national emergency. To achieve this end the armed forces must make full use of Negroes now in service, but future use of black manpower had to be based on the experience gained in two major wars. The board considered the policy it was proposing flexible, offering opportunity for advancement to qualified individuals and at the same time making possible for the Army an economic use of national manpower as a whole.

To its original report the board added a statement at once the hope and despair of its critics and supporters.

The Initial Objectives: The utilization of the proportionate ratio of the manpower made available to the military establishment during the postwar period. The manpower potential to be organized and trained as indicated by pertinent recommendations.

The Ultimate Objective: The effective use of all manpower made available to the military establishment in the event of a major mobilization at some unknown date against an undetermined aggressor. The manpower to be utilized, in the event of another major war, in the Army without regard to antecedents or race.

When, and if such a contingency arises, the manpower of the nation should be utilized in the best interests of the national security.

The Board cannot, and does not, attempt to visualize at this time, intermediate objectives. Between the first and ultimate objective, timely phasing may be interjected and adjustments made in accordance with conditions which may obtain at this undetermined date.

The board based its ultimate objective on the fact that the black community had made important advances in education and job skills in the past generation, and it expected economic and educational conditions for Negroes to continue to improve. Since such improvement would make it possible to employ black manpower in a variety of ways, the board's recommendations could be only a guide for the future, a policy that must remain flexible.

Secretary Patterson

To the specific objections raised by the reviewing agencies, the board replied that although black units eventually should be commanded by black officers "no need exists for the assignment of Negro commanders to units composed of white troops." It also agreed with those who felt it would be beneficial to correlate Army racial policies with those of the Navy. On other issues the board stood firm. It rejected the proposal that individual commanders be permitted to choose positions where Negroes could be employed in overhead installations on the grounds that this delegation of responsibility "hazards lack of uniformity and makes results doubtful." It refused to drop the quota, arguing it was needed for planning purposes. At the same time the board did admit that the 10 percent ratio, suitable for the moment, might be changed in the future in the interest of efficiency—though changed in which way it did not say.

The board rejected the proposition that the Army Service Forces and the Army Air Forces were unable to use small black units in white organizations and took a strong stand for elimination of the professional private, the career enlistee lacking the background or ability to advance beyond the lowest rank. Finally, the board rejected demands that the color line be reestablished in officers' messes and enlisted recreational facilities. "This large segment of the population contributed materially to the success attained by our military forces.... The Negro enjoyed the privileges of citizenship and, in turn, willingly paid the premium by accepting service. In many instances, this payment was settled through the medium of the supreme sacrifice."

The board's recommendations were well received, at least in the highest echelons of the War Department. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, now Chief of Staff,[6-20] quickly sent the proposed policy to the Secretary of War with a recommendation for approval "subject to such adjustment as experience shows is necessary."[6-21] On 28 February 1946 Secretary Patterson approved the new policy in a succinct restatement of the board's recommendations. The policy and the full Gillem Board Report were published as War Department Circular 124 on 27 April 1946. At the secretary's direction the circular was dispatched to the field "without delay."[6-22] On 4 March the report was released to the press.[6-23] The most exhaustive and intensive inquiry ever made by the Army into the employment of black manpower had survived the review and analysis process with its conclusions and recommendations intact.

Attitudes toward the new policy varied with interpretations of the board's statement of objectives. Secretary Patterson saw in the report "a significant development in the status of the Negro soldiers in the Army." The immediate effect of using Negroes in composite units and overhead assignments, he predicted, would be to change War Department policy on segregation.[6-24] But the success of the policy could not be guaranteed by a secretary of war, and some of his advisers were more guarded in their estimates. To Truman Gibson, once again in government service, but briefly this time, the report seemed a good beginning because it offered a new approach, one that had originated within the Army itself. Yet Gibson was wary of its chances for success: The board's recommendations, he told the Assistant Secretary of War, would make for a better Army "only if they are effectively carried out."[6-25] The newly appointed assistant secretary, Howard C. Petersen, was equally cautious. Explaining the meaning of the report to the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, he warned that "a strong policy weakly enforced will be of little value to the Army."[6-26]

Marcus H. Ray, Gibson's successor as the secretary's adviser on racial affairs,[6-27] stressed the board's ultimate objective to employ manpower without regard to race and called its recommendations "a step in the direction of efficient manpower utilization." It was a necessary step, he added, because "any racial group which lives under the stigma of implied inferiority inherent in a system of enforced separation cannot give over-all top performance in peace or in war."[6-28]

On the whole, the black community was considerably less sanguine about the new policy. The Norfolk Journal and Guide called the report a step in the right direction, but reserved judgment until the Army carried out the recommendations.[6-29] To a distinguished black historian who was writing an account of the Negro in World War II, the Gillem Board Report reflected the Army's ambiguity on racial matters. "It is possible," L. D. Reddick of the New York Public Library wrote, "to interpret the published recommendations as pointing in opposite directions."[6-30] One NAACP official charged that it "tries to dilute Jim-Crow by presenting it on a smaller scale." After citing the tremendous advances made by Negroes and all the reasons for ending segregation, he accused the Gillem Board of refusing to take the last step.[6-31] Most black papers adopted the same attitude, characterizing the new policy as "the same old Army." The Pittsburgh Courier, for one, observed that the new policy meant that the Army command had undergone no real change of heart.[6-32] Other segments of the public were more forebearing. One veterans' organization commended the War Department for the work of the Gillem Board but called its analysis and recommendations incomplete. Citing evidence that Jim Crow, not the enemy, "defeated" black combat units, the chairman of the American Veterans Committee called for an immediate end to segregation.[6-33]

Clearly, opposition to segregation was not going to be overcome with palliatives and promises, yet Petersen could only affirm that the Gillem Board Report would mean significant change. He admitted segregation's tenacious hold on Army thinking and that black units would continue to exist for some time, but he promised movement toward desegregation. He also made the Army's usual distinction between segregation and discrimination. Though there were many instances of unfair treatment during the war, he noted, these were individual matters, inconsistent with Army policy, which "has consistently condemned discrimination." Discrimination, he concluded, must be blamed on "defects" of enforcement, which would always exist to some degree in any organization as large as the Army.[6-34]

Actually, Petersen's promised "movement" toward integration was likely to be a very slow process. So substantive a change in social practice, the Army had always argued, required the sustained support of the American public, and judging from War Department correspondence and press notices large segments of the public remained unaware of what the Army was trying to do about its "Negro problem." Most military journalists continued to ignore the issue; perhaps they considered the subject of the employment of black troops unimportant compared with the problems of demobilization, atomic weaponry, and service unification. For example, in listing the principal military issues before the United States in the postwar period, military analyst Hanson Baldwin did not mention the employment of Negroes in the service.[6-35]

Given the composition of the Gillem Board and the climate of opinion in the nation, the report was exemplary and fair, its conclusions progressive. If in the light of later developments the recommendations seem timid, even superficial, it should be remembered to its credit that the board at least made integration a long-range goal of the Army and made permanent the wartime guarantee of a substantial black representation.

Nevertheless the ambiguities in the Gillem Board's recommendations would be useful to those commanders at all levels of the Army who were devoted to the racial status quo. Gillem and his colleagues discussed black soldiers in terms of social problems rather than military efficiency. As a result, their recommendations treated the problem from the standpoint of how best Negroes could be employed within the traditional segregated framework even while they spoke of integration as an ultimate goal. They gave their blessing to the continued existence of segregated units and failed to inquire whether segregation might not be a factor in the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of black units and black soldiers. True, they sought to use qualified Negroes in specialist jobs as a solution to better employment of black manpower, but this effort could have little practical effect. Few were qualified—and determination of qualifications was often done by those with little sympathy for the Negro and even less for the educated Negro. Black serviceman holding critical specialties and those assigned to overhead installations would never amount to more than a handful of men whose integration during duty hours only would fall far short even of tokenism.

To point out as the board did that the policy it was recommending no longer required segregation was meaningless. Until the Army ordered integration, segregation, simply by virtue of inertia, would remain. As McCloy, along with Gibson and others, warned, without a strong, explicit statement of intent by the Army the changes in Army practice suggested by the Gillem Board would be insignificant. The very acceptance of the board's report by officials traditionally opposed to integration should have been fair warning that the report would be difficult to use as a base for a progressive racial policy; in fact it could be used to justify almost any course of action. From the start, the War Department encountered overwhelming difficulties in carrying out the board's recommendations, and five years later the ultimate objective was still out of reach.

Clearly, the majority of Army officers viewed segregated service as the acceptable norm. General Jacob L. Devers, then commanding general of Army Ground Forces, gave a clue to their view when he told his fellow officers in 1946 that "we are going to put colored battalions in white divisions. This is purely business—the social side will not be brought into it."[6-36] Here then was the dilemma: Was not the Army a social institution as well as a fighting organization? The solution to the Army's racial problems could not be achieved by ignoring the social implications. On both counts there was a reluctance among many professional soldiers to take in Negroes. They registered acute social discomfort at the large influx of black soldiers, and many who had devoted their lives to military service had very real misgivings over using Negroes in white combat units or forming new black combat units because they felt that black fighters in the air and on the ground had performed badly in the past. To entrust the fighting to Negroes who had failed to prove their competence in this highest mission of the Army seemed to them to threaten the institution itself.

Despite these shortcomings, the work of the Gillem Board was a progressive step in the history of Army race relations. It broke with the assumption implicit in earlier Army policy that the black soldier was inherently inferior by recommending that Negroes be assigned tasks as varied and skilled as those handled by white soldiers. It also made integration the Army's goal by declaring as official policy the ultimate employment of all manpower without regard to race.

Even the board's insistence on a racial quota, it could be argued, had its positive aspects, for in the end it was the presence of so many black soldiers in the Korean War that finally ended segregation. In the meantime, controversy over the quota, whether it represented a floor supporting minimum black participation or a ceiling limiting black enlistment, continued unabated, providing the civil rights groups with a focal point for their complaints. No matter how hard the Army tried to justify the quota, the quota increased the Army's vulnerability to charges of discrimination.

Integration of the General Service

The Navy's postwar revision of racial policy, like the Army's, was the inevitable result of its World War II experience. Inundated with unskilled and undereducated Negroes in the middle of the war, the Navy had assigned most of these men to segregated labor battalions and was surprised by the racial clashes that followed. As it began to understand the connection between large segregated units and racial tensions, the Navy also came to question the waste of the talented Negro in a system that denied him the job for which he was qualified. Perhaps more to the point, the Navy's size and mission made immediately necessary what the Army could postpone indefinitely. Unlike the Army, the Navy seriously modified its racial policy in the last year of the war, breaking up some of the large segregated units and integrating Negroes in the specialist and officer training schools, in the WAVES, and finally in the auxiliary fleet and the recruit training centers.

Yet partial integration was not enough. Lester Granger's surveys and the studies of the secretary's special committee had demonstrated that the Navy could resolve its racial problems only by providing equal treatment and opportunity. But the absurdity of trying to operate two equal navies, one black and one white, had been obvious during the war. Only total integration of the general service could serve justice and efficiency, a conclusion the civil rights advocates had long since reached. After years of leaving the Navy comparatively at peace, they now began to demand total integration.

Admiral Denfeld

There was no assurance, however, that a move to integration was imminent when Granger returned from his final inspection trip for Secretary Forrestal in October 1945. Both Granger and the secretary's Committee on Negro Personnel had endorsed the department's current practices, and Granger had been generally optimistic over the reforms instituted toward the end of the war. Admirals Nimitz and King both endorsed Granger's recommendations, although neither saw the need for further change.[6-37] For his part Secretary Forrestal seemed determined to maintain the momentum of reform. "What steps do we take," he asked the Chief of Naval Personnel, "to correct the various practices ... which are not in accordance with Navy standards?"[6-38]

In response the Bureau of Naval Personnel circulated the Granger reports throughout the Navy and ordered steps to correct practices identified by Granger as "not in accordance with Navy standards."[6-39] But it was soon apparent that the bureau would be selective in adopting Granger's suggestions. In November, for example, the Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, arguing that officers "could handle black personnel without any special indoctrination," urged the secretary to reject Granger's recommendation that an office be established in headquarters to deal exclusively with racial problems. At the same time some of the bureau's recruiting officials were informing Negroes that their reenlistment in the Regular Navy was to be limited to the Steward's Branch.[6-40] With the help of Admiral Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations, Forrestal quickly put an end to this recruiting practice, but he paid no further attention to racial matters except to demand in mid-December a progress report on racial reforms in the Pacific area.[6-41] Nor did he seem disturbed when the Pacific commander reported a large number of all-black units, some with segregated recreational facilities, operating in the Pacific area as part of the permanent postwar naval organization.[6-42]

In the end the decision to integrate the general service came not from the secretary but from that bastion of military tradition, the Bureau of Naval Personnel. Despite the general reluctance of the bureau to liberalize the Navy's racial policy, there had been all along some manpower experts who wanted to increase the number of specialties open to black sailors. Capt. Hunter Wood, Jr., for example, suggested in January 1946 that the bureau make plans for an expansion in assignments for Negroes. Wood's proposal fell on the sympathetic ears of Admiral Denfeld, who considered the Granger recommendations practical for the postwar Navy. Denfeld, of course, was well aware that these recommendations had been endorsed by Admirals King and Nimitz as well as Forrestal, and he himself had gone on record as believing that Negroes in the peacetime Navy should lose none of the opportunities opened to them during the war.[6-43]

Denfeld had had considerable experience with the Navy's evolving racial policy in his wartime assignment as assistant chief of personnel where his principal concern had been the efficient distribution and assignment of men. He particularly objected to the fact that current regulations complicated what should have been the routine transfer of sailors. Simple control procedures for the segregation of Negroes in general service had been effective when Negroes were restricted to particular shore stations and duties, he told Admiral Nimitz on 4 January 1946, but now that Negroes were frequently being transferred from shore to sea and from ship to ship the restriction of Negroes to auxiliary ships was becoming extremely difficult to manage and was also "noticeably contrary to the non-differentiation policy enunciated by the Secretary of the Navy." The only way to execute that policy effectively and maintain efficiency, he concluded, was to integrate the general service completely. Denfeld pointed out that the admission of Negroes to the auxiliary fleet had caused little friction in the Navy and passed almost unnoticed by the press. Secretary Forrestal had promised to extend the use of Negroes throughout the entire fleet if the preliminary program proved practical, and the time had come to fulfill that promise. He would start with "the removal of restrictions governing the type of duty to which general service Negroes can be assigned," but would limit the number of Negroes on any ship or at any shore station to a percentage no greater than that of general service Negroes throughout the Navy.[6-44]

With the enlistment of the Chief of Naval Personnel in the cause, the move to an integrated general service was assured. On 27 February 1946 the Navy published Circular Letter 48-46: "Effective immediately all restrictions governing types of assignments for which Negro naval personnel are eligible are hereby lifted. Henceforth, they shall be eligible for all types of assignments in all ratings in all activities and all ships of naval service." The letter went on to specify that "in housing, messing, and other facilities, there would be no special accommodations for Negroes." It also directed a redistribution of personnel by administrative commands so that by 1 October 1946 no ship or naval activity would be more than 10 percent Negro. The single exception would be the Naval Academy, where a large contingent of black stewards would be left intact to serve the midshipmen's meals.

The publication of Circular Letter 48-46 was an important step in the Navy's racial history. In less than one generation, in fewer years actually than the average sailor's service life, the Navy had made a complete about-face. In a sense the new policy was a service reform rather than a social revolution; after a 23-year hiatus integration had once again become the Navy's standard racial policy. Since headlines are more often reserved for revolutions than reformations, the new policy attracted little attention. The metropolitan press gave minimum coverage to the event and never bothered to follow later developments. For the most part the black press treated the Navy's announcement with skepticism. On behalf of Secretary Forrestal, Lester Granger invited twenty-three leading black editors and publishers to inspect ships in the fleet as well as shore activities to see for themselves the changes being made. Not one accepted. As one veteran put it, the editors shrank from praising the Navy's policy change for fear of being proved hasty. They preferred to remain on safe ground, "givin' 'em hell."[6-45]

The editors had every reason to be wary: integration was seriously circumscribed in the new directive, which actually offered few guarantees of immediate change. Applying only to enlisted men in the shore establishment and on ships, the directive ignored the Navy's all-white officer corps and its nonwhite servants branch of stewards. Aimed at abolishing discrimination in the service, it failed to guarantee either through enlistment, assignment guidelines, or specific racial quotas a fair proportion of black sailors in the postwar Navy. Finally, the order failed to create administrative machinery to carry out the new policy. In a very real sense the new policy mirrored tradition. It was naval tradition to have black sailors in the integrated ranks and a separate Messman's Branch. The return to this tradition embodied in the order complemented Forrestal's philosophy of change as an outgrowth of self-realized reform. At the same time naval tradition did not include the concept of high-ranking black officers, white servants, and Negroes in specialized assignments. Here Forrestal's hope of self-reform did not materialize, and equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Navy remained an elusive goal.

But Forrestal and his military subordinates made enough of a start to draw the fire of white segregationists. The secretary answered charges and demands in a straightforward manner. When, for example, a congressman complained that "white boys are being forced to sleep with these negroes," Forrestal explained that men were quartered and messed aboard ship according to their place in the ship's organization without regard to race. The Navy made no attempt to prescribe the nature or extent of their social relationships, which were beyond the scope of its authority. Although Forrestal expressed himself as understanding the strong feelings of some Americans on this matter, he made it clear that the Navy had finally decided segregation was the surest way to emphasize and perpetuate the gap between the races and had therefore adopted a policy of integration.[6-46]

What Forrestal said was true, but the translation of the Navy's postwar racial policy into the widespread practice of equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes was still before him and his officers. To achieve it they would have to fight the racism common in many segments of American society as well as bureaucratic inertia. If put into practice the new policy might promote the efficient use of naval manpower and give the Navy at least a brief respite from the criticism of civil rights advocates, but because of Forrestal's failure to give clear-cut direction—a characteristic of his approach to racial reform—the Navy might well find itself proudly trumpeting a new policy while continuing its old racial practices.

The Marine Corps

As part of the naval establishment, the Marine Corps fell under the strictures of Secretary Forrestal's announced policy of racial nondiscrimination.[6-47] At the same time the Marine Corps was administratively independent of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Naval Personnel, and Circular Letter 48-46, which desegregated the Navy's general service, did not apply to the corps. In the development of manpower policy the corps was responsible to the Navy, in organization it closely resembled the Army, but in size and tradition it was unique. Each of these factors contributed to the development of the corps' racial policy and helped explain its postwar racial practices.

Because of the similarities in organization and mission between the Army and the Marine Corps, the commandant leaned toward the Army's solution for racial problems. The Army staff had contended that racially separate service was not discriminatory so long as it was equal, and through its Gillem Board policy it accepted the responsibility of guaranteeing that Negroes would be represented in equitable numbers and their treatment and opportunity would be similar to that given whites. Since the majority of marines served in the ground units of the Fleet Marine Force, organized like the Army in regiments, battalions, and squadrons with tables of organization and equipment, the formation of racially separate units presented no great problem.

