18. (p. 460)
Integration of the Marine Corps
Even more so than in the Army, the history of racial equality in the Marine Corps demonstrates the effect of the exigencies of war on the integration of the armed forces. The Truman order, the Fahy Committee, even the demands of civil rights leaders and the mandates of the draft law, all exerted pressure for reform and assured the presence of some black marines. But the Marine Corps was for years able to stave off the logical outcome of such pressures, and in the end it was the manpower demands of the Korean War that finally brought integration.
In the first place the Korean War caused a sudden and dramatic rise in the number of black marines: from 1,525 men, almost half of them stewards, in May 1949, to some 17,000 men, only 500 of them serving in separate stewards duty, in October 1953.[18-1] Whereas the careful designation of a few segregated service units sufficed to handle the token black representation in 1949, no such organization was possible in 1952, when thousands of black marines on active duty constituted more than 5 percent of the total enlistment. The decision to integrate the new black marines throughout the corps was the natural outcome of the service's early experiences in Korea. Ordered to field a full division, the corps out of necessity turned to the existing black service units, among others, for men to augment the peacetime strength of its combat units. These men were assigned to any unit in the Far East that needed them. As the need for more units and replacements grew during the war, newly enlisted black marines were more and more often pressed into integrated service both in the Far East and at home.
[Footnote 18-1: All statistics from official Marine Corps sources, Hist Div, HQMC.]
Most significantly, the war provided a rising generation of Marine Corps officers with a first combat experience with black marines. The competence of these Negroes and the general absence of racial tension during their integration destroyed long accepted beliefs to the contrary and opened the way for general integration. Although the corps continued to place special restrictions on the employment of Negroes and was still wrestling with the problem of black stewards well into the next decade, its basic policy of segregating marines by race ended with the cancellation of the last all-black unit designation in 1951. Hastily embraced by the corps as a solution to a pressing manpower problem, integration was finally accepted as a permanent manpower policy.
Impetus for Change (p. 461)
This transformation seemed remote in 1949 in view of Commandant Clifton B. Cates's strong defense of segregation. At that time Cates made a careful distinction between allocating men to the services without regard to race, which he supported, and ordering integration of the services themselves. "Changing national policy in this respect through the Armed Forces," he declared, "is a dangerous path to pursue inasmuch as it effects [sic] the ability of the National Military Establishment to fulfill its mission."[18-2] Integration of the services had to follow, not precede, integration of American society.
[Footnote 18-2: Memo, CMC for Asst SecNav for Air, 17 Mar 49, MC files.]
The commandant's views were spelled out in a series of decisions announced by the corps in the wake of the Secretary of the Navy's call for integration of all elements of the Navy Department in 1949. On 18 November 1949 the corps' Acting Chief of Staff announced a new racial policy: individual black marines would be assigned in accordance with their specialties to vacancies "in any unit where their services can be effectively utilized," but segregated black units would be retained and new ones created when appropriate in the regular and reserve components of the corps. In the case of the reserve component, the decision on the acceptance of an applicant was vested in the unit commander.[18-3] On the same day the commandant made it clear that the policy was not to be interpreted too broadly. Priority for the assignment of individual black marines, Cates informed the commander of the Pacific Department, would be given to the support establishment and black officers would be assigned to black units only.[18-4]
[Footnote 18-3: MC Memo 119-14, 18 Nov 49, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Marines, Hist Div, HQMC, files. Unless otherwise noted, all documents in this section are located in these files.]
[Footnote 18-4: Msg, CMC (signed C. B. Cates) to CG, Dept of Pacific, 18 Nov 49. Aware of the delicate public relations aspects of this subject, the Director of Plans and Policies recommended that this message be classified; see Memo, E. A. Pollock for Asst CMC, 8 Nov 49.]
Further limiting the chances that black marines would be integrated, Cates approved the creation of four new black units. The Director of Personnel and the Marine Quartermaster had opposed this move on the grounds that the new units would require technical billets, particularly in the supply specialties, which would be nearly impossible to fill with available enlisted black marines. Either school standards would have to be lowered or white marines would have to be assigned to the units. Cates met this objection by agreeing with the Director of Plans and Policies that no prohibition existed against racial mixing in a unit during a period of on-the-job training. The Director of Personnel would decide when a unit was sufficiently trained and properly manned to be officially designated a black organization.[18-5] In keeping with this arrangement, for example, the commanding general of the 2d Marine Division reported in February 1950 that his black marines were sufficiently trained to assume complete operation of the depot platoon within the division's service command. Cates then designated the platoon as a unit suitable for general (p. 462) duty black marines, which prompted the Coordinator of Enlisted Personnel to point out that current regulations stipulated "after a unit has been so designated, all white enlisted personnel will be withdrawn and reassigned."[18-6]
[Footnote 18-5: DP&P Study 119-49, 14 Nov 49, sub: Designation of Units for Assignment of Negro Marines, approved by CMC, 2 Dec 49.]
[Footnote 18-6: Memo, CG, 2d Marine Div, for CMC, 18 Feb 50, sub: Assignment of Negro Enlisted Personnel; Memo, CMC to CG, 2d Marine Div, 28 Mar 50, sub: Designation of the Depot Platoon, Support Company, Second Combat Service Group, Service Command, for Assignment of Negro Enlisted Marines; MC Routing Sheet, Enlisted Coordinator, Personnel Department, 27 Mar 50, same sub.]
Nor were there any plans for the general integration of black reservists, although some Negroes were serving in formerly all-white units. The 9th Infantry Battalion, for instance, had a black lieutenant. As the assistant commandant, Maj. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, put it on 4 January 1950, black units would be formed "in any area where there is an expressed interest" provided that the black population was large enough to support it.[18-7] When the NAACP objected to the creation of another all-black reserve unit in New York City as being contrary to Defense Department policy, the Marine Corps justified it on the grounds that the choice of integrated or segregated units must be made by the local community "in accord with its cultural values."[18-8] Notwithstanding the Secretary of the Navy's integration order and assignment policies directed toward effective utilization, it appeared that the Marine Corps in early 1950 was determined to retain its system of racially segregated units indefinitely.
[Footnote 18-7: Ltr, Smith to Franklin S. Williams, Asst Special Counsel, NAACP, 4 Jan 50, AO-1, MC files.]
[Footnote 18-8: Ltr, Roy Wilkins to SecDef, 27 Feb 50; Memo, SecNav for SecDef, 17 Apr 50, sub: Activation of Negro Reserve Units in the U.S. Marine Corps; both in SecDef 291.2. See also Ltr, Asst CMC to Franklin Williams, 7 Feb 50.]
But the corps failed to reckon with the consequences of the war that broke out suddenly in Korea in June. Two factors connected with that conflict caused an abrupt change in Marine race policy. The first was the great influx of Negroes into the corps. Although the commandant insisted that race was not considered in recruitment, and in fact recruitment instructions since 1948 contained no reference to the race of applicants, few Negroes had joined the Marine Corps in the two years preceding the war.[18-9] In its defense the corps pointed to its exceedingly small enlistment quotas during those years and its high enlistment standards, which together allowed recruiters to accept only a few men. The classification test average for all recruits enlisted in 1949 was 108, while the average for black enlistees during the same period was 94.7. New black recruits were almost exclusively enlisted for stewards duty.[18-10]
[Footnote 18-9: Ltr, CMC to Walter White, 2 Jul 51.]
[Footnote 18-10: Memo, Div of Plans and Policies for Asst Dir of Public Info, 4 Jun 51, sub: Article in Pittsburgh Courier of 26 May 51.]
A revision of Defense Department manpower policy combined with the demands of the war to change all that. The imposition of a qualitative distribution of manpower by the Secretary of Defense in April 1950 meant that among the thousands of recruits enlisted during the Korean War the Marine Corps would have to accept its share of the large percentage of men in lower classification test categories. Among these men were a significant number of black enlistees who had failed to qualify under previous standards. They were joined by thousands (p. 463) more who were supplied through the nondiscriminatory process of the Selective Service System when, during the war, the corps began using the draft. The result was a 100 percent jump in the number of black marines in the first year of war, a figure that would be multiplied almost six times before war inductions ran down in 1953. (Table 11)
Table 11--black Marines, 1949-1955
Percent Date Officers Enlisted Men of Corps
July 1949 0 1,525 1.6 July 1950 0 1,605 1.6 January 1951 2 2,077 1.2 July 1951 3 3,145 1.6 January 1952 3 8,315 3.7 July 1952 NA 13,858 6.0 January 1953 10 14,479 6.1 July 1953 13 15,729 6.0 November 1953 18 16,906 6.7 June 1954 19 15,682 6.5 January 1955 19 12,456 5.7
A second factor forcing a change in racial policy was the manpower demands imposed upon the corps by the war itself. When General MacArthur called for the deployment of a Marine regimental combat team and supporting air group on 2 July 1950, the Secretary of the Navy responded by sending the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, which included the 5th Marine Regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 11th Marines (Artillery), and Marine Air Group 33. By 13 September the 1st Marine Division and the 1st Marine Air Wing at wartime strength had been added. Fielding these forces placed an enormous strain on the corps' manpower, and one result was the assignment of a number of black service units, often combined with white units in composite organizations, to the combat units.
The pressures of battle quickly altered this neat arrangement. Theoretically, every marine was trained as an infantryman, and when shortages occurred in combat units commanders began assigning black replacements where needed. For example, as the demand for more marines for the battlefield grew, the Marine staff began to pull black marines from routine duties at the Marine Barracks in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii and send them to Korea to bring the fighting units up to full strength. The first time black servicemen were integrated as individuals in significant numbers under combat conditions was in the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade during the fighting in the Pusan Perimeter in August 1950. The assignment of large numbers of black marines throughout the combat units of the 1st Marine Division, beginning in September, provided the clearest instance of a service abandoning a social policy in response to the demands of the battlefield. The 7th Marines, for example, an organic element of the 1st Marine Division since August 1950, received into its rapidly expanding ranks, along with many recalled white reservists and men from small, miscellaneous Marine units, a 54-man black (p. 464) service unit. The regimental commander immediately broke up the black unit, assigning the men individually throughout his combat battalions.
That the emergency continued to influence the placement of Negroes is apparent from the distribution of black marines in March 1951, when almost half were assigned to combat duty in integrated units.[18-11] Before the war was over, the 1st Marine Division had several thousand black marines, serving in its ranks in Korea, where they were assigned to infantry and signal units as well as to transportation and food supply organizations. One of the few black reserve officers on active duty found himself serving as an infantry platoon commander in Company B of the division's 7th Marines.
[Footnote 18-11: Location of Black Marines, 31 March 1951
Posts and stations inside the United States 938 Posts and stations outside the United States 181 Troop training units 3 Aviation 190 Fleet Marine Force (Ground) 1,327 Ships 3 En route 58 Missing in action 8
Total 2,708
Source: Tab 1 to Memo, ACofS, G-1, to Asst Dir of Public Info, 6 Jun 51, sub: Queries Concerning Negro Marines.]
The shift to integration in Korea proved uneventful. In the words of the 7th Marines commander: "Never once did any color problem bother us.... It just wasn't any problem. We had one Negro sergeant in command of an all-white squad and there was another--with a graves registration unit--who was one of the finest Marines I've ever seen."[18-12] Serving for the first time in integrated units, Negroes proceeded to perform in a way that not only won many individuals decorations for valor but also won the respect of commanders for Negroes as fighting men. Reminiscing about the performance of black marines in his division, Lt. Gen. Oliver P. Smith remembered "they did everything, and they did a good job because they were integrated, and they were with good people."[18-13] In making his point the division commander contrasted the performance of his integrated men with the Army's segregated 24th Infantry. The observations of field commanders, particularly the growing opinion that a connection existed between good performance and integration, were bound to affect the deliberations of the Division of Plans and Policies when it began to restudy the question of black assignments in the fall of 1951.
[Footnote 18-12: Washington Post, February 27, 1951.]
[Footnote 18-13: USMC Oral History Interview, Lt Gen Oliver P. Smith, Jun 69.]
As a result of the division's study, the Commandant of the Marine Corps announced a general policy of racial integration on 13 December 1951, thus abolishing the system first introduced in 1942 of designating certain units in the regular forces and organized reserves as black units.[18-14] He spelled out the new order in some detail (p. 465) on 18 December, and although his comments were addressed to the commanders in the Fleet Marine Force, they were also forwarded to various commands in the support establishment that still retained all-black units. The order indicated that the practices now so commonplace in Korea were about to become the rule in the United States.[18-15] Some six months later the commandant informed the Chief of Naval Personnel that the Marine Corps had no segregated units and while integration had been gradual "it was believed to be an accomplished fact at this time."[18-16]
[Footnote 18-14: MC Policy Memo 109-51, 13 Dec 51, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Marines.]
