16. (p. 397)…

16. (p. 397)

Integration in the Air Force and the Navy

The racial reforms instituted by the four services between 1949 and 1954 demonstrated that integration was to a great extent concerned with effective utilization of military manpower. In the case of the Army and the Marine Corps the reforms would be delayed and would occur, finally, on the field of battle. The Navy and the Air Force, however, accepted the connection between military efficiency and integration even before the Fahy Committee began to preach the point. Despite their very dissimilar postwar racial practices, the Air Force and the Navy were facing the same problem. In a period of reduced manpower allocations and increased demand for technically trained men, these services came to realize that racial distinctions were imposing unacceptable administrative burdens and reducing fighting efficiency. Their response to the Fahy Committee was merely to expedite or revise integration policies already decided upon.

The Air Force, 1949-1951

The Air Force's integration plan had gone to the Secretary of Defense on 6 January 1949, committing that service to a major reorganization of its manpower. In a period of severe budget and manpower retrenchment, the Air Force was proposing to open all jobs in all fields to Negroes, subject only to the individual qualifications of the men and the needs of the service.[16-1] To ascertain these needs and qualifications the Director of Personnel Planning was prepared to screen the service's 20,146 Negroes (269 officers and 19,877 airmen), approximately 5 percent of its strength, for the purpose of reassigning those eligible to former all-white units and training schools and dropping the unfit from the service.[16-2] As Secretary of the Air Force Symington made clear, his integration plan would be limited in scope. Some black service units would be retained; the rest would be eliminated, "thereby relieving the Air Force of the critical problems involved in manning these units with qualified personnel."[16-3]

[Footnote 16-1: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 25 Mar 49, sub: Salient Factors of Air Force Policy Regarding Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-2: Negro strength figures as of 5 April 1949. Ltr, ASecAF to Robert Harper, Chief Clerk, House Armed Services Cmte, 5 Apr 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-3: Memo, Symington for Forrestal, 6 Jan 49, SecAF files.]

In the end the integration process was not a drawn-out one; much of Symington's effort in 1949 was devoted instead to winning approval for the plan. Submitted to Forrestal on 6 January 1949, it was (p. 398) slightly revised after lengthy discussions in both the Fahy Committee and the Personnel Policy Board and in keeping with the Defense Secretary's equal treatment and opportunity directive of 6 April 1949. Some further delay resulted from the Personnel Policy Board's abortive attempt to achieve an equal opportunity program common to all the services. The Air Force plan was not finally approved by the Secretary of Defense until 11 May. Some in the Air Force were worried about the long delay in approval. As early as 12 January the Chief of Staff warned Symington that budget programming for the new 48-wing force required an early decision on the plan, especially in regard to the inactivation of the all-black wing at Lockbourne. Further delay, he predicted, would cause confusion in reassignment of some 4,000 troops.[16-4] In conversation with the Secretary of Defense, Symington mentioned a deadline of 31 March, but Assistant Secretary Zuckert was later able to assure Symington that the planners could tolerate a delay in the decision over integration until May.[16-5]

[Footnote 16-4: Memo, Hoyt S. Vandenberg, CofS, USAF, for SecAF, 12 Jan 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-5: Memo, SecAF for Forrestal, 17 Feb 49; Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 24 Mar 49, sub: Lockbourne AFB; both in SecAF files.]

By then the long official silence had produced serious consequences, for despite the lack of any public announcement, parts of the plan had leaked to the press and caused some debate in Congress and considerable dissatisfaction among black servicemen. Congressional interest in the internal affairs of the armed forces was always of more than passing concern to the services. When a discussion of the new integration plan appearing in the Washington Post on 29 March caused a flurry of comment on Capitol Hill, Zuckert's assistant, Clarence H. Osthagen, met with the clerk of the House Armed Services Committee to "explain and clarify" for the Air Force. The clerk, Robert Harper, warned Osthagen that the impression in the House was that a "complete intermingling of Negro and white personnel was to take place" and that Congressman Winstead of Mississippi had been tempted to make a speech on the subject. Still, Harper predicted that there would be no adverse criticism of the plan in the House "at this time," adding that since that body had already passed the Air Force appropriation Chairman Carl Vinson was generally unconcerned about the Air Force racial program. Reporting on Senate reaction, Harper noted that while many members of the upper house would have liked to see the plan deferred, they recognized that the President's order made change mandatory. At any rate, Harper reassured Osthagen, the announcement of an integration plan would not jeopardize pending Air Force legislation.[16-6]

[Footnote 16-6: Memo for Files, Osthagen, Asst to ASecAF, 13 Apr 49, SecAF files.]

Unfortunately, the Air Force's black personnel were not so easily reassured, and the service had a morale problem on its hands during the spring of 1949. As later reported by the Fahy Committee staff, black troops generally supported the inactivation of the all-black 332d Fighter Wing at Lockbourne as a necessary step toward integration, but news reports frequently linked the disbandment of that unit to the belt tightening imposed on the Air Force by the 1950 budget. Some Negroes in the 332d concluded that the move was not (p. 399) directed at integration but at saving money for the Air Force.[16-7] They were concerned lest they find themselves relegated to unskilled labor units despite their training and experience. This fear was not so farfetched, considering Zuckert's private prediction that the redistribution of Lockbourne men had to be executed exactly according to the proposed program or "we would find experienced Air Force Negro technical specialists pushing wheelbarrows or driving trucks in Negro service units."[16-8]

[Footnote 16-7: Ltr, Joseph H. Evans, Assoc Exec Secy, Fahy Cmte, to Fahy Cmte, 23 Jun 49, FC file. See also "U.S. Armed Forces: 1950," Our World 5 (June 1950):11-35.]

[Footnote 16-8: Draft Memo, Zuckert for Symington, 15 Feb 49, sub: Air Force Policies on Negro Personnel (not sent), SecAF files.]

The truth was that, while most Negroes in the Air Force favored integration, some were disturbed by the prospect of competition with whites of equivalent rank that would naturally follow. Many of the black officers were overage in grade, their proficiency geared to the F-51, a wartime piston plane, and they were the logical victims of any reduction in force that might occur in this period of reduced military budgets.[16-9] Some men doubted that the new program, as they imperfectly understood it, would truly integrate the service. They could, for example, see no way for the Air Force to break through what the press called the "community patterns" around southern bases, and they were generally suspicious of the motives of senior department officials. The Pittsburgh Courier summarized this attitude by quoting one black officer who expressed doubt "that a fair program will be enforced from the top echelon."[16-10]

[Footnote 16-9: Washington Post, April 4, 1949; USAF Oral History Program, Interview with Lt Col Spann Watson (USAF, Ret.), 3 Apr 73.]

[Footnote 16-10: Pittsburgh Courier, January 22, 1949.]

But such suspicions were unfounded, for the Air Force's senior officials were determined to enforce the new program both fairly and expeditiously. General Vandenberg, the Chief of Staff, reported to the War Council on 11 January that the Air Force would "effect full and complete implementation" of its integration plan not only by issuing the required directives and orders, but also by assigning responsibility for monitoring the worldwide implementation of the program to his deputy for personnel. The Chief of Staff also planned to call a meeting of his senior commanders to discuss and solve problems rising from the plan and impress on them the personal attention they must give to carrying it out in the field.[16-11]

[Footnote 16-11: Memo, Vandenberg, CofS, USAF, for SecAF, 12 Jan 49, SecAF files.]

The Air Force Commanders' Conference, assembled on 12 April 1949, heard Lt. Gen. Idwal Edwards, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, explain the genesis of the integration plan and outline its major provisions. He mentioned two major steps to be taken in the first phase of the program. First, the 332d Fighter Wing would be inactivated on or before 30 June, and all blacks would be removed from Lockbourne. The commander of the Continental Air Command would create a board of Lockbourne officers to screen those assigned to the all-black base, dividing them into three groups. The skilled and qualified officers and airmen would be reassigned worldwide to white units "just like any other officers or airmen of similar skills (p. 400) and qualifications." General Edwards assumed that the number of men in this category would not be large. Some 200 officers and 1,500 airmen, he estimated, would be found sufficiently qualified and proficient for such reassignment. He added parenthetically that Colonel Davis understood the "implications" of the new policy and intended to recommend only an individual "of such temperament, judgment, and common sense that he can get along smoothly as an individual in a white unit, and second, that his ability is such as to warrant respect of the personnel of the unit to which he is transferred."

The technically unqualified but still "usable" men would be reassigned to black service units. The staff recognized, General Edwards added, that some Negroes were unsuited for assignment to white units for "various reasons" and had specifically authorized the retention of "this type of Negro" in black units. Finally, those who were found neither qualified nor useful would be discharged under current regulations.

The second major action would be taken at the same time as the first. All commands would similarly screen their black troops with the object of reassigning the skilled and qualified to white units and eliminating the chronically unqualified. At the same time racial quotas for recruitment and school attendance would be abolished. Henceforth, blacks would enter the Air Force under the same standards as whites and would be classified, assigned, promoted, or eliminated in accordance with rules that would apply equally to all. "In other words," Edwards commented, "no one is either helped or hindered because of the color of his skin; how far or how fast each one goes depends upon his own ability." To assure equal treatment and opportunity, he would closely monitor the problem. Edwards admitted that the subject of integrated living quarters had caused discussion in the staff, but based on the Navy's years of good experience with integrated quarters and bolstered by the probability that the number of Negroes in any white unit would rarely exceed 1 percent, the staff saw no need for separate sleeping accommodations.

General Edwards reminded the assembled commanders that, while integration was new to the Air Force, the Navy had been following a similar policy for years, encountering no trouble, even in the Deep South where black troops as well as the nearby civilian communities understood that when men left the base they must conform to the laws and customs of the community. And as a parting shot he made the commanders aware of where the command responsibility lay:

There will be frictions and incidents. However, they will be minimized if commanders give the implementation of this policy their personal attention and exercise positive command control. Unless our young commanders are guided and counselled by the senior commanders in unbiased implementation, we may encounter serious troubles which the Navy has very ably avoided. It must have your personal attention and personal control.[16-12]

[Footnote 16-12: Lt Gen I. H. Edwards, "Remarks on Major Personnel Problems Presented to USAF Commanders' Conference Headquarters, USAF," 12 Apr 49, SecAF files. Italics in the original.]

Compelling reasons for reform notwithstanding, the effectiveness of an integration program would in the end depend on the attitude and initiative of the local commander. In the Air Force's case the (p. 401) ultimate effectiveness owed much to the fact that the determination of its senior officials was fully explained and widely circulated throughout the service. As Lt. Gen. Daniel (Chappie) James, Jr., later recalled, those who thought to frustrate the process were well aware that they risked serious trouble if their opposition was discovered by the senior commanders. None of the obvious excuses for preserving the racial status quo remained acceptable after Vandenberg and Edwards made their positions clear.[16-13]

[Footnote 16-13: USAF Oral History Program, Interview with Lt Gen Daniel James, Jr., 2 Oct 73. James was to become the first four-star black officer in the armed forces.]

The fact that the control of the new plan was specifically made a personal responsibility of the senior commanders spoke well for its speedy and efficient execution. This was the kind of talk commanders understood, and as the order filtered down to the lower echelons its terms became even more explicit.[16-14] "Direct attention to this changed condition is required throughout the Command," Maj. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter notified his subordinate commanders at the Military Air Transport Service. "Judgment, leadership, and ingenuity are demanded. Commanders who cannot cope with the integration of Negroes into formerly white units or activities will have no place in the Air Force structure."[16-15]

[Footnote 16-14: Ltr, Marr to author, 19 Jun 70.]

[Footnote 16-15: MATS Hq Ltr No. 9, 1 May 49, SecAF files.]

The order itself, as approved by the Secretary of Defense on 11 May 1949 and published on the same day as Air Force Letter 35-3, was unmistakable in intent and clearly spelled out a new bill of rights for Negroes in the Air Force.[16-16] The published directive differed in some respects from the version drafted by the Chief of Staff in January. Despite General Edwards's comments at the commanders' conference in April, the provision for allowing commanders to segregate barracks "if considered necessary" was removed even before the plan was first forwarded to the Secretary of Defense. This deletion was made in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, probably by Zuckert.[16-17] Later Zuckert commented, "I wouldn't want to give the commanders that kind of sweeping power. I would be afraid of how it might be exercised."[16-18] From the beginning, black airmen were billeted routinely in the living quarters of the units to which they were assigned.

[Footnote 16-16: AF Ltr 35-3, 11 May 49. Effective until 11 May 1950, the order was superseded by a new but similar letter, AF Ltr 35-78, on 14 September 1950.]

[Footnote 16-17: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 12 Jan 49, AF Negro Affairs 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-18: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert.]

The final version of the directive also deleted reference to a 10 percent limitation on black strength in formerly white units. Zuckert had assured the Fahy Committee this limitation was designed to facilitate, not frustrate, the absorption of Negroes into white units, and Edwards even agreed that given the determination of Air Force officials to make a success of their program, the measure was probably unnecessary.[16-19] In the end Zuckert decided to drop any reference to such limitations "because of the confusion that seemed to arise from this statement."[16-20]

[Footnote 16-19: Testimony of Zuckert and Edwards, USAF, Before the Fahy Committee, 28 Mar 49, afternoon session, pp. 7-8.]

[Footnote 16-20: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 29 Apr 49, sub: Department of the Air Force Implementation of the Department of Defense Policy on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, SecAF files.]

Zuckert also deleted several clauses in the supplementary letter (p. 402) to Air Force commanders that was to accompany and explain the order. These clauses had listed possible exemptions from the new order: one made it possible to retain a man in a black unit if he was one of the "key personnel" considered necessary for the successful functioning of a black unit, and the other allowed the local commander to keep those Negroes he deemed "best suited" for continued assignment to black units. The free reassignment of all eligible Negroes, particularly the well-qualified, was essential to the eventual dissolution of the all-black units. The Fahy Committee had objected to these provisions and considered it important for the Air Force to delete them,[16-21] but the matter was not raised during the committee hearings. There is evidence that the deletions were actually requested by the Secretary of Defense's Personnel Policy Board, whose influence in the integration of the Air Force is often overlooked.[16-22]

[Footnote 16-21: Freedom to Serve, pp. 37-38.]

[Footnote 16-22: Memo, SecAF for Chmn, PPB, 30 Apr 49, copy in FC file. McCoy and Ruetten, Quest and Response, p. 223, call the deletion a victory for the committee.]

The screening of officers and men at Lockbourne got under way on 17 May. A board of officers under the presidency of Col. Davis, the commander of Lockbourne, and composed of representatives of Air Force headquarters, the Continental Air Command, and the Air Training Command, and important officers of Lockbourne, interviewed every officer in the wing. After considering each man's technical training, his performance, and his career field preference, the board recommended him for reassignment in a specific duty field. Although Edwards had promised that the screening boards would also judge each man's "adaptability" to integrated service, this requirement was quickly dropped by Davis and his fellow board members.[16-23] In fact, the whole idea of having screening boards was resented by some black officers. Zuckert later admitted that the screening may have been a mistake, but at the time it had been considered the best mechanism for ascertaining the proper assignment for the men.[16-24]

[Footnote 16-23: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Davis.]

[Footnote 16-24: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert.]

At the same time, a screening team in the Air Training Command gave a written examination to Lockbourne's more than 1,100 airmen and WAF's to determine if they were in appropriate military occupational specialties. A team of personnel counselors interviewed all (p. 403) airmen, weighed test scores, past performances, qualifications outside of assigned specialty, and choices of a career field, and then placed them in one of three categories. First, they could be earmarked for general reassignment in a specific military occupational specialty different from the one they were now in; second, they could be scheduled for additional or more advanced technical training; or third, they could be trained in their current specialties. The screeners referred marginal or extraordinary cases to Colonel Davis's board for decision.[16-25]

[Footnote 16-25: NME Fact Sheet No. 105-49, 27 Jul 49.]

Concurrently with the Lockbourne processing, individual commanders established similar screening procedures wherever black airmen were then assigned. All these teams uncovered a substantial number of men and women considered eligible for further training or reassignment. (Table 4)

Table 4--Disposition of Black Personnel at Eight Air Force Bases, 1949

Percentages Total Asgmt to Asgmt to Asgmt to Recom for Base Tested Instr Tech Present Board Duty School MOS Action

Lockbourne Male 970 .32 12.08 64.64 22.98 Female 58 0.00 25.86 55.17 18.97 Lackland 247 1.62 20.65 67.61 10.12 Barksdale 158 0.00 20.25 65.82 13.93 Randolph 252 2.38 26.19 57.14 14.29 Waco 146 2.06 30.14 57.53 10.27 Mather 126 .79 27.78 40.48 30.95 Williams 144 8.33 21.53 39.58 30.56 Goodfellow 122 .82 36.89 40.89 21.31

Total 2,223 1.35 19.61 59.20 19.84

Source: President's Cmte on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces, "A First Report on the Racial Integration Program of the Air Force," 6 Feb 50, FC file.

The process of screening Lockbourne's troops was quickly completed, but the process of reassigning them was considerably more drawn-out. The reassignments were somewhat delayed in the first place by indecision, caused by budgetary uncertainties, on the future of Lockbourne itself. By 25 July, a full two months after the screening began, the Lockbourne board had recommended only 181 officers and 700 airmen to Air Force headquarters for new assignment. A short time later, however, Lockbourne was placed on inactive status and its remaining men and women, with the exception of a small caretaker detachment, were quickly reassigned throughout the Air Force.

The staff had predicted that the speed with which the integration order was carried out would follow a geographical pattern, with southern bases the last to integrate, but in fact no special pattern prevailed. For the many Negroes assigned to all-black base squadrons for administrative purposes but serving on a day-to-day basis in integrated units, the change was relatively simple. These men had already demonstrated their ability to perform their duties competently under integration, and in conformity with the new order most (p. 404) commanders immediately assigned them to the units in which they were already working. Except for their own squadron overhead, some base service squadrons literally disappeared when these reassignments were effected. After the screening process, most commanders also quickly reassigned troops serving in the other all-black units, such as Squadron F's, air ammunition, motor transport, vehicle repair, signal heavy construction, and aviation engineer squadrons.[16-26]

[Footnote 16-26: "Report on the First Year of Implementation of Current Policies Regarding Negro Personnel," Incl to Memo, Maj Gen Richard E. Nugent for ASecAF, 14 Jul 50, sub: Distribution of Negro Personnel, PPB 291.2 (9 Jul 50) (hereafter referred to as Marr Report). See also USAF Oral Hist Interv with Marr.]

There were of course a few exceptions. Some commanders, noticeably more cautious than the majority, began the integration process with considerably less ease and speed.[16-27] As late as January 1950, for example, the Fahy Committee's executive secretary found that, with the exception of a small number of Negroes assigned to white units, the black airmen at Maxwell Air Force Base were still assigned to the all-black 3817th Base Service Squadron, the only such unit he found, incidentally, in a tour of seven installations.[16-28] But as the months went by even the most cautious commander, learning of the success of the new policy in other commands, began to reassign his black airmen according to the recommendations of the screening board. Despite the announcement that some black units would be retained, practically all units were integrated by the end of the first year of the new program. Even using the Air staff's very restricted definition of a "Negro unit," that is, one whose strength was over 50 percent black, statistics show how radical was the change in just one year. (Table 5)

[Footnote 16-27: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Davis.]

[Footnote 16-28: President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces, "A First Report on the Racial Integration Program of the Air Force," 6 Feb 50, FC file (hereafter cited as Kenworthy Report).]