Although the Marine Corps was similar to the Army in organization, it was very different in size and tradition. With a postwar force of little more than 100,000 men, the corps was hardly able to guarantee its segregated Negroes equal treatment and opportunity in terms of specialized training and variety of assignment. Again in contrast to the Army and Navy with their long tradition of Negroes in service, the Marine Corps, with a few unauthorized exceptions, had been an exclusively white organization since 1798. This habit of racial exclusion was strengthened by those feelings of intimacy and fraternity natural to any small bureaucracy. In effect the marines formed a small club in which practically everybody knew everybody else and was reluctant to admit strangers.[6-48] Racial exclusion often warred with the corps' clear duty to provide the fair and equal service for all Americans authorized by the Secretary of the Navy. At one point the commandant, General Alexander Vandegrift, even had to remind his local commanders that black marines would in fact be included in the postwar corps.[6-49]

One other factor influenced the policy deliberations of the Marine Corps: its experiences with black marines during World War II. Overshadowing the praise commanders gave the black depot companies were reports of the trials and frustrations suffered by those who trained the large black combat units. Many Negroes trained long and hard for antiaircraft duty, yet a senior group commander found them ill-suited to the work because of "emotional instability and lack of appreciation of materiel." One battery commander cited the "mechanical ineptitude" of his men; another fell back on "racial characteristics of the Negro as a whole" to explain his unit's difficulty.[6-50] Embodying rash generalization and outright prejudice, the reports of these commanders circulated in Marine Corps headquarters, also revealed that a large group of black marines experienced enough problems in combat training to cast serious doubt on the reliability of the defense battalions. This doubt alone could explain the corps' decision to relegate the units to the backwaters of the war zone. Seeing only the immediate shortcomings of the large black combat units, most commanders ignored the underlying reasons for the failure. The controversial commander of the 51st Defense Battalion, Col. Curtis W. LeGette,[6-51] however, gave his explanation to the commandant in some detail. He reported that more than half the men in the 51st as it prepared for overseas deployment—most of them recent draftees—were in the two lowest categories, IV and V, for either general classification or mechanical aptitude. That some 212 of the noncommissioned officers of the units were also in categories IV and V was the result of the unit's effort to carry out the commandant's order to replace white noncommissioned officers as quickly as possible. The need to develop black noncommissioned officers was underscored by LeGette, who testified to a growing resentment among his black personnel at the assignment of new white noncoms. Symptomatic of the unit's basic problems in 1944 was what LeGette called an evolving "occupational neurosis" among white officers forced to serve for lengthy periods with black marines.[6-52]

General Thomas

The marines experienced far fewer racial problems than either the Army or Navy during the war, but the difficulties that occurred were nonetheless important in the development of postwar racial policy. The basic cause of race problems was the rigid concentration of often undertrained and undereducated men, who were subjected to racial slurs and insensitive treatment by some white officials and given little chance to serve in preferred military specialties or to advance in the labor or defense units or steward details to which they were invariably consigned. But this basic cause was ignored by Marine Corps planners when they discussed the postwar use of Negroes. They preferred to draw other lessons from the corps' wartime experience. The employment of black marines in small, self-contained units performing traditional laboring tasks was justified precisely because the average black draftee was less well-educated and experienced in the use of the modern equipment. Furthermore, the correctness of this procedure seemed to be demonstrated by the fact that the corps had been relatively free of the flare-ups that plagued the other services. Many officials would no doubt have preferred to eliminate race problems by eliminating Negroes from the corps altogether. Failing this, they were determined that regular black marines continue to serve in those assignments performed by black marines during the war: in service units, stewards billets, and a few antiaircraft artillery units, the postwar successors to defense battalions.[6-53]

The development of a postwar racial policy to carry out the Navy Department's nondiscrimination order in the Marine Corps fell to the Division of Plans and Policies and its director, Brig. Gen. Gerald C. Thomas. It was a complicated task, and General Thomas and his staff after some delay established a series of guidelines intended to steer a middle path between exclusion and integration that would be nondiscriminatory. In addition to serving in the Steward's Branch, which contained 10 percent of all blacks in the corps, Negroes would serve in segregated units in every branch of the corps, and their strength would total some 2,800 men. This quota would not be like that established in the Army, which was pegged to the number of black soldiers during the war and which ultimately was based on national population ratios. The Marine Corps ratio of blacks to whites would be closer to 1 in 30 and would merely represent the estimated number of billets that might be filled by Negroes in self-sustaining segregated units.

The directorate also established a table of distribution plan that for the first time provided for black regular marines in aviation units and several other Marine Corps activities. Aviation units alone accounted for 25 percent of the marines in the postwar corps, General Thomas contended, and must absorb their proportionate share of black strength. Further, the Navy's policy of nondiscrimination demanded that all types of assignments be opened to black marines. Segregation "best suits the needs of the Marine Corps," General Thomas concluded. Ignoring the possibility of black officers and women marines, he thought that the opening of all specialties and types of duty to the enlisted ranks would find the Marine Corps "paralleling Navy policy."[6-54] Clearly, the Division of Plans and Policies wanted the corps to adopt a formula roughly analogous to the Gillem Board's separate but equal system without that body's provisions for a fixed quota, black officers, or some integrated service.

But even this concession to nondiscrimination was never approved, for the Plans and Policies Division ran afoul of a basic fact of segregation: the postwar strength of many elements of the Marine Corps was too small to support separate racial units. The Director of Aviation, for example, argued that because of the size and nature of his operation, segregated service was impossible. A substantial number of his enlisted men also did double duty by serving in air stations where Negroes could not be segregated, he explained. Only completely separate aviation units, police and maintenance, and construction units would be available for Negroes, a state of affairs "which would be open to adverse criticism." He recommended instead that Negroes in aviation be used only as stewards.[6-55] He failed to explain how this solution would escape adverse criticism.

General Thomas rejected these proposals, repeating that Secretary Forrestal's nondiscrimination policy demanded that a separate but equal system be extended throughout the Marine Corps. He also borrowed one of the Gillem Board's arguments: Negroes must be trained in the postwar military establishment in every occupation to serve as a cadre for future general mobilizations.[6-56] Thomas did not mention the fact that although large branches such as Fleet Marine Force aviation could maintain separate but equal living facilities for its black marines, even they would have to provide partially integrated training and working conditions. And the smaller organizations in the corps would be forced to integrate fully if forced to accept black marines. In short, if the corps wanted segregation it must pay the price of continued discrimination against black marines in terms of numbers enlisted and occupations assigned.

The choice was left to Commandant Vandegrift. One solution to the "Negro question," General Thomas told him, was complete integration and the abolition of racial quotas, but Thomas did not press this solution. Instead, he reviewed for Vandegrift the racial policies of the other services, pointing out that these policies had more often been devised to "appease the Negro press and other 'interested' agencies than to satisfy their own needs." Until the matter was settled on a "higher level," Thomas concluded, the services were not required to go further than had been their custom, and until Vandegrift decided on segregation or integration, setting quotas for the different branches in the corps was inappropriate. Thomas himself recommended that segregated units be adopted and that a quota be devised only after each branch of the corps reported how many Negroes it could use in segregated units.[6-57] Vandegrift approved Thomas's recommendation for segregated black units, and the Marine Corps lost the chance, temporarily, to adopt a policy in line with either the Navy's limited and integrated system or the Army's separate but equal system.

General Thomas spent the summer collecting and reviewing the proposals of the corps' various components for the employment of black marines. On the basis of this review General Vandegrift approved a postwar policy for the employment of Negroes in the Marine Corps on 26 September 1946. The policy called for the enlistment of 2,264 Negroes, 264 as stewards, the rest to serve in separate units, chiefly in ground security forces of the Fleet Marine Force in Guam and Saipan and in Marine Corps activities of the naval shore establishment. No Negroes except stewards would serve in Marine aviation, Marine forces afloat, or, with the exception of service depots, in the Marine logistic establishment.[6-58]

The policy was in effect by January 1947. In the end the Marine Corps' white-only tradition had proved strong enough to resist the progressive impulses that were pushing the other services toward some relaxation of their segregation policies. Committed to limiting Negroes to a token representation and employing black marines in rigidly self-contained units, the Marine Corps could not establish a quota for Negroes based on national racial proportions and could offer no promise of equal treatment and opportunity in work assignments and promotions.

Thus all the services emerged from their deliberations with postwar policies that were markedly different in several respects but had in common a degree of segregation. The Army, declaring that military efficiency demanded ultimate integration, temporized, guaranteeing as a first step an intricate system of separate but equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes. The Marine Corps began with the idea that separate but equal service was not discriminatory, but when equal service proved unattainable, black marines were left with separatism alone. The Navy announced the most progressive policy of all, providing for integration of its general service. Yet it failed to break the heavy concentration of Negroes in the Steward's Branch, where no whites served. And unlike the segregated Army, the integrated Navy, its admission standards too high to encourage black enlistments, did not guarantee to take any black officers or specialists.

None of these policies provided for the equal treatment and opportunity guaranteed to every black serviceman under the Constitution, although the racial practices of all the services stood far in advance of those of most institutions in the society from which they were derived. The very weaknesses and inadequacies inherent in these policies would in themselves become a major cause of the reforms that were less than a decade away.

CHAPTER 7

A Problem of Quotas

The War Department encountered overwhelming problems when it tried to put the Gillem Board's recommendations into practice, and in the end only parts of the new policy for the use of black manpower were ever carried out. The policy foundered for a variety of reasons: some implicit in the nature of the policy itself, others the result of manpower exigencies, and still others because of prejudices lingering in the staff, the Army, and the nation at large.

Even before the Army postwar racial policy was published in War Department Circular 124 on 27 April 1946 it met formidable opposition in the staff. Although Secretary Patterson had approved the new course of action, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Paul, sent a copy of what he called the "proposed" policy to the Army Air Forces for further comment.[7-1] The response of the air commander, General Carl Spaatz, revealed that he too considered the policy still open for discussion. He suggested that the Army abandon the quota in favor of admitting men on the basis of intelligence and professional ability and forbid enlistment to anyone scoring below eighty in the entry tests. He wanted the composite organizations of black and white units recommended by the board held to a minimum, and none smaller than an air group—a regimental-size unit. Black combat units should have only black service units in support. In fact, Spaatz believed that most black units should be service units, and he wanted to see Negroes employed in overhead assignments only where and when their specialties were needed. He did not want jobs created especially for them.[7-2]

These were not the only portents of difficulty for the new policy. Before its publication General Paul had announced that he would not establish a staff group on racial affairs as called for by the Gillem Board. Citing manpower shortages and the small volume of work he envisaged, Paul planned instead to divide such duties between his Welfare Branch and Military Personnel Services Group.[7-3] The concept of a central authority for the direction of racial policy was further weakened in April when Paul invited the Assistant Chief of Staff for Organization and Training, General Edwards, one of whose primary tasks was to decide the size and number of military units, to share responsibility for carrying out the recommendations of the Gillem Board.[7-4]

Assistant Secretary Petersen was perturbed at the mounting evidence of opposition. Specifically, he believed Spaatz's comments indicated a lack of accord with Army policy, and he wanted the Army Air Forces told that "these basic matters are no longer open for discussion." He also wanted to establish a troop basis that would lead, without the imposition of arbitrary percentages, to the assignment of a "fair proportion" of black troops to all major commands and their use in all kinds of duties in all the arms and services. Petersen considered the composite unit one of the most important features of the new policy, and he wanted "at least a few" such units organized soon. He mentioned the assignment of a black parachute battalion to the 82d Airborne Division as a good place to begin.

Petersen had other concerns. He was distressed at the dearth of black specialists in overhead detachments, and he wondered why War Department Circular 105, which provided for the assignment of men to critically needed specialties, explicitly excluded Negroes.[7-5] He wanted the circular revised. Above all, Petersen feared the new policy might falter from a lack of aggressive leadership. He estimated that at first it would require at least the full attention of several officers under the leadership of an "aggressive officer who knows the Army and has its confidence and will take an active interest in vigorous enforcement of the program."[7-6] By implication Petersen was asking General Paul to take the lead.

Within a week of Petersen's comments on leadership, Paul had revised Circular 105, making its provisions applicable to all enlisted men, regardless of race or physical profile.[7-7] A few days later, he was assuring Petersen that General Spaatz's comments were "inconsistent with the approved recommendations" and were being disregarded.[7-8] Paul also repeated the principal points of the new policy for the major commanders, especially those dealing with composite units and overhead assignments for black specialists. He stressed that, whenever possible, Negroes should be assigned to places where local community attitudes were most favorable and no undue burden would be imposed on local civilian facilities.[7-9]

General Paul

General Paul believed the principal impediment to practical application of the new policy was not so much the opposition of field commanders as the fact that many black units continued to perform poorly. He agreed with Marcus Ray, Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War, who had predicted as early as January 1946 that the success of the Gillem Board's recommendations would depend on how many Negroes of higher than average ability the armed forces could attract and retain. Ray reasoned that among the Negroes enlisting in the Regular Army—14 percent of the 1945 total—were large numbers of noncommissioned officers in the three highest grades whose abilities were limited. They were able to maintain their ratings, usually in service units, because their duties required knowledge of neither administration nor weapons. Truckmasters, foremen, riggers, and the like, they rushed to reenlist in order to freeze themselves in grade. Since many of these men were in the two lowest test categories, they could not supply the leaders needed for black units. Ray wanted to replace these men with better educated enlistees who could be used on the broadened professional base recommended by the Gillem Board. To that end he wanted the Army to test all enlisted men, discharge those below minimum standards, and launch a recruiting campaign to attract better qualified men, both black and white.[7-10] For his part, Paul also deplored the enlistment of men who were, in his words, "mentally incapable of development into the specialists, technicians, and instructors that we must have in the post-war Regular Army."[7-11]

Here, even before the new racial policy was published, the Army staff ran head on into the realities of postwar manpower needs. In a rapid demobilization, the Army was critically short of troops, particularly for overseas replacements, and it could maintain troop strength only by accepting all the men it could get. Until Paul had more definite information on the future operations of Selective Service and the rate of voluntary Regular Army enlistments, he would have to postpone action to curtail the admission of low-scoring men. So pressing were the Army's needs that Paul could do nothing to guarantee that black strength would not greatly exceed the 10 percent figure suggested by the Gillem Board. He anticipated that by 1 July 1946 the regular and active reserve components of the Army would together be approximately 15 percent black, a percentage impossible to avoid if the Army was to retain 1.8 million men. Since all planning had been based on a 10 percent black strength, plans would have to be revised to make use of the excess. In February 1946 the Chief of Staff approved General Paul's program: Negroes would continue to be drafted at the 10 percent ratio; at the same time their enlistment in the Regular Army would continue without restriction on numbers. Negroes would be limited to 15 percent of the overseas commands, and the continental commands would absorb all the rest.[7-12]

Paul's program for absorbing Negroes faced rough going, for the already complex manpower situation was further complicated by limitations on the use of Negroes in certain overseas theaters and the demands of the War Department's major commands. The Army was prohibited by an agreement with the State Department from sending Negroes to the Panama Canal Zone; it also respected an unwritten agreement that barred black servicemen from Iceland, the Azores, and China.[7-13] Since the War Department was unable to use Negroes everywhere, the areas where they could be used had to take more. The increase in black troops provoked considerable discussion in the large Pacific and European commands because it entailed separate housing, transportation, and care for dependents—all the usual expensive trappings of segregation. Theater commanders also faced additional problems in public relations and management. As one War Department staff officer claimed, black units required more than normal administration, stricter policing, and closer supervision. This in turn demanded additional noncommissioned officers, and "more Negro bodies must be maintained to produce equivalent results."[7-14]

Both commands protested the War Department decision. Representatives from the European theater arrived in Washington in mid-February 1946 to propose a black strength of 8.21 rather than the prescribed 15 percent. Seeking to determine where black soldiers could be used "with the least harmful effect on theater operations," they discovered in conferences with representatives of the War Department staff only the places Negroes were not to be used: in infantry units, in the constabulary, which acted as a border patrol and occupation police, in highly technical services, or as supervisors of white civilian laborers.[7-15]

The commander of Army Forces, Pacific, was even more insistent on a revision, asking how he could absorb so many Negroes when his command was already scheduled to receive 50,000 Philippine Scouts and 29,500 Negroes in the second half of 1947. These two groups, which the command considered far less adaptable than white troops to occupational duties, would together make up about 40 percent of the command's total strength. Although Philippine Scouts in the theater never exceeded 31,000, the command's protest achieved some success. The War Department agreed to reduce black troops in the Pacific to 14 percent by 1 January 1947 and 13 percent by 1 July 1947.[7-16]

No sooner had the demands of the overseas theaters been dealt with than the enlarged black quotas came under attack from the commanders of major forces. Instead of planning to absorb more Negroes, the Army Air Forces wanted to divest itself of some black units on the premise that unskilled troops were a liability in a highly technical service. General Spaatz reported that some 60 percent of all his black troops stationed in the United States in January 1946 were performing the duties of unskilled laborers and that very few could be trained for skilled tasks. He predicted that the Army Air Forces would soon have an even higher percentage of low-scoring Negroes because 15 percent of all men enlisting in his Regular Army units—expected to reach a total of 45,000 men by 1 July 1946—were black. To forestall this increase in "undesirable and uneconomical" troops, he wanted to stop inducting Negroes into the Army Air Forces and suspend all black enlistments in the Regular Army.[7-17]

The Army Air Forces elaborated on these arguments in the following months, refining both its estimates and demands. Specifically, its manpower officials estimated that to reach the 15 percent black strength ordered by 1 July 1946 the Air Forces would have to take 50,500 Negroes into units that could efficiently use only 22,000 men. This embarrassment of more than 28,000 unusable men, the Army Air Forces claimed, would require eliminating tactical units and creating additional quartermaster car companies, mess platoons, and other service organizations.[7-18] The Air staff wanted to eliminate the unwanted 28,000 black airmen by raising to eighty the minimum classification test score for Regular Army enlistment in the Army Air Forces. In the end it retreated from this proposal, and on 25 February requested permission to use the 28,000 Negroes in service units, but over and above its 400,000-man troop basis. It promised to absorb all these men into the troop basis by 30 June 1946.[7-19]

The Army staff rejected this plan on the grounds that any excess allowed above the current Air Forces troop basis would have to be balanced by a corresponding and unacceptable deficit in the Army Ground Forces and Army Service Forces.[7-20] The Army Air Forces countered with a proposal to discharge all black enlistees in excess of Air Forces requirements in the European theater who would accept discharge. It had in mind a group of 8,795 Negroes recently enlisted for a three-year period, who, in accordance with a lure designed to stimulate such enlistments, had chosen assignment in the Air Forces and a station in Europe. With a surplus of black troops, the Air Forces found itself increasingly unable to fulfill the "overseas theater of choice" enlistment contract. Since some men would undoubtedly refuse to serve anywhere but Europe, the Air staff reasoned, why not offer a discharge to all men who preferred separation over service elsewhere?

Again the Army staff turned down a request for a reduction in black troops. This time the Air Forces bowed to the inevitable—15 percent of its enlisted strength black—but grudgingly, for a quota of 50,419 Negroes, General Spaatz charged, "seriously jeopardizes the ability of the AAF to perform its assigned mission."[7-21]

The Army Service Forces also objected. When queried,[7-22] the chiefs of its technical and administrative services all agreed they could use only small percentages of black troops, and only those men in the higher categories of the classification test. From the replies of the chiefs it was plain that none of the technical services planned to use Negroes in as much as 10 percent of spaces, and several wanted to exclude black units altogether. Furthermore, the test qualifications they wanted set for many jobs were consistently higher than those achieved by the men then performing the tasks. The staff of the Army Service Forces went so far as to advocate that no more than 3.29 percent of the overhead and miscellaneous positions in the Army Service Forces be entrusted to black troops.[7-23]

These answers failed to impress the War Department's Director of Personnel and Administration and the Director of Organization and Training.[7-24] Both agreed that the technical and administrative services had failed to appreciate the problems and responsibilities outlined in War Department Circular 124; the assumption that black troops would not be used in certain types of duty in the future because they had not been so used in the past was unwarranted, General Paul added. Limited or token employment of Negroes, he declared, was no longer acceptable.[7-25]

Yet somehow the reality of black enlistments and inductions in 1946 never quite matched the Army's dire predictions. According to plans for 1 April 1946, Negroes in the continental United States would comprise 15.2 percent of the Army Service Forces, 15.4 percent of the Army Ground Forces, and 17 percent of the Army Air Forces. Actually, Negroes in continental commands on 30 April 1946 made up 14.86 percent of the Army Service Forces, 5.62 percent of the Army Ground Forces, and 11.86 percent of the Army Air Forces. The 116,752 black soldiers amounted to 12.35 percent of all troops based in the United States; overseas, the 67,372 Negroes constituted 7.73 percent of American force. Altogether, the 184,124 Negroes in the Army amounted to 10.14 percent of the whole.[7-26]

The Quota in Practice

While the solution to the problem of too many black enlistees and too many low-scoring men was obvious, it was also replete with difficulty. The difficulty came from the complex way the Army obtained its manpower. It accepted volunteers for enlistment in the Regular Army and qualified veterans for the Organized Reserves; until November 1946 it also drafted men through the Selective Service and accepted volunteers for the draft.[7-27] At the same time, under certain conditions it accepted enlistment in the Regular Army of drafted men who had completed their tours. To curtail enlistment of Negroes and discharge low-scoring professionals, the Army would be obliged to manipulate the complex regulations governing the various forms of enlistment and sidestep the egalitarian provisions of the Selective Service System at a time when the service was trying to attract recruits and avoid charges of racial discrimination. Altogether it was quite a large order, and during the next two years the Army fought the battle of numbers on many fronts.

It first took on the draft. Although to stop inducting Negroes when the administration was trying to persuade Congress to extend the draft act was politically unwise, the Army saw no way to restrict the number of Negroes or eliminate substandard men so long as Selective Service insisted on 10 percent black calls and a minimum classification test score of seventy. In April 1946 the Army issued a call for 126,000 men, boldly specifying that no Negroes would be accepted. Out of the battle of memos with Selective Service that followed, a compromise emerged: a black call of 4 percent of the total in April, a return to the usual 10 percent call for Negroes in May, and another 4 percent call in June.[7-28] No draft calls were issued in July and August, but in September the Army staff tried again, canceling the call for Negroes and rejecting black volunteers for induction.[7-29] Again it encountered resistance from the Selective Service and the black community, and when the Secretary of War was sued for violation of the Selective Service Act the Army issued a 3 percent call for Negroes in October, the last call made under the 1940 draft law. In all, 16,888 Negroes were drafted into the Army in 1946, some 10.5 percent of the total.[7-30]

The Army had more success restricting black enlistments. In April 1946, at the same time it adopted the Gillem Board recommendations, the Army began to deny enlistment or reenlistment in the Regular Army to anyone scoring below seventy on the Army General Classification Test. The only exceptions were men who had been decorated for valor and men with previous service who had scored sixty-five and were recommended for reenlistment by their commanders.[7-31] The Army also stopped enlisting men with active venereal disease, not because the Medical Department was unable to cure them but because by and large their educational levels were low and, according to the classification tests, they had little aptitude for learning. The Army stopped recruiting men for special stations, hoping a denial of the European theater and other attractive assignments would lower the number of unwanted recruits.