[Footnote 18-15: Memo, CMC for CG, FMF, Pacific, et al., 18 Dec 51, sub: Assignment of Negro Enlisted Personnel.]
[Footnote 18-16: Idem for Chief, NavPers (ca. Jun 51), MC files.]
The change was almost immediately apparent in other parts of the corps, for black marines were also integrated in units serving with the fleet. Reporting on a Mediterranean tour of the 3d Battalion, 6th Marines (Reinforced), from 17 April to 20 October 1952, Capt. Thomas L. Faix, a member of the unit, noted: "We have about fifteen Negro marines in our unit now, out of fifty men. We have but very little trouble and they sleep, eat and go on liberty together. It would be hard for many to believe but the thought is that here in the service all are facing a common call or summons to service regardless of color."[18-17] Finally, in August 1953, Lt. Gen. Gerald C. Thomas, (p. 466) who framed the postwar segregation policy, announced that "integration of Negroes in the Corps is here to stay. Colored boys are in almost every military occupation specialty and certainly in every enlisted rank. I believe integration is satisfactory to them, and it is satisfactory to us."[18-18]
[Footnote 18-17: Extract from Thomas L. Faix, "Marines on Tour (An Account of Mediterranean Goodwill Cruise and Naval Occupation Duty), Third Battalion, Sixth Marines (Reinforced), April 17-October 20, 1952," in Essays and Topics of Interest: #4, Race Relations, p. 36.]
[Footnote 18-18: The Chief of Staff was quoted in "Integration of the Armed Forces," Ebony 13 (July 1958):22.]
Assignments
The 1951 integration order ushered in a new era in the long history of the Marine Corps, but despite the abolition of segregated units, the new policy did not bring about completely unrestricted employment of Negroes throughout the corps. The commandant had retained the option to employ black marines "where their services can be effectively utilized," and in the years after the Korean War it became apparent that the corps recognized definite limits to the kinds of duty to which black marines could be assigned. Following standard assignment procedures, the Department of Personnel's Detail Branch selected individual staff noncommissioned officers for specific duty billets. After screening the records of a marine and considering his race, the branch could reject the assignment of a Negro to a billet for any (p. 467) reason "of overriding interest to the Marine Corps."[18-19]
[Footnote 18-19: Memo, Head of Detail Br, Pers Dept, for Dir of Pers, 10 Jun 52, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Marines, MC files. This method of assigning staff noncommissioned officers still prevailed in 1976.]
By the same token, the assignment of marines in the lower ranks was left to the individual commands, which filled quotas established by headquarters. Commanders usually filled the quotas from among eligible men longest on station, but whether or not Negroes were included in a transfer quota was left entirely to the discretion of the local commander. The Department of Personnel reserved the right, however, to make one racial distinction in regard to bulk quotas: it regulated the number of black marines it took from recruit depots as replacements, as insurance against a "disproportionate" number of Negroes in combat units. Under the screening procedures of Marine headquarters and unit commanders, black enlisted men were excluded from assignment to reserve officer training units, recruiting stations, the State Department for duty at embassies and legations, and certain special duties of the Department of Defense and the Navy Department.[18-20]
[Footnote 18-20: Ibid., 4 Aug 52.]
For the service to reserve the right to restrict the assignment of Negroes when it was of "overriding interest to the Marine Corps" was perhaps understandable, but it was also susceptible to considerable misinterpretation if not outright abuse. The Personnel Department was "constantly" receiving requests from commanders that no black noncoms be assigned to their units. While some of these requests seemed reasonable, the chief of the division's Detail Branch noted, others were not. Commanders of naval prison retraining centers did not want black noncommissioned officers assigned because, they claimed, Negroes caused unrest among the prisoners. The Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., where the commandant lived, did not want black marines because of the ceremonial nature of its mission. The Marine Barracks at Dahlgren, Virginia, did not want Negroes because conflicts might arise with civilian employees in cafeterias and movies. Other commanders questioned the desirability of assigning black marines to the Naval Academy, to inspector-instructor billets in the clerical and supply fields, and to billets for staff chauffeurs. The Detail Branch wanted a specific directive that listed commands to which black marines should not be assigned.[18-21]
[Footnote 18-21: Ibid., 10 Jun 52.]
Restrictions on the assignment of black marines were never codified, but the justification for them changed. In place of the "overriding interest to the Marine Corps" clause, the corps began to speak of restrictions "solely for the welfare of the individual Marine." In 1955 the Director of Personnel, Maj. Gen. Robert O. Bare, pointed to the unusually severe hardships imposed on Negroes in some communities where the attitude toward black marines sometimes interfered with their performance of duty. Since civilian pressures could not be recognized officially, Bare reasoned, they had to be dealt with informally on a person-to-person basis.[18-22] By this statement (p. 468) he meant the Marine Corps would informally exclude Negroes from certain assignments. Of course no one explained how barring Negroes from assignment to recruitment, inspector-instructor, embassy, or even chauffeur duty worked for "the welfare of the individual Marine." Such an explanation was just what Congressman Powell was demanding in January 1958 when he asked why black marines were excluded from assignments to the American Embassy in Paris.[18-23]
[Footnote 18-22: Ltr, Maj Gen R. O. Bare to CO, 1st Mar Div, 14 Jul 55; Ltr, Dir of Pers to CG, 1st Mar Div (ca. 10 Dec 56). The quotation is from Ltr, CO, Marine Barracks, NAD, Hawthorne, Nev., to Dir of Pers, 15 Dec 62.]
[Footnote 18-23: Ltr, Powell to SecDef, 23 Jan 58. See also unsigned Draft Ltr for the commandant's signature to Powell, 12 Feb 58.]
Community attitudes toward Negroes in uniform had become a serious matter in all the services by the late 1950's, and concern for the welfare of black marines was repeatedly voiced by Marine commanders in areas as far-flung as Nevada, Florida, and southern California.[18-24] But even here there was reason to question the motives of some local commanders, for during a lengthy discussion in the Personnel Department some officials asserted that the available evidence indicated no justification for restricting assignments. Anxiety over assignments anywhere in the United States was unfounded, they claimed, and offered in support statistics demonstrating the existence of a substantial black community in all the duty areas from which Negroes were unofficially excluded. The Assignment and Classification Branch also pointed out that the corps had experienced no problems in the case of the thirteen black marines then assigned to inspector-instructor duty, including one in Mobile, Alabama. The branch went on to discuss the possibility of assigning black marines to recruiting duty. Since recruiters were assigned to areas where they understood local attitudes and customs, some officials reasoned, Negroes should be used to promote the corps among potential black enlistees whose feelings and attitudes were not likely to be understood by white recruiters.
[Footnote 18-24: See Ltrs, A. W. Gentleman, Hq MC Cold Weather Tng Cen, Bridgeport, Calif., to Col Hartley, 12 Nov 57; CO, MB, NAS, Jacksonville, Fla., to Personnel Dept, 14 Dec 62; CO, MB, NAD, Hawthorne, Nev., to same, 15 Dec 62.]
These matters were never considered officially by the Marine Corps staff, and as of 1960 the Inspector General was still keeping a list of stations to which Negroes would not be assigned. But the picture quickly changed in the next year, and by June 1962 all restrictions on the assignment of black marines had been dropped with the exception of several installations in the United States where off-base housing was unavailable and some posts overseas where the use of black marines was limited because of the attitudes of foreign governments.[18-25]
[Footnote 18-25: Draft Memo, Head of Assignment and Classification Br for Dir, Pers (ca. 1961), sub: Restricted Assignments; Memo, IG for Dir, Pers, 31 Aug 62; Ltr, Lt Col A. W. Snell to Col R. S. Johnson, CO, MB, Port Lyautey, 28 Jun 62. See also Memo, Maj E. W. Snelling, MB, NAD, Charleston, S.C., for Maj Duncan, 27 Nov 62; and the following Ltrs: Col S. L. Stephan, CO, MB, Norfolk Nav Shipyard, to Dir, Pers, 7 Dec 62; K. A. Jorgensen, CO, MB, Nav Base, Charleston, S.C., to Duncan, 7 Dec 62; Col R. J. Picardi, CO, MB, Lake Mead Base, to Duncan, 30 Nov 62.]
The perennial problem of an all-black Steward's Branch persisted into the 1960's. Stewards served a necessary though unglamorous function in the Marine Corps, and education standards for such duty were (p. 469) considerably lower than those for the rest of the service. Everyone understood this, and beyond the stigma many young people felt was attached to such duties, many Negroes particularly resented the fact that while the branch was officially open to all, somehow none of the less gifted whites ever joined. Stewards were acquired either by recruiting new marines with stewards-duty-only contracts or by accepting volunteers from the general service. The evidence suggests that there was truth in the commonly held assumption among stewards that when a need for more stewards arose, "volunteers" were secured by tampering with the classification test scores of men in the general service.[18-26]
[Footnote 18-26: Shaw and Donnelly, Blacks in the Marine Corps, pp. 64-65.]
The commandant seemed less concerned with methods than results when stewards were needed. In June 1950 he had reaffirmed the policy of allowing stewards to reenlist for general duty, but when he learned that some stewards had made the jump to general duty without being qualified, he announced that men who had signed contracts for stewards duty only were not acceptable for general duty unless they scored at least in the 31st percentile of the qualifying tests. To make the change to general duty even less attractive, he ruled that if a steward reenlisted for general duty he would have to revert to the rank of private, first class.[18-27] Such measures did nothing to improve the morale of black stewards, many of whom, according to civil rights critics, felt confined forever to performing menial tasks, nor did it prevent constant shortages in the Steward's Branch and problems arising from the lack of men with training in modern mess management.
[Footnote 18-27: Speed Ltr, CMC to Distribution List, 22 Jun 50; Routing Sheet, Pers Dept, 21 Jun 50, sub: Enlistment of Stewards.]
The corps tried to attack these problems in the mid-1950's. At the behest of the Secretary of the Navy it eliminated the stewards-duty-only contract in 1954; henceforth all marines were enlisted for general duty, and only after recruit training could volunteers sign up for stewards duty. Acceptance of men scoring below ninety in the classification tests would be limited to 40 percent of those volunteering each month for stewards duty.[18-28] The corps also instituted special training in modern mess management for stewards. In 1953 the Quartermaster General had created an inspection and demonstration team composed of senior stewards to instruct members (p. 470) of the branch in the latest techniques of cooking and baking, supervision, and management.[18-29] In August 1954 the commandant established an advanced twelve-week course for stewards based on the Navy's successful system.
[Footnote 18-28: Ltrs, CMC to Distribution List, 16 Apr 55 and 18 Nov 55.]
[Footnote 18-29: Memo, Head, Enlisted Monitoring Unit, Detail Br, for Lt Col Gordon T. West, 29 Oct 54, Pers A. See also Shaw and Donnelly, Blacks in the Marine Corps, pp. 65-66.]
These measures, however, did nothing to cure the chronic shortage of men and the attendant problems of increased work load and low morale that continued to plague the Steward's Branch throughout the 1950's. Consequently, the corps still found it difficult to attract enough black volunteers to the branch. In 1959, for example, the branch was still 8 percent short of its 826-man goal.[18-30] The obvious solution, to use white volunteers for messman duty, would be a radical departure from tradition. True, before World War II white marines had been used in the Marine Corps for duties now performed by black stewards, but they had never been members of a branch organized exclusively for that purpose. In 1956 tradition was broken when white volunteers were quietly signed up for the branch. By March 1961 the branch had eighty white men, 10 percent of its total. Reviewing the situation later that year, the commandant decided to increase the number of white stewards by setting a racial quota on steward assignment. Henceforth, he ordered, half the volunteers accepted (p. 471) for stewards duty would be white.[18-31]
[Footnote 18-30: Memo, J. J. Holicky, Detail Br, for Dir of Pers, USMC, 3 Aug 59, sub: Inspection of Occupational Field 36 (Stewards), Pers 1, MC files.]
[Footnote 18-31: Memo, Asst Chief for Plans, BuPers (Rear Adm B. J. Semmes, Jr.), for Chief of NavPers, 22 Jun 61.]