Table 5--Racial Composition of Air Force Units

Negroes Assigned Negroes Assigned Month Black Integrated to Black to Integrated Units Units Units Units[1]

1949 June 106 167 Not available Not available July 89 350 14,609 7,369 August 86 711 11,921 11,977 September 91 863 11,521 13,290 October 88 1,031 9,522 15,980 November 75 1,158 8,038 17,643 December 67 1,253 7,402 18,489

1950 January 59 1,301 6,773 18,929 February 36 1,399 5,511 20,654 March 26 1,476 5,023 20,938 April 24 1,515 4,728 20,793 May 24 1,506 4,675 21,033

[Tablenote 1: Figures extracted from the Marr Report; see also monthly reports on AF integration, for example Memo, Dir, Pers Plng, for Osthagen (SecAF office), 10 Mar 50, sub: Distribution of Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

Despite the predictions of some analysts, the effect of (p. 405) integration on black recruitment proved to be negligible. In a service whose total strength remained about 415,000 men during the first year of integration, Negroes numbered as follows (Table 6):

Table 6--Black Strength in the Air Force

Percentage Officer Enlisted of Air Force Date Strength[1] Strength[1] Strength

December 1948 Not available Not available 6.5 June 1949 319 (47) 21,782 (2,196) 6.0 August 1949 330 (32) 23,568 (2,275) 6.5 December 1949 368 (18) 25,523 (3,072) 7.2 May 1950 341 (8) 25,367 (2,611) 7.1

[Tablenote 1: Includes in parentheses the Special Category Army Personnel with Air Force (SCARWAF), those soldiers assigned for duty in the Air Force but still administratively under the segregated Army, leftovers from the Department of Defense reorganization of 1947. Figures extracted from Marr Report.]

The Air staff explained that the slight surge in black recruits in the early months of integration was related less to the new policy than to the abnormal recruiting conditions of the period. In addition to the backlog of Negroes who for some time had been trying to enlist only to find the Air Force quota filled, there were many black volunteers who had turned to the quota-free Air Force when the Army, its quota of Negroes filled for some time, stopped recruiting Negroes.

With Negroes serving in over 1,500 separate units there was no need to invoke the 10 percent racial quota in individual units as Vandenberg had ordered. One notable exception during the first months of the program was the Air Training Command, where the rapid and unexpected reassignment of many black airmen caused some bases, James Connally in Texas, for example, to acquire a great many Negroes while others received few or none. To prevent a recurrence of the Connally experience and "to effect a smooth operation and proper adjustment of social importance," the commander of the Air Training Command imposed an 8 to 10 percent black quota on his units and established a procedure for staggering the assignment of black airmen in small groups over a period of thirty to sixty days instead of assigning them to any particular base in one large increment. These quotas were not applied to the basic training flights, which were completely integrated. It was not uncommon to find black enlistees in charge of racially mixed training flights.[16-29] Of all Air Force organizations, the Training Command received the greatest number of black airmen as a result of the screening and reassignment. (Table 7)

[Footnote 16-29: ATC, "History of ATC, July-December 1949," I:29-31; New York Times, September 18, 1949.]

Table 7--Racial Composition of the Training Command, December 1949 (p. 406)

A. Flight Training Percent White Black Black Officers 1,345 11 .8 Enlisted 2,063 22 1.0 Total 3,408 33 .9 B. Technical Training Officers 1,897 37 1.9 Enlisted 25,838 1,819 6.5 Total 27,735 1,856 6.0 C. Indoctrination (Basic) Training White 7,649 Black 1,007 Total 8,656 Percent black 11.6[a] D. Officers Candidate Training (candidates graduating from 28 November through 26 December 1949) White 225 Black 7 Total 232 Percent black 3.0 E. Course Representation

Base No. of Courses[b] _No. of Courses with Blacks_ Chanute 31 21 Warren 11 10 Keesler 16 7 Lowry 23 13 Scott 6 4 Sheppard 4 1

[Tablenote a: In January 1950, probably as a result of a decline in backlog and the raising of enlistment standard to GCT 100, this percentage dropped to 8.8.]

[Tablenote b: Negroes in 61 percent of the courses offered as of 26 Dec 1949.]

Source: Kenworthy Report.

At the end of the first year under the new program, the Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Nugent, informed Zuckert that integration had progressed "rapidly, smoothly and virtually without incident."[16-30] In view of this fact and at Nugent's recommendation, the Air Force canceled the monthly headquarters check on the program.

[Footnote 16-30: Memo, Actg DCSPER for Zuckert, 14 Jul 50, USAF file No. 3370, SecAF files.]

To some extent the Air Force's integration program ran away with itself. Whatever their personal convictions regarding discrimination, senior Air Force officials had agreed that integration would be limited. They were most concerned with managerial problems associated with continued segregation of the black flying unit and the black specialists scattered worldwide. Other black units were not considered an immediate problem. Assistant Secretary Zuckert admitted as much in March 1949 when he reported that black service units would be retained since they performed a "necessary Air Force function."[16-31] As originally conceived, the Air Force plan was frankly imitative of the Navy's postwar program, stressing merit and ability as the limiting factors of change. The Air Force promised to discharge all its substandard men, but those black airmen either ineligible for discharge or for reassignment to specialist duty would remain in segregated units.

[Footnote 16-31: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 25 Mar 49, sub: Salient Factors of Air Force Policy Regarding Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

Yet once begun, the integration process quickly became universal. By the end of 1950, for example, the Air Force had reduced the number of black units to nine with 95 percent of its black airmen serving in integrated units. The number of black officers rose to 411, an (p. 407) increase of 10 percent over the previous year, and black airmen to 25,523, an increase of 15 percent, although the proportion of blacks to whites continued to remain between 6 and 7 percent.[16-32] Some eighteen months later only one segregated unit was left, a 98-man outfit, itself more than 26 percent white. Negroes were then serving in 3,466 integrated units.[16-33]

[Footnote 16-32: Air Force Times, 10 February 1951. These figures do not take into account the SCARWAF (Army personnel) who continued to serve in segregated units within the Air Force.]

[Footnote 16-33: Memo, DepSecAF for Manpower and Organizations for ASD/M, 5 Sep 52, SecAF files.]

There were several reasons for the universal application of what was conceived as a limited program. First, the Air Force was in a sense the captive of its own publicity. While Secretary Symington had carefully delineated the limits of his departmental plan for the Personnel Policy Board in January 1949, he was carried considerably beyond these limits when he addressed President Truman in the open forum of the Fahy Committee's first formal meeting:

As long as you mentioned the Air Force, sir, I just want to report to you that our plan is to completely eliminate segregation in the Air Force. For example, we have a fine group of colored boys. Our plan is to take those boys, break up that fine group, and put them with the other units themselves and go right down the line all through these subdivisions one hundred percent.[16-34]

[Footnote 16-34: Transcript of the Meeting of the President and the Four Service Secretaries With the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 12 Jan 49, FC file, which reports the President's response as being "That's all right."]

Later, Symington told the Fahy Committee that while the new program would probably temporarily reduce Air Force efficiency "we are ready, willing, and anxious to embark on this idea. We want to eliminate the fundamental aspect of class in this picture."[16-35] Clearly, the retention of large black units was incompatible with the elimination of class distinctions.

[Footnote 16-35: Testimony of the Secretary of the Air Force Before the Fahy Committee, 28 Mar 49, afternoon session, p. 33.]

The more favorable the publicity garnered by the plan in succeeding months, the weaker the distinction became between the limited integration of black specialists and total integration. Reinforcing the favorable publicity were the monthly field reports that registered a steady drop in the number of black units and a corresponding rise in the number of integrated black airmen. This well-publicized progress provided another, almost irresistible reason for completing the task.

More to the point, the success of the program provided its own impetus to total integration. The prediction that a significant number of black officers and men would be ineligible for reassignment or further training proved ill-founded. The Air Force, it turned out, had few untrainable men, and after the screening process and transfer of those eligible was completed, many black units were so severely reduced in strength that their inactivation became inevitable. The fear of white opposition that had inhibited the staff planners and local commanders also proved groundless. According to a Fahy Committee staff report in March 1950, integration had been readily accepted at all levels and the process had been devoid of friction. "The men," E. W. (p. 408) Kenworthy reported, "apparently were more ready for equality of treatment and opportunity than the officer corps had realized."[16-36] At the same time, Kenworthy noted the effect of successful integration on the local commanders. Freed from the charges of discrimination that had plagued them at every turn, most of the commanders he interviewed remarked on the increased military efficiency of their units and the improved utilization of their manpower that had come with integration. They liked the idea of a strictly competitive climate of equal standards rigidly applied, and some expected that the Air Force example would have an effect, eventually, on civilian attitudes.[16-37]

[Footnote 16-36: Kenworthy Report, as quoted and commented on in Memo, Worthington Thompson (Personnel Policy Board staff) for Leva, 9 Mar 50, sub: Some Highlights of Fahy Committee Report on Air Force Racial Integration Program, SD 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-37: Ltr, Kenworthy to Zuckert, 5 Jan 50, SecAF files.]

For the Air Force, it seemed, the problem of segregation was all over but for the celebrating. And there was plenty of that, thanks to the Fahy Committee and the press. In a well-publicized tour of a cross section of Air Force installations in early 1950, Kenworthy surveyed the integration program for the committee. His favorable report won the Air Force laudatory headlines in the national press and formed the core of the Air Force section of the Fahy Committee's final report, Freedom to Serve.[16-38] For its part, the black press covered the program in great detail and gave its almost unanimous approval. As early as July 1949, for example, Dowdal H. Davis, president of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, reported on the highly encouraging reaction to the breakup of the 332d, and the headlines reflected this attitude: "The Air Force Leads the Way," the Chicago Defender headlined; "Salute to the Air Force," the Minneapolis Spokesman editorialized; and "the swiftest and most amazing upset of racial policy in the history of the U.S. Military," Ebony concluded. Pointing to the Air Force program as the best, the Pittsburgh Courier called the progress toward total integration "better than most dared hope."[16-39]

[Footnote 16-38: See, for example, the Washington Post, March 27, 1950.]

[Footnote 16-39: Press reaction summarized in Memo, James C. Evans for PPB, 19 Jan 50, PPB 291.2. See also, Ltr, Dowdal Davis, Gen Manager of the Kansas City Call, to Evans, 9 Jul 49, SD 291.2; Memo, Evans for SecAF, 5 Jul 49; and Memo, Zuckert for SecAF, 2 Aug 49, both in SecAF files; Chicago Defender, June 18, 1949; Minneapolis Spokesman, January 13, 1950; Ebony Magazine, 4 (September 1949):15; Pittsburgh Courier, July 25, 1952; Detroit Free Press, May 14, 1953.]

General Vandenberg and his staff were well aware of the rapid and (p. 409) profound change in the Air Force wrought by the integration order. From the start his personnel chief carefully monitored the program and reviewed the reports from the commands, ready to investigate any racial incidents or differences attributable to the new policy. The staff had expected a certain amount of testing of the new policy by both white and black troops, and with few exceptions the incidents reported turned out to be little more than that. Some arose from attempts by Negroes to win social acceptance at certain Air Force installations, but the majority of cases involved attempts by white airmen to introduce their black comrades into segregated off-base restaurants and theaters. Two examples might stand for all. The first involved a transient black corporal who stopped off at the Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C., to get a haircut in a post exchange barbershop. He was refused service and in the absence of the post exchange officer he returned to the shop to trade words and eventually blows with the barber. The corporal was subsequently court-martialed, but the sentence was set aside by a superior court.[16-40] Another case involved a small group of white airmen who ordered refreshments at a segregated lunch counter in San Antonio, Texas, for themselves "and a friend who would join them later." The friend, of course, was a black airman. The Inspector General reported this incident to be just one of a number of attempts by groups of white and black airmen to integrate lunch counters and restaurants. In each case the commanders concerned cautioned their men against such action, and there were few reoccurrences.[16-41]

[Footnote 16-40: Memo, IG, USAF, for ASecAF, 25 Jul 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-41: Idem for DCSPER, 7 Sep 49, copy in SecAF files; see also ACofS, G-2, Fourth Army, Ft. Sam Houston, Summary of Information, 7 Sep 49, copy in SA 291.2.]

The commanders' warnings were understandable because, as any official from Secretary Symington on down would quickly explain, the Air Force did not regard itself as being in the business of forcing changes in American society; it was simply trying to make the best use of its manpower to build military efficiency in keeping with its national defense mission.[16-42] But in the end the integration order proved effective on both counts. Racial feelings, racial incidents, charges of discrimination, and the problems of procurement, training, and assignment always associated with racially designated units had been reduced by an appreciable degree or eliminated entirely. The problems anticipated from the mingling of blacks and whites in social situations had proved to be largely imaginary. The Air Force adopted a standard formula for dealing with these problems during the next decade. Incidents involving black airmen were treated as individual incidents and dealt with on a personal basis like any ordinary disciplinary case. Only when there was no alternative was an incident labeled "racial" and then the commander was expected to deal speedily and firmly with the troublemakers.[16-43] This sensible procedure freed the Air Force for a decade from the charges of on-base discrimination that had plagued it in the past.

[Footnote 16-42: See, for example, Memo, SecAF for SecDef, 17 Feb 49; Ltr, SecAF to Sen. Burnet R. Maybank, 21 Jul 49; both in SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-43: Memo, Evans, OSD, for Worthington Thompson, 18 May 53, sub: Summary of Topics Reviewed in Thompson's office 15 May 53, SD 291.2.]

Without a doubt the new policy improved the Air Force's manpower (p. 410) efficiency, as the experience of the 3202d Installation Group illustrates. A segregated unit serving at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, the 3202d was composed of an all-black heavy maintenance and construction squadron, a black maintenance repair and utilities squadron, and an all-white headquarters and headquarters squadron. This rigid segregation had caused considerable trouble for the unit's personnel section, which was forced to assign men on the basis of color rather than military occupational specialty. For example, a white airman with MOS 345, a truck driver, although assigned to the unit, could not be assigned to the heavy maintenance and construction squadron where his specialty was authorized but had to be assigned to the white headquarters squadron where his specialty was not authorized. Clearly operating in an inefficient manner, the unit was charged with misassignment of personnel by the Air Inspector; in July 1950 it was swiftly and peaceably, if somewhat belatedly, integrated, and its three squadrons were converted to racially mixed units, allowing an airman to be assigned according to his training and not his color.[16-44]

[Footnote 16-44: History Officer, 3202d Installations Groups, "History of the 3202d Installations Group, 1 July-31 October 1950," Eglin AFB, Fla., pp. 8-9.]

The preoccupation of high officials with the effects of integration on a soldier's social life seemed at times out of keeping with the issues of national defense and military efficiency. At one of the Fahy Committee hearings, for instance, an exasperated Charles Fahy asked Omar Bradley, "General, are you running an Army or a dance?"[16-45] Yet social life on military bases at swimming pools, dances, bridge parties, and service clubs formed so great a part of the fabric of military life that the Air Force staff could hardly ignore the possibility of racial troubles in the countless social exchanges that characterized the day-to-day life in any large American institution. The social situation had been seriously considered before the new racial policy was approved. At that time the staff had predicted that problems developing out of integration would not prove insurmountable, and indeed on the basis of a year's experience a member of the Air staff declared that (p. 411)

at the point where the Negro and the white person are actually in contact the problem has virtually disappeared. Since all races of Air Force personnel work together under identical environmental conditions on the base, it is not unnatural that they participate together, to the extent that they desire, in certain social activities which are considered a normal part of service life. This type of integration has been entirely voluntary, without incident, and considerably more complete and more rapid than was anticipated.[16-46]

[Footnote 16-45: This off-the-record comment occurred during the committee hearings in the Pentagon and was related to the author by E. W. Kenworthy in interview on 17 October 1971. See also Memo, Kenworthy to Brig Gen James L. Collins, Jr., 13 Oct 76, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 16-46: Marr Report.]

The Air staff had imposed only two rules on interracial social activities: with due regard for sex and rank all Air Force facilities were available for the unrestricted use of all its members; troublemakers would get into trouble. Under these inflexible rules, the Fahy Committee later reported, there was a steady movement in the direction of shared facilities. "Here again, mutual respect engendered on the job or in the school seemed to translate itself into friendly association."[16-47] Whether it liked it or not, the Air Force was in the business of social change.

[Footnote 16-47: Freedom to Serve, p. 41.]

Typical of most unit reports was one from the commander of the 1701st Air Transport Wing, Great Falls Air Force Base, Montana, who wrote Secretary Symington that the unit's eighty-three Negroes, serving in ten different organizations, lived and worked with white airmen "on an apparently equal and friendly basis."[16-48] The commander had been unable to persuade local community leaders, however, to promote equality of treatment outside the base, and beyond its movie theaters Great Falls had very few places that allowed black airmen. The commander was touching upon a problem that would eventually trouble all the services: airmen, he reported to Secretary Symington, although they have good food and entertainment on the base, sooner or later want to go to town, sit at a table, and order what they want. The Air Force was now coming into conflict with local custom which it could see no way to control. As the Air Force Times put it, "The Air Force, like the other services, feels circumspect policy in this regard is the only advisable one on the grounds that off-base segregation is a matter for civilian rather than military decision."[16-49]

[Footnote 16-48: Ltr, Col Paul H. Prentiss, Cmdr, 1701st AT Wing, to SecAF, 27 Dec 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-49: Air Force Times, 10 February 1951.]

But this problem could not detract from what had been accomplished on the bases. Judged by the standards it set for itself before the Fahy Committee, the Air Force had achieved its goals. Further, they (p. 412) were achieved in the period between 1949 and 1956 when the percentage of blacks in the service doubled, an increase resulting from the Defense Department's qualitative distribution of manpower rather than the removal of the racial quota.[16-50] During these years the number of black airmen rose from 5.1 to 10.4 percent of the enlisted strength and the black officers from 0.6 to 1.1 percent. Reviewing the situation in 1960, Ebony noted that the program begun in 1949 was working well and that white men were accepting without question progressive racial practices forbidden in their home communities. Minor racial flare-ups still occurred, but integration was no longer a major problem in the Air Force; it was a fact of life.[16-51]

[Footnote 16-50: Memo for Rcd, ADS(M), 12 Sep 56, sub: Integration Percentages, ADS(M) 291.2. For further discussion of the qualitative distribution program, see Navy section, below.]

[Footnote 16-51: "Integration in the Air Force Abroad," Ebony 15 (March 1960):27.]

The Navy and Executive Order 9981

The changing government attitude toward integration in the late 1940's had less dramatic effect on the Navy than upon the other services because the Navy was already the conspicuous possessor of a racial policy guaranteeing equal treatment and opportunity for all its members. But as the Fahy Committee and many other critics insisted, the Navy's 1946 equality guarantee was largely theoretical; its major racial problem was not one of policy but of practice as statistics demonstrated. It was true, for example, that the Navy had abolished racial quotas in recruitment, yet the small number of black sailors--17,000 during 1949, averaging 4.5 percent of the total strength--made the absence of a quota academic.[16-52] It was true that Negroes served side by side with white sailors in almost every occupation and training program in the Navy, but it was also a fact that 62 percent of all Negroes in the Navy in 1949 were still assigned to the nonwhite Steward's Branch. This figure shows that as late as December 1949 fewer than 7,000 black sailors were serving in racially integrated assignments.[16-53] Again, with only 19 black officers, including 2 nurses, in a 1949 average officer strength of 45,464, it meant little to say that the Navy had an integrated officer corps. A shadow had fallen, then, between the promise of the Navy's policy and its fulfillment, partly because of indifferent execution.