Using the new enlistment standards as a base, the Army quickly revised its estimated black strength downward. On 16 April 1946 the Secretary of War rescinded the order requiring major commands to retain a black strength of 15 percent.[7-32] The acting G-3 had already informed the commanding general of the Army Air Forces of the predicted drop in the number of black troops—from 13.3 percent in June 1946 to 10 percent a year later—and agreed the Army Air Forces could reduce its planned intake accordingly.[7-33] Estimating the European theater's capacity to absorb black troops at 21,845 men, approximately 10 percent of the command total, the Army staff agreed to readjust its planned allotment of Negroes to that command downward by some 1,500 spaces.[7-34]

These changes proved ill-advised, for the effort to curb the number of Negroes in the Regular Army was largely unsuccessful. The staff had overlooked the ineffectiveness of the Army's testing measures and the zeal of its recruiters who, pressed to fill their quotas, accepted enlistees without concern for the new standards. By mid-June the effect was readily apparent. The European theater, for example, reported some 19,000 Negroes in excess of billets in black units and some 2,000 men above the theater's current allotment of black troops. Assignment of Negroes to Europe had been stopped, but the number of black regulars waiting for overseas assignment stood at 5,000, a figure expected to double by the end of the summer. Some of this excess could be absorbed in eight newly created black units, but that still left black units worldwide 18 to 40 percent overstrength.[7-35]

Marcus Ray

Notice that Negroes totaled 16 percent of the Regular Army on 1 July 1946 with the personnel staff's projections running to a 24 percent level for the next year precipitated action in the War Department. On 15 July Marcus Ray and Dean Rusk, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of War, met with representatives of the Army staff to discuss black strength. Basing his decision on the consensus of that meeting, the Secretary of War on 17 July suspended enlistment of Negroes in the Regular Army. He excepted two categories of men from this ruling. Men who qualified and had actually served for six months in any of forty-eight unusual military occupational specialties in which there were chronic manpower shortages would be enlisted without promise of specific assignment to branch or station. At the same time, because of manpower shortages, the Army would continue to accept Negroes, already regulars, who wanted to reenlist.[7-36]

While the new enlistment policy would help restore the Gillem Board's quantitative equilibrium to the Army, the secretary's exception allowing reenlistment of regulars would only intensify the qualitative imbalance between black and white soldiers. The nation's biracial educational system had produced an average black soldier who scored well below the average white soldier on all the Army's educational and training tests. The segregation policy had only complicated the problem by denying the talented Negro the full range of Army occupations and hence an equal chance for advancement. With the suspension of first-time enlistments, the qualitative imbalance was sure to grow, for now the highly qualified civilian would be passed over while the less qualified soldier was permitted to reenlist.

This imbalance was of particular concern to Marcus Ray who was present when the suspension of black enlistments had been decided upon. Ray had suggested that instead of barring all new enlistees the Army should discharge all Class V soldiers, whites and blacks alike, for the convenience of the government and recruit in their place an equal number of Class I and II candidates. Manpower officials had objected, arguing there was no point in enlisting more Negroes in Class I and II until the 10 percent ratio was again reached. Such a reduction, with current attrition, would take two years. At the same time, the Army manpower shortages made it impractical to discharge 92,000 soldiers, half of whom were white, in Class V. The organization and training representatives, on the other hand, agreed with Ray that it was in the best interest of the Army to discharge these men, pointing out that a recent increase in pay for enlisted men together with the continuing need for recruits with greater aptitude for learning would make the policy palatable to the Congress and the public.[7-37]

The conferees deferred decision on the matter, but during the following months the War Department set out to achieve a qualitative balance between its black and white recruits. On 10 August 1946 the Chief of Staff directed commanders, under the authority of Army Regulation 615-369 which defined ineptness for military service, to eliminate after six months men "incapable of serving in the Army in a desirable manner after reasonable attempts have been made to utilize their capabilities." He went on to explain that this category included those not mentally qualified, generally defined as men scoring below seventy, and those repeatedly guilty of minor offenses.[7-38] The Army reissued the order in 1947, further defining the criteria for discharge to include those who needed continued and special instruction or supervision or who exhibited habitual drunkenness, ineptness, or inability to conform to group living. A further modification in 1949 would deny reenlistment to married men who had failed during their first enlistment to make corporal or single men who did not make private first class.[7-39]

The measures were aimed at eliminating the least qualified men of both races, and in October 1946 General Paul decided the Army could now begin taking black recruits with the qualifications and background that allowed them "to become useful members of the Army."[7-40] To that end The Adjutant General announced on 2 October that as a further exception to the prohibition against black enlistments in the Regular Army all former officers and noncommissioned officers who volunteered would be accepted without limitation.[7-41] On 31 October he announced the establishment of a selective procurement program. With the exception of men who had been in certain specialized occupations for six months, all Negroes enlisting in the Regular Army had to score one hundred on the Army General Classification Test; the minimum score for white enlistees remained seventy.[7-42] At the same time, The Adjutant General rescinded for Negroes the choice-of-assignment provision of Regular Army enlistment contracts.

These measures helped lower the percentage of Negroes in the Army and reduced to some extent the differential in test scores between white and black soldiers. The percentage of Negroes dropped by 30 June 1947 to 7.91 percent of the Army, 8.99 percent of its enlisted strength and 9.4 percent of its Regular Army strength. Black enlisted strength of all the overseas commands stood at 8.75 percent, down from the 10.77 percent of the previous December. Percentages in the individual theaters reflected this trend; the European theater, for example, dropped from 10.33 percent black to 9.96, the Mediterranean theater from 10.05 to 8.03, and Alaska from 26.6 to 14.54.[7-43]

Precise figures on the number of poorly qualified troops eliminated are unknown, but the European command expected to discharge some 12,000 low-scoring and unsuitable men, many of them black, in 1947.[7-44] Several commands reported that the new regulations materially improved the quality of black units by opening vacancies to better qualified men. General Paul could argue with considerable justification that in regulating the quality of its recruits the Army was following the spirit if not the letter of the Gillem Board Report. If the Army could set high enough standards it would get good men, and to this end the General Staff's Personnel and Administration Division asked for the support of commanders.[7-45]

Although these measures were helpful to the Army, they were frankly discriminatory, and they immediately raised a storm of protest. During the summer of 1946, for example, many black soldiers and airmen complained about the Army's rejection of black enlistments for the European theater. The NAACP, which received some of the soldiers' complaints, suggested that the War Department honor its pledges or immediately release all Negroes who were refused their choice of location.[7-46] The Army did just that, offering to discharge honorably those soldiers who, denied their theater of choice, rejected any substitute offered.[7-47]

Later in 1946 a young Negro sued the Secretary of War and a Pittsburgh recruiting officer for refusing to enlist him. To make standards for black applicants substantially higher than those for whites, he alleged, violated the Preamble and Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, while the inducements offered for enlistment, for example the GI Bill of Rights, constituted a valuable property right denied him because of race. The suit asked that all further enlistments in the Army be stopped until Negroes were accepted on equal terms with whites and all special enlistment requirements for Negroes were abolished.[7-48] Commenting on the case, the chief of the War Department's Public Relations Division, Maj. Gen. Floyd L. Parks, defended the Gillem Board's 10 percent quota, but agreed that "we are on weak ground [in] having a different standard for admission between white and colored.... I think the thing to do is to put a ceiling over the number you take in, and then take the best ones."[7-49]

The suit brought to a climax the feeling of indignation against Army policy that had been growing among some civil rights activists. One organization called on the Secretary of War to abandon the Gillem Board policy "and unequivocably and equitably integrate Negroes ... without any discrimination, segregation or quotas in any form, concept or manner."[7-50] Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., of Wisconsin called the decision to suspend black enlistments race discrimination.[7-51] Walter P. Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers and the codirector of his union's Fair Practices Department, branded the establishment of a quota "undemocratic and in violation of principles for which they [Negroes] fought in the war" and demanded that black enlistment be reinstated and the quota abolished.[7-52] Invoking American tradition and the United Nations Charter, John Haynes Holmes, chairman of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, called for the abolition of enlistment quotas. The national commander of the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America announced that his organization unreservedly condemned the quota because it deliberately deprived citizens of their constitutional right to serve their country.[7-53]

The replies of the Secretary of War to all these protests were very much alike. The Army's enlistment practices, he wrote, were based on a belief that black strength in the Army ought to bear a direct relationship to the percentage of Negroes in the population. As for the basic premise of what seemed to him a perfectly logical course of action, Patterson concluded that "acceptance of the Negro-white ratio existing in the civilian population as a basis for the Army's distribution of units and personnel is not considered discriminatory."[7-54] The secretary's responses were interesting, for they demonstrated a significant change in the Army's attitude toward the quota. There is evidence that the quota was devised by the Gillem Board as a temporary expedient to guarantee the substantial participation of Negroes. It was certainly so viewed by civil rights advocates. As late as December 1946 Assistant Secretary Petersen was still echoing this view when he explained that the quota was a temporary ceiling and the Army had no right to use it as a permanent bar to black enlistment.[7-55]

Nevertheless it is also clear that the traditionalists considered the quota a means of permanently limiting black soldiers to a percentage equivalent to Negroes in the population. Assistant Secretary McCloy belonged to neither group. More than a year before in reviewing the Gillem Board's work he had declared: "I do not see any place for a quota in a policy that looks to utilization of Negroes on the basis of ability."

After a year of dealing with black overstrengths and juggling enlistment standards, General Paul and his staff thought otherwise. They believed that a ceiling must be imposed on the Army's black strength if a rapid and uncontrolled increase in the number of black troops was to be avoided. And it had to be avoided, they believed, lest it create a disproportionately large pool of black career soldiers with low aptitudes that would weaken the Army. Using the quota to limit the number of black troops, they maintained, was not necessarily discriminatory. It could be defended as a logical reading of the Gillem Board's declaration that "the proportion of Negro to white manpower as exists in the civil population" should be accepted in the peacetime Army to insure an orderly and uniform mobilization in a national emergency. With the Gillem policy to support it, the Army staff could impose a strict quota on the number of black soldiers and justify different enlistment standards for blacks and whites, a course that was in fact the only alternative to the curtailment of white enlistment under the manpower restrictions being imposed upon the postwar Army.[7-56]

Paul's reasoning was eventually endorsed by the new Chief of Staff, General Omar N. Bradley, Secretary Patterson, and his successor, Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall.[7-57] Beginning in mid-1947 the enlistment of Negroes was carefully geared to their percentage of the total strength of the Army, not to a fixed quota or percentage of those enlisting. This limitation on black enlistment was made more permanent in 1949 when it was included in the Army's mobilization plan, the basic manpower planning document.[7-58]

The adjustment of enlistment quotas to increase or curtail black strength quickly became routine in the Army. When the number of Negroes dropped below 10 percent of the Army's total strength in June 1947, The Adjutant General set a quota for the enlistment of black soldiers.[7-59] When this quota was met in late August, the enlistment of Negroes with no special training was reduced to 500 men per month.[7-60] As part of a Personnel and Administration Division program to increase the number and kinds of black units, the quota was temporarily increased to 3,000 men per month for four months beginning in December 1947.[7-61] Finding itself once again exceeding the 10 percent black strength figure, the Army suspended the enlistment of all Negroes for nine months beginning in April 1949.[7-62]

In effect, the Gillem Board's critics who predicted that the quota would become permanent were correct, but the quota was only the most publicized manifestation of the general scheme of apportioning manpower by race throughout the Army. General Paul had offered one solution to the problem in July 1946. He recommended that each major command and service be allocated its proportionate share of black troops; that such troops "have the over-all average frequency of AGCT grades occurring among Negro military personnel"; and that major commands and services submit plans for establishing enough units and overhead positions to accommodate their total allocations.[7-63] But Paul did not anticipate the low-scoring soldier's penchant for reenlistment or the ability of some commanders, often on the basis of this fact, to justify the rejection of further black allotments. Thus, in pursuit of a racial policy designed to promote the efficient use of manpower, the G-1 and G-3 sections of the General Staff wrestled for almost five years with the problem of racial balances in the various commands, continental armies, and training programs.

Broader Opportunities

The equitable distribution of Negroes throughout each major command and service was complicated by certain provisions of Circular 124. Along with the quota, the policy prescribed grouping black units, not to exceed regimental size, with white units in composite organizations and integrating black specialists in overhead organizations. The composite organizations were primarily the concern of the G-3 (later the Organization and Training Division) section of the General Staff, and in June 1946 its director, Lt. Gen. Charles P. Hall, brought the matter to the attention of major commanders. Although the War Department did not want to establish an arbitrary number of black combat units, Hall explained, the new policy stressed the development of such units to provide a broader base for future expansion, and he wanted more black combat units organized as rapidly as trained troops became available. To that end he called for a survey of all black units to find out their current organization and assignment.[7-64]

Army Ground Forces reported that it had formed some composite units, but its largest black unit, the 25th Regimental Combat Team, had been attached to the V Corps at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, instead of being made an organic element in a division. Practically all service group headquarters reported separate black and white battalions under their control, but many of the organizations in the Army Service Forces—those under the Provost Marshal General and the Surgeon General, for example—still had no black units, let alone composite organizations. The Caribbean Defense Command, the Trinidad Base Command, and the Headquarters Base Command of the Antilles Department reported similar situations. The Mediterranean theater was using some Negroes with special skills in appropriate overhead organizations, but in the vast European Command Negroes were assigned to separate regiments and smaller units. There were two exceptions: one provisional black regiment was attached to the 1st Infantry Division, and a black field artillery battalion was attached to each of the three occupation divisions. The Alaskan Department and the Okinawa Base Command had black units, both separate and grouped with white units, but the Yokohama Base Command continued to use specially skilled Negroes in black units because of the great demand for qualified persons in those units.[7-65]

To claim, as Hall did to Assistant Secretary Petersen, that black units were being used like white units was misleading. Despite the examples cited in the survey, many black units still remained independent organizations, and with one major exception black combat units grouped with white units were attached rather than assigned as organizational elements of a parent unit. This was an important distinction.[7-66] The constant imposition of attached status on a unit that under normal circumstances would be assigned as an organic element of a division introduced a sense of impermanence and alienation just as it relieved the division commander of considerable administrative control and hence proprietary interest in the unit.

Attached status, so common for black units, thus weakened morale and hampered training as Petersen well understood. Noting the favorable attitude of the division commander, he had asked in April 1946 if it was possible to assign the black 555th Parachute Battalion to the celebrated 82d Airborne Division.[7-67] The answer was no. The commanding general of the Army Ground Forces, General Devers, justified attachment rather than assignment of the black battalion to the 82d on the grounds that the Army's race policy called for the progressive adoption of the composite unit and attachment was a part of this process. Assignment of such units was, on the other hand, part of a long-range plan to put the new policy into effect and should still be subject to considerable study. Further justifying the status quo, he pointed to the division's low strength, which he said resulted from a lack of volunteers. Offering his own variation of the "Catch-22" theme, he suggested that before any black battalion was assigned to a large combat unit, the effect of such an assignment on the larger unit's combat efficiency would first have to be studied. Finally, he questioned the desirability of having a black unit assume the history of a white unit; evidently he did not realize that the intention was to assign a black unit with its black history to the division.[7-68]

General Eichelberger, Eighth Army Commander,
inspects 24th Infantry troops, Camp Majestic, Japan, June 1947.

In the face of such arguments Hall accepted what he called the "nonfeasibility" of replacing one of the 82d's organic battalions with the 555th, but he asked whether an additional parachute battalion could be authorized for the division so that the 555th could be assigned without eliminating a white battalion. He reiterated the arguments for such an assignment, adding that it would invigorate the 555th's training, attract more and better black recruits, and better implement the provisions of Circular 124.[7-69] General Devers remained unconvinced. He doubted that assigning the black battalion to the division would improve the battalion's training, and he was "unalterably opposed" to adding an extra battalion. He found the idea unsound from both a tactical and organizational point of view. It was, he said, undesirable to reorganize a division solely to assign a black unit.[7-70]

General Hall gave up the argument, and the 555th remained attached to the 82d. Attached status would remain the general pattern for black combat units for several years.[7-71] The assignment of the 24th Infantry to the 25th Infantry Division in Japan was the major exception to this rule, but the 24th was the only black regiment left intact, and it was administratively difficult to leave such a large organization in attached status for long. The other black regiment on active duty, the 25th Infantry, was split; its battalions, still carrying their unit designations, were attached to various divisions to replace inactive or unfilled organic elements. The 9th and 10th Cavalry, the other major black units, were inactivated along with the 2d Cavalry Division in 1944, but reactivated in 1950 as separate tank battalions.

That this distinction between attached and assigned status was considered important became clear in the fall of 1947. At that time the personnel organization suggested that the word "separate" be deleted from a sentence of Circular 124: "Employment will be in Negro regiments or groups, separate battalions or squadrons, and separate companies, troops, or batteries." General Paul reasoned that the word was redundant since a black unit was by definition a separate unit. General Devers was strongly opposed to deletion on grounds that it would lead to the indiscriminate organization of small black units within larger units. He argued that the Gillem Board had provided for black units as part of larger units, but not as organic parts. He believed that a separate black unit should continue to be attached when it replaced a white unit; otherwise it would lose its identity by becoming an organic part of a mixed unit. Larger considerations seem also to have influenced his conclusion: "Our implementation of the Negro problem has not progressed to the degree where we can accept this step. We have already progressed beyond that which is acceptable in many states and we still have a considerable latitude in the present policy without further liberalizing it from the Negro viewpoint."[7-72] The Chief of Staff supported Paul's view, however, and the word "separate" was excised.[7-73]

But the practice of attaching rather than assigning black units continued until the end of 1949. Only then, and increasingly during 1950, did the Army begin to assign a number of black units as organic parts of combat divisions. More noteworthy, Negroes began to be assigned to fill the spaces in parts of white units. Thus the 3d Battalion of the 9th Infantry and the 3d Battalion of the 188th became black units in 1950.