The new policy made an immediate difference. In less than two months the Steward's Branch was 20 percent white. In marked contrast to the claims of Navy recruiters, the marines reported no difficulty in attracting white volunteers for messman duties. Curiously, the volunteers came mostly from the southeastern states. As the racial composition of the Steward's Branch changed, the morale of its black members seemed to improve. As one senior black warrant officer later explained, simply opening stewards duty to whites made such duty acceptable to many Negroes who had been prone to ask "if it [stewards duty] was so good, why don't you have some of the whites in it."[18-32] When transfer to general service assignments became easy to obtain in the 1960's, the Marine Corps found that only a small percentage of the black stewards now wished to make the change.
[Footnote 18-32: USMC Oral History Interview, CWO James E. Johnson, 27 Mar 73.]
There were still inequities in the status of black marines, especially the near absence of black officers (two on active duty in 1950, nineteen in January 1955) and the relatively slow rate of promotion among black marines in general. The corps had always justified its figures on the grounds that competition in so small a service was extremely fierce, and, as the commandant explained to Walter White in 1951, a man had to be good to compete and outstanding to be promoted. He cited the 1951 selection figures for officer training: out of 2,025 highly qualified men applying, only half were selected and only half of those were commissioned.[18-33] Promotion to senior billets for noncommissioned officers was also highly competitive, with time in service an important factor. It was unlikely in such circumstances that many black marines would be commissioned from the ranks or a higher percentage of black noncommissioned officers would be promoted to the most senior positions during the 1950's.[18-34] The Marine Corps had begun commissioning Negroes so recently that the development of a representative group of black officers in a system of open competition was of necessity a slow and arduous task. The task was further complicated because most of the nineteen black officers on (p. 472) active duty in 1955 were reservists serving out tours begun in the Korean War. Only a few of them had made the successful switch from reserve to regular service. The first two were 2d Lt. Frank E. Petersen, Jr., the first black Marine pilot, and 2d Lt. Kenneth H. Berthoud, Jr., who first served as a tank officer in the 3d Marine Division. Both men would advance to high rank in the corps, Petersen becoming the first black marine general.
[Footnote 18-33: Ltr, CMC to Walter White, 2 Jul 51, AO-1, MC files. See also Memo, Div of Plans and Policies (T. J. Colley) for Asst Dir of Public Info, 4 Jun 51, sub: Article in Pittsburgh Courier of 26 May 51.]
[Footnote 18-34: Memo, Exec Off, ACofS, G-1, for William L. Taylor, Asst Staff Dir, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 27 Feb 63, sub: Personnel Information Requested, AO-1C, MC files.]
As for the noncommissioned officers, there were a number of senior enlisted black marines in the 1950's, many of them holdovers from the World War II era, and Negroes were being promoted to the ranks of corporal and sergeant in appreciable numbers.
But the tenfold increase in the number of black marines during the Korean War caused the ratio of senior black noncommissioned officers to black marines to drop. Here again promotion to higher rank was slow. The first black marine to make the climb to the top in the integrated corps was Edgar R. Huff. A gunnery sergeant in an integrated infantry battalion in Korea, Huff later became battalion sergeant major in the 8th Marines and eventually senior sergeant major of the Marine Corps.[18-35]
[Footnote 18-35: Shaw and Donnelly, Blacks in the Marine Corps, pp. 62-63. 66.]
By 1962 there were 13,351 black enlisted men, 7.59 percent of the corps' strength, and 34 black officers (7 captains, 25 lieutenants, and 2 warrant officers) serving in integrated units in all military occupations. These statistics illustrate the racial progress that occurred in the Marine Corps during the 1950's, a change that was both orderly and permanent, and, despite the complicated forces at work, in essence a gift to the naval establishment from the Korean battlefield.
19. (p. 473)
A New Era Begins
On 30 October 1954 the Secretary of Defense announced that the last racially segregated unit in the armed forces of the United States had been abolished.[19-1] Considering the department's very conservative definition of a segregated unit--one at least 50 percent black--the announcement celebrated a momentous change in policy. In the little more than six years since President Truman's order, all black servicemen, some quarter of a million in 1954, had been intermingled with whites in the nation's military units throughout the world. For the services the turbulent era of integration had begun.
[Footnote 19-1: New York Times, October 31, 1954; ibid., Editorial, November 1, 1954.]
The new era's turbulence was caused in part by the decade-long debate that immediately ensued over the scope of President Truman's guarantee of equal treatment and opportunity for servicemen. On one side were ranged most service officials, who argued that integration, now a source of pride to the services and satisfaction to the civil rights movement, had ceased to be a public issue. Abolishing segregated units, they claimed, fulfilled the essential elements of the executive order, leaving the armed forces only rare vestiges of discrimination to correct. Others, at first principally the civil rights bloc in Congress and civil rights organizations, but later black servicemen themselves, contended that the Truman order committed the Department of Defense to far more than integration of military units. They believed that off-base discrimination, so much more apparent with the improvement of on-base conditions, seriously affected morale and efficiency. They wanted the department to challenge local laws and customs when they discriminated against black servicemen.
This interpretation made little headway in the Department of Defense during the first decade of integration. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations made commitments to the principle of equal treatment within the services, and both admitted the connection between military efficiency and discrimination, but both presumed, at least until 1963, severe limitations on their power to change local laws and customs. For their part, the services constantly referred to the same limitations, arguing that their writ in regard to racial reform ran only to the gates of the military reservation.
Yet while there was no substantive change in the services' view of their racial responsibilities, the Department of Defense was able to make significant racial reforms between 1954 and 1962. More than expressing the will of the Chief Executive, these changes reflected the fact that military society was influenced by some of the same forces that were operating on the larger American society. Possessed of a discipline that enabled it to reform rapidly, military society still shared the prejudices as well as the reform impulses of the (p. 474) body politic. Racial changes in the services during the first decade of integration were primarily parochial responses to special internal needs; nevertheless, they took place at a time when civil rights demands were stirring the whole country. Their effectiveness must be measured against the expectations such demands were kindling in the black community.
The Civil Rights Revolution
The post-World War II civil rights movement was unique in the nation's history. Contrasting this era of black awakening with the post-Civil War campaign for black civil rights, historian C. Vann Woodward found the twentieth century phenomenon "more profound and impressive ... deeper, surer, less contrived, more spontaneous."[19-2] Again in contrast to the original, the so-called second reconstruction period found black Americans uniting in a demand for social justice so long withheld. In 1953, the year before the Supreme Court decision to desegregate the schools, Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP gave voice to the revolutionary rise in black expectations:
Twenty years ago the Negro was satisfied if he could have even a half-decent school to go to (and took it for granted that it would be a segregated school) or if he could go to the hotel in town or the restaurant maybe once a year for some special interracial dinner and meeting. Twenty years ago much of the segregation pattern was taken for granted by the Negro. Now it is different.[19-3]
[Footnote 19-2: C. Vann Woodward, Strange Career of Jim Crow, p. 170. This account of the civil rights movement largely follows Woodward's famous study, but the following works have also been consulted: Benjamin Muse, Ten Years of Prelude: The Story of Integration Since the Supreme Court's 1954 Decision (New York: Viking Press, 1964); Constance M. Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); Anthony Lewis and the New York Times, Portrait of a Decade (New York: New York Times, 1964); Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom; Freedom to the Free: A Report to the President by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963); Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders; Interv, Nichols with Clarence Mitchell, 1953, in Nichols Collection, CMH.]
[Footnote 19-3: Interv, Nichols with Mitchell.]
The difference was understandable. The rapid urbanization of many black Americans, coupled with their experience in World War II, especially in the armed forces and in defense industries, had enhanced their economic and political power and raised their educational opportunities. And what was true for the war generation was even truer for its children. Possessed of a new self-respect, young Negroes began to demonstrate confidence in the future and a determination to reject the humiliation of second-class citizenship. Out of this attitude grew a widespread demand among the young for full equality, and when this demand met with opposition, massive participation in civil rights demonstrations became both practical and inevitable. Again historian Woodward's observations are pertinent:
More than a black revolt against whites, it was in part a generational rebellion, an uprising of youth against the older generation, against the parental "uncle Toms" and their inhibitions. It even took the N.A.A.C.P. and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) by surprise. Negroes were in charge of their (p. 475) own movement, and youth was in the vanguard.[19-4]
[Footnote 19-4: Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim Crow_, p. 170.]
To a remarkable extent, this youthful vanguard was strongly religious and nonviolent. The influence of the church on the militant phase of the civil rights movement is one of the movement's salient characteristics.
This black awakening paralleled a growing realization among an increasing number of white Americans that the demands of the civil rights leaders were just and that the government should act. World War II had made many thoughtful Americans aware of the contradiction inherent in fighting fascism with segregated troops. In the postwar years, the cold war rivalry for the friendship and allegiance of the world's colored peoples, who were creating a multitude of new states, added a pragmatic reason for ensuring equal treatment and opportunity for black Americans. A further inducement, and a particularly forceful one, was the size of the northern black vote, which had become the key to victory in several electorally important states and had made the civil rights cause a practical political necessity for both major parties.
The U.S. Supreme Court was the real pacesetter. Significantly broadening its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court reversed a century-old trend and called for federal intervention to protect the civil rights of the black minority in transportation, housing, voting, and the administration of justice. In the Morgan v. Virginia decision of 1946,[19-5] for example, the Court launched an attack on segregation in interstate travel. In another series of cases it proclaimed the right of Negroes to be tried only in those courts where Negroes could serve on juries and outlawed the all-white primary system, which in some one-party states had effectively barred Negroes from the elective process. The latter decision partly explains the rise in the number of qualified black voters in twelve southern states from 645,000 in 1947 to some 1.2 million by 1952. However, many difficulties remained in the way of full enfranchisement. The poll tax, literacy tests, and outright intimidation frustrated the registration of Negroes in many areas, and in some rural counties black voter registration actually declined in the early 1960's. But the Court's intervention was crucial because its decisions established the precedent for federal action that would culminate in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
[Footnote 19-5: 328 U.S. 373 (1946).]
These judicial initiatives whittled away at segregation's hold on (p. 476) the Constitution, but it was the Supreme Court's rulings in the field of public education that dealt segregation a mortal blow. Its unanimous decision in the case of Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, on 17 May 1954[19-6] not only undermined segregation in the nation's schools, but by an irresistible extension of the logic employed in the case also committed the nation at its highest levels to the principle of racial equality. The Court's conclusion that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" exposed segregation in all public areas to renewed judicial scrutiny. It was, as Professor Woodward described it, the most far-reaching Court decision in a century, and it marked the beginning of the end of Jim Crow's reign in America.[19-7]
[Footnote 19-6: 347 U.S. 483 (1954); see also 349 U.S. 294 (1955).]
[Footnote 19-7: Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim Crow_, p. 147.]
But it was only the beginning, for the Court's order that the transition to racially nondiscriminatory school systems be accomplished "with all deliberate speed"[19-8] encountered massive resistance in many places. Despite ceaseless litigation and further affirmations by the Court, and despite enforcement by federal troops in the celebrated cases of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oxford, Mississippi, and by federal marshals in New Orleans, Louisiana,[19-9] elimination of segregated public schools was painfully slow. As late as 1962, for example, only 7.6 percent of the more than three million Negroes of school age in the southern and border states attended integrated schools.
[Footnote 19-8: 349 U.S. 294 (1955).]
[Footnote 19-9: For an outline of the federal and National Guard intervention in these areas, see Robert W. Coakley, Paul J. Scheips, Vincent H. Demma, and M. Warner Stark, "Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances Since World War II" (1945 to 1965 with two supplements through 1967), Center of Military History Study 75.]
The executive branch also took up the cause of civil rights, albeit in a more limited way than the courts. The Eisenhower administration, for instance, continued President Truman's efforts to achieve equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. Just before the Brown decision the administration quickly desegregated most dependent schools on military bases. It also desegregated the school system of Washington, D.C., and, with a powerful push from the Supreme Court in the case of the District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co. in 1953,[19-10] abolished segregation in places of public accommodation in the nation's capital. Eisenhower also continued Truman's fight against discrimination in federal employment, including jobs covered by government contracts, by establishing watchdog committees on government employment policy and government contracts.
[Footnote 19-10: 346 U.S. 100 (1953).]