[Footnote 16-52: Unless otherwise noted all statistics are from information supplied by the Bureau of Naval Personnel. The exact percentage on 1 July 1949 was 4.7; see Memo for Rcd, ASD(M), 12 Sep 56, sub: Integration Percentages, ASD(M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-53: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Under SecNav, 5 Dec 49, sub: Proposed Report to Chairman Personnel Policy Board Regarding the Implementation of Executive Order 9981, Pers 21, GenRecsNav.]

Submitted to and approved by the Secretary of Defense, the new Navy plan announced on 7 June 1949 called for a specific series of measures to bring departmental practices into line with policy.[16-54] Once he had gained Johnson's approval, Secretary of the Navy Matthews did not tarry. On 23 June he issued an explicit statement to all ships and stations, abjuring racial distinctions in the Navy and Marine (p. 413) Corps and ordering that all personnel be enlisted or appointed, trained, advanced or promoted, assigned and administered without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.[16-55] Admirable and comprehensive, Matthew's statement scarcely differed in intent from his predecessor's general declaration of equal treatment and opportunity of 12 December 1945 and the more explicit directive of the Chief of Naval Operations on the same subject on 27 February 1946. Yet despite the close similarity, a reiteration was clearly necessary. As even the most ardent apologist for the navy's postwar racial policy would admit, these groundbreaking statements had not done the job, and, to satisfy the demands of the Fahy Committee and the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Matthews had to convince his subordinates that the demand for equal treatment and opportunity was serious and had to be dealt with immediately. His specific mention of the Marine Corps and the problems of enlistment, assignment, and promotion, subjects ignored in the earlier directives, represented a start toward the reform of his department's racial practices currently out of step with its expressed policy.

[Footnote 16-54: Memo, SecNav for SecDef, 23 May 49, sub: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces, copy in FC file.]

[Footnote 16-55: ALNAV 447-49, which remained in force until 23 March 1953 when SecNav Instruction 1000.2 superseded it without substantial change.]

Yet a restatement of policy, no matter how specific, was not enough. As Under Secretary Dan A. Kimball admitted, the Navy had the formidable task of convincing its own people of the sincerity of its policy and of erasing the distrust that had developed in the black community "resulting from past discriminating practices."[16-56] Those who were well aware of the Navy's earlier failure to achieve integration by fiat were bound to greet Secretary Matthews's directive with skepticism unless it was accompanied by specific reforms. Matthews, aware of the necessity, immediately inaugurated a campaign to recruit more black sailors, commission more black officers, and remove the stigma attached to service in the Steward's Branch.

[Footnote 16-56: Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, sub: Implementation of Executive Order 9981, PPB 291.2.]

It was logical enough to start a reform of the Navy's integration program by attacking the perennial problem of too few Negroes in the general service. In his annual report to the Secretary of Defense, Matthews outlined some of the practical steps the Navy was taking to attract more qualified young blacks. The Bureau of Naval Personnel, he explained, planned to assign black sailors and officers to its recruiting service. As a first step it assigned eight Negroes to Recruitment Procurement School and subsequently to recruit duty in eight major cities with further such assignments planned when current manpower ceilings were lifted.[16-57]

[Footnote 16-57: SecNav, Annual Report to SecDef, FY 1949, p. 230; Memo, Under SecNav Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, sub: Implementation of Executive Order 9981, PPB 291.2.]

The Bureau of Naval Personnel had also polled black reservists on the possibility of returning to active duty on recruiting assignments, and from this group had chosen five officers for active duty in the New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, and Chicago recruiting offices. At the same time black officers and petty officers were sent to extol the advantages of a naval career before black student (p. 414) bodies and citizen groups.[16-58] Their performances were exceedingly well received. The executive secretary of the Dayton, Ohio, Urban League, for example, thanked Secretary Matthews for the appearances of Lieutenant Nelson before groups of students, reporters, and community leaders in the city. The lieutenant, he added, not only "clearly and effectively interpreted the opportunities open to Negro youth in the United States Navy" but also "greatly accelerated" the community's understanding of the Navy's integration program.[16-59] Nelson, himself, had been a leading advocate of an accelerated public relations program to advertise the opportunities for Negroes in the Navy.[16-60] The personnel bureau had adopted his suggestion that all recruitment literature, including photographs testifying to the fact that Negroes were serving in the general service, be widely distributed in predominantly black institutions. Manpower ceilings, however, had forced the bureau to postpone action on Nelson's suggestion that posters, films, pamphlets, and the like be used.[16-61]

[Footnote 16-58: Memo, Dir, Recruiting Div, BuPers, for Admin Aide to SecNav, 22 Dec 50, sub: Negro Officer in Recruiting on the West Coast; Ltr, SecNav to Actg Exec Dir, Urban League, Los Angeles, 22 Dec 50; both in Pers B6, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-59: Ltr, Charles W. Washington, Exec Secy, Dayton, Ohio, Urban League, to SecNav, 19 Oct 50, copy in Pers 1376, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-60: Memo, Nelson for Charles Durham, Fahy Committee, sub: Implementation of Proposed Navy Racial Policy, 17 Jun 49, FC file.]

[Footnote 16-61: Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, sub: Implementation of Executive Order 9981, PPB 291.2.]

An obvious concomitant to the increase in the number of black sailors was an increase in the number of black officers. The personnel bureau was well aware of this connection; Comdr. Luther C. Heinz, officer in charge of naval reserve officer training, called the shortage of Negroes in his program a particularly important problem. He promised, "in accord with the desires of the President," as he put it, to increase black participation in the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and his superior, the Chief of Naval Personnel, started a program in the bureau for that purpose.[16-62] With the help of the National Urban League, Heinz arranged a series of lectures by black officers at forty-nine black schools and other institutions to interest Negroes in the Navy's reserve officers program. In August 1949, for example, Ens. Wesley Brown, the first Negro to be graduated from Annapolis, addressed gatherings in Chicago on the opportunities for Negroes as naval officers.[16-63]

[Footnote 16-62: Memo, Off in Charge, NROTC Tng, for Chief, Plans & Policy Div, BuPers, 14 Jul 49, sub: NROTC Personnel Problems, Pers 424, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 16-63: Ltr, Granger to Chief, NavPers, 3 Aug 49, Pers 42, BuPersRecs.]

At the same time the Bureau of Naval Personnel wrote special press releases, arranged interviews for naval officials with members of the black press, and distributed publicity materials in predominantly black schools to attract candidates and to assure interested young men that race was no bar to their selection. In this connection Commander Heinz bid for and received an invitation to address the Urban League's annual conference in August 1949 to outline the Navy's program. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Adm. Thomas L. Sprague, also (p. 415) arranged for the training of all those engaged in promoting the program--professors of naval science, naval procurement officers, and the like. In states where such assignments were considered acceptable, Sprague planned to appoint Negroes to selection committees.[16-64] In a related move he also ordered that when local law or custom required the segregation of facilities used for the administration of qualifying tests for reserve officer training, the Navy would use its own facilities for testing. This ruling was used when the 1949 examinations were given in Atlanta and New Orleans; to the delight of the black press the Navy transferred the test site to its nearby facilities.[16-65] These efforts had some positive effect. In 1949 alone some 2,700 black youths indicated an interest in the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps by submitting applications.[16-66]

[Footnote 16-64: Memo, Dir of Tng, BuPers, for Chief, NavPers, 1 Jul 49; Ltr, Granger to Cmdr Luther Heinz, 3 Aug 49; Ltr, Heinz to Granger, 18 Aug 49. All in Pers 42, BuPersRecs. See also Interv, author with Nelson, 26 May 69, and Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb 70, both in CMH files.]

[Footnote 16-65: Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to Cmdt, All Continental Naval Dists, 17 Mar 50, Pers 42, BuPersRecs; Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, PPB 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-66: Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, PPB 291.2.]

Despite these well-intentioned efforts, the Navy failed to increase significantly the number of black officers or sailors in the next decade (Table 8). The percentage of Negroes in the Navy increased so slowly that not until 1955, in the wake of the great manpower buildup during the Korean War, did it exceed the 1949 figure. Although the percentage of black enlistments increased significantly at times--approximately 12 percent of all enlistments in 1955 were black, for example--the proportion of Negroes in the Navy's enlisted ranks was only 0.4 percent higher in 1960 than in 1949. While the number of black officers increased more than sevenfold in the same decade, it was still considerably less than 1 percent of the total officer strength, well below Army and Air Force percentages.

Table 8--Black Manpower, U.S. Navy

A. Enlisted Strength

_Percent Year Total Strength Black Strength Black_

1949 363,622 17,051 4.5 1950 329,114 14,858 3.7 1951 656,371 17,604 2.7 1952 728,511 23,010 3.2 1953 698,367 24,734 3.5 1954 635,103 24,236 3.8 1955 574,157 30,623 5.3 1956 586,782 37,308 6.3 1957 593,022 38,222 6.4 1958 558,955 30,978 5.7 1959 547,236 30,098 5.5 1960 544,323 26,760 4.9

B. Percentage of Blacks Enlisted in Steward's and Other Branches

Year Steward's Branch Other Branches

1949 65.12 34.88 1950 57.07 42.93 1951 55.27 44.73 1952 54.95 45.05 1953 51.73 48.27 1954 53.43 48.57 1955 51.19 48.81 1956 25.38 74.62 1957 21.66 78.34 1958 23.35 76.65

C. Officer Strength (Selected Years)

Year Black Officers on Active Duty Total Officers

1949 19 45,464 1951 23 66,323 1953 53 78,095 1955 81 71,591 1960 149

Source: BuPers, Personnel Statistics Branch. See especially BuPers, "Memo on Discrimination of the Negro," 24 Jan 59, BAF2-014. BuPers Technical Library. All figures represent yearly averages.

The Navy had an explanation for the small number of Negroes. The reduced manpower ceilings imposed on the Navy, even during the Korean War, had caused a drastic curtailment in recruiting. At the same time, with the brief exception of the Korean War, the Navy had depended on volunteers for enlistment and had required volunteers to score ninety or higher on the general classification test. The percentage of those who scored above ninety was lower for blacks than for whites--16 percent against 67 percent, a ratio, naval spokesmen suggested, that explained the enlistment figures. Furthermore, the low enlistment quotas produced a long waiting list of those desiring to volunteer. All applicants for the relatively few openings were thoroughly screened, and competition was so keen that any Negroes accepted for the monthly quota had to be extraordinarily well qualified.[16-67]

[Footnote 16-67: For a public expression of these sentiments see, for example, Ltr, Capt R. B. Ellis, Policy Control Br, BuPers, to President of Birmingham, Ala., Branch, NAACP, 30 Mar 50, Pers 66 MM, GenRecsNav.]

What the Navy's explanation failed to mention was that the rise and decline in the Navy's black strength during the 1950's was intimately related to the number of group IV enlistees being forced on the services under the provisions of the Defense Department's program (p. 416) for the qualitative distribution of manpower. Each service was required to accept 24 percent of all recruits in group IV from fiscal year 1953 to 1956, 18 percent in fiscal year 1957, and 12 percent thereafter. Between 1953 and 1956 the Navy accepted well above the required 24 percent of group IV men, but in fiscal year 1957 took only 15.1 percent, and in 1958 only 6.8 percent. In 1958, with the knowledge of the Secretary of Defense, all the services took in fewer of the group IV's than the distribution program required, but justified the reduction on the grounds that declining strength made it necessary to emphasize high quality in recruits. In a move endorsed by the Navy, the Air Force finally requested in 1959 that the qualitative distribution program be held in abeyance. On the basis of this request the Navy temporarily ceased to accept all group IV and some group III men, but resumed recruiting them when it seemed likely that the (p. 417) Secretary of Defense would refuse the request.[16-68]

[Footnote 16-68: BuPers, "Memo on Discrimination of the Negro," 24 January 1959, Pers A1224, BuPers Tech Library.]

The correlation between the rise and fall of the group IV enlistments and the percentage of Negroes in the Navy shows that all the increases in black strength between 1952 and 1959 came not through the Navy's publicized and organized effort to attract the qualified black volunteers it had promised the Fahy Committee, but from the men forced upon it by the Defense Department's distribution program. The correlation also lends credence to the charges of some of the civil rights critics who saw another reason for the shortage of Negroes. They claimed that there had been no drop in the number of applicants but that fewer Negroes were being accepted by Navy recruiters. One NAACP official claimed that Negroes were "getting the run around." Those who had fulfilled all enlistment requirements were not being informed, and others were being given false information by recruiters. He concluded that the Navy was operating under an unwritten policy of filling recruit quotas with whites, accepting Negroes only when whites were unavailable.[16-69] If these accusations were true, the Navy was denying itself the services of highly qualified black applicants at a time when the Defense Department's qualitative distribution program was forcing it to take large numbers of the less gifted. Certainly the number of Negroes capable of moving up the career and promotion ladder was reduced and the Navy left vulnerable to further charges of discrimination.

[Footnote 16-69: Ltr, Exec Secy, Birmingham, Ala., Branch, NAACP, to Chief, NavPers, 14 Mar 50, Pers A, GenRecsNav.]

As for the shortage of officers, Nelson cited the awareness among candidates that promotions were slower for blacks in the Navy than in the other services where there was "less caste and class to buck."[16-70] Nelson was aware that out of the 2,700 blacks who had indicated an interest in the reserve officer training program in 1949 only 250 actually took the aptitude tests. Of these, only two passed the tests and one of these was later rejected for poor eyesight. An Urban League spokesman believed that some failed to take the tests out of fear of failure but that many harbored a suspicion that the program was not entirely open to all regardless of race.[16-71] Reinforcing this suspicion was the fact that, despite the intentions of the (p. 418) Bureau of Naval Personnel and the Navy's increasing control over the appointment process, as of 1965 not a single Negro had been appointed to any of the 150-man state selection committees on reserve officer training.[16-72] Also to be considered, as the American Civil Liberties Union later pointed out, was the promotion record of black officers. As late as 1957 no black officer had ever commanded a ship, and while both black and white officers started up the same promotion ladder, the blacks were usually transferred out of the line into staff billets.[16-73]

[Footnote 16-70: Interv, Nichols with Nelson, 1953, in Nichols Collection; Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb 70; both in CMH files.]

[Footnote 16-71: Quoted in Memo, Dir of Tng, BuPers, for Chief, NavPers, 1 Jul 49, Pers 42, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-72: Memo for Rcd, Evans, 23 Jun 65, sub: NROTC Boards, ASD/M 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-73: Ltr, Exec Dir, ACLU, to SecNav, 26 Nov 57, GenRecsNav.]

Given the pressure on the personnel bureau to develop some respectable black manpower statistics, it is unlikely that the lack of educated, black recruits can be blamed on widespread subterfuge at the recruiting level. Far more likely is the explanation offered by Under Secretary Kimball, that the black community distrusted the Navy.[16-74] First apparent in the 1940's, this distrust lasted throughout the next decade as young Negroes continued to show a general apathy toward the Navy, which at times turned into open hostility. In September 1961 the Chief of Naval Personnel reported that recruiters were not infrequently being treated to "booing, hissing and other disorderly conduct" when they tried to discuss the opportunities for naval careers before black audiences.[16-75]

[Footnote 16-74: Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, sub: Implementation of Executive Order 9981, PPB 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-75: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Pers B, 23 Sep 61, copy in Harris Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

The Navy's poor reputation in the black community centered on the continued existence of the racially separate servants' branch, in the eyes of many the symbol of the service's racial exclusiveness. The Steward's Branch remained predominantly black. In 1949 it had 10,499 Negroes, 4,707 Filipinos, 741 other nonwhites, and 1 white man. Chief stewards continued to be denied the grade of chief petty officer, on the grounds that since stewards were not authorized to exercise military command over others than stewards because of their lack of military training, chief stewards were not chiefs in the military sense of the word. This difference in authority also explained, as the Chief of Naval Personnel put it, why as a general rule chief stewards were not quartered with other petty officers.[16-76] These (p. 419) distinctions were true also for stewards in the first, second, and third classes, a fact in their case symbolized by differences in uniform. Most of the thousands of black stewards continued to be recruited, trained, and employed exclusively in that branch, and thus for over half the Negroes--65 percent--in the 1949 Navy the chance for advancement was severely limited and the chance to qualify for a different job almost nonexistent.

[Footnote 16-76: Testimony of Vice Adm William M. Fechteler Before the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services (the Fahy Cmte), 28 Mar 49, p. 18.]

The Navy instituted several changes in the branch in the wake of the Fahy Committee's recommendations. On 25 July 1949 the Chief of Naval Personnel ordered all chief stewards designated chief petty officers with all the prerogatives of that status; in precedence they came immediately after chief dental technicians,[16-77] who were at the bottom of the list. That the change was limited to chief stewards did not go unnoticed. Joseph Evans of the Fahy Committee staff charged that the bureau "seemed to have ordered this to accede to the committee's recommendations never intending to go beyond Chief Stewards."[16-78] Nelson, by now a sort of unofficial ombudsman and gadfly for black sailors, urged his superiors to broaden the reform, and Kimball warned Admiral Sprague that limiting the change to chief stewards might be "justified on the literal statement of (p. 420) intention, but is vulnerable to criticism of continued discrimination." Without compelling reasons to the contrary, he added, "I do not feel that we can afford to risk any possible impression of reluctant implementation of the spirit of the directive."[16-79]

[Footnote 16-77: BuPers Cir Ltr 115-49, 25 Jul 49.]

[Footnote 16-78: Memo, Evans for Fahy Cmte, 23 Aug 49, sub: Progress in Navy, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

[Footnote 16-79: Memo, Under SecNav for Chief, NavPers, 10 Aug 49, MM (1) GenRecsNav.]

Admiral Sprague got the point, and on 30 August he announced that effective with the new year, stewards--first, second, and third class--would be designated petty officers with appropriate pay, prerogatives, and precedence, and that their uniforms would be changed to conform to those of other petty officers. He also amended the bureau's manual to allow commanding officers to change the ratings of stewards without headquarters approval, thus enlarging the opportunity for stewards, in all other respects qualified, to transfer into other ratings.[16-80] These reforms brought about a slow but steady change in the assignment of black sailors. Between January 1950 and August 1953, the percentage of Negroes in the general service rose from 42 to 47 percent of the Navy's 23,000 man black strength, with a corresponding drop in the percentage of those assigned to the Steward's Branch.[16-81]

[Footnote 16-80: BuPers Cir Ltr 141-49, 30 Aug 49. See also Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 22 Dec 49, sub: Implementation of Executive Order 9981, PPB 291.2; Memo, Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, 4 May 50, sub: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity, Pers 42, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-81: Memo, Dir, Plans and Policy, BuPers, for Capt Brooke Schumm, USN, PPB, 17 Jul 50, sub: Secretary of Defense Semi-Annual Report, Negro Enlisted Personnel Data for, Pers 14B; Memo, Head, Strength and Statistics Br, BuPers, for Head, Technical Info Br, BuPers, 25 Aug 53, sub: Information Requested by LCDR D. D. Nelson Concerning Negro Strength, Pers A14; both in BuPersRecs.]