Despite the emergence of racially composite units, the Army's execution of the Gillem Board recommendation on the integration of black and white units was criticized by black leaders. The board had placed no limitation on the size of the units to be integrated, and its call for progressive steps to utilize black manpower implied to many that the process of forming composite black and white units would continue till it included the smaller service units, which still contained the majority of black troops. It was one thing, the Army staff concluded, to assign a self-sustaining black battalion to a division, but quite another to assign a small black service unit in a similar fashion. As a spokesman for the Personnel and Administration Division put it in a 1946 address, the Army was "not now ready to mix Negro and white personnel in the same company or battery, for messing and housing." Ignoring the Navy's experience to the contrary, he concluded that to do so might provoke serious opposition from the men in the ranks and from the American public.[7-74]

Accordingly, G-1 and G-3 agreed to reject the Mediterranean theater's 1946 plan to organize composite service units in the 88th Infantry Division because such organization "involves the integration of Negro platoons or Negro sections into white companies, a combination which is not in accordance with the policy as expressed in Circular 124."[7-75] In the separate case of black service companies—for example, the many transportation truck companies and ordnance evacuation companies—theater commanders tended to combine them first into quartermaster trains and then attach them to their combat divisions.[7-76]

Despite the relaxation in the distinction between attached and assigned status in the case of large black units, the Army staff remained adamantly opposed to the combination of small black with small white units. The Personnel and Administration Division jealously guarded the orthodoxy of this interpretation. Commenting on one proposal to combine small units in April 1948, General Paul noted that while grouping units of company size or greater was permissible, the Army had not yet reached the stage where two white companies and two black companies could be organized into a single battalion. Until the process of forming racially composite units developed to this extent, he told the Under Secretary of the Army, William H. Draper, Jr., the experimental mixing of small black and white units had no place in the program to expand the use of Negroes in the Army.[7-77] He did not say when such a process would become appropriate or possible. Several months later Paul flatly told the Chief of Staff that integration of black and white platoons in a company was precluded by stated Army policy.[7-78]

Assignments

The organization of black units was primarily the concern of the Organization and Training Division; the Personnel and Administration Division's major emphasis was on finding more jobs for black soldiers in keeping with the Gillem Board's call for the use of Negroes on a broader professional scale. This could best be done, Paul decided, by creating new black units in a variety of specialties and by using more Negroes in overhead spaces in unit headquarters where black specialists would be completely interspersed with white. To that end his office prepared plans in November 1946 listing numerous occupational specialties that might be offered black recruits. It also outlined in considerable detail a proposal for converting several organizations to black units, including a field artillery (155-mm. howitzer) battalion, a tank company, a chemical mortar company, and an ordnance heavy automotive maintenance company. These units would be considered experimental in the sense that the men would be specially selected and distributed in terms of ability. The officers, Negroes insofar as practical, and cadre noncommissioned officers would be specially assigned. Morale and learning ability would be carefully monitored, and special training would be given men with below average AGCT scores. At the end of six months, these organizations would be measured against comparable white units. Mindful of the controversial aspects of his plan, Paul had a draft circulated among the major commands and services.[7-79]

The Army Ground Forces, first to answer, concentrated on Paul's proposal for experimental black units. Maj. Gen. Charles L. Bolte, speaking for the commanding general, reported that in July 1946 the command had begun a training experiment to determine the most effective assignments for black enlisted men in the combat arms. Because of troop reductions and the policy of discharging individuals with low test scores, he said, the experiment had lasted only five weeks. Five weeks was apparently long enough, however, for Brig. Gen. Benjamin F. Caffey, commander of the 25th Regimental Combat Team (Provisional), to reach some rather startling conclusions. He discovered that the black soldier possessed an untrained and undisciplined mind and lacked confidence and pride in himself. In the past the Negro had been unable to summon the physical courage and stamina needed to withstand the shocks of modern battle. Integrating individual Negroes or small black units into white organizations would therefore only lower the standard of efficiency of the entire command. He discounted the integration after the Battle of the Bulge, saying that it succeeded only because it came at the end of the war and during pursuit action. "It still remains a moot question," Caffey concluded, "as to whether the Negroes in integrated units would have fought in a tough attack or defensive battle." Curiously enough he went on to say that until Negroes reached the educational level of whites, they should be organized into small combat units—battalions and smaller—and attached to white organizations in order to learn the proper standards of military discipline, conduct, administration, and training. Despite its unfavorable opinion of experimental black units, the Army Ground Forces did not reject the whole proposal outright but asked for a postponement of six months until its own reorganization, required by the War Department, was completed.[7-80]

The other forces also rejected the idea of experimental black units. General Spaatz once again declared that the mission of the Army Air Forces was already seriously hampered by budgetary and manpower limitations and experimentation would only sacrifice time, money, manpower, and training urgently needed by the Army Air Forces to fulfill its primary mission. He believed, moreover, that such an experiment would be weighted in favor of Negroes since comparisons would be drawn between specially selected and trained black units and average white units.[7-81] In a similar vein the Director of Organization and Training, General Hall, found the conversion "undesirable at this time." He also concluded that the problem was not limited to training difficulties but involved a "combination of factors" and could be solved through the application of common sense by the local commander.[7-82] The Chiefs of Ordnance and the Chemical Corps, the technical services involved in the proposed experiment, concurred in the plan but added that they had no Negroes available for the designated units.[7-83]

In the face of this strong opposition, Paul set aside his plan to establish experimental black units and concentrated instead on the use of Negroes in overhead positions. On 10 January 1947 he drew up for the Chief of Staff's office a list of 112 military occupational specialties most commonly needed in overhead installations, including skilled jobs in the Signal, Ordnance, Transportation, Medical, and Finance Corps from which Negroes had been excluded. He called for an immediate survey of the Army commands to determine specialties to which Negroes might be assigned, the number of Negroes that could be used in each, and the number of Negroes already qualified and available for immediate assignment. Depending on the answers to this survey, he proposed that commanders assign immediately to overhead jobs those Negroes qualified by school training, and open the pertinent specialist courses to Negroes. Black quotas for the courses would be increased, not only for recruits completing basic training, who would be earmarked for assignment to overhead spaces, but also for men already assigned to units, who would be returned to their units for such assignments upon completion of their courses. Negroes thus assigned would perform the same duties as whites alongside them, but they would be billeted and messed in separate detachments or attached to existing black units for quarters and food.[7-84]

This proposal also met with some opposition. General Spaatz, for example, objected on the same grounds he had used against experimental black units. Forcing the military development of persons on the basis of color, General Ira C. Eaker, the deputy commander of Army Air Forces, argued, was detrimental to the organization as a whole. Spaatz added that it was desirable and necessary to select individual men on the basis of their potential contribution to the service rather than in response to such criteria as race.[7-85]

The Acting Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Henry I. Hodes, objected to the timing of the Paul proposal since it would require action by field commanders during a period when continuing mass demobilization and severe budget limitations were already causing rapid and frequent adjustments, especially in overhead installations. He also felt that sending men to school would disrupt unit activities; altogether too many men would be assigned to overhead jobs, particularly during the period when Negroes were receiving training. Finally, he believed that Paul's directive was too detailed. He doubted that it was workable because it centralized power in Washington.[7-86]

General Paul disagreed. The major flow of manpower, he maintained, was going to domestic rather than overseas installations. A relatively small shift of manpower was contemplated in his plan and would therefore cause little dislocation. The plan would provide commanders with the trained men they had been asking for. School training inevitably required men to be temporarily absent from their units, but, since commanders always complained about the scarcity of trained Negroes, Paul predicted that they would accept a temporary inconvenience in order to have their men school trained. The Gillem Board policy had been in effect for nine months, and "no material implementation by field commanders has as yet come to the attention of the division." If any changes were to be accomplished, Paul declared, "a specific directive must be issued." Since the Chief of Staff had charged the Personnel and Administration Division with implementing Gillem Board policy and since that policy expressly directed the use of Negroes in overhead positions, it seemed to Paul "inconceivable that any proposition ... designed to improve the caliber of any of their Negro personnel would be unworkable in the sense of creating a personnel shortage." He again recommended that the directive be approved and released to the public to "further the spirit and recommendations of the Gillem Board Report."[7-87]

His superiors did not agree. Instead of a directive, General Hodes ordered yet another survey to determine whether commanders were actually complying with Circular 124. He wanted all commands to itemize all the occupation specialties of major importance that contained black troops in overhead spaces.[7-88] Needless to say, the survey added little to the Army's knowledge of its racial problems. Most commanders reported full compliance with the circular and had no further recommendations.

With rare exceptions their statistics proved their claims specious. The Far East Command, for example, reported no Negroes in overhead spaces, although General MacArthur planned to incorporate about 400 Negroes into the bulk overhead units in Japan in July 1947. He reported that he would assign Negroes to overhead positions when qualified men could be spared. For the present they were needed in black units.[7-89] Other commands produced similar statistics. The Mediterranean theater, 8 percent black, had only four Negroes in 2,700 overhead spaces, a decrease over the previous year, because, as its commander explained, a shortage of skilled technicians and noncommissioned officers in black units meant that none could be spared. More than 20 percent black, the Alaskan Department had no Negroes in overhead spaces. In Europe, on the other hand, some 2,125 overhead spaces, 18.5 percent of the total, were filled by Negroes.[7-90]

Although Negroes held some 7 percent of all overhead positions in the field services, the picture was far from clear. More than 8 percent of the Army Air Forces' 105,000 overhead spaces, for example, were filled by Negroes, but the Army Ground Forces used only 473 Negroes, who occupied 5 percent of its overhead spaces. In the continental armies almost 14,000 Negroes were assigned to overhead, 13.35 percent of the total of such spaces—a more than equitable figure. Yet most were cooks, bakers, truck drivers, and the like; all finance clerks, motion picture projectionists, and personnel assistants were white. In the field commands the use of Negroes in Signal, Ordnance, Transportation, Medical, and Finance overhead spaces was at a minimum, although figures varied from one command to the other. The Transportation Corps, more than 23 percent black, used almost 25 percent of its Negroes in overhead; the Chemical Corps, 28 percent black, used more than 30 percent of its Negroes in overhead. At the same time virtually all skilled military occupational specialties were closed to Negroes in the Signal Corps, and the Chief of Finance stated flatly: "It is considered impractical to have negro overhead assigned to these [field] activities and none are utilized."[7-91]

The survey attested to a dismal lack of progress in the development of specialist training for Negroes. Although all the commanders of the zone of interior armies reported that Negroes had equal opportunity with whites to attend Army schools, in fact more than half of all the Army's courses were not open to black soldiers regardless of their qualifications. The Ordnance Department, for example, declared that all its technical courses were open to qualified Negroes, but as late as November 1947 the Ordnance School in Atlanta, Georgia, had openings for 440 whites but none for blacks.

Ironically, the results of the Hodes survey were announced just four days short of Circular 124's first birthday. Along with the other surveys and directives of the past year, it demonstrated that in several important particulars the Gillem Board's recommendations were being only partially and indifferently followed. Obviously, some way must be found to dispel the atmosphere of indifference, and in some quarters hostility, that now enveloped Circular 124.

A New Approach

A new approach was possible mainly because General Paul and his staff had amassed considerable experience during the past year in how to use black troops. They had come to understand that the problems inherent in broadening the employment of black soldiers—the procurement of desirable black recruits, their training, especially school training for military occupational specialties, and their eventual placement in spaces that used that training—were interrelated and that progress in one of these areas was impossible without advances in the other two. In November 1947 the Personnel and Administration Division decided to push for a modest step-by-step increase in the number of jobs open to Negroes, using this increase to justify an expansion of school quotas for Negroes and a special recruitment program.

It was a good time for such an initiative, for the Army was in the midst of an important reorganization of its program for specialist training. On 9 May 1947 the War Department had introduced a Career Guidance Program for managing the careers of enlisted men. To help each soldier develop his maximum potential and provide the most equitable system for promotions, it divided all Army jobs into several career fields—two, for example, were infantry and food service—and established certain job progressions, or ladders, within each field. An enlisted man could move up the ladder in his career field to increased responsibility and higher rank as he completed school courses, gained experience, and passed examinations.[7-92]

General Paul wanted to take advantage of this unusually fluid situation. He could point out that black soldiers must be included in the new program, but how was he to fit them in? Black units lacked the diverse jobs open to whites, and as a result Negroes were clustered in a relatively small number of military specialties with few career fields open to them. Moreover, some 111 of the Army's 124 listed school courses required an Army General Classification Test score of ninety for admission, and the Personnel and Administration Division discovered that 72 percent of Negroes enlisted between April 1946 and March 1947 as compared to 29 percent of whites scored below that minimum. Excluded from schools, these men would find it difficult to move up the career ladders.[7-93]

Concerned that the new career program would discriminate against black soldiers, Paul could not, however, agree with the solution suggested by Roy K. Davenport, an Army manpower expert. On the basis of a detailed study that he and a representative of the Personnel and Administration Division conducted on Negroes in the career program, Davenport concluded that despite significant improvement in the quality of black recruits in recent months more than half the black enlisted men would still fail to qualify for the schooling demanded in the new program. He wanted the Army to consider dropping the test score requirement for school admission and substituting a "composite of variables," including length of service in a military occupation and special performance ratings. Such a system, he pointed out, would insure the most capable in terms of performance would be given opportunities for schooling and would eliminate the racial differential in career opportunity. It was equally important, Davenport thought, to broaden arbitrarily the list of occupational specialties, open all school courses to Negroes, and increase the black quotas for courses already open to them.[7-94]

Mindful of the strong opposition to his recent attempts to train Negroes for new overhead assignments, General Paul did not see how occupational specialties could be increased until new units or converted white ones were formed, or, for that matter, how school quotas could be increased unless positions for Negroes existed to justify the training. He believed that the Army should first widen the employment of black units and individuals in overhead spaces, and then follow up with increased school quotas and special recruitment. Paul had already learned from recent surveys that the number of available overhead positions would allow only a modest increase in the number of specialized jobs available to Negroes; any significant increase would require the creation of new black units. Given the limitations on organized units, any increase would be at the expense of white units.

The Organization and Training Division had the right to decide which units would be white and which black, and considering the strong opposition in that division to the creation of more black units, an opposition that enjoyed support from the Chief of Staff's office, Paul's efforts seemed in vain. But again an unusual opportunity presented itself when the Chief of Staff approved a reorganization of the general reserve in late 1947. It established a continentally based, mobile striking force of four divisions with supporting units. Each unit would have a well-trained core of Regular Army or other troops who might be expected to remain in the service for a considerable period of time. Manpower and budget limitations precluded a fully manned and trained general reserve, but new units for the four continental divisions, which were in varying stages of readiness, were authorized.[7-95]

Army Specialists Report for Airborne Training,
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 1948.

Here was a chance to create some black units, and Paul jumped at it. During the activation and reorganization of the units for the general reserve he persuaded the Organization and Training Division to convert nineteen white units to black: seven combat (including infantry and field artillery battalions), five combat support, and seven service units for a total of 8,000 spaces. Nine of the units were attached to general reserve divisions, including the 2d Armored, 2d Infantry, and 82d Airborne Division. The rest, nondivisional elements, were assigned to the various continental armies.[7-96]

With the spaces in hand, the Personnel and Administration Division launched a special drive in late December 1947 to secure 6,318 Negroes, 565 men per week, above the normal recruiting quotas. It called on the commanding generals of the continental armies to enlist men for three years' service in the Regular Army from among those who had previous military service, had completed high school, or had won the Bronze Star, Commendation Ribbon, or a decoration for valor, and who could make a "reasonable" score on the classification test. After basic training at Fort Dix and Fort Knox, the men would be eligible for specialized schooling and direct assignment to the newly converted units.[7-97]

The conversion of units did not expand to any great extent the range of military specialties open to Negroes because they were already serving in similarly organized units. But it did increase the number of skilled occupation slots available to them. To force a further increase in the number of school-trained Negroes, Paul asked The Adjutant General to determine how many spaces for school-trained specialists existed in the units converted from white to black and how many spaces for school-trained specialists were unfilled in black units worldwide. He wanted to increase the quotas for each school-trained specialty to insure filling all these positions.[7-98] He also arranged to increase black quotas in certain Military Police, Signal, and Medical Corps courses, and he insisted that a directive be sent to all major continental commands making mandatory the use of Negroes trained under the increased school quotas.[7-99] Moving further along these lines, Paul suggested The Adjutant General assign a black officer to study measures that might broaden the use of Negroes in the Army, increase school quotas for them, select black students properly, and assign trained black soldiers to suitable specialties.[7-100]

The Adjutant General assigned Maj. James D. Fowler, a black graduate of West Point, class of 1941, to perform all these tasks. Fowler surveyed the nineteen newly converted units and recommended that 1,134 men, approximately 20 percent of those enlisted for the special expansion of the general reserve, be trained in thirty-seven courses of instruction—an increase of 103 black spaces in these courses. Examining worldwide Army strength to determine deficiencies in school-trained specialties in black units, he recommended a total increase of 172 spaces in another thirty-seven courses. Studying the organizational tables of more than two hundred military bases, Fowler recommended that black school quotas for another eleven military occupational specialties, for which there were currently no black quotas, be set at thirty-nine spaces.

On the basis of these recommendations, the Army increased the number of courses with quotas for Negroes from 30 to 62; black quotas were increased in 14 courses; 16 others remained unchanged or their black quotas were slightly decreased. New courses were opened to Negroes in the Adjutant General's School, the airborne section of the Infantry School, and the Artillery, Armored, Engineer, Medical, Military Police, Ordnance, Quartermaster, Signal, and Transportation schools. Courses with increased quotas were in Transportation, Quartermaster, Ordnance, and Engineer schools.[7-101] The number of black soldiers in courses open to recruits quickly grew from 5 to 13.7 percent of total enrollment, and the number of courses open to Negroes rose from 30 to 48 percent of all the entry courses in the Army school system.

The Quota System: An Assessment

The conversion of nineteen units from white to black in December 1947, the procurement of 6,000 Negroes to man these units, and the increases in black quotas for the Army schools to train specialists for these and other black units worldwide marked the high point of the Army's attempt to broaden the employment of Negroes under the terms of the Gillem Board policy. As Paul well knew, the training of black troops was linked to their placement and until the great expansion of the Army in 1950 for the Korean War no other units were converted from white to black. The increase in black combat units and the spread in the range of military occupations for black troops, therefore, were never achieved as planned. The interval between wars ended just as it began with the majority of white soldiers serving in combat or administrative units and the majority of black soldiers continuing to work in service or combat support units.[7-102]

The Personnel and Organization Division made no further requests for increased school quotas for Negroes, and even those increases already approved were short-lived. As soon as the needs of the converted units were met, the school quotas for Negroes were reduced to a level sufficient to fill the replacement needs of the black units. By March 1949, spaces for black students in the replacement stream courses had declined from the 237 recommended by Major Fowler to eighty-two; the number of replacement stream courses open to Negroes fell from 48 percent of all courses offered to 19.8 percent. Fowler had expected to follow up his study of school quotas in the Military Police, Signal Corps, and Medical Corps with surveys of other schools figuring in the Career Guidance Program, but since no additional overhead positions were ever converted from white to black, no further need existed for school quota studies. The three-point study suggested by Paul to find ways to increase school quotas for Negroes was never made.

The War Department's problems with its segregation policy were only intensified by its insistence on maintaining a racial quota. Whatever the authors' intention, the quota was publicized as a guarantee of black participation. In practice it not only restricted the number of Negroes in the Army but also limited the number and variety of black units that could be formed and consequently the number and variety of jobs available to Negroes. Further, it restricted the openings for Negroes in the Army's training schools.

Bridge Players, Seaview Service Club, Tokyo, Japan, 1948

At the same time, enlistment policies combined with Selective Service regulations to make it difficult for the Army to produce from its black quota enough men with the potential to be trained in those skills required by a variety of units. Attracted by the superior economic status promised by the Army, the average black soldier continued to reenlist, thus blocking the enlistment of potential military leaders from the increasing number of educated black youths. This left the Army with a mass of black soldiers long in service but too old to fight, learn new techniques, or provide leadership for the future. Subject to charges of discrimination, the Army only fitfully and for limited periods tried to eliminate low scorers to make room for more qualified men. Yet to the extent to which it failed to attract educated Negroes and provide them with modern military skills, it failed to perform a principal function of the peacetime Army, that of preparing a cadre of leaders for future wars.

In discussing the problem of low-scoring Negroes it should be remembered that the Army General Classification Test, universally accepted in the armed services as an objective device to measure ability, has been seriously questioned by some manpower experts. Since World War II, for example, educational psychologists have learned that ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds have an important influence on performance in general testing. Davenport, who eventually became a senior manpower official in the Department of Defense has, for one, concluded that the test scores created a distorted picture of the mental ability of the black soldier. He has also questioned the fairness of the Army testing system, charging that uniform time periods were not always provided for black and white recruits taking the tests and that this injustice was only one of several inequalities of test administration that might have contributed to the substantial differences in the scores of applicants.[7-103]

The accuracy of test scores can be ignored when the subject is viewed from the perspective of manpower utilization. In the five years after World War II, the actual number of white soldiers who scored in the lowest test categories equaled or exceeded the number of black soldiers. The Army had no particular difficulty using these white soldiers to advantage, and in fact refused to discharge all Class V men in 1946. Segregation was the heart of the matter; the less gifted whites could be scattered throughout the Army but the less gifted blacks were concentrated in the segregated black units.

Reversing the coin, what could the Army do with the highly qualified black soldier? His technical skills were unneeded in the limited number and variety of black units; he was barred from white units. In an attempt to deal with this problem, the Gillem policy directed that Negroes with special skills or qualifications be employed in overhead detachments. Such employment, however, depended in great part on the willingness of commanders to use school-trained Negroes. Many of these officers complained that taking the best qualified Negroes out of black units for assignment to overhead detachments deprived black units of their leaders. Furthermore, overhead units represented so small a part of the whole that they had little effect on the Army's problem.

The racial quota also complicated the postwar reduction in Army strength. Since the strength and composition of the Army was fixed by the defense budget and military planning, the majority of new black soldiers produced by the quota could be organized into units only at the expense of white units already in existence. In light of past performance of black units and in the interests of efficiency and economy, particularly at a time of reduced operating funds and a growing cold war, how could the Army justify converting efficient white units into less capable black units? The same question applied to the formation of composite units. Grouping lower scoring black units with white units, many of the Army staff believed, would lower the efficiency of the whole and complicate the Army's relations with the civilian community. As a result, the black units remained largely separate, limited in number, and tremendously overstrength throughout the postwar period.

Some of these problems, at least, might have been solved had the Army created a special staff group to oversee the new policy, a key proposal of the Gillem Board. The Personnel and Administration Division was primarily interested in individuals, in trying to place qualified Negroes on an individual basis; the Organization and Training Division was primarily concerned with units, in trying to expand the black units to approximate the combat to service ratio of white units. These interests conflicted at times, and with no single agency possessing overriding authority, matters came to an impasse, blocking reform of Army practices. Instead, the staff played a sterile numbers game, seeking to impose a strict ratio everywhere. But it was impossible to have a 10 percent proportion of Negroes in every post, in every area, in every overseas theater; it was equally impossible to have 10 percent in every activity, in every arm and service, in every type of task. Yet wherever the Army failed to organize its black strength by quota, it was open to charges of racial discrimination.

It would be a mistake to overlook the signs of racial progress achieved under the Gillem Board policy. Because of its provisions thousands of Negroes came to serve in the postwar Regular Army, many of them in a host of new assignments and occupations. But if the policy proved a qualified success in terms of numbers, it still failed to gain equal treatment and opportunity for black soldiers, and in the end the racial quotas and diverse racial units better served those who wanted to keep a segregated Army.