Independent federal agencies also began to attack racial discrimination. The Interstate Commerce Commission, with strong assistance from the courts, made a series of rulings that by 1961 had outlawed segregation in much interstate travel. The Federal Housing Authority, following the Supreme Court's abrogation of the state's power to enforce restrictive covenants in the sale of housing, began in the early 1950's to push toward a federal open-occupancy policy in public housing and all housing with federally guaranteed loans. (p. 477) The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an investigatory agency appointed by the President under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, examined complaints of voting discrimination and denials of equal protection under the law. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy dispatched federal officials to investigate and prosecute violations of voting rights in several states.
But civil rights progress was still painfully slow in the 1950's. The fight for civil rights in that decade graphically demonstrated a political fact of life: any profound change in the nation's social system requires the concerted efforts of all three branches of the national government. In this case the Supreme Court had done its part, repeatedly attacking segregation in many spheres of national life. The executive branch, on the other hand, did not press the Court's decisions as thoroughly as some had hoped, although Eisenhower certainly did so forcibly and spectacularly with federal troops at Little Rock in 1957. The dispatch of paratroopers to Little Rock,[19-11] a memorable example of federal intervention and one popularly associated with civil rights, had, in fact, little to do with civil rights, but was rather a vivid example of the exercise of executive powers in the face of a threat to federal judicial authority. Where the Brown decision was concerned, Eisenhower's view of judicial powers was narrow and his leadership antithetical to the Court's call for "all deliberate speed." He even withheld his support in school desegregation cases. Eisenhower was quite frank about the limitations he perceived in his power and, by inference, his duty to effect civil rights reforms. Such reforms, he believed, were a matter of the heart and, as he explained to Congressman Powell in 1953, could not be achieved by means of laws or directives or the action of any one person, "no matter with how much authority and forthrightness he acts."[19-12]
[Footnote 19-11: For an authoritative account of Little Rock, see Robert W. Coakley's "Operation Arkansas," Center of Military History Study 158M, 1967. See also Paul J. Scheips, "Enforcement of the Federal Judicial Process by Federal Marshals," in Bayonets in the Streets; The Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances, ed. Robin Higham (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1969), pp. 39-42.]
[Footnote 19-12: Ltr, Eisenhower to Powell, 6 Jun 53, G 124-A-1, Eisenhower Library. For a later and more comprehensive expression of these sentiments, see "Extemporaneous Remarks by the President at the National Conference on Civil Rights, 9 June 1959," _Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1959_, pp. 447-50.]
Despite the President's reluctance to lead in civil rights matters, major blame for the lack of substantial progress must be assigned to the third branch of government. The 1957 and 1960 civil rights laws, pallid harbingers of later powerful legislation in this field, demonstrated Congress's lukewarm commitment to civil rights reform that severely limited federal action. The reluctance of Congress to enact the reforms augured in the Brown decision convinced many Negroes that they would have to take further measures to gain their full constitutional rights. They had seen presidents and federal judges embrace principles long argued by civil rights organizations, but to little avail. Seven years after the Brown decision, Negroes were still disfranchised in large areas of the south, still (p. 478) endured segregated public transportation and places of public accommodation, and still encountered discrimination in employment and housing throughout the nation. Nor had favorable court decisions and federal attempts at enforcement reversed the ominous trend in black unemployment rates, which had been rising for a decade. Above all, court decisions could not spare Negroes the sense of humiliation that segregation produced. Segregation implied racial inferiority, a "constant corroding experience," as Clarence Mitchell once called it. It was segregation's seeming imperviousness to governmental action in the 1950's that caused the new generation of civil rights leaders to develop new civil rights techniques.
Their new methods forced the older leaders, temporarily at least, into eclipse. No longer could they convince their juniors of the efficacy of legal action, and the 1950's ended with the younger generation taking to the streets in the first spontaneous battles of their civil rights revolution. Under the direction of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and its charismatic founder, Martin Luther King, Jr., the strategy of massive civil disobedience, broached in 1948 by A. Philip Randolph, became a reality. Other organizations quickly joined the battle, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also organized by Dr. King but soon destined to break away into more radical paths, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an older organization, now expanded and under its new director, James Farmer, rededicated to activism.
Rosa Parks's refusal to move to the rear of the Montgomery bus in 1955 and the ensuing successful black boycott that ended the city's segregated transportation pointed the way to a wave of nonviolent direct action that swept the country in the 1960's. Thousands of young Americans, most notably in the student-led sit-ins enveloping the south in 1960[19-13] and the scores of freedom riders bringing chaos to the transportation system in 1961, carried the civil rights struggle into all corners of the south. "We will wear you down by our capacity to suffer," Dr. King warned the nation's majority, and suffer Negroes did in the brutal resistance that met their demands. But it was not in vain, for police brutality, mob violence, and assassinations set off hundreds of demonstrations throughout the country and made civil rights a national political issue.
[Footnote 19-13: For an account of the first major sit-in demonstrations, which occurred at Greensboro, North Carolina, and their influence on civil rights organizations, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, see Miles Wolff, Lunch at the Five and Ten; The Greensboro Sit-in (New York: Stein and Day, 1970). See also Clark, "The Civil Rights Movement," pp. 255-60.]
The stage was set for a climatic scene, and onto that stage walked the familiar figure of A. Philip Randolph, calling for a massive march on Washington to demand a redress of black grievances. This time, unlike the response to his 1940 appeal, the answer was a promise of support from both races. The churches joined in, many labor leaders, including Walter Reuther, enlisted in the demonstration, and even the President, at first opposed, gave his blessing to the national event. A quarter of a million people, about 20 percent of them white, marched to Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963 to hear King appeal to the (p. 479) the nation's conscience by reciting his dream of a just society. In the words of the Kerner Commission:
It [the march] was more than a summation of the past years of struggle and aspiration. It symbolized certain new directions: a deeper concern for the economic problems of the masses, more involvement of white moderates and new demands from the most militant, who implied that only a revolutionary change in American institutions would permit Negroes to achieve the dignity of citizens.[19-14]
[Footnote 19-14: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, p. 109.]
Limitations on Executive Order 9981
The decade of national civil rights activity that culminated symbolically at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was closely mirrored in the Department of Defense, where the services' definition of equal treatment and opportunity underwent a marked evolution. Here, a decade that had begun with the department's placing severe limitations on its defense of black servicemen's civil rights ended with the department's joining the vanguard of the civil rights movement.
In the early 1950's the services were constantly referring to the limitations of Executive Order 9981. The Air Force could not intervene in local custom, Assistant Secretary Zuckert told Clarence Mitchell in 1951. Social change in local communities must be evolutionary, he continued, either ignoring or contrasting the Air Force's own social experience.[19-15] Defending the practice of maintaining large training camps in localities discriminating against black soldiers, the Army Chief of Staff explained to Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan that while its facilities were open to all soldiers regardless of race, the Army had no control over nearby civilian communities. There was little its commanders could do beyond urging local civic organizations to cooperate.[19-16] The Deputy Chief of Naval Personnel was even more blunt. "The housing situation at Key West is not within the control of the Navy," he told the Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1953. Housing was segregated, he admitted, but it was the Federal Housing Authority, not the Navy, that controlled the location of off-base housing for black sailors.[19-17]
[Footnote 19-15: Memo, Lt Col Leon Bell, Asst Exec, Off, Asst SecAF, for Col Barnes, Office, SecAF, 9 Jan 51, SecAF files.]
[Footnote 19-16: Ltr, CofSA to Ferguson, 7 May 51; see also Ltr, Under SA Earl D. Johnson to Sen. Robert Taft, 19 Jul 51; both in CS 291.2 (27 Apr 51).]
[Footnote 19-17: Memo, Dep Chief, NavPers for ASD (M&P), 19 Feb 53, sub: Alleged Race Segregation at U.S. Naval Base, Key West, Florida, P 8 (4)/NB Key West, GenRecs Nav.]
These excuses for not dealing with off-base discrimination continued throughout the decade. As late as 1959, discussing a case of racial discrimination near an Army base in Germany, a Defense Department spokesman explained to Congressman James Roosevelt that "since the incident did not take place on one of our military bases, we are not in a position to offer direct relief in the situation...."[19-18] Even James Evans, the racial counselor, came to use this explanation. "Community mores with respect to race vary," Evans wrote in 1956, and "such matters are largely beyond direct purview of the Department (p. 480) of Defense."[19-19]
[Footnote 19-18: Ltr, ASD (MP&R) Charles C. Finucane to James Roosevelt, 3 Jun 59, ASD (MP&R) files.]
[Footnote 19-19: Evans and Lane, "Integration in the Armed Services," p. 83.]
Understandably, in view of the difficulties they perceived, the services tried to avoid the whole problem. In 1954, for example, a group of forty-eight black soldiers traveling on a bus in Columbia, South Carolina, were arrested and fined when they protested the attempted arrest of one of them for failing to comply with the state's segregated seating law. In the ensuing furor, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson explained to President Eisenhower that soldiers were subject to community law and his department contemplated no investigation or disciplinary action in the case. In view of the civil rights issues involved, Wilson continued,[19-20] the Judge Advocate General of the Army discussed the matter with the Justice Department and referred related correspondence to that department "for whatever disposition it considered appropriate." "This reply," an assistant noted on Wilson's file copy of the memo for the President, "gets them off our neck, but I don't know about Brownell's [the Attorney General]."[19-21]
[Footnote 19-20: Wilson, former president of General Motors Corporation, became President Eisenhower's first Secretary of Defense on 28 January 1953.]
[Footnote 19-21: Memo, CofS, G-1, for ASA, 6 Jan 54, sub: Mass Jailing and Fining of Negro Soldiers in Columbia, S.C.; Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), same date and sub; Memo, SecDef for President, 7 Jan 54. All in G-1 291.2 (10 Dec 53).]
But the services never did get "them" off their neck, and to a large extent defense officials could only blame themselves for their troubles. Their attitude toward extending their standards of equal treatment and opportunity to local communities implied a benign neutrality on their part in racial disputes involving servicemen. This attitude was belied by the fact that on numerous and sometimes celebrated occasions the services helped reinforce local segregation laws. In 1956, for example, Secretary of the Air Force Harold E. Talbott explained that military commanders were expected to foster good relations with local authorities and in many areas were obliged to "require" servicemen to conform to the dictates of local law "regardless of their own convictions or personal beliefs."[19-22]
[Footnote 19-22: SecAF statement, 1 May 56, quoted in Address by James P. Goode, Employment Policy Officer for the Air Force, at a meeting called by the President's Committee on Government Employment Policy, 24 May 56, AF File 202-56, Fair Employment Program.]
This requirement could be rather brutal in practice and placed the services, the nation's leading equal opportunity employer, in questionable company. In 1953 a black pilot stationed at Craig Air Force Base, Alabama, refused to move to the rear of a public bus until the military police ordered him to comply with the state law. The Air Force officially reprimanded and eventually discharged the pilot. The position of the Air Force was made clear in the reprimand:
Your actions in this instance are prejudicial to good order and military discipline and do not conform to the standards of conduct expected of a commissioned officer of the United States Air Force. As a member of the Armed Forces, you are obliged to abide by all municipal and state laws, regardless of your personal feelings or Armed Forces policy relative to the issue at hand. Your open violation of the segregation policy established by this Railroad Company and the State of Alabama is (p. 481) indicative of extremely poor judgment on your part and reflects unfavorably on your qualifications as a commissioned officer.[19-23]
[Footnote 19-23: Memo, CG, 3380th Tactical Training Wing, Keesler AFB, Miss., for (name withheld), Jul 53, sub: Administrative Reprimand; NAACP News Release, 23 Nov 53; copies of both in SecAF files.]
As the young pilot's commanding officer put it, the lieutenant had refused to accept the fact that military personnel must use tact and diplomacy to avoid discrediting the United States Air Force.[19-24]
[Footnote 19-24: Memo, Cmdr, 3615th Pilot Tng Wing, Craig AFB, Ala., for Cmdr, Flying Dir, Air Tng Cmd, Waco, Tex., 4 Aug 53, sub: Disciplinary Punishment, copy in SecAF files.]
Tact and diplomacy were also the keynote when the services helped enforce the local segregation practices of the nation's allies. This became increasingly true even in Europe in the 1950's, although never with as much publicity as the events connected with the carrier Midway's visit to Capetown, South Africa, in 1955. Its captain, on the advice of the U.S. consul, agreed to conform with a local law that segregated sailors when they were ashore. This agreement became public knowledge while the ship was en route, but despite a rash of protests and congressional demands that the visit be canceled, the Midway arrived at Capetown. Later a White House spokesman tried to put a good face on the incident:
We believe that a far greater blow was struck for the cause of equal justice when 23,000 South Africans came aboard the Midway on a non-segregated basis--when the whole community saw American democracy in action--than could have been made if we had decided to by-pass Capetown. Certainly no friends for our cause would have been gained in that way![19-25]
[Footnote 19-25: Ltr, Maxwell M. Rabb, President's Assistant for Minority Affairs, to Dr. W. Montague Cobb, as reproduced in Cobb, "The Strait Gate," Journal of the National Medical Association 47 (September 1955):349.]