Yet these reforms were modest in terms of the pressing need for a substantive change in the racial composition of the Steward's Branch. Despite the changes in assignment policy, the Steward's Branch was still nearly 65 percent black in 1952, and the rest were mostly Filipino citizens under contract. Secretary of the Navy Kimball's observation that 133 stewards had transferred out of the branch in a recent four-month period hardly promised any speedy change in the current percentages.[16-82] In fact there was evidence even at that late date that some staff members in the personnel bureau were working at cross-purposes to the Navy's expressed policy. Worried about the shortages of volunteers for the Steward's Branch, a group of officials had met in August 1951 to discuss ways of improving branch morale. Some suggested publicizing the branch to the black press and schools, showing that Negroes were in all branches of the Navy including the Steward's. They also studied a pamphlet called "The Advantages of Stewards Duty in the Navy" that gave nine reasons why a man should become a steward.[16-83]

[Footnote 16-82: Kimball was sworn in as Secretary of the Navy on 31 July 1951. Ltr, SecNav to Granger, 19 Nov 52, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-83: BuPers, Plans and Policy Div, "Review of Suggestions and Recommendations to Improve Standards, Morale, and Attitudes Toward Stewards Branch of U.S. Navy" (ca. 2 Aug 51), BuPersRecs.]

Obviously the Navy had to set a steady course if it intended any lasting racial reform of the Steward's Branch, but its leaders seemed ambivalent toward the problem. Despite his earlier efforts to raise the status of stewards, Kimball, in a variation on an old postwar argument, tried to show that the exclusiveness of the Steward's (p. 421) Branch actually worked to the Negro's advantage. As he explained to Lester Granger in November 1952, any action to effect radical or wholesale changes in ratings "would not only tend to reduce the efficiency of the Navy, but also in many instances be to the disadvantage or detriment of the individuals concerned, particularly those in the senior Steward ratings."[16-84] Supporting this line of argument, the Chief of Naval Personnel announced the reenlistment figures for the Steward's Branch--over 80 percent during the Korean War period. These figures, Vice Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., added, proved the branch to be the most popular in the Navy and offered "a rational measure of the state of the morale and job satisfaction."[16-85]

[Footnote 16-84: Ltr, SecNav for Granger, 19 Nov 52, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-85: Ltrs, Chief, NavPers, to James C. Evans, OSD, 19 Jun 53, and Granger, 28 Jul 53, both in P 8 (4), BuPersRecs.]

These explanations still figured prominently in the Navy's 1961 defense of its racial statistics. Discussing the matter at a White House meeting of civil rights leaders, the Chief of Naval Personnel pointed out that all the black stewards could be replaced with Filipinos, but the Navy had refrained from such a course for several reasons. The branch still had the highest reenlistment rate. It provided jobs for those group IV men the Navy was obliged to accept but could never use in technical billets. Without the opportunity provided by the branch, moreover, "many of the rated black stewards would probably not achieve a petty officer rating at all."[16-86]

[Footnote 16-86: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Pers B, 23 Sep 61, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library. See also Memo, Chief, NavPers, for ASD/M, 29 Mar 61, sub: Stewards in U.S. Navy, Pers 8 (4), BuPersRecs; Memo, Special Asst to SecDef, Adam Yarmolinsky, for Frederic Dutton, Special Asst to President, 31 Oct 61, sub: Yarmolinsky Memo of October 26, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

However well founded these arguments were, they did not satisfy the Navy's critics, who continued to press for the establishment of one recruitment standard and the assignment of men on the basis of interest and training rather than race. Lester Granger, for example, warned Secretary Kimball of the skepticism that persisted among sections of the black community: "As long as that branch [the Steward's Branch] is composed entirely of nonwhite personnel, the Navy is apt to be held by some to be violating its own stated policy."[16-87] To Kimball's successor, Robert B. Anderson,[16-88] Granger was even more blunt. The Steward's Branch, he declared, was "a constant irritant to the Negro public." He saw some logical reason for the continued concentration of Negroes in the branch but added "logic does not necessarily imply wisdom and I sincerely believe that it is unwise from the standpoint of efficiency and public relations to continue the Stewards Branch on its present basis."[16-89]

[Footnote 16-87: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 24 Oct 52, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-88: Secretary Anderson, appointed by President Eisenhower, became Secretary of the Navy on 4 February 1953.]

[Footnote 16-89: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 24 Apr 53, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

Granger's suggestion for change was straightforward. He wanted the Bureau of Naval Personnel to find a way to introduce a sufficiently large number of whites into the branch to transform its racial composition. The task promised to be difficult if the charges leveled in the Detroit Free Press were accurate. In May 1953 the paper (p. 422) reported incidents of naval recruiting officers who, "by one ruse or another," were shunting young volunteers, sometimes without their knowledge, into the Steward's Branch.[16-90]

[Footnote 16-90: Detroit Free Press, May 16, 1953.]

Granger's suggestions were taken up by Secretary Anderson, who announced his intention of integrating the Steward's Branch and ordered the Chief of Naval Personnel to draw up plans to that end.[16-91] To devise some practical measures for handling the problem, the personnel bureau brought back to active duty three officers who had been important to the development of the Navy's 1946 integration policy. Their study produced three recommendations: abolish the segregation of the Steward's Branch from the general service and separate recruitment for its members; consider consolidating the branch with the predominantly white Commissary Branch; and change the steward's insignia.[16-92]

[Footnote 16-91: UP News Release, September 21, 1953, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 16-92: Ltr, Cmdr Durwood W. Gilmore, USNR et al., to Chief, NavPers, Vice Adm J. L. Holloway, Jr., 31 Aug 53, P 8 (4), BuPersRecs.]

The group acknowledged that the Steward's Branch was a "sore spot with the Negroes, and is our weakest position from the standpoint of Public Relations," and two of their recommendations were obviously aimed at immediate improvement of public relations. Combining the messmen and commissary specialists would of course create an integrated branch, which Granger estimated would be only 20 percent black, and would probably provide additional opportunities for promotions, but in the end it could not mask the fact that a high proportion of black sailors were employed in food service and valet positions. Nor was it clear how changing the familiar crescent insignia, symbolic of the steward's duties, would change the image of a separate group that still performed the most menial duties. Long-term reform, everyone agreed, demanded the presence of a significant number of whites in the branch, and there was strong evidence that the general service contained more than a few group IV white sailors. The group's proposal to abolish separate recruiting would probably increase the number of blacks in the general service and eliminate the possibility that unsuspecting black recruits would be dragooned into a messman's career; both were substantial reforms but did not guarantee that whites would be attracted or assigned to the branch.

Admiral Holloway was concerned about this latter point, which dominated his discussions with the Secretary of the Navy on 1 September 1953. He had, he told Anderson, discussed with his recruiting specialists the possibility of recruiting white sailors for the branch, and while they all agreed that whites must not be induced to join by "improper procedures," such as preferential recruitment to escape the draft, they felt that whites could be attracted to steward duty by skillful recruiters, especially in areas of the country where industrial integration had already been accomplished. His bureau was considering the abolition of separate recruiting, but to make specific recommendations on matters involving the stewards he had created an ad hoc committee, under the Deputy Chief of Naval Personnel and composed of (p. 423) representatives of the other bureaus. When he received this committee's views, Holloway promised to take "definite administrative action."[16-93]

[Footnote 16-93: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, 1 Sep 53, sub: Mr. Granger's Visit and Related Matters, Pers, GenRecsNav.]

The three recommendations of the reservist experts did not survive intact the ad hoc committee's scrutiny. At the committee's suggestion, Holloway rejected the proposed merger of the commissary and steward functions on the grounds that such a move was unnecessary in an era of high reenlistment. He also decided that stewards would retain their branch insignia. He did approve, however, in a decision announced on 28 February 1954, putting an end to the separate recruitment of stewards with the exception of the contract enlistment of Filipino citizens. As Anderson assured Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York, only after recruit training and "with full knowledge of the opportunities in various categories of administrative specialties" would an enlistee be allowed to volunteer for messman's duty.[16-94]

[Footnote 16-94: Ltr, SecNav to Congressman Adam C. Powell, 19 Mar 54, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

Admiral Holloway promised a further search for ways to eliminate "points of friction" regarding the stewards, and naval officials discussed the problem with civil rights leaders and Defense Department officials on several occasions in the next years.[16-95] The (p. 424) Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Adam Yarmolinsky, reported in 1961 that the Bureau of Naval Personnel "was not sanguine" about recruiting substantial numbers of white seamen for the Steward's Branch.[16-96] In answer, the Chief of Naval Personnel could only point out that no matter what their qualifications or ambitions all men assigned to the Steward's Branch were volunteers. As one commentator observed, white sailors were very rarely attracted to the messmen's field because of its reputation as a black specialty.[16-97]

[Footnote 16-95: See, for example, ASD/M, Thursday Reports, 7 Jan 54 and 12 Apr 56, copies in Dep ASD (Civil Rights) files; see also Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Special Asst to SecDef, 29 Mar 61, sub: Stewards in U.S. Navy, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 16-96: Memo, Adam Yarmolinsky for Fred Dutton, 31 Oct 61, sub: Yarmolinsky Memo of October 26, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 16-97: Greenberg, _Race Relations and American Law_, p. 359.]

Nevertheless, by 1961 a definite pattern of change had emerged in the Steward's Branch. The end of separate recruitment drastically cut the number of Negroes entering the rating, while the renewed emphasis on transferring eligible chief stewards to other specialties somewhat reduced the number of Negroes already in the branch. Between 1956 and 1961, some 600 men out of the 1,800 tested transferred to other rating groups or fields. The substantial drop in black strength resulting from these changes combined with a corresponding rise in the number of contract messmen from the western Pacific region reduced for the first time in some thirty years Negroes in the Steward's Branch to a minority. Even for those remaining in the branch, life changed considerably. Separate berthing for stewards, always justified on the grounds of different duties and hours, was discontinued, and the amount of time spent by stewards at sea, with the varied military work that sea duty involved, was increased.[16-98]

[Footnote 16-98: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Special Asst to SecDef, 29 Mar 61, sub: Stewards in U.S. Navy, Pers 8 (4), GenRecsNav.]

If these changes caused by the increased enlistment of stewards from the western Pacific relieved the Steward's Branch of its reputation as the black man's navy, they also perpetuated the notion that servants' duties were for persons of dark complexion. The debate over a segregated branch that had engaged the civil rights leaders and the Navy since 1932 was over, but it had left a residue of ill will; some were bitter at what they considered the listless pace of reform, a pace which left the impression that the service had been forced to change against its will. To some extent the Navy in the 1950's failed to capitalize on its early achievements because it had for so long missed the point of the integrationists' arguments about the stewards. In the fifties the Navy expended considerable time and energy advertising for black officer candidates and recruits whom they guaranteed a genuinely equal chance to participate in all specialties, but these efforts were to some extent dismissed by critics as not germane. In 1950, for example, only 114 Negroes served in the glamorous submarine assignments and even fewer in the naval air service.[16-99] Yet this obvious underrepresentation caused no great outcry from the black community. What did cause bitterness and (p. 425) protest in an era of aroused racial pride was the fact that servants' duties fell almost exclusively on nonwhite Americans. That these duties were popular--the 80 percent reenlistment rate in the Steward's Branch continued throughout the decade and the transfer rate into the branch almost equaled the transfer out--was disregarded by many of the more articulate spokesmen, who considered the branch an insult to the black public. As Congressman Powell informed the Navy in 1953, "no one is interested in today's world in fighting communism with a frying pan or shoe polish."[16-100] Although statistics showed nearly half the black sailors employed in other than menial tasks, Powell voiced the mood of a large segment of the black community.

[Footnote 16-99: The Navy commissioned its first black pilot, Ens. Jesse L. Brown, in 1950. He was killed in action in Korea.]

[Footnote 16-100: Ltr, Powell to John Floberg, Asst SecNav for Air, 29 Jun 53, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

The Fahy Committee had acknowledged that manpower statistics alone were not a reliable index of equal opportunity. Convinced that Negroes were getting a full and equal chance to enlist in the general service and compete for officer commissions, the committee had approved the Navy's policy, trusting to time and equal opportunity to produce the desired result. Unfortunately for the Navy, there would be many critics both in and out of government in the 1960's who disagreed with the committee's trust in time and good intentions, for equal opportunity would remain very much a matter of numbers and percentages. In an (p. 426) era when a premium would be placed on the size of minority membership, the palm would go to the other services. "The blunt fact is," Granger reminded the Secretary of the Navy in 1954, "that as a general rule the most aspiring Negro youth are apt to have the least interest in a Navy career, chiefly because the Army and Air Force have up to now captured the spotlight."[16-101] A decade later the statement still held.

[Footnote 16-101: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 7 Jan 54, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

It was ironic that black youth remained aloof from the Navy in the 1950's when the way of life for Negroes on shipboard and at naval bases had definitely taken a turn for the better. The general service was completely integrated, although the black proportion, 4.9 percent in 1960, was still far less than might reasonably be expected, considering the black population.[16-102] Negroes were being trained in every job classification and attended all the Navy's technical schools. Although not yet represented in proportionate numbers in the top grades within every rating, Negroes served in all ratings in every branch, a fact favorably noticed in the metropolitan press.[16-103] Black officers, still shockingly out of proportion to black strength, were not much more so than in the other services and were serving more often with regular commissions in the line as well as on the staff. Their lack of representation in the upper ranks demonstrated that the climb to command was slow and arduous even when the discriminatory tactics of earlier times had been removed. In 1961 the Navy could finally announce that a black officer, Lt. Comdr. Samuel L. Gravely, Jr., had been ordered to command a destroyer escort, the USS Falgout.[16-104]

[Footnote 16-102: Memo, ASD/M for SA et al., 21 Nov 51, sub: Manuscript on the Negro in the Armed Forces, SecDef 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-103: See New York Herald Tribune, December 2, 1957, and New York Post, March 14, 1957.]

[Footnote 16-104: Gravely would eventually become the first black admiral in the U.S. Navy.]

But how were these changes being accepted among the rank and file? Comments from official sources and civil rights groups alike showed the leaven of racial tolerance at work throughout the service.[16-105] Reporter Lee Nichols, interviewing members of all the services in (p. 427) 1953,[16-106] found that whites expected blacks to prove themselves in their assignments while blacks were skeptical that equal opportunities for assignment were really open to them. Yet the Nichols interviews reveal a strain of pride and wonderment in the servicemen at the profound changes they had witnessed.

[Footnote 16-105: See, for example, Ltr, Exec Secy, President's Cmte on Equal Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, to CNO, 21 Jun 49, FC file; Memo, Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, BuPersRecs; Memo, ASD/M for SA et al., 21 Nov 51, sub: Manuscript on the Negro in the Armed Forces, SecDef 291.2; Ltr, Exec Secy, ACLU, to SecNav, 26 Nov 57, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-106: Nichols's sampling, presented in the form of approximately a hundred interviews with men and women from all the services, was completely unscientific and informal and was undertaken for the preparation of his book, Breakthrough on the Color Front. Considering their timing, the interviews supply an interesting sidelight to the integration period. They are included in the Nichols Collection, CMH.]

In time integrated service became routine throughout the Navy, and instances of Negroes in command of integrated units increased. Bigots of both races inevitably remained, and the black community continued to resent the separate Steward's Branch, but the sincerity of the Navy's promise to integrate the service seemed no longer in doubt.

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17. (p. 428)

The Army Integrates

The integration of the United States Army was not accomplished by executive fiat or at the demand of the electorate. Nor was it the result of any particular victory of the civil rights advocates over the racists. It came about primarily because the definition of military efficiency spelled out by the Fahy Committee and demonstrated by troops in the heat of battle was finally accepted by Army leaders. The Army justified its policy changes in the name of efficiency, as indeed it had always, but this time efficiency led the service unmistakably toward integration.

Race and Efficiency: 1950

The Army's postwar planners based their low estimate of the black soldier's ability on the collective performance of the segregated black units in World War II and assumed that social unrest would result from mixing the races. The Army thus accepted an economically and administratively inefficient segregated force in peacetime to preserve what it considered to be a more dependable fighting machine for war. Insistence on the need for segregation in the name of military efficiency was also useful in rationalizing the prejudice and thoughtless adherence to traditional practice which obviously played a part in the Army's tenacious defense of its policy.

An entirely different conclusion, however, could be drawn from the same set of propositions. The Fahy Committee, for example, had clearly demonstrated the inefficiency of segregation, and more to the point, some senior Army officials, in particular Secretary Gray and Chief of Staff Collins, had come to question the conventional pattern. Explaining later why he favored integration ahead of many of his contemporaries, Collins drew on his World War II experience. The major black ground units in World War II, and to a lesser degree the 99th Pursuit Squadron, he declared, "did not work out." Nor, he concluded, did the smaller independent black units, even those commanded by black officers, who were burdened with problems of discipline and inefficiency. On the other hand, the integrated infantry platoons in Europe, with which Collins had personal experience, worked well. His observations had convinced him that it was "pointless" to support segregated black units, and while the matter had "nothing to do with sociology itself," he reasoned that if integration worked at the platoon level "why not on down the line?" The best plan, he believed, was to assign two Negroes to each squad in the Army, always assuming that the quota limiting the total number of black soldiers would be preserved.[17-1]

[Footnote 17-1: Interv, author with Collins.]

But the Army had promised the Fahy Committee in April 1950 it (p. 429) would abolish the quota. If carried out, such an agreement would complicate an orderly and controlled integration, and Collins's desire for change was clearly tempered by his concern for order and control. So long as peacetime manpower levels remained low and inductions through the draft limited, a program such as the one contemplated by the Chief of Staff was feasible, but any sudden wartime expansion would change all that. Fear of such a sudden change combined with the strong opposition to integration still shared by most Army officials to keep the staff from any initiative toward integration in the period immediately after the Fahy Committee adjourned.

Even before Gray and Collins completed their negotiations with the Fahy Committee, they were treated by the Chamberlin Board to yet another indication of the scope of Army staff opposition to integration. Gray had appointed a panel of senior officers under Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin on 18 September 1949 in fulfillment of his promise to review the Army's racial policy periodically "in the light of changing conditions and experiences of this day and time."[17-2] After sitting four months and consulting more than sixty major Army officials and some 280 officers and men, the board produced a comprehensive summary of the Army's racial status based on test scores, enlistment rates, school figures, venereal disease rates, opinion surveys, and the like.

[Footnote 17-2: Memo, SA for Lt Gen Stephen J. Chamberlin, 30 Nov 49, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army, CSGPA 291.2. See also Dir, P&A, Summary Sheet to CofS, 2 Nov 49, sub: Board to Study the Utilization of Negro Manpower in Peacetime Army, CSGPA 291.2, and TAG to Chamberlin, 18 Nov 49, same sub, AG 334 (17 Nov 49). In addition to Chamberlin, the board included Maj. Gen. Withers A. Buress, commanding general of the Infantry Center; Maj. Gen. John M. Divine, commanding general of 9th Infantry Division, Fort Dix; and Col. M. VanVoorst, Personnel and Administration Division, as recorder without vote.]

The conclusions and recommendations of the Chamberlin Board represent perhaps the most careful and certainly the last apologia for a segregated Army.[17-3] The Army's postwar racial policy and related directives, the board assured Secretary Gray, were sound, were proving effective, and should be continued in force. It saw only one objection to segregated units: black units had an unduly high proportion of men with low classification test scores, a situation, it believed, that could be altered by raising the entrance level and improving training and leadership. At any rate, the board declared, this disadvantage was a minor one compared to the advantages of an organization that did not force Negroes into competition they were unprepared to face, did not provoke the resentment of white soldiers with the consequent risk of lowered combat effectiveness, and avoided placing black officers and noncommissioned officers in command of white troops, "a position which only the exceptional Negro could successfully fill."