CHAPTER 8

Segregation's Consequences

The Army staff had to overcome tremendous obstacles in order to carry out even a modest number of the Gillem Board's recommendations. In addition to prejudices the Army shared with much of American society and the institutional inertia that often frustrates change in so large an organization, the staff faced the problem of making efficient soldiers out of a large group of men who were for the most part seriously deficient in education, training, and motivation. To the extent that it overcame these difficulties, the Army's postwar racial policy must be judged successful and, considered in the context of the times, progressive.

Nevertheless, the Gillem Board policy was doomed from the start. Segregation was at the heart of the race problem. Justified as a means of preventing racial trouble, segregation only intensified it by concentrating the less able and poorly motivated. Segregation increased the problems of all commanders concerned and undermined the prestige of black officers. It exacerbated the feelings of the nation's largest minority toward the Army and multiplied demands for change. In the end Circular 124 was abandoned because the Army found it impossible to fight another war under a policy of racial quotas and units. But if the quota had not defeated the policy, other problems attendant on segregation would probably have been sufficient to the task.

Discipline and Morale Among Black Troops

By any measure of discipline and morale, black soldiers as a group posed a serious problem to the Army in the postwar period. The standard military indexes—serious incidents statistics, venereal disease rates, and number of courts-martial—revealed black soldiers in trouble out of all proportion to their percentage of the Army's population. When these personal infractions and crimes were added to the riots and serious racial incidents that continued to occur in the Army all over the world after the war, the dimensions of the problem became clear.

In 1945, when Negroes accounted for 8.5 percent of the Army's average strength, black prisoners entering rehabilitation centers, disciplinary barracks, and federal institutions were 17.3 percent of the Army total. In 1946, when the average black strength had risen to 9.35 percent of the Army's total, 25.9 percent of the soldiers sent to the stockade were Negroes. The following tabulation gives their percentage of all military prisoners by offense:

Source: Correction Branch, TAGO, copy in CMH.

The most common explanation offered for such statistics is that fundamental injustices drove these black servicemen to crime. Probably more to the point, most black soldiers, especially during the early postwar period, served in units burdened with many disadvantaged individuals, soldiers more likely to get into trouble given the characteristically weak leadership in these units. But another explanation for at least some of these crime statistics hinged on commanders' power to define serious offenses. In general, unit commanders had a great deal of discretion in framing the charges brought against an alleged offender; indeed, where some minor offenses were concerned officers could even conclude that a given infraction was not a serious matter at all and simply dismiss the soldier with a verbal reprimand and a warning not to repeat his offense. Whereas one commander might decide that a case called for a charge of aggravated assault, another, faced with the same set of facts, might settle for a charge of simple assault. If it is reasonable to assume that, as a part of the pattern of discrimination, Negroes accused of offenses like misconduct toward superiors, AWOL, and assault often received less generous treatment from their officers than white servicemen, then it is reasonable to suspect that statistics on Negroes involved in crime may reflect such discriminatory treatment.

The crime figures were particularly distressing to the individual black soldier, as indeed they were to his civilian counterpart, because as a member of a highly visible minority he became identified with the wrongdoing of some of his fellows, spectacularly reported in the press, while his own more typical attendance to orders and competent performance of duty were more often buried in the Army's administrative reports. In particular, Negroes among the large overseas commands suffered embarrassment. The Gillem Board policy was announced just as the Army began the occupation of Germany and Japan. As millions of veterans returned home, to be replaced in lesser numbers by volunteers, black troops began to figure prominently in the occupation forces. On 1 January 1947 the Army had 59,795 Negroes stationed overseas, 10.77 percent of the total number of overseas troops, divided principally between the two major overseas commands. By 1 March 1948, in keeping with the general reduction of forces, black strength overseas was reduced to 23,387 men, but black percentages in Europe and the Far East remained practically unchanged.[8-1] It was among these Negroes, scattered throughout Germany and Japan, that most of the disciplinary problems occurred.

During the first two years of peace, black soldiers consistently dominated the Army's serious-incident rate, a measure of indictments and accusations involving troops in crimes against persons and property. In June 1946, for example, black soldiers in the European theater were involved in serious incidents (actual and alleged) at the rate of 2.57 cases per 1,000 men. The rate among white soldiers for the same period was .79 cases per 1,000. The rate for both groups rose considerably in 1947. The figure for Negroes climbed to a yearly average of 3.94 incidents per 1,000; the figure for whites, reflecting an even greater gain, reached 1.88. These crime rates were not out of line with America's national crime rate statistics, which, based on a sample of 173 cities, averaged about 3.25 during the same period.[8-2] Nevertheless, the rate was of particular concern to the government because the majority of the civil offenses were perpetuated against German and Japanese nationals and therefore lowered the prestige and effectiveness of the occupation forces.

Less important but still a serious internal problem for the Army was a parallel rise in the incidence of venereal disease. Various reasons have been advanced for the great postwar rise in the Army's venereal disease rate. It is obvious, for example, that the rapid conversion from war to peacetime duties gave many American soldiers new leisure and freedom to engage in widespread fraternization with the civilian population. Serious economic dislocation in the conquered countries drove many citizens into a life of prostitution and crime. By the same token, the breakdown of public health services had removed a major obstacle to the spread of social disease. But whatever the reasons, a high rate of venereal disease—the overseas rate was three times greater than the rate reported for soldiers in the United States—reflected a serious breakdown in military discipline, posed a threat to the combat effectiveness of the commands, and produced lurid rumors and reports on Army morality.

As in the case of crime statistics, the rate of venereal disease for black soldiers in the overseas commands far exceeded the figure for whites. The Eighth Army, the major unit in the Far East, reported for the month of June 1946 1,263 cases of venereal disease for whites, or 139 cases per 1,000 men per year; 769 cases were reported for Negroes, or 1,186 cases per 1,000 men per year. The rates for the European Command for July 1946 stood at 806 cases per 1,000 Negroes per year as compared with 203 for white soldiers. The disease rate improved considerably during 1947 in both commands, but still the rates for black troops averaged 354 per 1,000 men per year in Eighth Army compared to 89 for whites. In Europe the rate was 663 per 1,000 men per year for Negroes compared to 172 for whites. At the same time the rate for all soldiers in the United States was 58 per 1,000 per year.[8-3] Some critics question the accuracy of these statistics, charging that more white soldiers, with informal access to medical treatment, were able to escape detection by the Medical Department's statisticians, at least in cases of more easily treated strains of venereal disease.

The court-martial rate for black soldiers serving overseas was also higher than for white soldiers. Black soldiers in Europe, for example, were court-martialed at the rate of 3.48 men per 1,000 during the third quarter of 1946 compared with a 1.14 rate for whites. A similar situation existed in the Far East where the black service units had a monthly court-martial rate nearly double the average rate of the Eighth Army as a whole.[8-4]

The disproportionate black crime and disease rates were symptomatic of a condition that also revealed itself in the racially oriented riots and disturbances that continued to plague the postwar Army. Sometimes black soldiers were merely reacting to blatant discrimination countenanced by their officers, to racial insults, and at times even to physical assaults, but nevertheless they reacted violently and in numbers. The resulting incidents prompted investigations, recriminations, and publicity.

Two such disturbances, more spectacular than the typical flare-up, and important because they influenced Army attitudes toward blacks, occurred at Army bases in the United States. The first was a mutiny at MacDill Airfield, Florida, which began on 27 October 1946 at a dance for black noncommissioned officers to which privates were denied admittance. Military police were called when a fight broke out among the black enlisted men and rapidly developed into a belligerent demonstration by a crowd that soon reached mob proportions. Police fire was answered by members of the mob and one policeman and one rioter were wounded. Urged on by its ringleaders, the mob then overwhelmed the main gate area and disarmed the sentries. The rioters retained control of the area until early the next day, when the commanding general persuaded them to disband. Eleven Negroes were charged with mutiny.[8-5] A second incident, a riot with strong racial overtones, occurred at Fort Leavenworth in May 1947 following an altercation between white and black prisoners in the Army Disciplinary Barracks. The rioting, caused by allegations of favoritism accorded to prisoners, lasted for two days; one man was killed and six were injured.[8-6]

Disturbances in overseas commands, although less serious, were of deep concern to the Army because of the international complications. In April 1946, for example, soldiers of the 449th Signal Construction Detachment threw stones at two French officers who were driving through the village of Weyersbusch in the Rhine Palatinate. The officers, one of them injured, returned to the village with French MP's and requested an explanation of the incident. They were quickly surrounded by about thirty armed Negroes of the detachment who, according to the French, acted in an aggressive and menacing manner. As a result, the Supreme French Commander in Germany requested his American counterpart to remove all black troops from the French zone. The U.S. commander in Europe, General Joseph T. McNarney, investigated the incident, court-martialed its instigators, and transferred the entire detachment out of the French zone. At the same time his staff explained to the French that to prohibit the stationing of Negroes in the area would be discriminatory and contrary to Army policy. Black specialists continued to operate in the French zone, although none were subsequently stationed there permanently.[8-7]

The Far East Command also suffered racial incidents. The Eighth Army reported in 1946 that "racial agitation" was one of the primary causes of assault, the most frequent violent crime among American troops in Japan. This racial agitation was usually limited to the American community, however, and seldom involved the civilian population.[8-8]

The task of maintaining a biracial Army overseas in peacetime was marked with embarrassing incidents and time-consuming investigations. The Army was constantly hearing about its racial problems overseas and getting no end of advice. For example, in May 1946 Louis Lautier, chief of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association news service, informed the Assistant Secretary of War that fifty-five of the seventy American soldiers executed for crimes in the European theater were black. Most were category IV and V men. "In light of this fact," Lautier charged, "the blame for the comparatively high rate of crime among black soldiers belongs to the American educational system."[8-9]

But when a delegation of publishers from Lautier's organization toured European installations during the same period, the members took a more comprehensive look at the Seventh Army's race problems. They told Secretary Patterson that they found all American soldiers reacting similarly to poor leadership, substandard living conditions, and menial occupations whenever such conditions existed. Although they professed to see no difference in the conduct of white and black troops, they went on to list factors that contributed to the bad conduct of some of the black troops including the dearth of black officers, hostility of military police, inadequate recreation, and poor camp location. They also pointed out that many soldiers in the occupation had been shipped overseas without basic training, scored low in the classification tests, and served under young and inexperienced noncoms. Many black regulars, on the other hand, once proud members of combat units, now found themselves performing menial tasks in the backwaters of the occupation. Above all, the publishers witnessed widespread racial discrimination, a condition that followed inevitably, they believed, from the Army's segregation policy. Conditions in the Army appeared to them to facilitate an immediate shift to integration; conditions in Europe and elsewhere made such a shift imperative. Yet they found most commanders in Europe still unaware of the Gillem Board Report and its liberalizing provisions, and little being done to encourage within the Army the sensitivity to racial matters that makes life in a biracial society bearable. Until the recommendations of the board were carried out and discrimination stopped, they warned the secretary, the Army must expect racial flare-ups to continue.[8-10]

Characteristically, the Secretary of War's civilian aide, Marcus Ray, never denied evidence of misconduct among black troops, but concentrated instead on finding the cause. Returning from a month's tour of Pacific installations in September 1946, he bluntly pointed out to Secretary Patterson that high venereal disease and court-martial rates among black troops were "in direct proportion to the high percentage of Class IV and Vs among the Negro personnel." Given Ray's conclusion, the solution was relatively simple: the Army should "vigorously implement" its recently promulgated policy, long supported by Ray, and discharge persons with test scores of less than seventy.[8-11]

The civilian aide was not insensitive to the effects of segregation on black soldiers, but he stressed the practical results of the Army's policy instead of making a sweeping indictment of segregation. For example, he criticized the report of the noted criminologist, Leonard Keeler, who had recently studied the criminal activities of American troops in Europe for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Ray was critical, not because Keeler had been particularly concerned with the relatively high black crime rate and its effect on Europeans, but because the report overlooked the concentration of segregated black units which had increased the density of Negroes in some areas of Europe to a point where records and reports of misconduct presented a false picture. In effect, black crime statistics were meaningless, Ray believed, as long as the Army's segregation policy remained intact. Where Keeler implied that the solution was to exclude Negroes from Europe, Ray believed that the answer lay in desegregating and spreading them out.[8-12]

It was probably inevitable that all the publicity given racial troubles would attract attention on Capitol Hill. When the Senate's Special Investigations Committee took up the question of military government in occupied Europe in the fall of 1946, it decided to look into the conduct of black soldiers also. Witnesses asserted that black troops in Europe were ill-behaved and poorly disciplined and their officers were afraid to punish them properly for fear of displeasing higher authorities. The committee received a report on the occupation prepared by its chief counsel, George Meader. A curious amalgam of sensational hearsay, obvious racism, and unimpeachable fact, the document was leaked to the press and subsequently denounced publicly by the committee's chairman, Senator Harley M. Kilgore of West Virginia. Kilgore charged that parts of the report dealing with Negroes were obviously based on hearsay. "Neither prejudice nor malice," the senator concluded, "has any place in factual reports."[8-13]

Although the committee's staff certainly had displayed remarkable insensitivity, Meader's recommendations appeared temperate enough. He wanted the committee to explore with the War Department possible solutions to the problem of black troops overseas, and he called on the War Department to give careful consideration to the recommendations of its field commanders. The European commander was already on record with a recommendation to recall all black troops from Europe, citing the absence of Negroes from the U.S. Occupation Army in the Rhineland after World War I. Lt. Gen. Lucius D. Clay, then U.S. Commander, Berlin, who later succeeded General McNarney as theater commander and military governor, wanted Negroes in the occupation army used primarily as parade troops. Meader contended that the War Department was reluctant to act on these theater recommendations because it feared political repercussions from the black community. He had no such fear: "certainly, the conduct of the negro troops, as provable from War Department records, is no credit to the negro race and proper action to solve the problem should not result in any unfavorable reaction from any intelligent negro leaders."[8-14]

The War Department was not insensitive to the opinions being aired on Capitol Hill. The under secretary, Kenneth C. Royall, had already dispatched a group from the Inspector General's office under Brig. Gen. Elliot D. Cooke to find out among other things if black troops were being properly disciplined and to investigate other charges Lt. Col. Francis P. Miller had made before the Special Investigations Committee. Examining in detail the records of one subordinate European command, which had 12,000 Negroes in its force of 44,000, the Cooke group decided that commanders were not afraid to punish black soldiers. Although Negroes were responsible for vehicle accidents and disciplinary infractions in numbers disproportionate to their strength, they also had a proportionately higher court-martial rate.[8-15]

While the Cooke group was still studying the specific charges of the Senate's Investigations Committee, Secretary Patterson decided on a general review of the situation. He ordered Ray to tour European installations and report on how the Gillem Board policy was being put into effect overseas. Ray visited numerous bases and housing and recreation areas in Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Austria. He examined duties, living conditions, morale, and discipline. He also looked into race relations and community attitudes. His month's tour, ending on 17 December 1946, reinforced his conviction that substandard troops—black and white—were at the heart of the Army's crime and venereal disease problem. Ray supported the efforts of local commanders to discharge these men, although he wanted the secretary to reform and standardize the method of discharge. In his analysis of the overseas situation, the civilian aide avoided any specific allusion to the nexus between segregation and racial unrest. In a rare burst of idealism, however, he did condemn those who would exclude Negroes from combat units and certain occupations because of presumed prejudices on the part of the German population. To bow to such prejudices, he insisted, was to negate America's aspirations for the postwar world. In essence, Ray's formula for good race relations was quite simple: institute immediately the reforms outlined in the Gillem Board Report.

In addition to broader use of black troops, Ray was concerned with basic racial attitudes. The Army, he charged, generally failed to see the connection between prejudice and national security; many of its leaders even denied that prejudice existed in the Army. Yet to ignore the problem of racial prejudice, he claimed, condemned the Army to perpetual racial upsets. He wanted the secretary to restate the Army's racial objectives and launch an information and education program to inform commanders and troops on racial matters.[8-16]

In all other respects a lucid progress report on the Gillem Board policy, Ray's analysis was weakened by his failure to point out the effect of segregation on the performance and attitude of black soldiers. Ray believed that the Gillem Board policy, with its quota system and its provisions for the integration of black specialists, would eventually lead to an integrated Army. Preoccupied with practical and imminently possible racial reforms, Ray, along with Secretary Patterson and other reformers within the Army establishment, tended to overlook the tenacious hold that racial segregation had on Army thought.

This hold was clearly illustrated by the reaction of the Army staff to Ray's recommendations. Speaking with the concurrence of the other staff elements and the approval of the Deputy Chief of Staff, General Paul warned that very little could be accomplished toward the long-range objective of the Gillem Board—integration—until the Army completed the long and complex task of raising the quality and lowering the quantity of black soldiers. He also considered it impractical to use Negroes in overhead positions, combat units, and highly technical and professional positions in exact proportion to their percentage of the population. Such use, Paul claimed, would expend travel funds already drastically curtailed and further complicate a serious housing situation. He admitted that the deep-seated prejudice of some Army members in all grades would have a direct bearing on the progress of the Army's new racial policy.

24th Infantry Band, Gifu, Japan, 1947

The staff generally agreed with Ray's other recommendations with one exception: it opposed his suggestion that black units be used in the European theater's constabulary, the specially organized and trained force that patrolled the East-West border and helped police the German occupation. The theater commander had so few capable Negroes, Paul reasoned, that to siphon off enough to form a constabulary unit would threaten the efficiency of other black units. Besides, even if enough qualified Negroes were available, he believed their use in supervisory positions over German nationals would be unacceptable to many Germans.[8-17] The staff offered no evidence for this latter argument, and indeed there was none available. In marked contrast to their reaction to the French government's quartering of Senegalese soldiers in the Rhineland after World War I, the German attitude toward American Negroes immediately after World War II was notably tolerant, a factor in the popularity among Negroes of assignments to Europe. It was only later that the Germans, especially tavern owners and the like, began to adopt the discriminatory practices of their conquerors.[8-18]

Ray's proposals and the reaction to them formed a kind of watershed in the War Department's postwar racial policy. Just ten months after the Gillem Board Report was published, the Army staff made a judgment on the policy's effectiveness: the presence of Negroes in numbers approximating 10 percent of the Army's strength and at the current qualitative level made it necessary to retain segregation indefinitely. Segregation kept possible troublemakers out of important combat divisions, promoted efficiency, and placated regional prejudices both in the Army and Congress. Integration must be postponed until the number of Negroes in the Army was carefully regulated and the quality of black troops improved. Both, the staff thought, were goals of a future so distant that segregated units were not threatened.

But the staff's views ran contrary to the Gillem Board policy and the public utterances of the Secretary of War. Robert Patterson had consistently supported the policy in public and before his advisers. Besides, it was unthinkable that he would so quickly abandon a policy developed at the cost of so much effort and negotiation and announced with such fanfare. He had insisted that the quota be maintained, most recently in the case of the European Command.[8-19] In sum, he believed that the policy provided guidelines, practical and expedient, albeit temporary, that would lead to the integration of the Army.

In face of this impasse between the secretary and the Army staff there slowly evolved what proved to be a new racial policy. Never clearly formulated—Circular 124 continued in effect with only minor changes until 1950—the new policy was based on the substantially different proposition that segregation would continue indefinitely while the staff concentrated on weeding out poorly qualified Negroes, upgrading the rest, and removing vestiges of discrimination, which it saw as quite distinct from segregation. At the same time the Army would continue to operate under a strict 10 percent quota of Negroes, though not necessarily within every occupation or specialty. The staff overlooked the increasingly evident connection between segregation and racial unrest, thereby assuring the continuation of both. From 1947 on, integration, the stated goal of the Gillem Board policy, was ignored, while segregation, which the board saw as an expedient to be tolerated, became for the Army staff a way of life to be treasured. It was from this period in 1947 that Circular 124 and the Gillem Board Report began to gain their reputations as regressive documents.

Improving the Status of the Segregated Soldier

General Huebner
inspects the 529th Military Police Company, Giessen, Germany, 1948.

In 1947 the Army accelerated its long-range program to discharge soldiers who scored less than seventy on the Army General Classification Test. Often a subject of public controversy, the program formed a major part of the Army's effort to close the educational and training gap between black and white troops.[8-20] Of course, there were other ways to close the gap, and on occasion the Army had taken the more positive and difficult approach of upgrading its substandard black troops by giving them extra training. Although rarely so recognized, the Army's long record of providing remedial academic and technical training easily qualified it as one of the nation's major social engineers.