The black serviceman lacked the civilian's option to escape community discrimination. For example, one black soldier requested transfer because of discrimination he was forced to endure in the vicinity of Camp Hanford, Washington. His request was denied, and in commenting on the case the Army's G-1 gave a typical service excuse when he said that the Army could not practically arrange for the mass reassignment of black soldiers or the restriction of their assignments to certain geographical areas to avoid discrimination.[19-26] The Air Force added a further twist. Replying to a similar request, a spokesman wrote that limiting the number of bases to which black airmen could be assigned would be "contrary to the policy of equality of treatment."[19-27] There was, however, one exception to the refusal to alter assignments for racial reasons. Both the Air Force and the Army had an established and frequently reiterated policy of not assigning troops involved (p. 482) in interracial marriages to states where such unions were illegal.[19-28]
[Footnote 19-26: Memo, ACofS, G-1, for TIG, 30 Nov 53, sub: Complaint of Cpl Israel Joshua, G-1 291.2 (3 Nov 53). For an earlier expression of the same sentiments, see ACofS, G-1, Summary Sheet for CofS, 27 Nov 50, sub: Request for Policy Determination, G-1 291.2 (9 Nov 50). Camp Hanford was originally the Hanford Engineer Works, which played a part in the MANHATTAN project that produced the atom bomb.]
[Footnote 19-27: Memo, Maj Gen Joe Kelly, Dir, Legis Liaison, USAF, for Lt Col William G. Draper, AF Aide to President, 1 Sep 54, with attachments, sub: Segregation in Gulfport, Mississippi; Memo, Col Draper for Maxwell Rabb, 6 Oct 54; both in GF 124-A-1, Eisenhower Library.]
[Footnote 19-28: Career Management Div, TAGO, "Policy Paper," Jul 54, AGAM 291.2 For other pronouncements of this policy, see ibid.; DF, ACS/G-1 to TAG, 4 Jan 54, sub: Assignment of Personnel; and in G-1 291.2 the following: Memo, Chief, Classification and Standards Br, G-1, for Planning Office, G-1, 28 Feb 50, sub: Assignment of Personnel; DF, G-1 to TAG, 8 Mar 50, same sub.]
At times the services' respect for local laws and ordinances forced them to retain some aspects of the segregation policies so recently abolished. Answering a complaint made by Congressman Powell in 1956, for example, The Adjutant General of the Army explained that off-duty entertainment did not fall within the scope of the Truman order. Since most dances were sponsored by outside groups, they had to take place "under conditions cited by them." To insist on integration in this instance, The Adjutant General argued, would mean cancellation of these dances to the detriment of the soldiers' morale. For that reason, segregated dances would continue on post.[19-29]
[Footnote 19-29: Ltr, TAG to Powell, 9 Aug 56, GF 124-A-1, Eisenhower Library.]
This response illustrates the services' approach to equal opportunity and treatment during the Eisenhower administration. The President showed a strong reluctance to interfere with local laws and customs, a reluctance that seemed to flow out of a pronounced constitutional scruple against federal intervention in defiance of local racial laws. The practical consequence of this scruple was readily apparent in the armed forces throughout his administration. In 1955, for example, a black veteran called the President's attention to the plight of black soldiers, part of an integrated group, who were denied service in an Alabama airport and left unfed throughout their long journey. Answering for the President, Maxwell M. Rabb, Secretary to the Cabinet, reaffirmed Eisenhower's dedication to equal opportunity but added that it was not in the scope of the President's authority "to intervene in matters which are of local or state-wide concern and within the jurisdiction of local legislation and determination."[19-30] Again to a black soldier complaining of being denied service near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a White House assistant, himself a Negro, replied that "outside of an Army post, there is little that the Federal Government can do, except to appeal to the decency of the citizens to treat men in uniform with courtesy and respect." He then suggested a course of action for black soldiers:
The President's heart bleeds when any Americans are victims of injustice, and he is doing everything he possibly can to rectify this situation in our country.
You can hold up his hand by carrying on, despite the unpleasant things that are happening to you at this moment, realizing that, on this end, we will work all the harder to make your sacrifices worthwhile.[19-31]
[Footnote 19-30: Ltrs, C. B. Nichols to President, 28 Mar 55, and Rabb to Nichols, 20 Apr 55; both in G-124-1, Eisenhower Library.]
[Footnote 19-31: Ltr, E. Frederic Morrow to Pfc John Washington, 9 Apr 57, in reply to Ltr, Washington to President, 5 Mar 57; both in G-124-A-1, Eisenhower Library.]
But as the record suggests, this promise to rectify the situation was never meant to extend beyond the gates of the military reservation. Thus, the countless incidents of blatant discrimination encountered by black GI's would continue largely unchallenged into the 1960's, masking the progress made by the Eisenhower administration in ordering the sometimes reluctant services to adopt reforms. This presidential (p. 483) resolution was particularly obvious in the integration of civilian facilities at Navy shipyards and installations and in schools for dependent children on military posts.
Integration of Navy Shipyards
The Navy employed many thousands of civilians, including a large number of Negroes, at some forty-three installations from Virginia to Texas. At the Norfolk shipyard, for example, approximately 35 percent of the 15,000 employees were black. To the extent dictated by local laws and customs, black employees were segregated and otherwise discriminated against. The degree of segregation depended upon location, and, according to a 1953 newspaper survey, ranged "from minor in most instances to substantial in a few cases."[19-32]
[Footnote 19-32: UPI News Release, 20 Aug 53, copy in CMH files.]
In January 1952 the Chief of the Office of Industrial Relations, Rear Adm. W. McL. Hague, all but absolved Navy installations from the provisions of Executive Order 9980.[19-33] He announced that segregation would continue if "the station is subject to local laws of the community in which located, and the laws of the community require segregated facilities," or if segregation were "the norm of the community and conversion to common facilities would, in the judgment of the commanding officer, result in definite impediment to productive effort." Known officially as "OIR Notice CP75," Hague's statement left little doubt that segregation would remain the norm in most instances. It specified that a change to integrated facilities would be allowed only after the commander had decided that it could be accomplished without "inordinate interference with the Station's ability to carry out its mission." If other facilities stood nearby, the change would be allowed only after he had coordinated with the naval district commander.[19-34] Shortly thereafter the Acting Secretary of the Navy expressed his agreement with Hague's statement,[19-35] thus elevating it to an official expression of Navy policy.
[Footnote 19-33: Executive Order 9980, announcing regulations governing fair employment practices within the federal government, was signed by President Truman on 26 July 1948, the same day and as a companion to his order on equal treatment and opportunity in the services.]
[Footnote 19-34: OIR Notice CP75, Chief, Office of Industrial Relations, to Chiefs, Bureaus, et al., 23 Jan 52, sub: Segregation of Facilities for Civil Service Employees; Navy Department Policy.]
[Footnote 19-35: Ltr, Actg SecNav Francis Whitehair to Jerry O. Gilliam, Norfolk Branch, NAACP, 19 Mar 52, P 8(4), SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]
Official protestations to the contrary, the Navy was again segregating people by race. Evans, in the Department of Defense, charged that this was in fact the "insidious intent" of Hague's notice. He pointed out to Assistant Secretary of Defense Rosenberg that signs and notices of segregation were reappearing over drinking fountains and toilets at naval installations which had abandoned such practices, that men in uniform were now subjected to segregation at such facilities, and that the local press was making the unrefuted claim that local law was (p. 484) being reestablished on federal properties.[19-36] Somewhat late to the battle, Dennis D. Nelson seemingly a permanent fixture in the Pentagon, spoke out against his department's policy, but from a different angle. He warned the Secretary of the Navy through his aide that Notice 75 was embarrassing not only for the Navy but for the White House as well.[19-37]
[Footnote 19-36: Draft Memo, Evans for Rosenberg, SecDef 291.2. Evans delivered the draft memo to Mrs. Rosenberg and discussed the situation with her at length "in the spring of 1952." See Interv, author with Evans, 28 Mar 72, CMH files. On Mrs Rosenberg's request for a survey of the situation, see Memo, ASD (M&P) for Under SecNav, 23 Dec 52. See also Memo, CO, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, for Chief, NavPers, 23 Apr 52, P 8(4), BuPersRecs.]
[Footnote 19-37: Memo, Nelson for Aide to Asst SecNav, 20 May 53, P 8(4), GenRecsNav.]
Nelson was right of course. The notice quickly won the attention of civil rights leaders. Walter White condemned the policy, but his protest, along with the sharp complaints of the NAACP's Clarence Mitchell and Jerry Gilliam and the arguments of the Urban League's Lester Granger, failed to move Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball.[19-38] The secretary insisted that integrating these installations might jeopardize the fulfillment of the Navy's mission, dependent as it was on the "efficiency and whole-hearted cooperation" of the employees. "In a very realistic way," he told Walter White, the Navy must recognize and conform to local labor customs and usages.[19-39] Answering Rosenberg's inquiry on the subject, the Navy gave its formula for change:
This Department cannot take the initiative in correcting this social ill but must content itself with being alert to take advantage of the gradual dissolution of these racial prejudices which can be effectively brought about only by a process of social education and understanding. This Department is ever ready to dissolve segregation practices of long standing as soon as that can be done without decreasing the effectiveness of our activities.[19-40]
[Footnote 19-38: Kimball succeeded Sullivan as Secretary of the Navy on 31 July 1951.]
[Footnote 19-39: Ltrs, White to SecNav, 26 May 52; Mitchell to same, 8 Feb 52; Jerry Gilliam to same, 10 Feb 52; Granger to same, 22 May and 27 Jun 52; SecNav to Granger, 16 Jun 52; same to White, 20 Jun 52; Chief, OIR, to Mitchell, 4 Feb 52; Under SecNav to Mitchell, 5 Mar 52. All in P 8(4), GenRecsNav.]
[Footnote 19-40: Memo, Actg SecNav for ASD (M&P), 22 Jan 53; Memo, ASD (M&P) for Under SecNav, 23 Dec 52; both in P 8(4), GenRecsNav.]
President Eisenhower's newly appointed Secretary of the Navy, Robert B. Anderson, endorsed Notice 75 along the same lines, informing Mitchell that the Navy would "measure the pace of non-segregation by the limits of what is practical and reasonable in each area."[19-41]
[Footnote 19-41: Ltr, SecNav to Mitchell (ca., Apr 53), OIR 161, GenRecsNav.]
But what seemed practical and reasonable in the Navy was not (p. 485) necessarily so in the White House, where the President had publicly pledged his administration to the abolition of segregation in the federal government. Should Eisenhower falter, there was always his 1952 campaign ally, Congressman Powell, to remind him of his "forthright stand on segregation when federal funds are expended."[19-42] In colorful prose that pulled no punches, Powell reminded the President of his many black supporters and pressed him on the Navy's continuing segregation. Although he denied Powell's charge of obstructionist tactics in the executive branch, the President had in fact been told by Maxwell Rabb, now serving as his minority affairs assistant, that "some government agencies were neglecting their duty."[19-43] The President responded to this news promptly enough by ordering Rabb to supervise the executive agencies in their application of the presidential racial policy. Rabb thereafter discussed the Navy's policy with Secretary Anderson and his assistants on 11 June 1953.
[Footnote 19-42: Ltr, Powell to Eisenhower, 17 Apr 53, copy in SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]
[Footnote 19-43: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change 1953-1956 (New York: New American Library, 1963), p. 293.]
With his policy openly contradicting the President's, Anderson was in an awkward position. He had been unaware of the implications of the problem, he later explained, and had accepted his predecessor's judgment. His mistake, he pled, was one of timing not intent.[19-44] Yet Anderson had conducted a wide correspondence on the subject, discussed the matter with Lester Granger, and as late as 28 May was still defending Notice 75, telling Special White House Assistant Wilton B. Persons that it represented a practical answer to a problem that could not be corrected by edict. Nor could he introduce any changes, he maintained, adopting his predecessor's argument that the Navy should "be alert to take advantage of its [segregation's] gradual dissolution through the process of social education and understanding."[19-45]
[Footnote 19-44: Interv, Nichols with Anderson, 18 Sep 53, and Nichols UPI Release, 21 Sep 53; both in Nichols Collection, CMH.]