[Footnote 17-3: Memo, Gen Chamberlin et al. for SA, 9 Feb 50, sub: Report of Board of Officers on Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army, AG 291.2 (6 Dec 49). A copy of the report and many of the related and supporting documents are in CMH.]

A decision on these matters, the board stated, had to be based on combat effectiveness, not the use of black manpower, and what constituted maximum effectiveness was best left to the judgment of war-tested combat leaders. These men, "almost without exception," vigorously opposed integration. Ignoring the Army's continuing (p. 430) negotiations with the Fahy Committee on the matter, the board called for retaining the 10 percent quota. To remove the quota without imposing a higher entrance standard, it argued, would result in an influx of Negroes "with a corresponding deterioration of combat efficiency." In short, ignoring the political and budgetary realities of the day, the board called on Secretary Gray to repudiate the findings of the Fahy Committee and the stipulations of Executive Order 9981 and to maintain a rigidly segregated service with a carefully regulated percentage of black members.

While Gray and Collins let the recommendations of the Chamberlin Board go unanswered, they did very little to change the Army's racial practices in the year following their agreements with the Fahy Committee. The periodic increase in the number of critical specialties for which Negroes were to be trained and freely assigned did not materialize. The number of trained black specialists increased, and some were assigned to white units, but this practice, while substantially different from the Gillem Board's idea of limiting such integration to overhead spaces, nevertheless produced similar results. Black specialists continued to be assigned to segregated units in the majority of cases, and in the minds of most commanders such assignment automatically limited black soldiers to certain jobs and schools no matter what their qualifications. Kenworthy's blunt conclusion in May 1951 was that the Army had not carried out the policy it had agreed to.[17-4] Certainly the Army staff had failed to develop a successful mechanism for gauging its commanders' compliance with its new policy. Despite the generally progressive sentiments of General Collins and Secretary Gray's agreement with the Fahy Committee, much of the Army clung to old sentiments and practices for the same old reasons.

[Footnote 17-4: Kenworthy, "The Case Against Army Segregation," p. 32.]

The catalyst for the sudden shift away from these sentiments and practices was the Korean War. Ranking among the nation's major conflicts, the war caused the Army to double in size in five months. By June 1951 it numbered 1.6 million, with 230,000 men serving in Korea in the Eighth Army. This vast expansion of manpower and combat commitment severely tested the Army's racial policy and immediately affected the racial balance of the quota-free Army. When the quota was lifted in April 1950, Negroes accounted for 10.2 percent of the total enlisted strength; by August this figure reached 11.4 percent. On 1 January 1951, Negroes comprised 11.7 percent of the Army, and in December 1952 the ratio was 13.2 percent. The cause of this striking rise in black strength was the large number of Negroes among wartime enlistments. The percentage of Negroes among those enlisting in the Army for the first time jumped from 8.2 in March 1950 to 25.2 in August, averaging 18 percent of all first-term enlistments during the first nine months of the war. Black reenlistment increased from 8.5 to 12.9 percent of the total reenlistment during the same period, and the percentage of black draftees in the total number of draftees supplied by Selective Service averaged 13 percent.[17-5]

[Footnote 17-5: Memo, G-1 for VCofS, sub: Negro Statistics, 16 Jun 50-6 Oct 50, CS 291.2 Negro; idem for G-3, 18 Apr 51, sub: Training Spaces for Negro Personnel, OPS 291.2; Memo, Chief, Mil Opers Management Branch, G-1, for G-1, 1 Feb 51, sub: Distribution of Negro Manpower in the Army, G-1 291.2, and Memo, Chief, Procurement and Distribution Div, G-1, for G-1, 20 Oct 53, same sub and file.]

The effect of these increases on a segregated army was tremendous. (p. 431) By April 1951, black units throughout the Army were reporting large overstrengths, some as much as 60 percent over their authorized organization tables. Overstrength was particularly evident in the combat arms because of the steady increase in the number of black soldiers with combat occupational specialties. Largely assigned to service units during World War II--only 22 percent, about half the white percentage, were in combat units--Negroes after the war were assigned in ever-increasing numbers to combat occupational specialties in keeping with the Gillem Board recommendation that they be trained in all branches of the service. By 1950 some 30 percent of all black soldiers were in combat units, and by June 1951 they were being assigned to the combat branches in approximately the same percentage as white soldiers, 41 percent.[17-6]

[Footnote 17-6: STM-30, Strength of the Army, Sep 50, Mar 51, and Jul 51.]

The Chief of Staff's concern with the Army's segregation policy went beyond immediate problems connected with the sudden manpower increases. Speaking to Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Craig, the Inspector General, in August 1950, Collins declared that the Army's social policy was unrealistic and did not represent the views of younger Americans whose attitudes were much more relaxed than those of the senior officers who (p. 432) established policy. Reporting Collins's comment to the staff, Craig went on to say the situation in Korea confirmed his own observations that mixing whites and blacks "in reasonable proportions" did not cause friction. Continued segregation, on the other hand, would force the Army to reinstate the old division-size black unit, with its ineffectiveness and frustrations, to answer the Negro's demand for equitable promotions and job opportunities. In short, both Collins and Craig agreed that the Army must eventually integrate, and they wanted the use of black servicemen restudied.[17-7]

[Footnote 17-7: IG Summary Sheet for CofS, 7 Dec 50, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Segregation, CS 291.2 (7 Dec 50).]

Their view was at considerable variance with the attitude displayed by most officers on the Army staff and in the major commands in December 1950. His rank notwithstanding, Collins still had to persuade these men of the validity of his views before they would accept the necessity for integration. Moreover, with his concept of orderly and controlled social change threatened by the rapid rise in the number of black soldiers, Collins himself would need to assess the effects of racial mixing in a fluid manpower situation. These necessities explain the plethora of staff papers, special boards, and field investigations pertaining to the employment of black troops that characterized the next six months, a period during which every effort was made to convince senior officers of the practical necessity for integration. The Chief of Staff's exchange of views with the Inspector General was not circulated within the staff until December 1950. At that time the personnel chief, Lt. Gen. Edward H. Brooks, recommended reconvening the Chamberlin Board to reexamine the Army's racial policy in light of the Korean experience. Brooks wanted to hold off the review until February 1951 by which time he thought adequate data would be available from the Far East Command. His recommendation was approved, and the matter was returned to the same group which had so firmly rejected integration less than a year before.[17-8]

[Footnote 17-8: G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 18 Dec 50, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Segregation, G-1 291.2.]

Even as the Chamberlin Board was reconvening, another voice was added to those calling for integration. Viewing the critical overstrength in black units, Assistant Secretary Earl D. Johnson recommended distributing excess black soldiers among other units of the Army.[17-9] The response to his proposal was yet another attempt to avoid the dictates of the draft law and black enlistments. Maj. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, the G-1, advised against integrating the organized white units on the grounds that experience gained thus far on the social impact of integration was inadequate to predict its effect on "overall Army efficiency." Since the Army could not continue assigning more men to the overstrength black units, McAuliffe wanted to organize additional black units to accommodate the excess, and he asked Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, the G-3, to activate the necessary units.[17-10]

[Footnote 17-9: Memo, ASA for SA, 3 Apr 51, sub: Present Overstrength in Segregated Units, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-10: Memo, G-1 for CofS, 26 May 51, sub: Present Overstrength in Segregated Units; DF, G-1 for G-3, 16 Apr 51, sub: Training Spaces for Negro Personnel; both in G-1 291.2.]

The chief of the Army Field Forces was even more direct. Integration was untimely, General Mark W. Clark advised, and the Army should instead reimpose the quota and push for speedy implementation of the Secretary of Defense's directive on the qualitative distribution (p. 433) of manpower.[17-11] Clark's plea for a new quota was one of many circulating in the staff since black enlistment percentages started to rise. But time had run out on the quota as a solution to overstrength black units. Although the Army staff continued to discuss the need for the quota, and senior officials considered asking the President for permission to reinstitute it, the Secretary of Defense's acceptance of parity of enlistment standards had robbed the Army of any excuse for special treatment on manpower allotments.[17-12]

[Footnote 17-11: Memo, CG, AFF, for G-1, 8 May 51, sub: Negro Strength in the Army, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-12: Memo, ASA for SA, 1 Jul 51, and Draft Memo, SA for President (not sent), both in SA 291.2.]

McAuliffe's recommendation for additional black units ran into serious opposition and was not approved. Taylor's staff, concerned with the practical problems of Army organization, objected to the proposal, citing budget limitations that precluded the creation of additional units and policy restrictions that forbade the creation of new units merely to accommodate black recruits. The operations staff recommended instead that black soldiers in excess of unit strength be shipped directly from training centers to overseas commands as replacements without regard for specific assignment. McAuliffe's personnel staff, in turn, warned that on the basis of a monthly average dispatch of 25,000 replacements to the Far East Command, the portion of Negroes in those shipments would be 15 percent for May 1951, 21 percent for June, 22 percent for July, and 16 percent for August. McAuliffe listed the familiar problems that would accrue to the Far East commanders from this decision, but he was unable to break the impasse in Washington. Thus the problem of excess black manpower was passed on to the overseas commanders for resolution.[17-13]

[Footnote 17-13: CMT 2 (Brig Gen D. A. Ogden, Chief, Orgn & Tng Div, G-3), 3 May 51, CMT 3 (Brig Gen W. E. Dunkelberg, Chief, Manpower Control Div, G-1), 21 May 51, and CMT 4 (Ogden), 24 May 51, to G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 18 Apr 51, sub: Negro Overstrengths, G-1 291.2.]

Commanders in Korea had already begun to apply the only practical remedy. Confronted with battle losses in white units and a growing surplus of black replacements arriving in Japan, the Eighth Army began assigning individual black soldiers just as it had been assigning individual Korean soldiers to understrength units.[17-14] In August 1950, for example, initial replacements for battle casualties in (p. 434) the 9th Infantry of the U.S. 2d Infantry Division included two black officers and eighty-nine black enlisted men. The commander assigned them to units in his severely undermanned all-white 1st and 2d Battalions. In September sixty more soldiers from the regiment's all-black 3d Battalion returned to the regiment for duty. They were first attached but later, with the agreement of the officers and men involved, assigned to units of the 1st and 2d Battalions. Subsequently, 225 black replacements were routinely assigned wherever needed throughout the regiment.[17-15] By December the 9th Infantry had absorbed Negroes to about their proportion of the national population, 11 percent. Of six black officers among them, one commanded Company C and another was temporarily in command of Company B when that unit fought in November on the Ch'ongch'on River line. S. L. A. Marshall later described Company B as "possibly the bravest" unit in that action.[17-16]

[Footnote 17-14: The Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, known as KATUSA, a program for integrating Korean soldiers in American units, was substantially different from the integration of black Americans in terms of official authorization and management; see CMH study by David C. Skaggs, "The Katusa Program," in CMH.]

[Footnote 17-15: Memo, CO, 9th Inf, for TIG, 29 Oct 50, attached to IG Summary Sheet for CofS, 7 Dec 50, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Segregation, CS 291.2 (7 Dec 50); FEC, "G-1 Command Report, 1 January-31 October 1950."]

[Footnote 17-16: S. L. A. Marshall, "Integration," Detroit News, May 13, 1956.]

The practice of assigning individual blacks throughout white units in Korea accelerated during early 1951 and figured in the manpower rotation program which began in Korea during May. By this time the practice had so spread that 9.4 percent of all Negroes in the theater were serving in some forty-one newly and unofficially integrated units.[17-17] Another 9.3 percent were in integrated but predominantly black units. The other 81 percent continued to serve in segregated units: in March 1951 these numbered 1 black regiment, 10 battalions, 66 separate companies, and 7 separate detachments. Looked at another way, by May 1951 some 61 percent of the Eighth Army's infantry companies were at least partially integrated.

[Footnote 17-17: ORO Technical Memorandum T-99, A Preliminary Report on the Utilization of Negro Manpower, 30 Jun 51, p. 34, copy in CMH.]

Though still limited, the conversion to integrated units was permanent. The Korean expedient, adopted out of battlefield necessity, carried out haphazardly, and based on such imponderables as casualties and the draft, passed the ultimate test of traditional American pragmatism: it worked. And according to reports from Korea, it worked well. The performance of integrated troops was praiseworthy with no report of racial friction.[17-18] It was a test that could not fail to impress field commanders desperate for manpower.

[Footnote 17-18: Ibid., p. 35. For a popular report on the success of this partial integration, see Harold H. Martin, "How Do Our Negro Troops Measure Up?," Saturday Evening Post 223 (June 16, 1951):30-31.]

Training

Training units in the United States were subject to many of the stresses suffered by the Eighth Army, and without fanfare they too began to integrate. There was little precedent for the change. True, the Army had integrated officer training in World War II and basic training at the Women's Army Corps Training Center at Fort Lee, Virginia, in April 1950. But beyond that only the rare black trainee designated for specialist service was assigned to a white training unit. Until 1950 there was no effort to mix black and white trainees because the Army's manpower experts always predicted a "social (p. 435) problem," a euphemism for the racial conflict they feared would follow integration at large bases in the United States.

Not that demands for integration ever really ceased. Civil rights organizations and progressive lawmakers continued to press the Army, and the Selective Service System itself complained that black draftees were being discriminated against even before induction.[17-19] Because so many protests had focused on the induction process, James Evans, the Civilian Aide to the Secretary of Defense, recommended that the traditional segregation be abandoned, at least during the period between induction and first assignment.[17-20] Congressman Jacob Javits, always a critic of the Army's segregation policy, was particularly disturbed by the segregation of black trainees at Fort Dix, New Jersey. His request that training units be integrated was politely rejected in the fall of 1950 by General Marshall, who implied that the subject was an unnecessary intrusion, an attitude characteristic of the Defense Department's war-distracted feelings toward integration.[17-21]

[Footnote 17-19: Ltr, Lewis B. Hershey to SA, 21 Sep 50, SA 291.2; Memo, Col W. Preston Corderman, Exec, Office of ASA, for CofS, 8 Sep 50, sub: Racial Complaints, CS 291.2. For an example of complaints by a civil rights organization, see Telg, J. L. LeFore, Mobile, Ala., NAACP, to President, 18 Sep 50, and Ltr, A. Philip Randolph to SecDef, 30 Oct 50, both in SD 291.2 Neg.]

[Footnote 17-20: Memo, Evans for Leva, ASD, 5 Oct 50, sub: Racial Complaint From the Mobile Area, SD 291.2 Neg (18 Sep 50).]

[Footnote 17-21: Ltrs, Javits to SecDef, 6 Sep and 2 Oct 50; Ltrs, SecDef to Javits, 19 Sep and 10 Oct 50. All in SD 291.2 Neg.]

Again, the change in Army policy came not because the staff ordered it, but because local commanders found it necessary. The commanders of the nine training divisions in the continental United States were hard pressed because the number of black and white inductees in any monthly draft call, as well as their designated training centers, depended on Selective Service and was therefore unpredictable. It was impossible for commanders to arrange for the proper number of separate white and black training units and instructors to receive the inductees when no one knew whether a large contingent of black soldiers or a large group of whites would get off the train. A white unit could be undermanned and its instructors idle while a black unit was overcrowded and its instructors overworked. This inefficient use of their valuable training instructors led commanders, first at Fort Ord and then at the other training divisions and replacement centers throughout the United States, to adopt the expedient of mixing black and white inductees in the same units for messing, housing, and training. As the commander of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, put it, sorting out the rapidly arriving inductees was "ridiculous," and he proceeded to assign new men to units without regard to color. He did, however, divert black inductees from time to time "to hold the Negro population down to a workable basis."[17-22]

[Footnote 17-22: G-1 Summary Sheet for VCofS, 22 Apr 52, sub: Information for the G-1 Information Book, G-1 291.2; Memo, ASA (M&PR) for ASD (M&PR), 22 Aug 52, sub: Progress Report on Elimination of Segregation in the Army, SD 291.2; Memo, VCofS for SA, 18 Jun 51, sub: Assimilation of Negroes at Ft. Jackson, S.C., SA 291.2. See also Lt Col William M. Nichols, "The DOD Program to Ensure Civil Rights Within the Services and Between the Services and the Community," Rpt 116, 1966, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, p. 24.]

The commanding general of the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Dix raised another question about integrating trainees. He had integrated all white units other than reserve units at his station, he explained (p. 436) to the First Army commander in January 1951, but since he was receiving many more white trainees than black he would soon be forced to integrate his two black training regiments as well by the unprecedented assignment of white soldiers to black units with black officers and noncommissioned officers.[17-23] Actually, such reverse integration was becoming commonplace in Korea, and in the case of Fort Dix the Army G-1 solved the commander's dilemma by simply removing the asterisk, which meant black, from the names of the 364th and 365th Infantry Regiments.[17-24]

[Footnote 17-23: Ltr, Maj Gen W. K. Harrison, CG, 9th Inf Div, Ft. Dix, N.J., to CG, First Army, 19 Jan 51, sub: Request for an Additional Training Regiment, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-24: Memo, DA, G-1 for CGIA, for 9th Inf Div, 28 Feb 51, G-1 291.2; AGAO-I, 3 Mar 51, AG 322.]

The nine training divisions were integrated by March 1951, with Fort Dix, New Jersey, and Fort Knox, Kentucky, the last to complete the process. Conversion proved trouble-free and permanent; no racial incidents were reported. In June Assistant Secretary of the Army Johnson assured the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Personnel, Anna Rosenberg, that current expansion of training divisions would allow the Army to avoid in the future even the occasional funneling of some inductees into temporarily segregated units in times of troop overstrengths.[17-25] Logic dictated that those who trained together would serve together, but despite integrated training, the plethora of Negroes in overseas replacement pipelines, and the increasing amount of integrated fighting in Korea, 98 percent of the Army's black soldiers still served in segregated units in April 1951, almost three years after President Truman issued his order.

[Footnote 17-25: Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), 5 Jun 51; Memo, SA for ASD (M&P), 3 Sep 52; both in SD 291.2.]

Performance of Segregated Units

Another factor leading to a change in racial policy was the performance of segregated units in Korea. Despite "acts of heroism and capable performance of duty" by some individuals, the famous old 24th Infantry Regiment as a whole performed poorly. Its instability was especially evident during the fighting on Battle Mountain in August 1950, and by September the regiment had clearly become a "weak link in the 25th Division line," and in the Eighth Army as well.[17-26] On 9 September the division commander recommended that the regiment be removed from combat. "It is my considered opinion," Maj. Gen. William B. Kean told the Eighth Army commander, that the 24th Infantry has demonstrated in combat that

it is untrustworthy and incapable of carrying out missions expected of an Infantry Regiment. In making this statement, I am fully cognizant of the seriousness of the charges that I am making, and the implications involved.... The continued use of this Regiment in combat will jeopardize the United Nations war effort in Korea.[17-27]

[Footnote 17-26: Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), pp. 485-86. For a detailed account of the battlefield performance of the 24th and other segregated units, see ibid., passim.]

[Footnote 17-27: Ltr, Maj Gen W. B. Kean to CG, Eighth Army, 9 Sep 50, sub: Combat Effectiveness of the 24th Infantry Regiment, AG 330.1 (A).]

Kean went on to spell out his charges. The regiment was unreliable (p. 437) in combat, particularly on the defensive and at night; it abandoned positions without warning to troops on its flanks; it wasted equipment; it was prone to panic and hysteria; and some of its members were guilty of malingering. The general made clear that his charges were directed at the unit as an organization and not at individual soldiers, but he wanted the unit removed and its men reassigned as replacements on a percentage basis in the other units of the Eighth Army.