In World War II thousands of draftees were taught to read and write in the Army's literacy program. In 1946 at Fort Benning an on-duty educational program was organized in the 25th Regimental Combat Team for soldiers, in this case all Negroes, with less than an eighth grade education. Although the project had to be curtailed because of a lack of specialized instructors, an even more ambitious program was launched the next year throughout the Army after a survey revealed an alarming illiteracy rate in replacement troops. In a move of primary importance to black recruits, the Far East Command, for example, ordered all soldiers lacking the equivalent of a fifth grade education to attend courses. The order was later changed to include all soldiers who failed to achieve Army test scores of seventy.[8-21]

In 1947 the European theater launched the most ambitious project by far for improving the status of black troops, and before it was over thousands of black soldiers had been examined, counseled, and trained. The project was conceived and executed by the deputy and later theater commander, Lt. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner, and his adviser on Negro affairs, Marcus Ray, now a lieutenant colonel.[8-22] These men were convinced that a program could be devised to raise the status of the black soldier. Huebner wanted to lay the foundation for a command-wide educational program for all black units. "If you're going to make soldiers out of people," he later explained, "they have the right to be trained." Huebner had specialized in training in his Army career, had written several of the Army's training manuals, and possessed an abiding faith in the ability of the Army to change men. "If your soldiers don't know how, teach them."[8-23]

General Huebner got his chance in March 1947 when the command decided to use some 3,000 unassigned black troops in guard duties formerly performed by the 1st Infantry Division. The men were organized into two infantry battalions,[8-24] but because of their low test scores Huebner decided to establish a twelve-to thirteen-week training program at the Grafenwohr Training Center and directed the commanding general of the 1st Division to train black soldiers in both basic military and academic subjects. Huebner concluded his directive by saying:

This is our first opportunity to put into effect in a large way the War Department policy on Negro soldiers as announced in War Department Circular No. 124, 1946. Owing to the necessity for rapid training, and to the press of occupational duties, little time has been available in the past for developing the leadership of the Negro soldier. We can now do that.... I wish you to study the program, its progress, its deficiencies and its advantages, in order that a full report may be compiled and lessons in operation and training drawn.[8-25]

As the improved military bearing and efficiency of black trainees and the subsequent impressive performance of the two new infantry battalions would suggest, the reports on the Grafenwohr training were optimistic and the lessons drawn ambitious. They prompted Huebner on 1 December 1947 to establish a permanent training center at Kitzingen Air Base.[8-26] Essentially, he was trying to combine both drill and constant supervision with a broad-based educational program. Trainees received basic military training for six hours daily and academic instruction up to the twelfth grade level for two hours more. The command ordered all black replacements and casuals arriving from the United States to the training center for classifying and training as required. Eventually all black units in Europe were to be rotated through Kitzingen for unit refresher and individual instruction. As each company completed the course at Kitzingen, the command assigned academic instructors to continue an on-duty educational program in the field. A soldier was required to participate in the educational program until he passed the general education development test for high school level or until he clearly demonstrated that he could not profit from further instruction.

Washington was quick to perceive the merit of the European program, and Paul reported widespread approval "from all concerned."[8-27] The program quickly produced some impressive statistics. Thousands of soldiers—at the peak in 1950 more than 62 percent of all Negroes in the command—were enrolled in the military training course at Kitzingen or in on-duty educational programs organized in over two-thirds of the black companies throughout the command. By June 1950 the program had over 2,900 students and 200 instructors. A year later, the European commander estimated that since the program began some 1,169 Negroes had completed fifth grade in his schools, 2,150 had finished grade school, and 418 had passed the high school equivalency test.[8-28] The experiment had a practical and long-lasting effect on the Army. For example, in 1950 a sampling of three black units showed that after undergoing training at Kitzingen and in their own units the men scored an average of twenty points higher in Army classification tests. According to a 1950 European Command estimate, the command's education program was producing some of the finest trained black troops in the Army.

Reporting to Kitzingen.
Men of Company B, 371st Infantry Battalion, arrive for refresher course in basic military training.

The training program even provoked jealous reaction among some white troops who claimed that the educational opportunities offered Negroes discriminated against them. They were right, for in comparison to the on-duty high school courses offered Negroes, the command restricted courses for white soldiers to so-called literacy training or completion of the fifth grade. Command spokesmen quite openly justified the disparity on the grounds that Negroes on the whole had received fewer educational opportunities in the United States and that the program would promote efficiency in the command.[8-29]

Whether a connection can be made between the Kitzingen training program and improvement in the morale and discipline of black troops, the fact was that by January 1950 a dramatic change had occurred in the conduct of black soldiers in the European Command. The rate of venereal disease among black soldiers had dropped to an average approximating the rate for white troops (and not much greater than the always lower average for troops in the United States). This phenomenon was repeated in the serious incident rate. In the first half of 1950 courts-martial that resulted in bad conduct discharges totaled fifty-nine for Negroes, a figure that compared well with the 324 similar verdicts for the larger contingent of white soldiers.[8-30] For once the Army could document what it had always preached, that education and training were the keys to the better performance of black troops. The tragedy was that the education program was never applied throughout the Army, not even in the Far East and in the United States, where far more black soldiers were stationed than in Europe.[8-31] The Army lost yet another chance to fulfill the promise of its postwar policy.

In later years Kitzingen assumed the task of training black officers, a natural progression considering the attitude of General Huebner and Marcus Ray. The general and the command adviser were convinced that the status of black soldiers depended at least in part on the caliber of black officers commanding them. Huebner deftly made this point in October 1947 soon after Kitzingen opened when he explained to General Paul that he wanted more "stable, efficient, and interested Negro officers and senior non-commissioned officers" who, he believed, would set an example for the trainees.[8-32] Others shared Huebner's views. The black publishers touring Europe some months later observed that wherever black officers were assigned there was "a noticeable improvement in the morale, discipline and general efficiency of the units involved."[8-33]

The European Command had requisitioned only five black officers during the last eight months, General Paul noted; this might have caused its shortage of black officers. Still, Paul knew the problem went deeper, and he admitted that many black officers now on duty were relatively undesirable and many desirable ones were being declared surplus. He was searching for a solution.[8-34] The Personnel and Administration Division could do very little about the major cause of the shortage, for the lack of black officers was fundamentally connected with the postwar demobilization affecting all the services. Most black officers were unable to compete in terms of length of service, combat experience, and other factors that counted heavily toward retention. Consequently their numbers dropped sharply from an August 1945 high of 7,748 to a December 1947 low of 1,184. The drop more than offset the slight rise in the black percentage of the whole officer corps, .8 percent in 1945 to 1.0 percent in 1947.

At first General Paul was rather passive in his attitude toward the shortage of black officers. Commenting on Assistant Secretary of War Petersen's suggestion in May 1946 that the Army institute a special recruitment program to supplement the small number of black officers who survived the competition for Regular Army appointments, Paul noted that all appointments were based on merit and competition and that special consideration for Negroes was itself a form of discrimination.[8-35] Whether through fear of being accused of discrimination against whites or because of the general curtailment of officer billets, it was not until April 1948 that the Personnel and Administration Division launched a major effort to get more black officers.

In April 1948 General Paul had his Manpower Control Group review the officer strength of seventy-eight black units stationed in the United States. The group uncovered a shortage of seventy-two officers in the seventy-eight units, but it went considerably beyond identifying simple shortages. In estimating the number of black officers needed, the group demonstrated not only how far the Gillem Board policy had committed the Army, but in view of contemporary manpower shortages just how impossible this commitment was of being fulfilled. The manpower group discovered that according to Circular 124, which prescribed more officers for units containing a preponderance of men with low test scores, the seventy-eight units should have 187 additional officers beyond their regular allotment. Also taking into account Circular 124's provision that black officers should command black troops, the group discovered that these units would need another 477 black officer replacements. The group temporized. It recommended that the additional officers be assigned to units in which 70 percent or more of the men were in grades IV and V and without mentioning specific numbers noted that high priority be given to the replacement of white officers with Negroes. Assuming the shortages discovered in the seventy-eight units would be mirrored in the 315 black units overseas as well as other temporary units at home, the group also wanted General Paul to order a comprehensive survey of all black units.[8-36]

Paul complied with the group's request by ordering the major commanders in May to list the number of officers by branch, grade, and specialty needed to fill the vacant spaces in their black units.[8-37] But there was really little need for further surveys because the key to all the group's recommendations—the availability of suitable black officers—was beyond the immediate reach of the Army. General Paul was able to fill the existing vacancies in the seventy-eight continental units by recalling black officers from inactive duty, but the number eligible for recall or available from other sources was limited. As of 31 May 1948, personnel officials could count on only 2,794 black reserve and National Guard officers who could be assigned to extended active duty. This number was far short of current needs; Negroes would have to approximate 4.1 percent (3,000 officers) of the Army's officer corps if all the whites in black units were replaced. As for the other provisions of the Gillem Board, the Organization and Training Division urged restraint, arguing that Circular 124 was not an authorization for officers in excess of organization table ceilings, but rather that the presence of many low-scoring men constituted a basis for requesting more officers.[8-38]

General Paul did not argue the point. Admitting that the 4.1 percent figure was "an objective to be achieved over a period of time," he could do little but instruct the commanders concerned to indicate in future requisitions that they wanted black officers as fillers or replacements in black units. Clearly, as long as the number of black officers remained so low, the provisions of Circular 124 calling for black officers to replace whites or supplement the officer strength of units containing men with low test scores would have to be ignored.

There were other long-range possibilities for procuring more black officers, the most obvious the expansion of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. As of January 1948 the Army had ROTC units at nine predominantly black colleges and universities with a total enrollment of 3,035 cadets. The Organization and Training Division contemplated adding one more unit during 1948, but after negotiations with officials from Secretary Royall's office, themselves under considerable congressional and public pressure, the division added three more advanced ROTC units, one service and two combat, at predominantly black institutions.[8-39] At the same time some hope existed for increasing the number of black cadets at West Point. The academy had nine black cadets in 1948, including five plebes. General Paul hoped that the graduation of these cadets would stimulate further interest and a corresponding increase in applications from Negroes.[8-40]

It was probably naive to assume that an increase of black cadets from four to nine would stir much interest when other statistics suggested that black officers had a limited future in the service. As Secretary Royall pointed out, even if the total number of black officers could not be quickly increased, the percentage of black officers in the Regular Army could.[8-41] Yet by April 1948 the Army had almost completed the conversion of reservists into regulars, and few black officers had been selected. In June 1945, for example, there were 8 black officers in the Regular Army; by April 1948 they numbered only 41, including 4 West Point graduates and 32 converted reservists.[8-42] The Army had also recently nominated 13 young Negroes, designated Distinguished Military Graduates of the advanced ROTC program, for Regular Army commissions.

During the Regular Army integration program, 927 Negroes and 122,520 whites applied for the Regular Army; the Army and the Air Force awarded commissions to 27,798 white officers (22.7 percent of those applying) and 96 black officers (10.3 percent of the applicants). Preliminary rejections based on efficiency and education ran close to 40 percent of the applicants of both races. The disparity in rejections by race appeared when applicants went before the Selection Board itself; only 18.55 percent of the remaining black applicants were accepted while 39.35 percent of the white applicants were selected for Regular Army commissions.[8-43]

Given statistics like these, it was difficult to stimulate black interest in a career as an Army officer, as General Paul was well aware. He had the distribution of black officers appointed to the Regular Army studied in 1947 to see if it was in consonance with the new racial policy. While most of the arms and services passed muster with the Personnel and Administration Division, Paul felt compelled to remind the Chief of Engineers, whose corps had so far awarded no Regular Army commission to the admittedly limited number of black applicants, that officers were to be accepted in the Regular Army without regard to race. He repeated this warning to the Quartermaster General and the Chief of Transportation; both had accepted black officers for the Regular Army but had selected only the smallest fraction of those applying. Although the black applicants did score slightly below the whites, Paul doubted that integration would lower the standards of quality in these branches, and he wanted every effort made to increase the number of black officers.[8-44]

The Chief of Engineers, quick to defend his record, explained that the race of candidates was difficult to ascertain and had not been considered in the selection process. Nevertheless, he had reexamined all rejected applications and found two from Negroes whose composite scores were acceptable. Both men, however, fell so short of meeting the minimum professional requirements that to appoint either would be to accord preferential treatment denied to hundreds of other underqualified applicants.[8-45] It would appear that bias and prejudice were not the only governing factors in the shortage of black officers, but rather that in some ways at least Circular 124 was making impossible demands on the Army's personnel system.

Discrimination and the Postwar Army

Training black soldiers and trying to provide them with black officers was a practical move demanded by the Army's new race policy. At the same time, often with reluctance and only after considerable pressure had been brought to bear, the Army also began to attack certain practices that discriminated against the black soldier. One was the arbitrary location of training camps after the war. In November 1946, for example, the Army Ground Forces reorganized its training centers for the Army, placing them at six installations: Fort Dix, New Jersey; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Fort Knox, Kentucky; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Fort Lewis, Washington, and Fort Ord, California. White enlisted and reenlisted men were sent to the training centers within the geographical limits of the Army area of their enlistment. Because it was impossible for the Army Ground Forces to maintain separate black training cadres of battalion size at each of the six centers, all Negroes, except those slated for service in the Army Air Forces, were sent to Fort Jackson.[8-46]

The Gillem Board had called for the assignment of Negroes to localities where community attitudes were favorable, and Marcus Ray protested the Ground Forces action. "It is in effect a restatement of policy and ... has implications which will affect adversely the relationship of the Army and our Negro manpower potential.... I am certain that this ruling will have the immediate effect of crystallizing Negro objections to the enlistment of qualified men and also Universal Military Training."[8-47]

Ray reminded Assistant Secretary of War Petersen that the Fort Jackson area had been the scene of many racial disturbances since 1941 and that an increase in the black troop population would only intensify the hostile community attitude. He wanted to substitute Fort Dix and Fort Ord for Fort Jackson. He also had another suggestion: Why not assign black training companies to white battalions, especially in those training centers that drew their populations from northern, eastern, and western communities?

Petersen ignored for the time being Ray's suggestion for composite training groups, but he readily agreed on training black soldiers at more congenial posts, particularly after Ray's views were aired in the black press. Petersen also urged the Deputy Chief of Staff to coordinate staff actions with Ray whenever instructions dealing with race relations in the Army were being prepared.[8-48] At the same time, Secretary of War Patterson assured Walter White of the NAACP, who had also protested sending Negroes to Fort Jackson, that the matter was under study.[8-49] Within a matter of months Negroes entering the Army from civilian life were receiving their training at Fort Dix and Fort Ord.

Turning its back on the overt racism of some southern communities, the Army unwittingly exposed an example of racism in the west. The plan to train Negroes at Fort Ord aroused the combined opposition of the citizens around Monterey Bay, who complained to Senator William F. Knowland that theirs was a tourist area unable to absorb thousands of black trainees "without serious threat of racial conflict." The Army reacted with forthright resistance. Negroes would be trained at Fort Ord, and the Secretary of the Army would be glad to explain the situation and cooperate with the local citizenry.[8-50]

On the recommendation of the civilian aide, the Assistant Secretary of War introduced another racial reform in January 1947 that removed racial designations from overseas travel orders and authorizations issued to dependents and War Department civilian employees.[8-51] The order was strongly opposed by some members of the Army staff and had to be repeated by the Secretary of the Army in 1951.[8-52] Branding racial designations on travel orders a "continuous source of embarrassment" to the Army, Secretary Frank Pace, Jr., sought to include all travel orders in the prohibition, but the Army staff persuaded him it was unwise. While the staff agreed that orders involving travel between reception centers and training organizations need not designate race, it convinced the secretary that to abolish such designations on other orders, including overseas assignment documents, would adversely affect strength and accounting procedures as well as overseas replacement systems.[8-53] The modest reform continued in effect until the question of racial designation became a major issue in the 1960's.

Not all the reforms that followed the Gillem Board's deliberations were so quickly adopted. For in truth the Army was not the monolithic institution so often depicted by its critics, and its racial directives usually came out of compromises between the progressive and traditional factions of the staff. The integration of the national cemeteries, an emotion-laden issue in 1947, amply demonstrated that sharp differences of opinion existed within the department. Although long-standing regulations provided for segregation by rank only, local custom, and in one case—the Long Island National Cemetery—a 1935 order by Secretary of War George H. Dern, dictated racial segregation in most of the cemeteries. The Quartermaster General reviewed the practice in 1946 and recommended a new policy specifically opening new sections of all national cemeteries to eligible citizens of all races. He would leave undisturbed segregated grave sites in the older sections of the cemeteries because integration would "constitute a breach of faith with the next of kin of those now interred."[8-54] As might be expected, General Paul supported the quartermaster suggestion, as did the commander of the Army Ground Forces. The Army Air Forces commander, on the other hand, opposed integrating the cemeteries, as did the Chief of Staff, who on 22 February 1947 rejected the proposal. The existing policy was reconfirmed by the Under Secretary of War three days later, and there the matter rested.[8-55]

Not for long, for civil rights spokesmen and the black press soon protested. The NAACP confessed itself "astonished" at the Army's decision and demanded that Secretary Patterson change a practice that was both "un-American and un-democratic."[8-56] Marcus Ray predicted that continuing agitation would require further Army action, and he reminded Under Secretary Royall that cemeteries under the jurisdiction of the Navy, Veterans Administration, and Department of the Interior had been integrated with considerable publicity. He urged adoption of the Quartermaster General's recommendation.[8-57] That was enough for Secretary Patterson. On 15 April he directed that the new sections of national cemeteries be integrated.[8-58]

It was a hollow victory for the reformers because the traditionalists were able to cling to the secretary's proviso that old sections of the cemeteries be left alone, and the Army continued to gather its dead in segregation and in bitter criticism. Five months after the secretary's directive, the American Legion protested to the Secretary of War over segregation at the Fort Snelling National Cemetery, Minnesota, and in August 1950 the Governor's Interracial Commission of the State of Minnesota carried the matter to the President, calling the policy "a flagrant disregard of human dignity."[8-59] The Army continued to justify segregation as a temporary and limited measure involving the old sections, but a decade after the directive the commander of the Atlanta Depot was still referring to segregation in some cemeteries.[8-60] The controversial practice would drag on into the next decade before the Department of Defense finally ruled that there would be no lines drawn by rank or race in national cemeteries.

An attempt to educate the rank and file in the Army's racial policy met some opposition in the Army staff. At General Paul's request, the Information and Education Division prepared a pamphlet intended to improve race relations through troop indoctrination.[8-61] Army Talk 170, published on 1 April 1947, was, like its World War II predecessors, Command of Negro Troops and The Negro Soldier, progressive for the times. While it stressed the reforms projected in the Army's policy, including eventual integration, it also clearly defended the Army's continued insistence on segregation on the grounds that segregation promoted interracial harmony. The official position of the service was baldly stated. "The Army is not an instrument of social reform. Its interest in matters of race is confined to considerations of its own effectiveness."

Even before publication the pamphlet provoked considerable discussion and soul-searching in the Army staff. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Thomas T. Handy, questioned some of the Information and Education Division's claims for black combatants. In the end the matter had to be taken to General Eisenhower for resolution. He ordered publication, reminding local commanders that if necessary they should add further instructions of their own, "in keeping with the local situation" to insure acceptance of the Army's policy. The pamphlet was not to be considered an end in itself, he added, but only one element in a "progressive process toward maximum utilization of manpower in the Army."[8-62]

Segregation in Theory and Practice

Efforts to carry out the policy set forth in Circular 124 reached a high-water mark in mid-1948. By then black troops, for so long limited to a few job categories, could be found in a majority of military occupational fields. The officer corps was open to all without the restrictions of a racial quota, and while a quota for enlisted men still existed all racial distinctions in standards of enlistment were gone. The Army was replacing white officers in black units with Negroes as fast as qualified black replacements became available. And more were qualifying every day. By 30 June 1948 the Army had almost 1,000 black commissioned officers, 5 warrant officers, and 67 nurses serving with over 65,000 enlisted men and women.[8-63]

But here, in the eyes of the Army's critics, was the rub: after three years of racial reform segregation not only remained but had been perfected. No longer would the Army be plagued with the vast all-black divisions that had segregated thousands of Negroes in an admittedly inefficient and often embarrassing manner. Instead, Negroes would be segregated in more easily managed hundreds. By limiting integration to the battalion level (the lowest self-sustaining unit in the Army system), the Army could guarantee the separation of the races in eating, sleeping, and general social matters and still hope to escape some of the obvious discrimination of separate units by making the black battalions organic elements of larger white units. The Army's scheme did not work. Schooling and specialty occupations aside, segregation quite obviously remained the essential fact of military life and social intercourse for the majority of black soldiers, and all the evidence of reasonable and genuine reform that came about under the Gillem Board policy went aglimmering. The Army was in for some rough years with its critics.

But why were the Army's senior officers, experienced leaders at the pinnacle of their careers and dedicated to the well-being of the institution they served, so reluctant to part with segregation? Why did they cling to an institution abandoned by the Navy and the Air Force,[8-64] the target of the civil rights movement and its allies in Congress, and by any reasonable judgment so costly in terms of efficient organization? The answers lie in the reasoned defense of their position developed by these men during the long controversy over the use of black troops and so often presented in public statements and documents.[8-65] Arguments for continued segregation fell into four general categories.