[Footnote 19-45: Ltrs, SecNav to W. Persons, 28 May 53; SecNav to Granger, 28 May and 29 Jul 53; Granger to Anderson, 24 Apr and 2 Jul 53. See also Memo, Chief, NavPers for SecNav, 11 May 53. All in SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]
But neither the civil rights leaders nor the White House could be put off with gradualism. Anderson's stand was roundly criticized. In an address to the NAACP annual convention, Walter White plainly referred to the secretary's position as a "defiance of President Eisenhower's order."[19-46] If such barbed criticism left the secretary unmoved, Rabb carried a stronger weapon, and in their 11 June meeting the two men discussed the President's order to integrate federally owned or controlled properties, the possibility of a Supreme Court decision on the same subject, and, more to the point, Powell's public statements concerning segregation at the Norfolk and Charleston naval shipyards.[19-47]
[Footnote 19-46: White, Address Delivered at 44th NAACP Annual Convention, 28 Jun 53, copy in CMH.]
[Footnote 19-47: Memo, Under SecNav for President, 23 Jun 53, sub: Segregation in Naval Activities, attached to Ltr, Under SecNav to Sherman Adams, 24 Jun 53, P 8(4), GenRecsNav.]
Anderson then proceeded to reverse his position. He began by (p. 486) ordering a survey of a group of southern installations to estimate the effect of integration on their civilian programs. He learned segregation could be virtually eliminated at these shipyards and stations within six months, although Under Secretary Charles S. Thomas, who prepared the report, agreed with the local commanders that an integration directive would be certain to cause trouble. But the formula chosen by the commanders for eliminating segregation, in which Thomas concurred, might well have given Anderson pause. They wanted to remove racial signs from drinking fountains and toilets, certain that the races would continue using separate facilities, and leave the problem of segregated cafeterias till later. It was the unanimous opinion of those involved, Thomas reported, that the situation should not be forced by "agitators," a category in which they all placed Powell.
On 20 August Anderson directed commanders of segregated facilities to proceed steadily toward complete elimination of racial barriers. Furthermore, each commander was to submit a progress report on 1 November and at sixty-day intervals thereafter.[19-48] Although the secretary was concerned with the possible reaction of the civil rights groups were integration not achieved in the first sixty days, he was determined to give local commanders some leeway in carrying out his order.[19-49] But he made it clear to the press that he did not intend "to put up with inaction."
[Footnote 19-48: ALL NAV, 20 Aug 53; Ltr, Chief, Industrial Relations, to Commandant, 6th Naval District, 21 Aug 53, OIR 200, GenRecsNav. For an example of how the new policy was transmitted to the field, see COMFIVE Instruction 5800, 15 Sep 53, A. (2), GenRecsNav.]
[Footnote 19-49: Interv, Nichols with Anderson; Nichols News Release, 23 Sep 53, in Nichols Collection, CMH.]
He need not have worried. Evans reported on 29 October that integration of the Charleston shipyard was almost complete and had occurred so far without incident. In fact, he told Assistant Secretary of Defense John A. Hannah, the reaction of the local press and community had been "surprisingly tolerant and occasionally favorable."[19-50] Evans, however, apparently overlooked an attempt by some white employees to discourage the use of integrated facilities. Although there was no disorder, the agitators were partly successful; the Chief of Industrial Relations reported that white usage had (p. 487) dropped severely.[19-51] Nevertheless by 14 January 1954 this same officer could tell Secretary Anderson that all racial barriers for civilian employees had been eliminated without incident.[19-52]
[Footnote 19-50: Evans, Weekly Thursday Report to ASD (M&P), 29 Oct 53, SD 291.2. Begun by Evans as a means of informing Rosenberg of activities in his office, the Weekly Thursday Report was adopted by the assistant secretary for use in all parts of the manpower office.]
[Footnote 19-51: Memo, Chief, Industrial Relations, for SecNav, 5 Nov 53, sub: Segregation of Facilities for Civil Service Employees; see also Ltr, SecNav to President, 9 Nov 53; both in P 8(4), GenRecsNav.]
[Footnote 19-52: Memo, Chief, Industrial Relations, for SecNav, 5 Nov 53, sub: Segregation of Facilities for Civil Service Employees, P 8(4), GenRecsNav.]
Dependent Children and Integrated Schools
The Department of Defense's effort to integrate schools attended by servicemen's children proved infinitely more complex than integrating naval shipyards. In a period when national attention was focused on the constitutional implications of segregated education, the Eisenhower administration was thrust into a dispute over the intent of federal aid to education and eventually into a reappraisal of the federal role in public education. Confusing to the Department of Defense, the President's personal attitude remained somewhat ambiguous throughout the controversy. He had publicly committed himself to ending segregation in federally financed institutions, yet he had declared scruples against federal interference with state laws and customs that would prevent him from acting to keep such a pledge when all its ramifications were revealed.
In fact not one but four separate categories of educational institutions came under scrutiny. Only the first category, schools run by the U.S. Office of Education for the Department of Defense overseas and on military reservations in the United States, operated exclusively with federal funds. The next two categories, schools operated by local school districts on military reservations and schools on federal land usually adjacent to a military reservation, were supported by local and state funds with federal subsidies. The fourth and by far the largest group contained the many community schools attended by significant numbers of military dependents. These schools received considerable federal support through the impact aid program.
The federal support program for schools in "federally impacted" areas added yet another dimension to the administration's reappraisal. The impact aid legislation (Public Laws 815 and 874),[19-53] like similar programs during World War II, was based on the premise that a school district derived no tax from land occupied by a federal installation but usually incurred an increase in school enrollment. In many cases the enrollment of military dependents was far greater than that of the communities in the school district. Actually, these programs were not limited to the incursion of military families; the most extreme federal impact in terms of enrollment percentages was found in remote mountain districts where in some cases almost all students were children of U.S. Forest Service or National Park Service employees.
[Footnote 19-53: PL 815, 23 Sep 50, 64 U.S. 967; PL 874, 30 Sep 50, 64 U.S. 1100.]
In recognition of these inequities in the tax system, Congress gave such school systems special "in-lieu of tax" support. Public Law 815 provided for capital projects, land, buildings, and major equipment; Public Law 874 gave operating support in the form of salaries, (p. 488) supplies, and the like. If, for example, a school district could prove at least 3 percent of its enrollment federally connected, it was eligible to receive from the U.S. Office of Education a grant equal to the district's cost of instruction for federally connected students. If it could show federally connected enrollment necessitated additional classrooms, the school district was eligible for federally financed buildings. Such schools were usually concentrated in military housing areas, but examples existed of federally financed schools, like federal dependents, scattered throughout the school district. Students from the community at large attended the federally constructed schools and the school district continued to receive state support for all students. Although Public Law 874 was far more important in terms of general application and fiscal impact, its companion piece, Public Law 815, was more important to integration because it involved the construction of schools. From the beginning Congress sought to prevent these laws from becoming a means by which federal authorities exercised control over the operation of school districts. It stipulated that "no department, officer or employee of the United States shall exercise any direction, supervision or control over the personnel, curriculum or program of instruction" of any local school or school system.[19-54] The firmness of this admonition, an indication of congressional opinion on this important issue, later played a decisive part in the integration story.
[Footnote 19-54: Sec. 7a, PL 874, 64 U.S. 1100.]
Attacks on segregation in schools attended by military dependents did not begin until the early fifties when the Army, in answer to complaints concerning segregated schools in Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia, began using a stock answer to the effect that the schools were operated by state agencies as part of the state school system subject to state law.[19-55] Trying to justify the situation to Clarence Mitchell, Assistant Secretary of the Army Fred Korth cited Public Law 874, whose intent, he claimed, was that educating children residing on federal property was the responsibility of "the local educational agency."[19-56]
[Footnote 19-55: DA Office of Legislative Liaison Summary Sheet for ASA, 27 Sep 51, sub: Alleged Segregation Practiced at Fort Bliss, Texas, CS 291.2 Negroes (17 Sep 51); Ltr, CG, The Artillery School, to Parents of School Age Children, 2 Sep 52, sub: School Information, AG 352.9 AKPSIGP. For examples of complaints on segregated schools, see Ltrs, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey to ASD (M&P), 16 Jun 52, and Dir, Washington Bureau, NAACP, to SecDef, 2 Oct 52; both in OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-56: Draft Ltr, ASA (M&P) to Mitchell. Although he never dispatched it, Korth used this letter as a basis for a discussion of the matter with Mitchell in an October 1952 meeting.]
Senator Humphrey, for one, was not to be put off by such an interpretation. He reminded Assistant Secretary Rosenberg that President Truman had vetoed an education bill in 1951 because of provisions requiring segregation in schools on federal property. As a member of the subcommittee that guided Public Law 874 through Congress, Humphrey could assure Rosenberg that at no time did Congress include language requiring segregation in post schools. Thanks to the Army's interpretation, he observed, local community segregation practices were being extended for the first time to federal property under the guise of compliance with federal law. He predicted further incursions by the segregationists if this move was left unchallenged.[19-57]
[Footnote 19-57: Ltr, Humphrey to ASD (M&P), 16 Oct 52, OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
After conferring with both Humphrey and Mitchell, Rosenberg took (p. 489) the matter of segregated schools on military posts to the U.S. Commissioner of Education, Earl J. McGrath. With Secretary of Defense Lovett's approval she put the department on record as opposed to segregated schools on posts because they were "violative not only of the policy of the Department" but also of "the policy set forth by the President."[19-58] Evidently McGrath saw Public Law 874 in the same light, for on 15 January 1953 he informed Rosenberg that if the Department of Defense outlawed segregated dependent schooling and local educational agencies were unable to comply, his office would have to make "other arrangements" for the children.[19-59]
[Footnote 19-58: Ltr, ASD (M&P) to U.S. Commissioner of Educ, 10 Jan 53, SecDef 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-59: Ltr, U.S. Commissioner of Educ to ASD (M&P), 15 Jan 53; Ltr, ASD (M&P) to Humphrey, 10 Jan 53; both in OASD 291.2.]
Commissioner McGrath proposed that his office discuss the integration question further with Defense Department representatives but the change in administrations interrupted these negotiations and Rosenberg's successor, John A. Hannah, made it clear that there would be no speedy change in the racial composition of post schools. Commenting at Hannah's request on the points raised by McGrath, the Army's principal personnel officer concluded that integration should be considered a departmental goal, but one that should be approached by steps "consistent with favorable local conditions as determined by the installation commander concerned." In his opinion, committing the department to integration of all on-post schools, as the Assistant Secretary of Defense had proposed earlier, would create teacher procurement problems and additional financial burdens.[19-60] This cautious endorsement of integrated schools was further qualified by the Secretary of the Army. It was a "desirable goal," he told Hannah, but "positive steps to eliminate segregation ... should be preceded by a careful analysis of the impact on each installation concerned."[19-61] Hannah then broke off negotiations with the Office of Education.
[Footnote 19-60: G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 13 Feb 53, sub: Segregation of School Children on Military Installations, G-1 291.2 (15 Jan 53).]
[Footnote 19-61: Memo, Exec Off, SA, for ASD (M&P), 20 Feb 53, sub: Proposed Reply to U.S. Commissioner of Education Regarding Segregation in Dependent Schools, copy in G-1 291.2 (15 Jan 53).]
The matter was rescued from bureaucratic limbo when in answer to a question during his 19 March 1953 press conference President Eisenhower promised to investigate the school situation, adding:
I will say this--I repeat it, I have said it again and again: whenever Federal funds are expended for anything, I do not see how any American can justify--legally, or logically, or morally--a discrimination in the expenditure of those funds as among our citizens. All are taxed to provide these funds. If there is any benefit to be derived from them, I think they must all share, regardless of such inconsequential factors as race and religion.[19-62]
[Footnote 19-62: President's News Conference, 19 Mar 53, _Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953_, p. 108.]
The sweeping changes implied in this declaration soon became apparent. Statistics compiled as a result of the White House investigation revealed that federal dependents attended thousands of schools, a complex mix of educational institutions having little more in common than their mutual dependence in whole or part on federal funds.[19-63] (p. 490) Most were under local government control and the great majority, including the community public schools, were situated a long distance from any military base. The President was no doubt unaware of the ramifications of federal enrollment and impacted aid on the nation's schools when he made his declaration, and, given his philosophy of government and the status of civil rights at the time, it is not surprising that his promise to look into the subject came to nothing. From the beginning Secretary of Defense Wilson limited the department's campaign against segregated schools to those on federal property rather than those using federal funds. And even this limited effort to integrate schools on federal property encountered determined opposition from many local officials and only the halfhearted support of some of the federal officials involved.