General Kean also claimed to have assigned unusually able officers to the regiment, but to no avail. In attempting to lead their men in battle, all the unit's commanders had become casualties. Concluding that segregated units would not work in a combat situation, the general believed that the combat value of black soldiers would never be realized unless they were integrated into white units at a rate of not more than 10 percent.[17-28]

[Footnote 17-28: Observer Report, Lt Col J. D. Stevens, Plans Div, G-3, 25 Oct 50, G-3 333 PAC (Sec I-D), Case 18, Tab G.]

The 25th Division commander's charges were supported by the Eighth Army inspector general, who investigated the 24th Infantry at length but concluded that the inactivation of the 24th was unfeasible. Instead he suggested integrating Negroes in all Eighth Army units up to 15 percent of their strength by means of the replacement process. The Far East Command's inspector general, Brig. Gen. Edwin A. Zundel, concurred, stating that the rotation process would provide a good opportunity to accomplish integration and expressing hope that the theater would observe the "spirit" of the Army's latest racial regulations.[17-29]

[Footnote 17-29: FECOM Check Sheet, IG to G-1, FEC, 27 May 51, sub: Report of Investigation; Memo, FEC G-1 for CofS, FEC, 30 Apr 51, sub: G-1 Topics Which CINC May Discuss With Gen Taylor; both are quoted in FECOM Mil Hist Section, "History of the Korean War," III (pt. 2): 151-52, in CMH.]

Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker, the Eighth Army commander, accepted the inspector general's report, and the 24th Infantry remained on duty in Korea through the winter. Zundel meanwhile continued the investigation and in March 1951 offered a more comprehensive assessment of the 24th. It was a fact, for example, that 62 percent of the unit's troops were in categories IV and V as against 41 percent of the troops in the 35th Infantry and 46 percent in the 27th, the 25th Division's white regiments. The Gillem Board had recommended supplying all such units with 25 percent more officers in the company grades, something not done for the 24th Infantry. Some observers also reported evidence in the regiment of the lack of leadership and lack of close relationships between officers and men; absence of unit esprit de corps; discrimination against black officers; and poor quality of replacements.

Whatever the cause of the unit's poor performance, the unanimous recommendation in the Eighth Army, its inspector general reported, was integration. Yet he perceived serious difficulty in integration. To mix the troops of the eighty-four major segregated units in the Eighth Army under wartime conditions would create an intolerable administrative burden and would be difficult for the individuals involved. If integration was limited to the 24th Infantry alone, on the other hand, its members, indeed even its former members, would share the onus of its failure. The inspector general therefore (p. 438) again recommended retaining the 24th, assigning additional officers and noncommissioned officers to black units with low test averages, and continuing the integration of the Eighth Army.[17-30]

[Footnote 17-30: Ltr, EUSAK IG to CG, EUSAK, 15 Mar 51, sub: Report of Investigation Concerning 24th Infantry Regiment and Negro Soldiers in Combat, EUSAK IG Report.]

The Eighth Army was not alone in investigating the 24th Infantry. The NAACP was also concerned with reports of the regiment's performance, in particular with figures on the large number of courts-martial. Thirty-six of the men convicted, many for violation of Article 75 of the Articles of War (misbehavior before the enemy), had appealed to the association for assistance, and Thurgood Marshall, then one of its celebrated attorneys, went to the Far East to investigate. Granted carte blanche by the Far East commander, General Douglas MacArthur, Marshall traveled extensively in Korea and Japan reviewing the record and interviewing the men. His conclusions: "the men were tried in an atmosphere making justice impossible," and the NAACP had the evidence to clear most of them.[17-31] Contrasting the Army's experiences with those of the Navy and the Air Force, Marshall attributed (p. 439) discrimination in the military justice system to the Army's segregation policy. He blamed MacArthur for failing to carry out Truman's order in the Far East and pointed out that no Negroes served in the command's headquarters. As long as racial segregation continued, the civil rights veteran concluded, the Army would dispense the kind of injustice typical of the courts-martial he reviewed.

[Footnote 17-31: Thurgood Marshall, _Report on Korea: The Shameful Story of the Courts Martial of Negro GIs_ (New York: NAACP, 1951).]

It would be hard to refute Marshall's contention that discrimination was a handmaiden of segregation. Not so Walter White's contention that the reports of the 24th Infantry's poor performance constituted an attempt to discredit the combat ability of black soldiers and return them to labor duties. The association's executive secretary had fought racial injustice for many decades, and, considering his World War II experiences with the breakup of the 2d Cavalry Division into labor units, his acceptance of a conspiracy theory in Korea was understandable. But it was inaccurate. The Army operated under a different social order in 1951, and many combat leaders in the Eighth Army were advocating integration. The number of black service units in the Eighth Army, some ninety in March 1951, was comparable to the number in other similar Army commands. Nor, for that matter, was the number of black combat units in the Eighth Army unusual. In March 1951 the Eighth Army had eighty-four such units ranging in size from regiment to detachment. Far from planning the conversion of black combat troops to service troops, most commanders were recommending their assignment to integrated combat units throughout Korea.

Apprised of these various conclusions, MacArthur ordered his staff to investigate the problem of segregation in the command.[17-32] The Far East Command G-1 staff incorporated the inspector general's report in its study of the problem, adding that "Negro soldiers can and do fight well when integrated." The staff went on to dismiss the importance of leadership as a particular factor in the case of black troops by observing that "no race has a monopoly on stupidity."[17-33]

[Footnote 17-32: Ltr, Lt Gen Edward Almond, CofS, FECOM, to TIG, 15 Mar 51, IG 333.9.]

[Footnote 17-33: FECOM Check Sheet, IG to G-1, FEC, 27 May 51, sub: Report of Investigation; Memo, FEC G-1 for CofS FEC, 30 Apr 51, sub: G-1 Topics Which CINC May Discuss With Gen Taylor.]

Before the staff could finish its investigation, General Matthew B. Ridgway replaced MacArthur as Far East commander. Fresh from duty as Eighth Army commander, Ridgway had had close-hand experience with the 24th Infantry's problems; from both a military and a human viewpoint he had concluded that segregation was "wholly inefficient, not to say improper." He considered integration the only way to assure esprit de corps in any large segment of the Army. As for segregation, Ridgway concluded, "it has always seemed to me both un-American and un-Christian for free citizens to be taught to downgrade themselves this way as if they were unfit to associate with their fellows or to accept leadership themselves."[17-34] He had planned to seek authorization to integrate the major black units of the Eighth Army in mid-March, but battlefield preoccupations and his sudden elevation to theater command interfered. Once he became commander in chief, however, he quickly concurred in his inspector general's recommendation, adding that "integration in white combat units in Korea is a practical (p. 440) solution to the optimum utilization of Negro manpower provided the overall theater level of Negroes does not exceed 15 percent of troop level and does not exceed over 12 percent in any combat unit."[17-35]

[Footnote 17-34: Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 192-93.]

[Footnote 17-35: Memorandum for File, FECOM IG, 2 May 51, copy in AG 330.1.]

The 24th Infantry's experiences struck yet another blow at the Army's race policy. Reduce the size of black units, the Gillem Board had reasoned, and you will reduce inefficiency and discrimination. Such a course had not worked. The same troubles that befell the 92d Division in Italy were now being visited in Korea on the 24th Infantry, a unit rich with honors extending back to the Indian fighting after the Civil War, the War with Spain, and the Philippine Insurrection. The unit could also boast among its medal of honor winners the first man to receive the award in Korea, Pfc. William Thompson of Company M. Before its inactivation in 1951 the 24th had yet another member so honored, Sgt. Cornelius H. Carlton of Company H.

Final Arguments

To concentrate on the widespread sentiment for integration in the Far East would misrepresent the general attitude that still prevailed in the Army in the spring of 1951. This attitude was clearly reflected again by the Chamberlin Board, which completed its reexamination of the Army's racial policy in light of the Korean experience in April. The board recognized the success of integrated units and even cited evidence indicating that racial friction had decreased in those units since the men generally accepted any replacement willing to fight. But in the end the board retreated into the Army's conventional wisdom: separate units must be retained, and the number of Negroes in the Army must be regulated.[17-36]

[Footnote 17-36: Report of Board of Officers on Utilization of Negro Manpower (2d Chamberlin Report), 3 Apr 51, G-1 334 (8 Nov 51).]

The board's recommendations were not approved. Budgetary limitations precluded the creation of more segregated units and the evidence of Korea could not be denied. Yet the board still enjoyed considerable support in some quarters. The Vice Chief of Staff, General Haislip, who made no secret of his opposition to integration, considered it "premature" to rely and act solely on the experience with integration in Korea and the training divisions, and he told Secretary Pace in May 1951 that "no action should be taken which would lead to the immediate elimination of segregated units."[17-37] And then there was the assessment of Lt. Gen. Edward M. Almond, World War II commander of the 92d Division and later X Corps commander in Korea and MacArthur's chief of staff. Twenty years after the Korean War Almond's attitude toward integration had not changed.

I do not agree that integration improves military efficiency; I believe that it weakens it. I believe that integration was and is a political solution for the composition of our military forces because those responsible for the procedures either do not understand the characteristics of the two human elements (p. 441) concerned, the white man and the Negro as individuals. The basic characteristics of Negro and White are fundamentally different and these basic differences must be recognized by those responsible for integration. By trial and error we must test the integration in its application. These persons who promulgate and enforce such policies either have not the understanding of the problem or they do not have the intestinal fortitude to do what they think if they do understand it. There is no question in my mind of the inherent difference in races. This is not racism--it is common sense and understanding. Those who ignore these differences merely interfere with the combat effectiveness of battle units.[17-38]

[Footnote 17-37: Memo, Actg CofS for SA, 31 May 51, sub: Negro Strength in the Army, CS 291.2 Negroes (11 Apr 51); see also Interv, author with Haislip, 14 Feb 71, CMH files.]

[Footnote 17-38: Incl to Ltr, Almond to CMH, 1 Apr 72, CMH files.]

The opinions of senior commanders long identified with segregated units in combat carried weight with the middle-ranking staff officers who, lacking such experience, were charged with devising policy. Behind the opinions expressed by many staff members there seemed to be a nebulous, often unspoken, conviction that Negroes did not perform well in combat. The staff officers who saw proof for their convictions in the troubles of the 24th Infantry ignored the possibility that segregated units, not individual soldiers, was the problem. Their attitude explains why the Army continued to delay changes made imperative by its experience in Korea.

It also explains why at this late date the Army turned to the scientific community for still another review of its racial policy. The move originated with the Army's G-3, Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, who in February called for the collection of all information on the Army's experiences with black troops in Korea. If the G-1, General McAuliffe, did not consider the available data sufficient, General Taylor added, he would join in sponsoring further investigation in the Far East.[17-39] The result was two studies. The G-1 sent an Army personnel research team, which left for Korea in April 1951, to study the Army's regulations for assigning men under combat conditions and to consider the performance of integrated units.[17-40] On 29 March, Maj. Gen. Ward S. Maris, the G-4, requested the Operations Research Office, a contract agency for the Army, to make a study of how best to use black manpower in the Army.[17-41] The G-1 investigation, undertaken by manpower experts drawn from several Army offices, concentrated on the views of combat commanders; the contract agency reviewed all available data, including a detailed battlefield survey by social scientists. Both groups submitted preliminary reports in July 1951.

[Footnote 17-39: Memo, ACofS, G-3, for ACofS, G-1, 22 Feb 51, WDGPA 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-40: Memo, Chief, Pers Mgmt Div, G-1, for CofS, G-3, 6 Mar 51, WDGPA 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-41: Ltr, Maj Gen Ward Maris, G-4, for Dir, ORO, 29 Mar 51, G-4 291.2. The Operations Research Office, a subsidiary of the Johns Hopkins University, performed qualitative and quantitative analyses of strategy, tactics, and materiel. Some of its assignments were subcontracted to other research institutions; all were assigned by the G-4's Research and Development Division and coordinated with the Department of Defense.]

Their findings complemented each other. The G-1 team reported that integration of black soldiers into white combat units in Korea had been accomplished generally "without undue friction and with better utilization of manpower." Combat commanders, the team added, "almost unanimously favor integration."[17-42] The individual soldier's own motivation determined his competence, the team concluded. The (p. 442) contract agency, whose report was identified by the code name Project CLEAR,[17-43] observed that large black units were, on average, less reliable than large white units, but the effectiveness of small black units varied widely. The performance of individual black soldiers in integrated units, on the other hand, approximated that of whites. It found that white officers commanding black units tended to attribute their problems to race; those commanding integrated units saw their problems as military ones. The contract team also confirmed previous Army findings that efficient officers and noncommissioned officers, regardless of race, were accepted by soldiers of both races. Integration, it decided, had not lowered white morale, but it had raised black morale. Virtually all black soldiers supported integration, while white soldiers, whatever their private sentiments, were not overtly hostile. In most situations, white attitudes toward integration became more favorable with firsthand experience. Although opinions varied, most combat commanders with integration experience believed that a squad should contain not more than two Negroes. In sum, the Project CLEAR group concluded that segregation hampered the Army's effectiveness while integration increased it. Ironically, this conclusion practically duplicated the verdict of the Army's surveys of the integration of black and white units in Europe at the end of World War II.

[Footnote 17-42: DA Personnel Research Team, "A Preliminary Report on Personnel Research Data" (ca. 28 Jul 51), AG 333.3.]

[Footnote 17-43: ORO-T-99, "A Preliminary Report on the Utilization of Negro Manpower," 30 Jun 51, S4-S6, copy in CMH. A draft version of a more comprehensive study on the same subject was prepared in seven volumes (ORO-R-11) in November 1951. These several documents are usually referred to as Project CLEAR, the code name for the complete version. The declassification and eventual publication of this very important social document had a long and interesting history; see, for example, Memo, Howard Sacks, Office of the General Counsel, SA, for James C. Evans, 3 Nov 55, in CMH. For over a decade a "sanitized" version of Project CLEAR remained For Official Use Only. The study was finally cleared and published under the title Social Research and the Desegregation of the U.S. Army, ed. Leo Bogart (Chicago: Markham, 1969).]

General Collins immediately accepted the Project CLEAR conclusions when presented to him verbally on 23 July 1951.[17-44] His endorsement and the subsequent announcement that the Army would integrate its forces in the Far East implied a connection which did not exist. Actually, the decision to integrate in Korea was made before Project CLEAR or the G-1 study appeared. This is not to denigrate the importance of these documents. Their justification of integration in objective, scientific terms later helped convince Army traditionalists of the need for worldwide change and absolved the Secretary of the Army, his Chief of Staff, and his theater commander of the charge of having made a political and social rather than a military decision.[17-45]

[Footnote 17-44: ORO, "Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army: A 1951 Study" (advance draft), pp. viii-ix, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 17-45: Ltr, Dir, ORO, to G-3, 20 Nov 52, G-3 291.2; see also Interv, Nichols with Davis.]

Integration of the Eighth Army

On 14 May 1951 General Ridgway forced the issue of integration by formally requesting authority to abolish segregation in his command. He would begin with the 24th Infantry, which he wanted to replace after reassigning its men to white units in Korea. He would then integrate the other combat units and, finally, the service units. (p. 443) Where special skills were not a factor Ridgway wanted to assign his black troops throughout the theater to a maximum of 12 percent of any unit. To do this he needed permission to integrate the 40th and 45th Divisions, the federalized National Guard units then stationed in Japan. He based his proposals on the need to maintain the combat effectiveness of his command where segregated units had proved ineffective and integrated units acceptable.[17-46]

[Footnote 17-46: Msg, CINCFE to DA, DA IN 12483, 14 May 51, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower in the FEC; ibid., DA IN 13036, 15 May 51, same sub. See also Ltrs, CG, Eighth Army, to CINCFE, 7 May 51, sub: Redesignation of Negro Combat Units, and Ridgway to author, 3 Dec 73, both in CMH.]

When it finally arrived, the proposal for wide-scale integration of combat units encountered no real opposition from the Army staff. General Ridgway had rehearsed his proposal with the G-3 when the latter visited the Far East in April. Taylor "heartily approved," calling the times auspicious for such a move.[17-47] Of course his office quickly approved the plan, and McAuliffe in G-1 and the rest of the staff followed suit. There was some sentiment on the staff, eventually suppressed, for retaining the 24th Infantry as an integrated unit since the statutory requirement for the four black regiments had been repealed in 1950.[17-48] The staff did insist, over the G-1's objections, on postponing the integration of the two National Guard divisions until their arrival in Korea, where the change could be accomplished through normal replacement-rotation procedures.[17-49] There were other minor complications and misunderstandings between the Far East Command and the Army staff over the timing of the order, but they were easily ironed out.[17-50] Collins discussed the plan with the appropriate congressional chairmen, Ridgway further briefed the Secretary of Defense during General Marshall's 1951 visit to Japan, and Secretary of the Army Pace kept the President informed.[17-51]

[Footnote 17-47: Ridgway, The Korean War, p. 192.]

[Footnote 17-48: Section 401, Army Organization Act of 1950 (PL 581, 81st Cong.), published in DA Bull 9, 6 Jul 50. See also Msg, DA to CINCFE, DA 92561, 28 May 51; G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS and SA, 14 May 51, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower; Memo for Rcd, G-1 (ca. 14 May 51). All in G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-49: G-1 Summary Sheets for CofS, 18 and 23 May 51, sub: Utilization of Negro Troops in FECOM, G-1 291.2. See also Elva Stillwaugh's study, "Personnel Problems in the Korean Conflict," pp. 26-29, in CMH.]

[Footnote 17-50: See, for example, Msg, DA to CINCFE, DA 92561, 28 May 51; Msg, CINCFE to DA, C6444, 8 Jun 51.]

[Footnote 17-51: Memo, Actg CofS for SA, 28 May 51, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower, CS 291.2.]

Pace had succeeded Gordon Gray as secretary in April 1950 and participated in the decisions leading to integration. A Harvard-trained lawyer with impressive managerial skills, Pace did not originate any of the Army's racial programs, but he fully supported the views of his Chief of Staff, General Collins.[17-52] Meeting with his senior civilian assistants, the G-1 and G-3 of the Army, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Rosenberg on 9 June, Pace admitted that their discussions were being conducted "probably with a view to achieving complete integration in the Army." Nevertheless, he stressed a cautionary approach because "once a step was taken it was very much harder to retract." He was particularly worried about the high percentage of black soldiers, 12.5 percent of the Army's total, compared with the percentage of Negroes in the other services. He summarized the three options still under discussion in the Department of the Army: Ridgway's call for complete integration in Korea, followed by integration of Army elements in Japan, with a 10 percent limit (p. 444) on black replacements; Mark Clark's proposal to ship black combat battalions to Korea to be used at the division commanders' discretion, with integration limited to combat-tested individuals and then only in support units; and, finally, the Army staff's decision to continue sending replacements for use as the Far East Command saw fit.

[Footnote 17-52: Interv, author with Collins.]

Commenting on the Ridgway proposal, one participant pointed out that a 10 percent limit on black replacements, even if integration spread to the European Command, would mean that the majority of the Army's Negroes would remain in the United States. Rosenberg, however, preferred the Ridgway plan. Stressing that it was an Army decision and that she was "no crusader," she nevertheless reminded Secretary Pace that the Army needed to show some progress. Rosenberg mentioned the threat of a Congress which might force more drastic measures upon the Army and pointedly offered to defer answering her many congressional inquisitors until the Army reached a decision.[17-53]

[Footnote 17-53: Memo for Rcd, Col James F. Collins, Asst to ASD (M&P), 9 Jun 51, SD 291.2.]