First, segregation was necessary to preserve the internal stability of the Army. Prejudice was a condition of American society, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower told a Senate committee in 1948, and the Army "is merely one of the mirrors that holds up to our faces the United States of America." Since society separated the races, it followed that if the Army allowed black and white soldiers to live and socialize together it ran the very real risk of riots and racial disturbances which could disrupt its vital functions. Remembering the contribution of black platoons to the war in Europe, General Eisenhower, for his part, was willing to accept the risk and integrate the races by platoons, believing that the social problems "can be handled," particularly on the large posts. Nevertheless he made no move toward integrating by platoons while he was Chief of Staff. Later he explained that

the possibility of applying this lesson [World War II integration of Negro platoons] to the peacetime Army came up again and again. Objection involved primarily the social side of the soldier's life. It was argued that through integration we would get into all kinds of difficulty in staging soldiers' dances and other social events. At that time we were primarily occupied in responding to America's determination "to get the soldiers home"—so, as I recall, little progress toward integration was made during that period.[8-66]

Inspection by the Chief of Staff.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower talks with a soldier of the 25th Combat Team Motor Pool during a tour of Fort Benning, Georgia, 1947.

"Liquor and women," Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee pronounced, were the major ingredients of racial turmoil in the Army. Although General Lee had been a prime mover in the wartime integration of combat platoons, he wanted the Army to avoid social integration because of the disturbances he believed would attend it. As General Omar N. Bradley saw it, the Army could integrate its training programs but not the soldier's social life. Hope of progress would be destroyed if integration was pushed too fast. Bradley summed up his postwar attitude very simply: "I said let's go easy—as fast as we can."

Second, segregation was an efficient way to isolate the poorly educated and undertrained black soldier, especially one with a combat occupational specialty. To integrate Negroes into white combat units, already dangerously understrength, would threaten the Army's fighting ability. When he was Chief of Staff, Eisenhower thought many of the problems associated with black soldiers, problems of morale, health, and discipline, were problems of education, and that the Negro was capable of change. "I believe," he said, "that a Negro can improve his standing and his social standing and his respect for certain of the standards that we observe, just as well as we can." Lt. Gen. Wade H. Haislip, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration, concluded that the Army's racial mission was education. All that Circular 124 meant, he explained, "was that we had to begin educating the Negro soldiers so they could be mixed sometime in the future." Bradley observed in agreement that "as you begin to get better educated Negroes in the service," there is "more reason to integrate." The Army was pledged to accept Negroes and to give them a wide choice of assignment, but until their education and training improved they had to be isolated.

Third, segregation was the only way to provide equal treatment and opportunity for black troops. Defending this paternalistic argument, Eisenhower told the Senate:

In general, the Negro is less well educated ... and if you make a complete amalgamation, what you are going to have is in every company the Negro is going to be relegated to the minor jobs, and he is never going to get his promotion to such grades as technical sergeant, master sergeant, and so on, because the competition is too tough. If, on the other hand, he is in smaller units of his own, he can go up to that rate, and I believe he is entitled to the chance to show his own wares.

Fourth, segregation was necessary because segments of American society with powerful representatives in Congress were violently opposed to mixing the races. Bradley explained that integration was part of social evolution, and he was afraid that the Army might move too fast for certain sections of the country. "I thought in 1948 that they were ready in the North," he added, "but not in the South." The south "learned over the years that mixing the races was a vast problem." Bradley continued, "so any change in the Army would be a big step in the South." General Haislip reasoned, you "just can't do it all of a sudden." As for the influence of those opposed to maintaining the Army's social status quo, Haislip, who was the Vice Chief of Staff during part of the Gillem Board period, recalled that "everybody was floundering around, trying to find the right thing to do. I didn't lose any sleep over it [charges of discrimination]." General Eisenhower, as he did so often during his career, accurately distilled the thinking of his associates:

I believe that the human race may finally grow up to the point where it [race relations] will not be a problem. It [the race problem] will disappear through education, through mutual respect, and so on. But I do believe that if we attempt merely by passing a lot of laws to force someone to like someone else, we are just going to get into trouble. On the other hand, I do not by any means hold out for this extreme segregation as I said when I first joined the Army 38 years ago.

These arguments might be specious, as a White House committee would later demonstrate, but they were not necessarily guileful, for they were the heartfelt opinions of many of the Army's leaders, opinions shared by officials of the other services. These men were probably blind to the racism implicit in their policies, a racism nurtured by military tradition. Education and environment had fostered in these career officers a reverence for tradition. Why should the Army, these traditionalists might ask, abandon its black units, some with histories stretching back almost a century? Why should the ordered social life of the Army post, for so long a mirror of the segregated society of most civilian communities, be so uncomfortably changed? The fact that integration had never really been tried before made it fraught with peril, and all the forces of military tradition conspired to support the old ways.

What had gone unnoticed by Army planners was the subtle change in the attitude of the white enlisted man toward integration. Opinion surveys were rare in an institution dedicated to the concept of military discipline, but nevertheless in the five years following the war several surveys were made of the racial views of white troops (the views of black soldiers were ignored, probably on the assumption that all Negroes favored integration). In 1946, just as the Gillem Board policy was being enunciated, the Army staff found enlisted men in substantial agreement on segregation. Although most of those surveyed supported the expanded use of Negroes in the Army, an overwhelming majority voted for the principle of having racially separate working and living arrangements. Yet the pollsters found much less opposition to integration when they put their questions on a personal basis—"How do you feel about...?" Only southerners as a group registered a clear majority for segregated working conditions. The survey also revealed another encouraging portent: most of the opposition to integration existed among older and less educated men.[8-67]

General Davis

Three years later the Secretary of Defense sponsored another survey of enlisted opinion on segregation. This time less than a third of those questioned were opposed to integrated working conditions and some 40 percent were not "definitely opposed" to complete integration of both working and living arrangements. Again men from all areas tended to endorse integration as their educational level rose; opposition, on the other hand, centered in 1949 among the chronic complainers and those who had never worked with Negroes.[8-68]

In discussing prejudice and discrimination it is necessary to compare the Army with the rest of American society. Examining the question of race relations in the Army runs the risk of distorting the importance given the subject by the nation as a whole in the postwar period. While resistance to segregation was undoubtedly growing in the black community and among an increasing number of progressives in the white community, there was as yet no widespread awareness of the problem and certainly no concerted public effort to end it. This lack of perception might be particularly justified in the case of Army officers, for few of them had any experience with black soldiers and most undoubtedly were not given to wide reading and reflecting on the subject of race relations. Moreover, the realities of military life tended to insulate Army officers from the main currents of American society. Frequently transferred and therefore without roots in the civilian community, isolated for years at a time in overseas assignments, their social life often centered in the military garrison, officers might well have been less aware of racial discrimination.

Perhaps because of the insulation imposed on officers by their duties, the Army's leaders were achieving reforms far beyond those accepted elsewhere in American society. Few national organizations and industries could match the Army in 1948 for the number of Negroes employed, the breadth of responsibility given them, and the variety of their training and occupations. Looked at in this light, the Army of 1948 and the men who led it could with considerable justification be classed as a progressive force in the fight for racial justice.

Segregation: An Assessment

The gap between the Army's stated goal of integration and its continuing practices had grown so noticeable in 1948, a presidential election year, that most civil rights spokesmen and their allies in the press had become disillusioned with Army reforms. Benjamin O. Davis, still the Army's senior black officer and still after eight years a brigadier general, called the Army staff's attention to the shift in attitude. Most had greeted publication of Circular 124 as "the dawn of a new day for the colored soldier"—General Davis's words—and looked forward to the gradual eradication of segregation. But Army practices in subsequent months had brought disappointment, he warned the under secretary, and the black press had become "restless and impatient." He wanted the Army staff to give "definite expression of the desire of the Department of National Defense for the elimination of all forms of discrimination-segregation from the Armed Services."[8-69] The suggestion was disapproved. General Paul explained that the Army could not make such a policy statement since Circular 124 permitted segregated units and a quota that by its nature discriminated at least in terms of numbers of Negroes assigned.[8-70]

In February 1948 the Chief of Information tried to counter criticism by asking personnel and administrative officials to collect favorable opinions from prominent civilians, "particularly Negroes and sociologists." But this antidote to public criticism failed because, as the deputy personnel director had to admit, "the Division does not have knowledge of any expressed favorable opinion either of individuals or organizations, reference our Negro policy."[8-71]

A constant concern because it marred the Army's public image, segregation also had a profound effect on the performance and well-being of the black soldier. This effect was difficult to measure but nevertheless real and has been the subject of considerable study by social scientists.[8-72] Their opinions are obviously open to debate, and in fact most of them were not fully formulated during the period under discussion. Yet their conclusions, based on modern sociological techniques, clearly reveal the pain and turmoil suffered by black soldiers because of racial separation. Rarely did the Army staff bother to delve into these matters in the years before Korea, although the facts on which the scientists based their conclusions were collected by the War Department itself. This indifference is the more curious because the Army had always been aware of what the War Department Policies and Programs Review Board called in 1947 "that intangible aspect of military life called prestige and spirit."[8-73]

Burdened with the task of shoring up its racial policy, the Army staff failed to concern itself with the effect of segregation. Yet by ignoring segregation the staff overlooked the primary cause of its racial problems and condemned the Army to their continuation. It need not have been, because as originally conceived, the Gillem Board policy provided, in the words of the Assistant Secretary of War, for "progressive experimentation" leading to "effective manpower utilization without regard to race or color."[8-74] This reasonable approach to a complex social issue was recognized as such by the War Department and by many black spokesmen. But the Gillem Board's original goal was soon abandoned, and in the "interest of National Defense," according to Secretary Royall, integration was postponed for the indefinite future.[8-75] Extension of individual integration below the company level was forbidden, and the lessons learned at the Kitzingen Training Center were never applied elsewhere; in short, progressive experimentation was abandoned.

The Gillem Board era began with Secretary Patterson accepting the theory of racially separate but equal service as an anodyne for temporary segregation; it ended with Secretary Royall embracing a permanent separate but equal system as a shield to protect the racial status quo. While Patterson and his assistants accepted restriction on the number of Negroes and their assignment to segregated jobs and facilities as a temporary expedient, military subordinates used the Gillem Board's reforms as a way to make more efficient a segregation policy that neither they nor, they believed, society in general was willing to change. Thus, despite some real progress on the periphery of its racial problem, the Army would have to face the enemy in Korea with an inefficient organization of its men.

The Army's postwar policy was based on a false premise. The Gillem Board decided that since Negroes had fought poorly in segregated divisions in two world wars, they might fight better in smaller segregated organizations within larger white units. Few officers really believed this, for it was commonly accepted throughout the Army that Negroes generally made poor combat soldiers. It followed then that the size of a unit was immaterial, and indeed, given the manpower that the Army received from reenlistments and Selective Service, any black unit, no matter its size, would almost assuredly be an inefficient, spiritless group of predominately Class IV and V men. For in addition to its educational limitations, the typical black unit suffered a further handicap in the vital matter of motivation. The Gillem Board disregarded this fact, but it was rarely overlooked by the black soldier: he was called upon to serve as a second-class soldier to defend what he often regarded as his second-class citizenship. In place of unsatisfactory black divisions, Circular 124 made the Army substitute three unsatisfactorily mixed divisions whose black elements were of questionable efficiency and a focus of complaint among civil rights advocates. Commanders at all levels faced a dilemma implicit in the existence of white and black armies side by side. Overwhelmed by regulations and policies that tried to preserve the fiction of separate but equal opportunity, these officers wasted their time and energy and, most often in the case of black officers, lost their self-confidence.

In calling for the integration of small black units rather than individuals, the Gillem Board obviously had in mind the remarkably effective black platoons in Europe in the last months of World War II. But even this type of organization was impossible in the postwar Army because it demanded a degree of integration that key commanders, especially the major Army component commanders, were unwilling to accept.

These real problems were intensified by the normal human failings of prejudice, vested interest, well-meaning ignorance, conditioned upbringing, shortsightedness, preoccupation with other matters, and simple reluctance to change. The old ways were comfortable, and the new untried, frightening in their implications and demanding special effort. Nowhere was there enthusiasm for the positive measures needed to implement the Gillem Board's recommendations leading to integration. This unwillingness to act positively was particularly noticeable in the Organization and Training Division, in the Army Ground Forces, and even to some extent in the Personnel and Administration Division itself.

The situation might have improved had the Gillem Board been able or willing to spell out intermediate goals. For the ultimate objective of using black soldiers like white soldiers as individuals was inconceivable and meaningless or radical and frightening to many in the Army. Interim goals might have provided impetus for gradual change and precluded the virtual inertia that gripped the Army staff. But at best Circular 124 served as a stopgap measure, allowing the Army to postpone for a few more years any substantial change in race policy. This postponement cost the service untold time and effort devising and defending a system increasingly under attack from the black community and, significantly, from that community's growing allies in the administration.

CHAPTER 9

The Postwar Navy

That Army concerns and problems dominated the discussions of race relations in the armed forces in the postwar years is understandable since the Army had the largest number of Negroes and the most widely publicized segregation policy of all the services. At the same time the Army bore, unfairly, the brunt of public criticism for all the services' race problems. The Navy, committed to a policy of integration, but with relatively few Negroes in its integrated general service or in the ranks of the segregated Marine Corps and the new Air Force, its racial policy still fluid, merely attracted less attention and so escaped many of the charges hurled at the Army by civil rights advocates both in and out of the federal government. But however different or unformed their racial policies, all the services for the most part segregated Negroes in practice and all were open to charges of discrimination.

Although the services developed different racial policies out of their separate circumstances, all three were reacting to the same set of social forces and all three suffered from race prejudice. They also faced in common a growing indifference to military careers on the part of talented young Negroes who in any case would have to compete with an aging but persistent group of less talented black professionals for a limited number of jobs. Of great importance was the fact that the racial practices of the armed forces were a product of the individual service's military traditions. Countless incidents support the contention that service traditions were a transcendent factor in military decisions. Marx Leva, Forrestal's assistant, told the story of a Forrestal subordinate who complained that some admirals were still opposed to naval aviation, to which Forrestal replied that he knew some admirals who still opposed steam engines.[9-1] Forrestal's humorous exaggeration underscored the tenacity of traditional attitudes in the Navy. Although self-interest could never be discounted as a motive, tradition also figured prominently, for example, in the controversy between proponents of the battleship and proponents of the aircraft carrier. Certainly the influence of tradition could be discerned in the antipathy of Navy officials toward racial change.[9-2]

The Army also had its problems with tradition. It endured tremendous inner conflict before it decided to drop the cavalry in favor of mechanized and armored units. Nor did the resistance to armor die quickly. Former Chief of Staff Peyton C. March reported that a previous Chief of Cavalry told him in 1950 that the Army had betrayed the horse.[9-3] President Roosevelt was also a witness to how military tradition frustrated attempts to change policy. He picked his beloved Navy to make the point: "To change anything in the Na-a-vy is like punching a feather bed. You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching."[9-4] Many senior officers resisted equal treatment and opportunity simply because of their traditional belief that Negroes needed special treatment and any basic change in their status was fraught with danger.[9-5]

Still, tradition could work two ways, and in the case of the Navy, at least, the postwar decision to liberalize racial practices can be traced in part to its sense of tradition. When James Forrestal started to integrate the general service in 1944, his appeals to his senior military colleagues, the President, and the public were always couched in terms of military efficiency. But if military efficiency made the new policy announced in February 1946 inevitable, military tradition made partial integration acceptable. Black sailors had served in significant numbers in an integrated general service during the nation's first century and a half, and those in the World War II period who spoke of a traditional Navy ban against Negroes were just as wrong as those who spoke of a traditional ban on liquor. The same abstemious secretary who completely outlawed alcohol on warships in 1914 initiated the short-lived restrictions on the service of Negroes in the Navy.[9-6] Both limited integration and liquor were old traditions in the American Navy, and the influence of military tradition made integration of the general service relatively simple.

Forrestal was convinced that in order to succeed racial reform must first be accepted by the men already in uniform; integration, if quietly and gradually put into effect, would soon demonstrate its efficiency and make the change acceptable to all members of the service. Quiet gradualism became the hallmark of his effort. In August 1945 the Navy had some 165,000 Negroes, almost 5.5 percent of its total strength. Sixty-four of them, including six women, were commissioned officers.[9-7] Presumably, these men and women would be the first to enjoy the fruits of the new integration order. Their number could also be expected to increase because, as Secretary Forrestal reported in August 1946, the only quotas on enlistment were those determined by the needs of the Navy and the limitation of funds.[9-8] Even as he spoke, at least some black sailors were being trained in almost all naval ratings and were serving throughout the fleet, on planes and in submarines, working and living with whites. The signs pointed to a new day for Negroes in the Navy.

Shore Leave in Korea.
Men of the USS Topeka land in Inch'on, 1948.

But during the chaotic months of demobilization a different picture began to emerge. Although Negroes continued to number about 5 percent of the Navy's enlisted strength, their position altered radically. The average strength figures for 1946 showed 3,300 Negroes, 16 percent of the total black strength, serving in the integrated general service while 17,300, or 84 percent, were classified as stewards. By mid-1948 the outlook was somewhat brighter, but still on the average only 38 percent of the Negroes in the Navy held jobs in the general service while 62 percent remained in the nonwhite Steward's Branch. At this time only three black officers remained on active duty. Again, what Navy officials saw as military efficiency helps explain this postwar retreat. Because of its rapidly sinking manpower needs, the Navy could afford to set higher enlistment standards than the Army, and the fewer available spaces in the general service went overwhelmingly to the many more eligible whites who applied. Only in the Steward's Branch, with its separate quotas and lower enlistment standards, did the Navy find a place for the many black enlistees as well as the thousands of stewards ready and willing to reenlist for peacetime service.

If efficiency explains why the Navy's general service remained disproportionately white, tradition explains how segregation and racial exclusion could coexist with integration in an organization that had so recently announced a progressive racial policy. Along with its tradition of an integrated general service, the Navy had a tradition of a white officer corps. It was natural for the Navy to exclude black officers from the Regular Navy, Secretary John L. Sullivan said later, just as it was common to place Negroes in mess jobs.[9-9] A modus vivendi could be seen emerging from the twin dictates of efficiency and tradition: integrate a few thousand black sailors throughout the general service in fulfillment of the letter of the Bureau of Naval Personnel circular; as for the nonwhite Steward's Branch and the lack of black officers, these conditions were ordinary and socially comfortable. Since most Navy leaders agreed that the new policy was fair and practical, no further changes seemed necessary in the absence of a pressing military need or a demand from the White House or Congress.

To black publicists and other advocates of civil rights, the Navy's postwar manpower statistics were self-explanatory: the Navy was discriminating against the Negro. Time and again the Navy responded to this charge, echoing Secretary Forrestal's contention that the Navy had no racial quotas and that all restrictions on the employment of black sailors had been lifted. As if suggesting that all racial distinctions had been abandoned, personnel officials discontinued publishing racial statistics and abolished the Special Programs Unit.[9-10] Cynics might have ascribed other motives for these decisions, but the civil rights forces apparently never bothered. For the most part they left the Navy's apologists to struggle with the increasingly difficult task of explaining why the placement of Negroes deviated so markedly from assignment for whites.

The Navy's difficulty in this regard stemmed from the fact that the demobilization program under which it geared down from a 3.4 million-man service to a peacetime force of less than half a million was quite straightforward and simple. Consequently, the latest state of the Negro in the Navy was readily apparent to the black serviceman and to the public. The key to service in the postwar Navy was acceptance into the Regular Navy. The wartime Navy had been composed overwhelmingly of reservists and inductees, and shortly after V-J day the Navy announced plans for the orderly separation of all reservists by September 1946. In April 1946 it discontinued volunteer enlistment in the Naval Reserve for immediate active duty, and in May it issued its last call for draftees through Selective Service.[9-11]

At the same time the Bureau of Naval Personnel launched a vigorous program to induce reservists to switch to the Regular Navy. In October 1945 it opened all petty officer ratings in the Regular Navy to such transfers and offered reservists special inducements for changeover in the form of ratings, allowance extras, and, temporarily, short-term enlistments. So successful was the program that by July 1947 the strength of the Regular Navy had climbed to 488,712, only a few thousand short of the postwar authorization. The Navy ended its changeover program in early 1947.[9-12] While it lasted, black reservists and inductees shared in the program, although the chief of the personnel recruiting division found it necessary to amplify the recruiting instructions to make this point clear.[9-13] The Regular Navy included 7,066 enlisted Negroes on V-J day, 2.1 percent of the total enlisted strength. This figure nearly tripled in the next year to 20,610, although the percentage of Negroes only doubled.[9-14]

The Steward's Branch

The major concern of the civil rights groups was not so much the number of Negroes in the Regular Navy, although this remained far below the proportion of Negroes in the civilian population, but that the majority of Negroes were being accepted for duty in the nonwhite Steward's Branch. More than 97 percent of all black sailors in the Regular Navy in December 1945 were in this branch. The ratio improved somewhat in the next six months when 3,000 black general service personnel (out of a wartime high of 90,000) transferred into the Regular Navy while more than 10,000 black reservists and draftees joined the 7,000 regulars already in the Steward's Branch.[9-15] The statistical low point in terms of the ratio of Negroes in the postwar regular general service and the Steward's Branch occurred in fiscal year 1947 when only 19.21 percent of the Navy's regular black personnel were assigned outside the Steward's Branch.[9-16] In short, more than eight out of every ten Negroes in the Navy trained and worked separately from white sailors, performing menial tasks and led by noncommissioned officers denied the perquisites of rank.