[Footnote 19-63: Memo for Rcd, Human Relations and Research Br, G-1 (ca. Mar 53), copy in CMH. See also Memo, Under SecNav for ASD (M&P), 11 Mar 53, sub: Schools Operated by the Department of the Navy Pursuant to Section 6 and 3 of Public Law 874, 81st Congress, A18, GenRecsNav; "List of States and Whether or Not Segregation is Practiced in Schools for Dependents, as Given by Colonel Brody, OPNS Secn, AGO, In Charge of Dependents Schools, 16 Oct 51," OSA 291.2 Negroes.]
The Department of Defense experienced few problems at first as it integrated its own schools. Its overseas schools, especially in Germany and Japan, had always been integrated, and its schools in the United States now quickly followed suit. Eleven in number, they were paid for and operated by the U.S. Commissioner of Education because the states in which they were located prohibited the use of state funds for schools on federal property. With only minimal public attention, all but one of these schools was operating on an integrated basis by 1953. The exception was the elementary school at Fort Benning, Georgia, which at the request of the local school board remained a white-only school. On 20 March 1953 the new Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, informed the White House that this school had been ordered to commence integrated operations in the fall.[19-64]
[Footnote 19-64: Memo, SA for James Hagerty, White House Press Secretary, 20 Mar 53, sub: Segregation in Army Schools, copy in CMH.]
The integration of schools operated by local school authorities on military posts was not so simple, and before the controversy died down the Department of Defense found itself assuming responsibility for a number of formerly state-operated institutions. As of April 1953, twenty-one of these sixty-three schools in the United States were operating on a segregated basis. (Table 12)
Table 12--Defense Installations With Segregated Public Schools
State Installation
Alabama (C)[1] Maxwell Air Force Base Craig Air Force Base
Arkansas (S)[2] Pine Bluff Arsenal (Army)
Florida (C) MacDill Air Force Base Eglin Air Force Base Tyndall Air Force Base Naval Air Station, Pensacola Patrick Air Force Base
Maryland (S) Andrews Air Force Base Naval Air Station, Patuxent Naval Powder Factory, Indianhead
Oklahoma (C) Fort Sill (Army)
Texas (C) Fort Bliss (Army) Fort Hood (Army) Fort Sam Houston (Army) Randolph Air Force Base Reese Air Force Base Shepherd Air Force Base Lackland Air Force Base
Virginia (C) Fort Belvoir (Army) Langley Air Force Base
[Tablenote 1: (C) indicates segregation required by state constitution.] [Tablenote 2: (S) indicates segregation required by state statute.]
The Secretary of the Army promised to investigate the possibility of integrating schools on Army bases and to consider further action with the Commissioner of Education "as the situation is clarified." He warned the President that to "prod the commissioner" into setting up integrated federal schools when segregated state schools were available would invite charges in the press and Congress of squandering money. Moreover, newly assembled faculties would have state accreditation problems.[19-65] Admitting that there were complicating factors, the President ignored the secretary's warnings and noted that if integrated schools could not be provided by (p. 491) state authorities "other arrangements will be considered."[19-66]
[Footnote 19-65: Ibid.]
[Footnote 19-66: Memo, Eisenhower for SecDef, 25 Mar 53, sub: Segregation in Schools on Army Posts; Memo, Bernard Shanley (Special Counsel to President) for SA, 25 Mar 53; both in 124A-4 Eisenhower Library.]
Others in the administration took these complications more seriously. Oveta Culp Hobby, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, was concerned with the attitude of Congress and the press. She pleaded for more time to see what the Supreme Court would rule on the subject and to study the effect of the conversion to federally operated schools "so that we can feel confident of our ground in the event further action should be called for." Going a step further than the Secretary of the Army, Hobby suggested delaying action on the twenty-one segregated schools on posts "for the immediate present."[19-67]
[Footnote 19-67: Ltr, Secy of HEW, to SecDef, 13 Apr 53, copy in CMH.]
In marked contrast to Hobby's recommendation, and incidentally buttressing popular belief in the existence of an interdepartmental dispute on the subject, Secretary of Defense Wilson told the President that he wanted to end segregation in all schools on military installations "as swiftly as practicable." He admitted it would be difficult, as a comprehensive and partially covert survey of the school districts by the local commanders had made clear. The commanders found, for example, that the twenty-one school districts involved would not operate the schools as integrated institutions. (p. 492) Wilson also stressed that operating the schools under federal authority would be very expensive, but his recommendation was explicit. There should be no exact timetable, but the schools should be integrated before the 1955 fall term.[19-68]
[Footnote 19-68: Ltr, SecDef to President, 29 May 53, copy in CMH. On the Army's investigation of the schools, see also G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 6 Apr 53, sub: Segregation in Schools on Army Posts, CS 291.2 Negroes (25 Mar 53), and the following: Ltrs, TAG to CG's, Continental Armies et al., 30 Mar 53, and to CG, Fourth Army, 17 Apr 53, sub: Segregation in Schools on Army Posts, AGAO-R 352.9 (17 Apr 53); Memo, Dir of Pers Policy, OSD, for ACS/G-1 and Chief of NavPers, 6 May 53; Statement for Sherman Adams in reply to Telg, Powell to President, as attachment to Memo, ASD (M&P) for SecNav, 5 Jun 53; last two in OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
Although both Wilson and Hobby later denied that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was opposed to integrating the schools, rumors and complaints persisted throughout the summer of 1953 that Hobby opposed swift action and had carried her opposition "to the cabinet level."[19-69] Lending credence to these rumors, President Eisenhower later admitted that there was some foot-dragging in his official family. He had therefore ordered minority affairs assistant Rabb, already overseeing the administration's fight against segregated shipyards, to "track down any inconsistencies of this sort in the rest of the departments and agencies of the government."[19-70]
[Footnote 19-69: DOD OPI Release, 1 Feb 54; UPI News Release, 31 Jan 54; Telg, Powell to President, ca. 1 Jun 53; Ltr, President to Powell, 6 Jun 53; Press Release, Congressman Powell, 10 Jun 53; NAACP Press Release, 16 Nov 53; White, Address Delivered at 44th NAACP Annual Convention, 28 Jun 53. Copies of all in Nichols Collection, CMH. See also New York Times, February 1, 1954.]
[Footnote 19-70: Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, p. 293.]
The interdepartmental dispute was quickly buried by Wilson's dramatic order of 12 January 1954. Effective as of that date, the secretary announced, "no new school shall be opened for operation on a segregated basis, and schools presently so conducted shall cease operating on a segregated basis, as soon as practicable, and under no circumstances later than September 1, 1955."[19-71] Wilson promised to negotiate with local authorities, but if they were unable to comply the Commissioner of Education would be requested to provide integrated facilities through the provisions of Public Law 874. Interestingly, the secretary's order predated the Supreme Court decision on segregated education by some four months.
[Footnote 19-71: Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 12 Jan 54, sub: Schools on Military Installations for Dependents of Military and Civilian Personnel, SecDef 291.2.]
The order prompted considerable public response. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith telegraphed "hearty approval of your directive ... action is consonant with democratic ideals and in particular with the military establishment's successful program of integration in the armed forces."[19-72] Walter White added the NAACP's approval in a similar vein, and many individual citizens offered congratulations.[19-73] But not all the response was favorable. Congressman Arthur A. Winstead of Mississippi asked the secretary to outline for him "wherein you believe that procedure will add anything whatsoever to the defense of this country. Certainly it appears to me that you have every reason anyone could desire to refuse to take action which is in total (p. 493) violation of certain state laws."[19-74]
[Footnote 19-72: Telg, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith to Wilson, 1 Feb 54, SecDef 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-73: Telg, Walter White to SecDef, 1 Feb 54; and as an example of a letter from an individual citizen, see Ltr, Mrs. Louis Shearer to SecDef, 1 Feb 54; both in SecDef 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-74: Ltr, Winstead to SecDef, 18 Feb 54, SecDef 291.2.]
The three services quickly responded to the order. By 18 February all had issued specific directives for enforcing it. The Secretary of the Navy, for example, declared that the "policy of non-segregation" would apply
to the operation of existing schools and school facilities hereafter constructed on Navy and Marine Corps installations within the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the area in which Public Law 874 and ... 815 ... are operative.... In the case of PL 874 this area will be extended, effective 1 July 1954, to include Wake Island ... the same policy of non-segregation will apply in all Navy-operated schools for dependent children of military and civilian personnel of the Department of Defense.[19-75]
[Footnote 19-75: SecNav Instruction 5700.1, 18 Feb 54, which was renewed by SecNav Instruction 17755.1A, 31 Jul 58. For other services, see Memo, Chief, Pers Ser Div, USAF, for all Major ZI Commands and Alaskan Air Command, 8 Feb 54, sub: Elimination of Segregation in On-Base Schools, AFPMP-12, AF files; Ltr, TAG to CG's, Continental Armies, MDW, 4 Feb 54, sub: Elimination of Segregation in On-Post Public Schools, AGCP 352.9 (4 Feb 54).]
Any local school official hoping for a reprieve from the deadlines expressed in these orders was likely to be disappointed. In response to queries on the subject, the services quoted their instructions, and if they excused continued segregation during the 1954 school year they were adamant about the September 1955 integration date.[19-76] The response of Secretary of the Air Force Talbott to one request for an extension revealed the services' determination to stick to the letter of the Wilson order. Talbott agreed with the superintendent of the Montgomery County, Alabama, school board that local school boards were best qualified to run the schools for dependent children of the military, but he refused to extend the deadline. "Unilateral action in the case of individual Air Force base schools would be in violation of the directive," he explained, adding: "At such time as the Alabama legislature acts to permit your local board of education to operate the school at Maxwell AFB on an integrated basis, the Air Force will return operational responsibility for the school to the local board at the earliest practicable date."[19-77]
[Footnote 19-76: Ltr, SecNav to Clarence Mitchell, 30 Apr 54; Ltr, Jack Cochrane, BuPers Realty Legal Section, to B. Alden Lillywhite, Dept of HEW, 20 Apr 54; both in P 11-1, GenRecsNav. See also Ltr, ASD (M&P) to Commissioner of Educ, 3 May 55; Ltr, ASD (M&P) to Dr. J. W. Edgar, Texas Education Agency, 3 May 55; both in OASD (M&P) 291.2 (3 May 55).]
[Footnote 19-77: Ltr, SecAF to Superintendent of Montgomery Public Schools, 12 Jan 55, SecAF files.]
As a result of this unified determination on the part of departmental officials, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense could announce in December 1954 that two of the schools, the one at Craig Air Force Base, Alabama, and Fort Belvoir, Virginia, were integrated; two others, the Naval Air Station school at Pensacola, Florida, and Reese Air Force Base, Texas, had been closed; the remaining seventeen would be fully integrated by the September 1955 deadline.[19-78] Lee Nichols, a prolific writer on integration, reported in November 1955 that schools segregated for generations suddenly had black and white children sitting side by side. This move by the armed forces, he (p. 494) pointed out, could have far-reaching effects. Educators from segregated community schools would be watching the military experiment closely for lessons in how to comply with the Supreme Court's desegregation order.[19-79]
[Footnote 19-78: Memo for Rcd, Chief, Morale and Welfare Br, ASD (M&P), 17 Dec 54, sub: Integration of Certain Schools Located on Military Installations, OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-79: UPI News Release, Incl to Memo, Dir, DOD Office of Public Information, for ASD (M&P), 10 Nov 55, OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
Strictly speaking there were more than twenty-one segregated schools operating on federal installations. A small group of institutions built and operated by local authorities stood on land leased from the services. At the time of Secretary Wilson's order this category of schools included three with 75-year leases, those at Fort Meade, Maryland, and Fort Bliss and Biggs Air Force Base, Texas, and one with a 25-year lease at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas.[19-80] The Air Force's general counsel believed the lease could be broken in light of the Wilson order, but the possibility developed that some extensions might be granted to these schools because of the lease complication.[19-81] The Secretary of the Army went right to the point, asking the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Carter L. Burgess, for an extension in the case of Fort Meade pending Maryland's integration of its schools under the Supreme Court's decision.[19-82] In response Burgess ordered, as of 1 June 1955, the exemption of four schools. "No attempt shall be made," he informed the services, "to break the lease or take over operation of the schools pending further instruction from the Secretary of Defense."[19-83]
[Footnote 19-80: Ltr, Col Staunton Brown, USA, District Engineer, Little Rock District, to Division Engineer, Southwestern Div, 8 Jun 56, sub: Meeting With Representatives of White Hall School District, Pine Bluff Arsenal; Memo, Asst Adjutant, Second Army, for CG, Second Army, 7 Jun 56, sub: Lease for Meade Heights Elementary School; copies of both in OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-81: Memo, AF General Counsel for Dir of Mil Pers, 29 Mar 55, sub: Lease on Property Occupied by Briggs Air Force Base Dependent's School; Memo, Asst SecAF for ASD (M&P), 24 May 55, sub: Biggs Air Force Base Dependent School; both in SecAF files.]