The decision was finally announced on 1 July 1951. A message went out to General Ridgway approving "deactivation of the 24th Infantry and your general plan for integration of Negroes into all units (with the temporary exception of the 40th and 45th Divisions)."[17-54] The staff wanted the move to be gradual, progressive, and secret to avoid any possible friction in the Eighth Army and to win general acceptance for integration. But it did not remain secret for long. In the face of renewed public criticism for its segregated units and after lengthy staff discussion, the Army announced the integration of the Far East Command on 26 July, the third anniversary of the Truman order.[17-55] Prominent among the critics of the Army's delay was General MacArthur, who publicly blamed President Truman for the continued segregation of his former command. The charge, following as it did the general's dismissal, was much discussed in the press and the Department of Defense. Easily disputed, it was eventually overtaken by the fact of integration.

[Footnote 17-54: Msg, DA to CINCFE, DA 95359, 1 Jul 51.]

[Footnote 17-55: Memo, Chief, Public Info Div, CINFO, for Dir, Office of Public Info, DOD, 26 Jul 51; DOD Press Release, 26 Jul 51. For last-minute criticism of the continued segregation see, for example, Ltr, Sens. Herbert Lehman and Hubert Humphrey to SecDef, 25 Jul 51; Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), 19 Jul 51, sub: Racial Segregation in FECOM; Telg, Elmer W. Henderson, Dir, American Council on Human Rights, to George C. Marshall, SecDef, 31 May 51. All in SecDef 291.2.]

Three problems had to be solved in carrying out the integration (p. 445) order. The first, inactivation of the 24th Infantry and the choice of a replacement, was quickly overcome. From the replacements suggested, Ridgway decided on the 14th Infantry, which had been recently assigned, minus men and equipment, to the Far East Command. It was filled with troops and equipment from the 34th Infantry, then training replacements in Japan. On 1 October it was assigned to the 24th's zone of responsibility in the 25th Division's line. The 24th Infantry, its men and equipment transferred to other infantry units in Korea, was inactivated on 1 October and "transferred to the control of the Department of the Army."[17-56]

[Footnote 17-56: Per Ltr, TAG to CINCFE, 9 Aug 51, AGAO-I 322 (26 Jul 51), implemented by Eighth Army GO 717, 22 Sep 51.]

The second problem, integration of units throughout the command, proved more difficult and time-consuming. Ridgway considered the need most urgent in the infantry units and wanted their integration to take precedence. The 3d Battalion of the 9th Infantry was reorganized first, many of its black members scattered throughout other infantry units in the 2d Division. But then things got out of phase. To speed the process the Army staff dropped its plan for inactivating all segregated units and decided simply to remove the designation "segregated" and assign white soldiers to formerly all-black units. Before this form of integration could take place in the 3d Battalion, 15th Infantry, the last major black infantry unit, the 64th Tank Battalion and the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion began the process of shifting their black troops to nearby white units. The 77th Engineer Combat Company was the last combat unit to lose the asterisk, the Army's way of designating a unit black.[17-57] The command was originally committed to an Army contingency plan that would transfer black combat troops found superfluous to the newly integrated units to service units, but this proved unnecessary. All segregated combat troops were eventually assigned to integrated combat units.[17-58]

[Footnote 17-57: Msg, DA 81846, 19 Sep 51; Eighth Army GO 774, 16 Oct 51.]

[Footnote 17-58: FECOM Mil Hist Section, "History of the Korean War," III (pt. 2):153-57.]

To soften the emotional aspects of the change, troop transfers were scheduled as part of the individual soldier's normal rotation. By the end of October 1951 the Eighth Army had integrated some 75 percent of its infantry units. The process was scheduled for completion by December, but integration of the rest of its combat units and the great number of service units dragged on for another half year. It was not until May 1952 that the last divisional and nondivisional organizations were integrated.[17-59]

[Footnote 17-59: Memo, ASA (M&RF) for ASD (M&P), 22 Aug 52, sub: Integration of Negro Manpower, SD 291.2.]

The third and greatest problem in the integration of the Far East Command was how to achieve a proportionate distribution of black troops throughout the command. Ridgway was under orders to maintain black strength at a maximum 12 percent except in combat infantry units, where the maximum was 10 percent. The temporary restriction on integrating the 40th and 45th Divisions and the lack of specially trained Negroes eligible for assignment to the Japan Logistical Command added to the difficulty of achieving this goal, but the basic cause of delay was the continued shipment of black troops to the (p. 446) Far East in excess of the prescribed percentage. During the integration period the percentage of black replacements averaged between 12.6 and 15 percent and occasionally rose above 15 percent.[17-60] Ridgway finally got permission from Washington to raise the ratio of black soldiers in his combat infantry units to 12 percent, and further relief could be expected in the coming months when the two National Guard divisions began integrating.[17-61] Still, in October 1951 the proportion of Negroes in the Eighth Army had risen to 17.6 percent, and the flow of black troops to the Far East continued unabated, threatening the success of the integration program. Ridgway repeatedly appealed for relief, having been warned by his G-1 that future black replacements must not exceed 10 percent if the integration program was to continue successfully.[17-62]

[Footnote 17-60: Ibid.; Stillwaugh, "Personnel Problems in the Korean Conflict," pp. 33-35.]

[Footnote 17-61: Msg, CSA to CINCFE, DA 96489, 18 Jul 51.]

[Footnote 17-62: Journal Files, G-1, FEC, Oct 51, Annex 2.]

Ridgway was particularly concerned with the strain on his program caused by the excessive number of black combat replacements swelling the percentage of Negroes in his combat units. By September black combat strength reached 14.2 percent, far above the limits set by the Army staff. Ridgway wanted combat replacements limited to 12 (p. 447) percent. He also proposed that his command be allowed to request replacements by race and occupational specialty in order to provide Army headquarters with a sound basis for allotting black enlisted men to the Far East. While the Army staff promised to try to limit the number of black combat troops, it rejected the requisition scheme. Selection for occupational specialist training was not made by race, the G-1 explained, and the Army could not control the racial proportions of any particular specialty. Since the Army staff had no control over the number of Negroes in the Army, their specialties or the replacement needs of the command, no purpose would be served by granting such a request.[17-63]

[Footnote 17-63: Rad, CINCFE for DA, DA IN 182547, 11 Sep 52, sub: Negro Personnel; Msg, DA to CINCFE, 23 Sep 52, G-1 291.2.]

Yet Ridgway's advice could not be ignored, because by year's end the whole Army had developed a vested interest in the success of integration in the Far East. The service was enjoying the praise of civil rights congressmen, much of the metropolitan press, and even some veterans' groups, such as the Amvets.[17-64] Secretary Pace was moved to call the integration of the Eighth Army a notable advance in the field of human relations.[17-65] But most of all, the Army began to experience the fruits of racial harmony. Much of the conflict and confusion among troops that characterized the first year of the war disappeared as integration spread, and senior officials commented publicly on the superior military efficiency of an integrated Army in Korea.[17-66] As for the men themselves, their attitudes were in sharp contrast to those predicted by the Army traditionalists. The conclusion of some white enlisted men, wounded and returned from Korea, were typical:

Far as I'm concerned it [integration] worked pretty good.... When it comes to life or death, race does not mean any difference.... It's like one big family.... Got a colored guy on our machine gun crew--after a while I wouldn't do without him.... Concerning combat, what I've seen, an American is an American. When we have to do something we're all the same.... Each guy is like your own brother--we treated all the same.... Had a colored platoon leader. They are as good as any people.... We [an integrated squad] had something great in common, sleeping, guarding each other--sometimes body against body as we slept in bunkers.... Takes all kinds to fight a war.[17-67]

[Footnote 17-64: See, for example, Press Release by Senator Herbert H. Lehman, 27 July 1951, which expressed the praise of nine U.S. senators; Editorial in the Baltimore Sun, December 21, 1951; Ltr, National Cmdr, Amvets, to CINCFE, 5 Dec 51, copies in CMH.]

[Footnote 17-65: Semiannual Report of the Secretary of Defense, July 1-December 31, 1951 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 13.]

[Footnote 17-66: See, for example, Interv, Nichols with Bradley; Ltr, Ridgway to author, 3 Dec 73; Mark S. Watson, "Most Combat GI's are Unsegregated," datelined 15 Dec 51 (probably prepared for the Baltimore Sun). All in CMH files. See also James C. Evans and David Lane, "Integration in the Armed Services," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 304 (March 1956):78.]

[Footnote 17-67: Extracted from a series of interviews conducted by Lee Nichols with a group of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 12 November 1952, in Nichols Collection, CMH.]

Integration was an established fact in Korea, but the question remained: could an attitude forged in the heat of battle be sustained on the more tranquil maneuver grounds of central Europe and the American south?

Integration of the European and Continental Commands (p. 448)

Since the Army was just 12 percent Negro in September 1951, it should have been possible to solve Ridgway's problem of black overstrength simply by distributing black soldiers evenly throughout the Army. But this solution was frustrated by the segregation still in force in other commands. Organized black units in the United States were small and few in number, and black recruits who could not be used in them were shipped as replacements to the overseas commands, principally in the Far East and Europe.[17-68] Consequently, Ridgway's problem was not an isolated one; his European counterpart was operating a largely segregated command almost 13 percent black. The Army could not prevent black overstrengths so long as Negroes were ordered into the quota-free service by color-blind draft boards, but it could equalize the overstrength by integrating its forces all over the world.

[Footnote 17-68: In 1951 the European Command was the major Army headquarters in the European theater. It was, at the same time, a combined command with some 20,000 members of the Air Force and Navy serving along with 234,000 Army troops. In August 1952 a separate Army command (U.S. Army, Europe) was created within the European Command. Discussion of the European Command and its commander in the following paragraphs applies only to Army troops.]

This course, along with the knowledge that integration was working in the Far East and the training camps, was leading senior Army officials toward full integration. But they wanted certain reassurances. Believing that integration of the continental commands would create, in the words of the G-1, "obstacles and difficulties vastly greater than those in FECOM," the Army staff wanted these problems (p. 449) thoroughly analyzed before taking additional moves, "experimental or otherwise," to broaden integration.[17-69] General Collins, although personally committed to integration, voiced another widespread concern over extending integration beyond the Far East units. Unlike the Navy and the Air Force, which were able to secure more highly qualified men on a volunteer basis, the Army had long been forced to accept anyone meeting the draft's minimum standards. This circumstance was very likely to result, he feared, in an army composed to an unprecedented degree of poorly educated black soldiers, possibly as much as 30 percent in the near future.[17-70]

[Footnote 17-69: Memo, G-1 for DCofS, Admin, 18 Jul 51, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-70: Ltr, Eli Ginzberg to Lt Col Edward J. Barta, Hist Div, USAREUR, attached to Ltr, Ginzberg to Carter Burgess, ASD (M&P), 11 Nov 55, SD 291.2 (11 Nov 55).]

The Army's leaders received the necessary reassurances in the coming months. The Secretary of Defense laid to rest their fear that the draft-dependent Army would become a dumping ground for the ignorant and untrainable when, in April 1951, he directed that troops must be distributed among the services on a qualitative basis. Assistant Secretary of the Army Johnson asked Professor Eli Ginzberg, a social scientist and consultant to the Army, to explain to the Army Policy Council the need for aggressive action to end segregation.[17-71] And once again, but this time with considerable scientific detail to support its recommendations, the Project CLEAR final report told Army leaders that the service should be integrated worldwide. Again the researchers found that the Army's problem was not primarily racial, but a question of how best to use underqualified men. Refining their earlier figures, they decided that black soldiers were best used in integrated units at a ratio of 15 to 85. Integration on the job was conducive to social integration, they discovered, and social integration, dependent on several variables, was particularly amenable to firm policy guidance and local control. Finally, the report found that integration on military posts was accepted by local civilians as a military policy unlikely to affect their community.[17-72]

[Footnote 17-71: Ltr, Ginzberg to Burgess, 11 Nov 55.]

[Footnote 17-72: ORO-R-11, Rpt, Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army, Project CLEAR, vol. 1; G-1 Summary Sheet for CofSA, 5 Jan 52, sub: Evaluation of ORO-R-11 on Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army, CS 291.2 Negroes (5 Jan 52).]

The Chief of Staff approved the Project CLEAR final report, although his staff had tried to distinguish between the report's view of on-the-job integration and social integration, accepting the former with little reservation, but considering the latter to be "weak in supporting evidence." The personnel staff continued to stress the need to reimpose a racial quota quickly without waiting for black enrollment to reach 15 percent as the Project CLEAR report suggested. It also believed that integration should be limited to the active federal service, exempting National Guard units under state control. General McAuliffe agreed to drop racial statistics but warned that investigation of discrimination charges depended on such statistics. He also agreed that blacks could be mixed with whites at 10 to 20 percent of the strength of any white unit, but to assign whites in similar percentages to black units "would undoubtedly present difficulties and place undue burdens on the assigned white personnel." Finally, McAuliffe stressed that commanders would have flexibility (p. 450) in working out the nonoperational aspects of integration so long as their methods and procedures were consistent with Army policy.[17-73]

[Footnote 17-73: G-1 Summary Sheet for CofSA, 5 Jan 52.]

These reservations aside, McAuliffe concluded that integration was working in enough varied circumstances to justify its extension to the entire Army. General Collins agreed, and on 29 December 1951 he ordered all major commanders to prepare integration programs for their commands. Integration was the Army's immediate goal, and, he added, it was to be progressive, in orderly stages, and without publicity.[17-74]

[Footnote 17-74: Ibid., 29 Dec 51, sub: Integration of Negro Enlisted Personnel, G-1 291.2 Negroes.]

The Chief of Staff's decision was especially timely for the European Command where General Thomas T. Handy faced manpower problems similar to if not so critical as those in the Far East. During 1951 Army strength in Europe had also risen sharply--from 86,000 to 234,000 men. Black strength had increased even more dramatically, from 8,876 (or 11 percent) to 27,267 (or 13 percent). The majority of black soldiers in Europe served in segregated units, the number of which more than doubled because of the Korean War. From sixty-six units in June 1950, the figure rose to 139 in March 1952. Most of these units were not in divisions but in service organizations; 113 were service units, of which fifty-three were transportation units.

Again as in the Far East, some integration in Europe occurred in response to the influx of new soldiers as well as to Army directives. Handy integrated his Noncommissioned Officers' Academy in 1950 in an operation involving thousands of enlisted men. After he closed the segregated Kitzingen Training Center in February 1951, black troops were absorbed into other training and replacement centers on an integrated basis. For some time Army commanders in Europe had also been assigning certain black soldiers with specialist training to white units, a practice dramatically accelerated in 1950 when the command began receiving many Negroes with occupation specialties unneeded in black units. In March 1951 Handy directed that, while the assignment of Negroes to black units remained the first priority, Negroes possessing qualifications unusable or in excess of the needs of black units would be assigned where they could be used most effectively.[17-75] Consequently, by the end of 1951 some 7 percent of all black enlisted men, 17 percent of the black officers, and all black soldiers of the Women's Army Corps in the command were serving in integrated units.

[Footnote 17-75: Ltr, EUCOM to Sub Cmds, 16 Mar 51, sub: Utilization of Negro Personnel, USAREUR SGS 291.2. See also EUCOM Hist Div, "Integration of Negro and White Troops in the U.S. Army, Europe, 1952-1954," p. 4, in CMH. This monograph, prepared by Ronald Sher, will be cited hereafter as Sher Monograph.]

In sharp contrast to the Far East Command, there was little support among senior Army officials in Europe for full integration. Sent by Assistant Secretary Johnson to brief European commanders on the Army's decision, Eli Ginzberg met with almost universal skepticism. Most commanders were unaware of the Army's success with integration in the Far East and in the training divisions at home; when so informed they were quick to declare such a move impractical for Europe. They warned of the social problems that would arise with the all-white civilian population and predicted that the Army would be forced to abandon (p. 451) the program in midstream.[17-76]

[Footnote 17-76: Ltr, Ginzberg to Burgess, 11 Nov 55, CMH files.]

There were exceptions. Lt. Gen. Manton S. Eddy, the commander of the Seventh Army, described the serious operational problems caused by segregation in his command. Most of his black units were unsatisfactory, and without minimizing the difficulties he concluded in 1951 that integration was desirable not only for the sake of his own mission but for the Army's efficiency and the nation's world leadership. Officers at Headquarters, Supreme Allied Powers, Europe, also recited personnel and training problems caused in their command by segregation, but here, Ginzberg noted, the attitude was one of cautious silence, an attitude that made little difference because General Eisenhower's command was an international organization having nothing to do with the Army's race policies. It would, however, be of some interest during the 1952 political campaign when some commentators made the false claim that Eisenhower had integrated American units in Europe.[17-77]

[Footnote 17-77: See, for example, Pathfinder Magazine 58 (May 7, 1952):11. See also Ltr, Philleo Nash to Donald Dawson, 27 May 52, Nash Collection, Truman Library; Ltr, Brig Gen Charles T. Lanham to Evans, 7 Aug 51, CMH files; CINFO Summary Sheet, 12 Jun 52, sub: Query Washington Bureau, NAACP, CSA 291.2.]

Obviously it was going to take more than a visit from Ginzberg to move the European Command's staff, and later in the year Collins took the matter up personally with Handy. This consultation, and a series of exchanges between McAuliffe and command officials, led Collins to ask Handy to submit an integration plan as quickly as possible.[17-78] Handy complied with a proposal that failed on the whole to conform to the Army's current plans for worldwide integration and was quickly amended in Washington. The European Command would not, Collins decreed, conduct a special screening of its black officers and noncoms for fitness for combat duty. The command would not retain segregated service units, although the Army would allow an extension of the program's timetable to accomplish the integration of these units. Finally, the command would stage no publicity campaign but would instead proceed quietly and routinely. The program was to begin in April 1952.[17-79]

[Footnote 17-78: Msg, CofSA to CINCEUR, 4 Dec 51, DA 88688.]

[Footnote 17-79: Ltr, AG, EUCOM, to CofSA, 14 Dec 51, sub: Racial Integration in Combat Units; G-1 Summary Sheet, 24 Jan 52, same sub; Ltr, CofSA to Handy, 15 Feb 52; Msg, CINCEUR to CofSA, 22 Mar 52, DA IN 119235; Msg, CofSA to CINCEUR, DA 904459, 24 Mar 52. All in CS 291.2.]

Integration of the European Command proceeded without incident, but the administrative task was complicated and frequently delayed by the problem of black overstrength. Handy directed that Negroes be assigned as individuals in a 1 to 10 ratio in all units although he would tolerate a higher ratio in service and temporary duty units during the early stages of the program.[17-80] This figure was adjusted upward the following year to a maximum of 12 percent black for armor and infantry units, 15 percent for combat engineers and artillery, and 17.5 percent for all other units. During the process of integrating the units, a 25 percent black strength was authorized.[17-81]

[Footnote 17-80: Memo, CINCEUCOM for Commanding Generals et al., 1 Apr 52, sub: Racial Integration of EUCOM Army Units, copy in CS 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-81: Sher Monograph, p. 27.]