The Navy itself had reason to be concerned. The Steward's Branch created efficiency problems and was a constant source of embarrassment to the service's public image. Because of its low standards, the branch attracted thousands of poorly educated and underprivileged individuals who had a high rate of venereal disease but were engaged in preparing and serving food. Leaders within the branch itself, although selected on the basis of recommendations from superiors, examinations, and seniority, were often poor performers. Relations between the individual steward and the outfit to which he was assigned were often marked by personal conflicts and other difficulties. Consequently, while stewards eagerly joined the branch in the Regular Navy, the incidence of disciplinary problems among them was high. The branch naturally earned the opprobrium of civil rights groups, who were sensitive not only to the discrimination of a separate branch for minorities but also to the unfavorable image these men created of Negroes in the service.[9-17]

Mess Attendants, USS Bushnell, 1918

The Navy had a ready defense for its management of the branch. Its spokesmen frequently explained that it performed an essential function, especially at sea. Since this function was limited in scope, they added, the Navy was able to reduce the standards for the branch, thus opening opportunities for many men otherwise ineligible to join the service. In order to offer a chance for advancement the Navy had to create a separate recruiting and training system for stewards. This separation in turn explained the steward's usual failure to transfer to branches in the regular command channels. Since there were no minimum standards for the branch, it followed that most of its noncommissioned officers remained unqualified to exercise military command over personnel other than their branch subordinates. Lack of command responsibility was also present in a number of other branches not directly concerned with the operation of ships. It was not the result of race prejudice, therefore, but of standards for enlistment and types of duties performed. Nor was the steward's frequent physical separation based on race; berthing was arranged by department and function aboard large vessels. Separation did not exist on smaller ships. Messmen were usually berthed with other men of the supply department, including bakers and storekeepers. Chief stewards, however, as Under Secretary Kimball later explained, had not been required to meet the military qualifications for chief petty officer, and therefore it was "considered improper that they should be accorded the same messing, berthing, club facilities, and other privileges reserved for the highest enlisted grade of the Navy."[9-18] Stewards of the lower ranks received the same chance for advancement as members of other enlisted branches, but to grant them command responsibility would necessitate raising qualifications for the whole branch, thus eliminating many career stewards and extending steward training to include purely military subjects.[9-19]

Mess Attendants, USS Wisconsin, 1953

There was truth in these assertions. Stewards had taken advantage of relaxed regulations, flocking into the Regular Navy during the first months of the changeover program. Many did so because they had many years invested in a naval career. Some may have wanted the training and experience to be gained from messman's service. In fact, some stewards enjoyed rewarding careers in restaurant, club, and hotel work after retirement. More surprising, considering the numerous complaints about the branch from civil rights groups, the Steward's Branch consistently reported the highest reenlistment rate in the Navy. Understandably, the Navy constantly reiterated these statistics. Actually, the stewards themselves were a major stumbling block to reform of the branch. Few of the senior men aspired to other ratings; many were reluctant to relinquish what they saw as the advantages of the messman's life. Whatever its drawbacks, messman's duty proved to be a popular assignment.[9-20]

The Navy's defense was logical, but not too convincing. Technically the Steward's Branch was open to all, but in practice it remained strictly nonwhite. Civil rights activists could point to the fact that there were six times as many illiterate whites as Negroes in the wartime Navy, yet none of these whites were ever assigned to the Steward's Branch and none transferred to that branch of the Regular Navy after the war.[9-21] Moreover, shortly after the war the Bureau of Naval Personnel predicted a 7,577-man shortage in the Steward's Branch, but the Navy made no attempt to fill the places with white sailors. Instead, it opened the branch to Filipinos and Guamanians, recruiting 3,500 of the islanders before the program was stopped on 4 July 1946, the date of Philippine independence. Some Navy recruiters found other ways to fill steward quotas. The Urban League and others reported cases in which black volunteers were rejected by recruiters for any assignment but steward duty.[9-22] Nor did civil rights spokesmen appreciate the distinction in petty officer rank the Navy made between the steward and other sailors; they continued to interpret it as part and parcel of the "injustices, lack of respect and the disregard for the privileges accorded rated men in other branches of the service."[9-23] They also resented the paternalism implicit in the secretary's assurances that messman's duty was a haven for men unable to compete.

Some individuals in the department were aware of this resentment in the black community and pushed for reform in the Steward's Branch. The Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, John Nicholas Brown, wanted more publicity given both in and outside the service to the fact that the branch was not restricted to any one race and, conversely, that Negroes were welcome in the general service.[9-24] In view of the strong tradition of racial separateness in the stewards rating, such publicity might be considered sheer sophistry, but no more so than the suggestion made by a senior personnel official that the Commissary Branch and Steward's Branch be combined to achieve a racially balanced specialty.[9-25] Lester Granger, now outside the official Navy family but still intimately concerned with the department's racial affairs, also pleaded for a merger of the commissary and steward functions. He reasoned that, since members of the Commissary Branch could advance to true petty officer rating, such a merger would provide a new avenue of advancement for stewards.

But more to the point Granger also pushed for reform in the standards of the Steward's Branch. He recognized that educational and other requirements had been lowered for stewards, but, he told Forrestal's successor, Secretary John L. Sullivan, there was little wisdom in "compounding past error." He also pointed out that not all messmen were in the lower intelligence classifications and recommended that the higher scoring men be replaced with low-scoring whites.[9-26]

From within the Navy itself Lt. Dennis D. Nelson, one of the first twelve Negroes commissioned and still on active duty, added his voice to the demand for reform of the Steward's Branch. An analogy may be drawn between the Navy career of Nelson and that of the legendary Christopher Sargent. Lacking Sargent's advantages of wealth and family connection, Nelson nevertheless became a familiar of Secretary Sullivan's and, though not primarily assigned to the task, made equal opportunity his preeminent concern. A highly visible member of the Navy's racial minority in Washington, he made himself its spokesman, pressing senior officials to bring the department's manpower practices closer to its stated policy. Once again the Navy experienced the curious phenomenon of a lieutenant firing off memos and letters to senior admirals and buttonholing the Secretary of the Navy.[9-27]

Nelson had a host of suggestions for the Steward's Branch: eliminate the branch as a racially separate division of labor in the Navy, provide permanent officer supervision for all steward units, develop capable noncommissioned officers in the branch with privileges and responsibilities similar to those of other petty officers, indoctrinate all personnel in the ramifications of the Navy's stated integration policy, and create a committee to work out the details of these changes. On several occasions Nelson tried to show his superiors how nuances in their own behavior toward the stewards reinforced, perhaps as much as separate service itself, the image of discrimination. He recommended that the steward's uniform be changed, eliminating the white jacket and giving the steward a regular seaman's look. He also suggested that petty officer uniforms for stewards be regularized. At one poignant moment this lonely officer took on the whole service, trying to change singlehandedly a thoughtless habit that demeaned both blacks and whites. He admonished the service: "refrain from the use of 'Boy' in addressing Stewards. This has been a constant practice in the Service and is most objectionable, is in bad taste, shows undue familiarity and pins a badge of inferiority, adding little to the dignity and pride of adults."[9-28]

In summing up these recommendations for the Secretary of the Navy in January 1949, Nelson reminded Sullivan that only 37 percent of the Navy's Negroes were in the general service, in contrast to 72 percent of the Negroes in the Marine Corps. He warned that this imbalance perturbed the members of the recently convened National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs and predicted it would interest those involved in the forthcoming presidential inquiry on equality in the armed forces.[9-29]

Despite its continued defense of the status quo in the Steward's Branch, the Bureau of Naval Personnel was not insensitive to criticism. To protect Negroes from overzealous recruiters for the branch, the bureau had announced in October 1945 that any Negro in the general service desiring transfer to the Steward's Branch had to make his request in writing.[9-30] In mid-1946 it closed the branch to first enlistment, thereby abolishing possible abuses in the recruiting system.[9-31] Later in the year the bureau tried to upgrade the quality of the branch by instituting a new and more rigorous training course for second-and third-class stewards and cooks at Bainbridge, Maryland. Finally, in June 1947 it removed from its personnel manual all remaining mention of restrictions on the transfer of messmen to the general service.[9-32] These changes were important, but they failed to attack racial separation, the major problem of the branch. Thus the controversy over messmen, in which tradition, prejudice, and necessity contended, went on, and the Steward's Branch, a symbol of discrimination in the Navy, remained to trouble both the service and the civil rights groups for some time.

Black Officers

Commander Nelson

The Navy had a racial problem of more immediate concern to men like Lieutenant Nelson, one of three black officers remaining on active duty. These were the survivers of a most exclusive group that had begun its existence with much hope. In the months following graduation of the first twelve black officers and one warrant officer in March 1944, scores of Negroes had passed through the Navy's training school. By the end of the war the V-12 program had thirty-six black candidates, with three others attending the Supply Corps School at Harvard. The number of black officers had grown at an agonizingly slow rate, although in June 1944 the Secretary of the Navy approved a personnel bureau request that in effect removed any numerical quotas for black officers. Unfortunately, black officers were still limited to filling "needs as they appeared," and the need for black officers was curtailed by the restricted range of activities open to them in the segregated wartime service. Further, most nominees for commissions were selected from the ranks and depended on the sponsorship of their commanding officer who might not be able to spare a competent enlisted man who deserved promotion. Putting the matter in the best possible light, one Navy historian blamed the dearth of black officers on bureaucratic inertia.[9-33]

Despite procurement failures and within the limitations of general segregation policy, the Navy treated black officers with scrupulous fairness during the war. The Bureau of Naval Personnel insisted they be given the privileges of rank in wardroom and ashore, thus crushing an attempt by authorities at Great Lakes to underwrite a tacit ban on the use of the officers' club by Negroes. In fact, integration proved to be more the rule than the exception in training black officers. The small number of black candidates made segregated classes impractical, and after graduation of the first group of black officers at Great Lakes, Negroes were accepted in all officer candidate classes. As part of this change, the Special Programs Unit successfully integrated the Navy's officer candidate school in the posh hotels of still-segregated Miami Beach.

The officers graduated into a number of assignments. Some saw duty aboard district and yard craft, others at departmental headquarters in Washington. A few served in recruit training assignments at Great Lakes and Hampton Institute, but the majority went overseas to work in logistical and advanced base companies, the stevedore-type outfits composed exclusively of Negroes. Nelson, for example, was sent to the Marshall Islands where he was assigned to a logistic support company composed of some three hundred black sailors and noncommissioned officers with a racially mixed group of officers. Black staff officers, engineers, doctors, dentists, and chaplains were also attached to these units, where they had limited responsibilities and little chance for advancement.[9-34]

Exceptions to the assignment rule increased during the last months of the war. The Special Programs Unit had concluded that restricting black officers to district craft and shore billets might further encourage the tendency to build an inshore black Navy, and the Bureau of Naval Personnel began assigning black officers to seagoing vessels when they completed their sea duty training. By July 1945 several were serving in the fleet. To avoid embarrassment, the Chief of Naval Personnel made it a practice to alert the commanding officers of a ship about to receive a black officer so that he might indoctrinate his officers. As his assistant, Rear Adm. William M. Fechteler, explained to one such commander, "if such officers are accorded the proper respect and are required to discharge the duties commensurate with their rank they should be equally competent to white officers of similar experience."[9-35]

Fechteler's prediction proved accurate. By V-J day, the Navy's black officers, both line and staff, were serving competently in many occupations. The bureau reported that the "personnel relationship aspect" of their introduction into the service had worked well. Black officers with white petty officers and enlisted men under them handled their command responsibilities without difficulty, and in general bureau reports and field inspections noted considerable satisfaction with their performance.[9-36] But despite this satisfactory record, only three black officers remained on active duty in 1946. The promise engendered by the Navy's treatment of its black officers in the closing months of the war had not been fulfilled during the demobilization period that followed, and what had been to the civil rights movement a brightening situation rapidly became an intolerable one.

There were several reasons for the rapid demobilization of black officers. Some shared the popular desire of reserve officers to return to civilian life. Among them were mature men with substantial academic achievements and valuable technical experience. Many resented in particular their assignment to all-black labor units, and wanted to resume their civilian careers.[9-37] But a number of black officers, along with over 29,000 white reservists, did seek commissions in the Regular Navy.[9-38] Yet not one Negro was granted a regular commission in the first eighteen months after the war. Lester Granger was especially upset by these statistics, and in July 1946 he personally took up the case of two black candidates with Secretary Forrestal.[9-39]

The Bureau of Naval Personnel offered what it considered a reasonable explanation. As a group, black reserve officers were considerably overage for their rank and were thus at a severe disadvantage in the fierce competition for regular commissions. The average age of the first class of black officers was over thirty-one years. All had been commissioned ensigns on 17 March 1944, and all had received one promotion to lieutenant, junior grade, by the end of the war. When age and rank did coincide, black reservists were considered for transfer. For example, on 15 March 1947 Ens. John Lee, a former V-12 graduate assigned as gunnery officer aboard a fleet auxiliary craft, received a regular commission, and on 6 January 1948 Lt. (jg.) Edith DeVoe, one of the four black nurses commissioned in March 1945, was transferred into the Regular Navy. The following October Ens. Jessie Brown was commissioned and assigned to duty as the first black Navy pilot.

In a sense, the black officers had the cards stacked against them. As Nelson later explained, the bureau did not extend to its black line officers the same consideration given other reservists. While the first twelve black officers were given unrestricted line officer training, the bureau assigned them to restricted line positions, an added handicap when it came to promotions and retention in the postwar Navy. All were commissioned ensigns, although the bureau usually granted rank according to the candidate's age, a practice followed when it commissioned its first black staff officers, one of whom became a full lieutenant and the rest lieutenants, junior grade. As an overage reservist himself, Nelson remained on active duty after the war through the personal intervention of Secretary Forrestal. His tour in the Navy's public relations office was repeatedly extended until finally on 1 January 1950, thanks to Secretary Sullivan, he received a regular commission.[9-40]

Prospects for an increase in black officers were dim. With rare exception the Navy's officers came from the academy at Annapolis, the officer candidate program, or the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps (NROTC) program. Ens. Wesley A. Brown would graduate in the academy's class of 1949, the sixth Negro to attend and the first to graduate in the academy's 104-year history. Only five other Negroes were enrolled in the academy's student body in 1949, and there was little indication that this number would rapidly increase. For the most part the situation was beyond the control of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. Competition was keen for acceptance at Annapolis. The American Civil Liberties Union later asserted that the exclusion of Negroes from many of the private prep schools, which so often produced successful academy applicants, helped explain why there were so few Negroes at the academy.[9-41]

Nor were many black officers forthcoming from the Navy's two other sources. Officer candidate schools, severely reduced in size after the war and a negligible source of career officers, had no Negroes in attendance from 1946 through 1948. Perhaps most disturbing was the fact that in 1947 just fourteen Negroes were enrolled among more than 5,600 students in the NROTC program, the usual avenue to a Regular Navy commission.[9-42] The Holloway program, the basis for the Navy's reserve officer training system, offered scholarships at fifty-two colleges across the nation, but the number of these scholarships was small, the competition intense, and black applicants, often burdened by inferior schooling, did not fare well.

Statistics pointed at least to the possibility that racial discrimination existed in the NROTC system. Unlike the Army and Air Force programs, reserve officer training in the Navy depended to a great extent on state selection committees dominated by civilians. These committees exercised considerable leeway in selecting candidates to fill their state's annual NROTC quota, and their decisions were final. Not one Negro served on any of the state committees. In fact, fourteen of the fifty-two colleges selected for reserve officer training barred Negroes from admission by law and others—the exact number is difficult to ascertain—by policy. One black newspaper charged that only thirteen of the participating institutions admitted Negroes.[9-43] In all, only six black candidates survived this process to win commissions in 1948.

Lester Granger blamed the lack of black candidates on the fact that so few Negroes attended the schools; undoubtedly, more Negroes would have been enrolled in reserve officer training had the program been established at one of the predominantly black colleges. But black institutions were excluded from the wartime V-12 program, and when the program was extended to include fifty-two colleges in November 1945 the Navy again rejected the applications of black schools, justifying the exclusion, as it did for many white schools, on grounds of inadequacies in enrollment, academic credentials, and physical facilities.[9-44] Some black spokesmen called the decision discriminatory. President Mordecai Johnson of Howard University ruefully wondered how the Navy's unprejudiced and nondiscriminatory selection of fifty-two colleges managed to exclude so neatly all black institutions.[9-45]

Others disagreed. From the first the Special Programs Unit had rejected the clamor for forming V-12 units in predominantly black colleges, arguing that in the long run this could be considered enforced segregation and hardly contribute to racial harmony. Although candidates were supposed to attend the NROTC school of their choice, black candidates were restricted to institutions that would accept them. If a black school was added to the program, all black candidates would very likely gravitate toward it. Several black spokesmen, including Nelson, took this attitude and urged instead a campaign to increase the number of Negroes at the various integrated schools in the NROTC system.[9-46] Whatever the best solution, a significant and speedy increase in the number of black officers was unlikely.

Of lesser moment because of the small size of the WAVES and the Nurse Corps, the role of black women in the postwar Navy nevertheless concerned several civil rights leaders. Roy Wilkins, for one, concluded that the Navy's new policy which "hasn't worked out on the officer level ... hadn't worked on the women's level" either.[9-47] The Navy's statistics seemed to proved his contention. The service had 68 black enlisted women and 6 officers (including 4 nurses) on V-J day; a year later the number had been reduced to 5 black WAVES and 1 nurse. The Navy sought to defend these statistics against charges of discrimination. A spokesman explained that the paucity of black WAVES resulted from the fact that Negroes were barred from the WAVES until December 1944, just months before the Navy stopped recruiting all WAVES. Black WAVES who had remained in the postwar Navy had been integrated and were being employed without discrimination.[9-48]

But criticism persisted. In February 1948 the Navy could count six black WAVES out of a total enlisted force of 1,700, and during hearings on a bill to regularize the women's services several congressmen joined with a representative of the NAACP to press for a specific anti-discrimination amendment. The amendment was defeated, but not before Congressman Adam Clayton Powell charged that the status of black women in the Navy proved discrimination and demonstrated that the administration was practicing "not merely discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crowism, but total exclusion."[9-49] The same critics also demanded a similar amendment to the companion legislation on the WAC's, but it, too, was defeated.

Black nurses presented a different problem. Two of the wartime nurses had resigned to marry and the third was on inactive status attending college. The Navy, Secretary Forrestal claimed in July 1947, was finding it difficult to replace them or add to their number. Observing that black leaders had shown considerable interest in the Navy's nursing program, Forrestal noted that a similar interest had not been forthcoming from black women themselves. During the Navy's 1946 recruitment drive to attract 1,000 new nurses, only one Negro applied, and she was disqualified on physical grounds.[9-50]

Public Image and the Problem of Numbers

Individual black nurses no doubt had cogent reasons for failing to apply for Navy commissions, but the fact that only one applied called attention to a phenomenon that first appeared about 1946. Black Americans were beginning to ignore the Navy. Attempts by black reserve officers to procure NROTC applicants in black high schools and colleges proved largely unproductive. Nelson spoke before 8,500 potential candidates in 1948, and a special recruiting team reached an equal number the following year, but the combined effort brought fewer than ninety black applicants to take the competitive examination.[9-51] Recruiters had similar problems in the enlistment of Negroes for general service. Viewed from a different perspective, even the complaints and demands of black citizens, at flood tide during the war, now merely trickled into the secretary's office, reflecting, it could be argued, a growing indifference. That such unwillingness to enlist, as Lester Granger put it, should occur on the heels of a widely publicized promise of racial equality in the service was ironic. The Navy was beginning to welcome the Negro, but the Negro no longer seemed interested in joining.[9-52]

Naval Unit Passes in Review,
Naval Advanced Base, Bremerhaven, Germany, 1949.

Several reasons were suggested for this attitude. Assistant Secretary Brown placed the blame, at least in part, on the gap between policy and practice. Because of delay in abolishing old discriminatory practices, he pointed out to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, "the Navy's good public relations are endangered."[9-53] The personnel bureau promptly investigated, found justification for complaints of discrimination, and took corrective action.[9-54] Yet, as Nelson pointed out, such corrections, often in the form of "clarifying directives," were usually directed to specific commanders and tied to specific incidents and were ignored by other commanders as inapplicable to their own racial experiences.[9-55] Despite the existence of the racially separate Steward's Branch, the Navy's policy seemed so unassailable to the Chief of Naval Personnel that when his views on a congressional measure to abolish segregation in the services were solicited he reported without reservation that his bureau interposed no objection.[9-56]