The ratios were raised because the percentage of Negroes in the (p. 452) command continued to exceed the 1 to 10 ratio and was still increasing. In September 1953 the new commander, General Alfred M. Gruenther, tried to slow the rate of increase.[17-82] He got Washington to halt the shipment of black units, and he himself instituted stricter reenlistment standards in Europe. Finally, he warned that with fewer segregated units to which black troops might be assigned, the racial imbalance was becoming more critical, and he asked for a deferment of the program's completion.[17-83] The Army staff promised to try to alleviate the racial disproportions in the replacement stream, but asked Gruenther to proceed as quickly as possible with integration.[17-84]

[Footnote 17-82: As of 1 August 1952 the major joint American command in Europe was designated U.S. European Command (USEUCOM). The U.S. Army element in this command was designated U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR). Gruenther was the commander in chief of the European Command from July 1953 to November 1956. At the same time he occupied the senior position in the NATO Command under the title Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR).]

[Footnote 17-83: Memo, USCINCEUR for TAG, 30 Sep 53, sub: Racial Integration of USAREUR Units, AG 291.2 (30 Sep 53); see also Sher Monograph, pp. 24-27.]

[Footnote 17-84: Memos, G-1 for TAG, 30 Oct 53, sub: Negro Overstrength in USAREUR, and TAG for USCINCEUR, 2 Nov 53, same sub; both in AG 291.2 (30 Oct 53).]

There was little the Army staff could do. The continental commands had the same overstrength problem, and the staff considered the European Command an inappropriate place to raise black percentages. By mid-1953 Negroes accounted for some 16 percent of Army personnel in Europe and, more important to the command, the number of Negroes with combat occupation specialties continued to increase at the same rate. As an alternative to the untenable practice of reclassifying combat-trained men for noncombat assignments purely on account of race, Gruenther again raised the acceptable ratio of blacks in combat units. At the same time he directed the Seventh Army commander to treat ratios in the future merely as guidelines, to be adhered to as circumstances permitted.[17-85] The percentage of Negroes in the command leveled off at this time, but not before the black proportion of the command's transportation units reached 48.8 percent. Summing up his command's policy on integration, Gruenther concluded: "I cannot permit the assignment of large numbers of unqualified personnel, regardless of race, to prejudice the operation readiness of our units in an effort to attain 100 percent racial integration, however desirable that goal may be."[17-86] A heavy influx of white replacements with transportation specialties allowed the European Command to finish integrating the elements of the Seventh Army in July 1954.[17-87] The last black unit in the command, the 94th Engineer Battalion, was inactivated in November.

[Footnote 17-85: Ltr, USCINCEUR to CG, Seventh Army, 8 Jul 53, sub: Racial Integration of USAREUR Units, USAREUR AG 291.2 (1953).]

[Footnote 17-86: Ltr, CINCUSAREUR to SACEUR, 10 Apr 53, USAREUR SGS 291.2 (1953), quoted in Sher Monograph, p. 28.]

[Footnote 17-87: Hq USAREUR, "Annual Historical Report, 1 January 1953-30 June 1954," p. 60, in CMH.]

Integration of black troops in Europe proved successful on several counts, with the Army, in Assistant Secretary Fred Korth's words, "achieving benefits therefrom substantially greater than we had anticipated at its inception."[17-88] The command's combat (p. 453) readiness increased, he claimed, while its racial incidents and disciplinary problems declined. The reaction of the soldiers was, again in Korth's words, "generally good" with incidents stemming from integration "fewer and much farther between." Moreover, the program had been a definite advantage in counteracting Communist propaganda, with no evidence of problems with civilians arising from social integration. More eloquent testimony to the program's success appeared in the enthusiasm of the European Command's senior officials.[17-89] Their fears and uncertainties eased, they abruptly reversed their attitudes and some even moved from outright opposition to praise for the program as one of their principal achievements.

[Footnote 17-88: Memo, ASA (M&RF) for J. C. Evans, OASD (M), 26 Nov 52, sub: Negro Integration in Europe, SD 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-89: Ltr, Ginzberg to Burgess, 15 Nov 55, CMH files; Ernest Leiser, "For Negroes, It's a New Army Now," Saturday Evening Post 225 (December 13, 1952):26-27, 108-12.]

The smaller overseas commands also submitted plans to Army headquarters for the breakup of their segregated units in 1951, and integration of the Alaskan Command and the rest proceeded during 1952 without incident.[17-90] At the same time the continental Army commands, faced with similar manpower problems, began making exceptions, albeit considerably more timidly than the great overseas commands, to the assignment of Negroes to black units. As early as September 1951 the Army G-1 discovered instances of unauthorized integration in every Army area,[17-91] the result of either unrectified administrative errors or the need to find suitable assignments for black replacements. "The concern shown by you over the press reaction to integrating these men into white units," the Sixth Army commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph M. Swing, reported to the Army staff, "causes me to guess that your people may not realize the extent to which integration has already progressed--at least in the Sixth Army."[17-92] Swing concluded that gradual integration had to be the solution to the Army's race problems everywhere. McAuliffe agreed with Swing that the continental commands should be gradually integrated, but, as he put it, "the difficulty is that my superiors are not prepared to admit that we are already launched on a progressive integration program" in the United States. The whole problem was a very touchy one, McAuliffe added.[17-93]

[Footnote 17-90: On the integration of these commands, see, for example, G-1 Summary Sheet, 4 Sep 52, sub: Utilization of Negro Personnel; Ltr, CG, USARAL, to DA, 15 Sep 51; Ltr, G-1 to Maj Gen Julian Cunningham, 22 Oct 51. All in G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-91: Memo, Chief, Manpower Control Div, G-1, for Gen Taylor, 6 Sep 51, sub: Negro Integration, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-92: Ltr, CG, Sixth Army, to ACofS, G-1, 10 Sep 51, G-1 291.2 Negroes.]

[Footnote 17-93: Ltr, G-1 to CG, Sixth Army, 17 Sep 51, G-1 291.2.]

The Army staff had agreed to halt the further integration of units in the United States until the results of the overseas changes had been carefully analyzed. Nevertheless, even while the integration of the Far East forces was proceeding, General McAuliffe's office prepared a comprehensive two-phase plan for the integration of the continental armies. It would consolidate all temporary units then separated into racial elements, redistributing all Negroes among the organized white units; then, Negroes assigned to black components of larger white units would be absorbed into similar white units through normal attrition or by concentrated levies on the black units. McAuliffe (p. 454) estimated that the whole process would take two years.[17-94]

[Footnote 17-94: G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 21 Sep 51, sub: G-1 Attitude Toward Integration of Negroes Into CONUS Units, CS 291.2 Negroes (21 Sep 51). The staff's decision to halt further integration was announced in Memo, ACofS, G-1, for ACofS, G-3, 18 Jul 51, G-1 291.2.]

McAuliffe's plan was put into effect when General Collins ordered worldwide integration in December 1952. The breakdown of the "10 percent Army" proceeded uneventfully, and the old black units disappeared. The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, now converted into the 509th and 510th Tank Battalions (Negro), received white replacements and dropped the racial designation. The 25th Infantry, now broken down into smaller units, was integrated in September 1952. On 12 October 1953 Assistant Secretary of Defense John Hannah announced that 95 percent of the Army's Negroes were serving in integrated units with the rest to be so assigned not later than June 1954.[17-95] His estimate was off by several months. The European (p. 455) Command's 94th Engineer Battalion, the last major all-black unit, was inactivated in November 1954, several weeks after the Secretary of Defense had announced the end of all segregated units.[17-96]

[Footnote 17-95: U.S. News and World Report 35 (October 16, 1953):99-100.]

[Footnote 17-96: Hq USAREUR, "Annual Historical Report, 1 July 1954-30 June 1955," p. 83.]

Like a man who discovers that his profitable deeds are also virtuous, the Army discussed its new racial policy with considerable pride. From company commander to general officer the report was that the Army worked better; integration was desirable, and despite all predictions to the contrary, it was a success. Military commentators in and out of uniform stoutly defended the new system against its few critics.[17-97] Most pointed to Korea as the proving ground for the new policy. Assistant Secretary of Defense Hannah generalized about the change to integration: "Official analyses and reports indicate a definite increase in combat effectiveness in the overseas areas.... From experience in Korea and elsewhere, Army commanders have (p. 456) determined, also, that more economical and effective results accrue from the policies which remove duplicate facilities and operations based upon race."[17-98] The Army, it would seem, had made a complete about-face in its argument from efficiency.

[Footnote 17-97: See, for example, Semiannual Report of the Secretary of Defense, January 1-June 30, 1933, p. 24; ibid., January 1-June 30, 1954, pp. 21-22; and annual reports of the Secretary of the Army for same period, as well as CINCUSAREUR's response to criticisms by General Mark Clark, Army Times, May 19, 1956, and S. L. A. Marshall's devastating rejoinder to General Almond in the Detroit News, May 13, 1956. Clark's views are reported in U.S. News and World Report 40 (May 11, 1956). See also Ltr, Lt Col Gordon Hill, CINFO, to Joan Rosen, WCBS, 17 Apr 64, CMH files; New York Herald Tribune, May 14, 1956; New York Times May 6, 1956.]

[Footnote 17-98: Ltr, Hannah, ASD (M), to Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, 27 Feb 53, ASD (M) 291.2.]

But integration did more than demonstrate a new form of military efficiency. It also stilled several genuine fears long entertained by military leaders. Many thoughtful officials had feared that the social mingling that would inevitably accompany integration in the continental United States might lead to racial incidents and a breakdown in discipline. The new policy seemed to prove this fear groundless.[17-99] A 1953 Army-sponsored survey reported that, with the single major exception of racially separate dances for enlisted men at post-operated service clubs on southern bases, segregation involving uniformed men and women now stopped at the gates of the military reservation.[17-100] Army headquarters, carefully monitoring the progress of social integration, found it without incident.[17-101] At the same time the survey revealed that some noncommissioned officers' clubs and enlisted men's clubs tended to segregate themselves, but no official notice was taken of this tendency, and not one such instance was a source of racial complaint in 1953. The survey also discovered that racial attitudes in adjacent communities had surprisingly little influence on the relations between white and black soldiers on post. Nor was there evidence of any appreciable resentment toward integration on the part of white civilian employees, even when they worked with or under black officers and enlisted men.

[Footnote 17-99: One exception was the strong objection in some states to racially mixed marriages contracted by soldiers. Twenty-seven states had some form of miscegenation law. The Army therefore did not assign to stations in those states soldiers who by reason of their mixed marriages might be subject to criminal penalties. See Memo, Chief, Classification and Standards Branch, DCSPER, for Planning Office, 28 Feb 50, sub: Assignment of Personnel; DF, DCSPER to TAG, 4 Jun 54; both in DCSPER 291.2. For further discussion of the matter, see TAGO, Policy Paper, July 1954; New York Post, November 13, 1957.]

[Footnote 17-100: HUMRRO, Integration of Social Activities on Nine Army Posts, Aug 53. See also Interv, Nichols with Davis. A DCSPER action officer, Davis was intimately involved with the Army's integration program during this period.]

[Footnote 17-101: Interv, author with Evans, 4 Dec 73, CMH files.]

The on-post dance, a valuable morale builder, was usually restricted to one race because commanders were afraid of arousing antagonism in nearby communities. But even here restrictions were not uniform. Mutual use of dance floors by white and black couples was frequent though not commonplace and was accepted in officers' clubs, many noncommissioned officers' clubs, and at special unit affairs. The rules for social integration were flexible, and many adjustments could be made to the sentiments of the community if the commander had the will and the tact. Some commanders, unaware of what was being accomplished by progressive colleagues, were afraid to establish a precedent, and often avoided practices that were common elsewhere. Social scientists reviewing the situation suggested that the Army should acquaint the commanders with the existing wide range of social possibilities.

Fear of congressional disapproval, another reason often given for deferring integration, was exaggerated, as a meeting between Senator Richard B. Russell and James Evans in early 1952 demonstrated. (p. 457) At the request of the manpower secretary, Evans went to Capitol Hill to inform the chairman of the Armed Services Committee that for reasons of military efficiency the Army was going to integrate. Senator Russell observed that he had been unable to do some things he wanted to do "because your people [black voters] weren't strong enough politically to support me." Tell the secretary, Russell added, "that I won't help him integrate, but I won't hinder him either--and neither will anyone else."[17-102] The senator was true to his word. News of the Army's integration program passed quietly through the halls of Congress without public or private protest.

[Footnote 17-102: Ibid.]

Much opposition to integration was based on the fear that low-scoring black soldiers, handicapped by deficiencies in schooling and training, would weaken integrated units as they had the all-black units. But integration proved to be the best solution. As one combat commander put it, "Mix 'um up and you get a strong line all the way; segregate 'um and you have a point of weakness in your line. The enemy hits you there, and it's bug out."[17-103] Korea taught the Army that an integrated unit was not as weak as its weakest men, but as strong as its leadership and training. Integration not only diluted the impact of the less qualified by distributing them more widely, but also brought about measurable improvement in the performance and standards of a large number of black soldiers.

[Footnote 17-103: Quoted in John B. Spore and Robert F. Cocklin, "Our Negro Soldiers," Reporter 6 (January 22, 1952):6-9.]

Closely related to the concern over the large number of ill-qualified soldiers was the fear of the impact of integration on a quota-free Army. The Project CLEAR team concluded that a maximum of 15 to 20 percent black strength "seems to be an effective interim working level."[17-104] General McAuliffe pointed out in November 1952 that he was trying to maintain a balanced distribution of black troops, not only geographically but also according to combat and service specialties (see Tables 9 and 10). Collins decided to retain the ceiling on black combat troops--no more than 12 percent in any combat unit--but he agreed that a substantially higher percentage was acceptable in all other units.[17-105]

[Footnote 17-104: Ltr, Dir, ORO, to ACofS, G-3, 20 Nov 52, G-3 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-105: Memo for Rcd, G-1, 6 Nov 52, ref: ACofS, G-1, Memo for CofS, sub: Distribution of Negro Personnel, 14 Oct 52, G-1 291.2.]

Table 9--Worldwide Distribution of Enlisted Personnel by Race, October 1952

(In Thousands)

European Far East Other Overseas Continental Category Command Command Commands United Total States

White 212.1 293.1 96.0 649.2 1,250.5 Black 35.6 41.5 5.8[a] 110.6 193.4 Total 247.7 334.6 101.8 759.8 1,445.9 Percent black 14.4 12.4 5.7 14.6 13.4

[Tablenote a: Restrictions remained in effect on the assignment of Negroes to certain stations in USARPAC, TRUST, and USARCARIB.]

Source: Memo, Chief, Per and Dist Br, G-1, for ACofS, G-1, 8 Oct 52, sub: Distribution of Negro Enlisted Personnel, G-1, 291.2.

Table 10--Distribution of Black Enlisted Personnel by Branch and Rank, 31 October 1952

AUS Regular Branch Total Percent[b] Total Percent[b]

Armor 7,738 13.7 3,565 13.8 Artillery 33,684 16.9 14,854 19.9 Infantry 37,220 14.1 15,713 14.9 Adjutant General's Corps 1,074 8.8 663 10.8 Chemical Corps 1,504 15.5 633 20.1 Corps of Engineers 18,987 16.4 8,315 17.9 Military Police Corps 3,012 8.1 1,751 9.8 Finance Corps 68 2.4 51 5.3 Army Medical Service 9,896 12.2 4,439 12.9 Ordnance Corps 5,683 10.2 2,598 12.0 Quartermaster Corps 9,690 20.8 4,187 20.6 Signal Corps 6,923 8.2 3,192 8.7 Transportation Corps 16,380 31.2 8,765 38.2 Women's Army Corps 1,310 13.1 1,283 13.3 No Branch assignment[a] 42,643 11.4 17,779 11.7 Total 195,812[c] 87,788

[Tablenote a: In training.]

[Tablenote b: Figures show black percentage of total Army enlistments.]

[Tablenote c: Discrepancy with Table 9, which is based on September figures.]

Source: STM-30, 31 Oct 52.

These percentages were part of a larger concern over the number of Negroes in the Army as a whole. Based on the evidence of draft-swollen enlistment statistics, it seemed likely that the 15 to 20 percent figure would be reached or surpassed in 1953 or 1954, and there was some discussion in the staff about restoring the quota. But such talk quickly faded as the Korean War wound down and the percentage declined. Negroes constituted 14.4 percent of enlisted strength in December 1952 and leveled off by the summer of 1955 at 11.9 percent. Statistics for the European Command illustrated the trend. In June 1955, Negroes accounted for 3.6 percent of the command's officer strength and 11.4 percent of its enlisted strength. The enlisted figure represents a drop from a high of 16.1 percent in June 1953. The percentage of black troops was down to 11.2 percent of the (p. 458) command's total strength--officers, warrant officers, and enlisted men--by June 1956. The reduction is explained in part by a policy adopted by all commands in February 1955 of refusing, with certain exceptions, to reenlist three-year veterans who scored less than ninety in the classification tests. In Europe alone some 5,300 enlisted men were not permitted to reenlist in 1955. Slightly more than 25 percent were black.[17-106]

[Footnote 17-106: Hq USAREUR, "Annual Historical Report, 1 July 1954-30 June 1955," pp. 76-80, 92; ibid., 1 July 1955-30 June 1956, pp. 65-67.]

The racial quota, in the guise of an "acceptable" percentage of Negroes in individual units, continued to operate long after the Army agreed to abandon it. No one, black or white, appears to have voiced in the early 1950's the logical observation that the establishment of a racial quota in individual Army units--whatever the percentage and the grounds for that percentage--was in itself a residual form of discrimination. Nor did anyone ask how establishing a race quota, clearly distinct from restricting men according to mental, moral, or professional standards, could achieve the "effective working (p. 459) level" posited by the Army's scientific advisers.

These questions would still be pertinent years later because the alternative to the racial quota--the enlistment and assignment of men without regard for color--would continue to be unacceptable to many. They would argue that to abandon the quota, as the services did in the 1960's, was to violate the concept of racial balance, which is yet another hallmark of an egalitarian society. For example, during the Vietnam War some black Americans complained that too many Negroes were serving in the more dangerous combat arms. Since men were assigned without regard to race, these critics were in effect asking for the quota again, reminding the service that the population of the United States was only some 11 percent black. And during discussions of the all-volunteer Army a decade later, critics would be asking how the white majority would react to an army 30 or even 50 percent black.

These considerations were clearly beyond the ken of the men who integrated the Army in the early 1950's. They concentrated instead on the perplexities of enlisting and assigning vast numbers of segregated black soldiers during wartime and closely watched the combat performance of black units in Korea. Integration provided the Army with a way to fill its depleted combat units quickly. The shortage of white troops forced local commanders to turn to the growing surplus of black soldiers awaiting assignment to a limited number of black units. Manpower restrictions did not permit the formation of new black units merely to accommodate the excess, and in any case experience with the 24th Infantry had strengthened the Army staff's conviction that black combat units did not perform well. However commanders may have felt about the social implications of integration, and whatever they thought of the fighting ability of black units, the only choice left to them was integration. When the Chief of Staff ordered the integration of the Far East Command in 1951, what had begun as a battlefield expedient became official policy.

Segregation became unworkable when the Army lost its power to limit the number of black soldiers. Abandonment of the quota on enlistments, pressed on the Army by the Fahy Committee, proved compatible with segregated units only so long as the need for fighting men was not acute. In Korea the need became acute. Ironically, the Gillem Board, whose work became anathema to the integrationists, accurately predicted the demise of segregation in its final report, which declared that in the event of another major war the Army would use its manpower "without regard to antecedents or race."

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