[Footnote 19-82: Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), 3 May 55, sub: Elimination of Segregation in On-Post Public Schools, OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-83: Memo, ASD (M&P) for SA et al., 1 Jun 55, sub: Operation of Dependent Schools on Military Installations on an Integrated Basis; idem for SecDef et al., 25 Aug 55, sub: Status of Racial Integration in Schools on Military Installations for Dependents of Military and Civilian Personnel; both in OASD (M&P) 291.2 (25 Aug 55).]
It was some time before the question of temporary extensions was resolved. Two of the leased property schools, Biggs and Fort Bliss, were integrated before the September deadline as a result of a change in state law in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision. Then, on 16 July 1956, the Assistant Secretary of the Army reported that the phased integration of Fort Meade's elementary school had started.[19-84] The Pine Bluff Arsenal case was still unresolved in 1956, but since at that time there were no black dependents at the installation it was not considered so pressing by Burgess, who allowed the extension to continue beyond 1956. Besides, it turned out there were still other schools in this category that the Navy had temporarily exempted from the September 1955 deadline. The school at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, for example, which had no black dependents eligible for attendance, was allowed to continue to operate as usual while negotiations were under way for the transfer of the school and property to the St. Mary's County, Maryland, school (p. 495) board.[19-85] A lease for the temporary use of buildings by local authorities for segregated schools on the grounds of the New Orleans Naval Air Station was allowed to run on until 1959 because of technicalities in the lease, but not, however, without considerable public comment.[19-86]
[Footnote 19-84: Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), 16 Jul 56, sub: Status of Racial Integration in Schools at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, and Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas, OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-85: Memo, Cmdr Charles B. Reinhardt, OASD (M&P), for Brig Gen John H. Ives, Mil Policy Div, OASD (M&P), 26 Oct 55, sub: School at Patuxent River Naval Air Stations, OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-86: See the following Memos: ASD (M&P) for SecNav, 18 Nov 55, sub: Integration in Schools on Military Installations for Department of Military and Civilian Personnel; idem for Asst SecNav (P&RF), 23 Jan 56, sub: Segregation in Schools at the New Orleans Naval Base, Algiers, Louisiana; Asst SecNav (P&RF) for ASD (M&P), 7 Apr 56, same sub; ASD (M&P) for Asst SecNav (FM), 15 Aug 58, sub: U.S. Naval Station, New Orleans, Louisiana: One Year Extension of Outlease With Orleans Parish School Board, New Orleans, Louisiana; Ltrs, CO, New Orleans Naval Station, to Rev. Edward Schlick, 24 Feb 56, and Rear Adm John M. Will, OASD (M&P), to Clarence Mitchell, NAACP, 6 Dec 55 and 18 Apr 56. All in OASD (M&P) 291.2. For public interest in the case, see the files of the Chief of Naval Personnel (P 11-1) for the years 1956-59.]
The Department of Defense could look with pride at its progress. In less than three years after President Eisenhower had promised to look into segregated schools for military dependents, the department had integrated hundreds of classrooms, inducing local authorities to integrate a series of schools in areas that had never before seen blacks and whites educated together. It had even ordered the integration of classes conducted on post by local universities and (p. 496) voluntarily attended by servicemen in off-duty hours.[19-87] Yet many dependent schools were untouched because Wilson's order applied only to schools on federal property. It ignored the largest category of dependent schools, those in the local community that because of heavy enrollment of federal dependents were supported in whole or part by federal funds. In these institutions some 28,000 federal dependents were being educated in segregated classes. Integration for them would have to await the long court battles that followed Brown v. Board of Education.
[Footnote 19-87: Ltr, Sen. Herbert Lehman to SecDef, 10 Oct 56; Ltr, SecDef to Lehman, 15 Oct 56, both in SD 291.2.]
This dreary prospect had not always seemed so inevitable. Although Wilson's order ignored local public schools, civil rights advocates did not, and the problem of off-base segregation, typified by the highly publicized school at the Little Rock Air Force Base in 1958, became an issue involving not only the Department of Defense but the whole administration. The decision to withhold federal aid to school districts that remained segregated in defiance of court orders was clearly beyond the power of the Department of Defense. In a memorandum circulated among Pentagon officials in October 1958, Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Elliot C. Richardson discussed the legal background of federal aid to schools attended by military dependents, especially congressional intent and the definition of "suitable" facilities as expressed in Public Laws 815 and 874. He also took up the question of whether to provide off-base integrated schooling, balancing the difficult problem of protecting the civil rights of federal employees against the educational advantages of a state-sponsored education system. Richardson mentioned the great variation in school population--some bases having seven high school aged children one year, none the next--and the fact that the cost of educating the 28,087 dependents attending segregated schools in 1957 would amount to more than $49 million for facilities and $8.7 million annually for operations. He was left with one possible conclusion, that "irrespective of our feelings about the unsuitability of segregated education as a matter of principle, we are constrained by the legislative history, the settled administrative construction, and the other circumstances surrounding the statutes in question to adhere to the existing interpretation of them."[19-88]
[Footnote 19-88: Memo, Asst Secy of HEW for Secy of HEW, 4 Oct 58, sub: Payments of Segregated Schools Under P.L. 815 and P.L. 874, Incl to Ltr, Asst Secy of HEW to ASD (M&P), 10 Oct 58, OASD (M&P)291.2 (10 Oct 58).]
Richardson might be "constrained" to accept the status quo, but some black parents were not. In the fall of 1958 matters came to a head at the school near the Little Rock air base. Here was a new facility, built by the local school board exclusively with federal funds, on state land, and intended primarily for the education of dependents living at a newly constructed military base. On the eve of the school's opening, the Pulaski County school board informed the Air Force that the school would be for white students only. The decision was brought to the President's attention by a telegram from a black sergeant's wife whose child was denied admission.[19-89] The telegram was only the first in a series of protests from congressmen, civil (p. 497) rights organizations, and interested citizens. For all the Defense Department had a stock answer: there was nothing the Air Force could do. The service neither owned nor operated the school, and the impact aid laws forbade construction of federal school facilities if the local school districts could provide public school education for federal dependents.[19-90]
[Footnote 19-89: Memo, Dir of Pers Policy, OSD, for Stephen Jackson, 29 Aug 58, sub: Air Force Segregated School Situation in Pulaski County, Arkansas (San Francisco Chronicle article of Aug 26, 58); Memo for Rec, Stephen Jackson, OASD (M&P), 8 Oct 58, sub: Integration of Little Rock Air Force Base School, Jacksonville, Ark., attached to Memo, ASD (M&P) for SA et al., 10 Oct 58. All in OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-90: See, for example, Ltrs, Dir of Pers Policy, OSD, to Sen. Richard L. Neuberger, 10 Sep 58, and ASD/M to Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr., 23 Oct 58. See also Memo, Dep Dir of Mil Pers, USAF, for Asst SecAF (Manpower, Pers, and Res Forces), 9 Oct 58, sub: Dependent Schools. All in OASD (M&P) 291.2.]
The department would not get off the hook so easily; the President wanted something done about the Little Rock school, although he wanted his interest kept quiet.[19-91] Yet any action would have unpleasant consequences. If the department transferred the father, it was open to a court suit on his behalf; if it tried to force integration on the local authorities, they would close the school. Since neither course was acceptable, Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles C. Finucane ordered his troubleshooter, Stephen Jackson, to Little Rock to investigate.[19-92]
[Footnote 19-91: Memo, Lt Col Winston P. Anderson, Exec Off, Asst SecAF (M&P), for Asst SecAF (M&P), 24 Nov 58, SecAF files.]
[Footnote 19-92: Memo, ASD (MP&R) for SA et al., 10 Oct 58, OASD (MP&R) 291.2; Memo for Rcd, Spec Asst to Asst SecAF, 17 Oct 58, sub: Meeting With Mr. Finucane and Mr. Jackson re Little Rock Air Force Base, SecAF files.]
Before he went to Little Rock, Jackson met with officials from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and decided, with the concurrence of the Department of Justice, that the solution lay in government purchase of the land. The school would then be on a military base and subject to integration. Should local authorities refuse to operate the integrated on-base school, the Air Force would do so. In that event, Jackson warned local officials on his arrival in Arkansas, the school district would lose much of its federal enrollment and hence its very important federal subsidy. Nor could the board be assured that the federal acquisition would be limited to one school. Jackson later admitted the local black school had also been constructed with federal funds, and he could not guarantee that it would escape federal acquisition. Board members queried Jackson on this point, introducing the possibility that the federal government might try to acquire local high schools, also attended in large numbers by military dependents and also segregated. Jackson assured the school board that the department "had no desire to change the community patterns where schools were already in existence merely because they received federal aid,"[19-93] a statement that amounted to a new federal policy.
[Footnote 19-93: Memo for Rcd, Dep ASD (MR&P), 8 Oct 58, sub: Integration of Little Rock Air Force Base School, Jacksonville, Ark.; attached to Memo, ASD (MP&R) for SA et al., 10 Oct 58, OASD (MP&R) 291.2.]
Jackson failed to convince the board, and in late October 1958 it rejected the government's offer to run an integrated school on land purchased from them.[19-94] Jackson thereupon met with justice officials and together they decided that sometime before 1 January 1959 the Justice Department would acquire title to the school land for one year by taking a leasehold through the right of eminent domain. They did not at that time, however, formulate any definite plan of (p. 498) action to accomplish the school take-over.[19-95]
[Footnote 19-94: Memo for Rcd, Dep Asst SecAF, 24 Nov 58, SecAF files.]
[Footnote 19-95: Ibid.; Memo, Lt Col Winston P. Anderson, Exec Off, Asst SecAF (M&P) for Asst SecAF (M&P), 24 Nov 58, SecAF files.]
It was just as well, for soon after this decision was reached the NAACP brought up the subject of dependent schools near the Air Force bases at Blytheville, Arkansas, and Stewart, Tennessee.[19-96] Air Force Deputy Assistant Secretary James P. Goode was quick to point out that there were at least five other segregated schools constructed with federal funds, situated near Air Force bases, and attended almost exclusively by federal dependents. He also predicted that a careful survey would reveal perhaps another fifteen schools in segregated districts serving only Air Force dependents. In light of these facts, and with a frankly confessed aversion to the administration's acquisition of the properties by right of eminent domain, Goode preferred to have the schools integrated in an orderly manner through the supervision of the federal courts.[19-97]
[Footnote 19-96: Memo, Asst SecAF (M&P) for Under SecAF, 26 Nov 58, SecAF files.]
[Footnote 19-97: Memo, Dep Asst SecAF (MP&R) for Asst SecAF (MP&R), 26 Nov 58, sub: Little Rock Air Force Base Elementary School, SecAF files.]
This attitude was to prevail for some time in the Department of Defense. In April 1961, for example, the Assistant Secretary for Manpower informed a Senate subcommittee that, while schools under departmental jurisdiction were integrated "without reservation and with successful results," many children of black servicemen stationed in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and elsewhere still attended segregated off-post schools. Adjacent to military posts and attended "in whole or in part by federal dependents," these schools "conformed to state rather than federal laws."[19-98] And as late as May 1963, a naval official admitted there was no way for the Navy to require school officials in Key West, Florida, to conform to the Department of Defense's policy of equal opportunity.[19-99]
[Footnote 19-98: Memo, ASD (M) for Chmn, Subcommittee on Education, Cmte on Labor and Pub Welfare, of the U.S. Senate, 25 Apr 61, OASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 19-99: Ltr, Rear Adm C. K. Duncan, Asst Chief for Plans, BuPers, to Mrs. Rosetta McCullough, 16 May 63, P 8, GenRecsNav.]
Yet even as the principle of noninterference with racial patterns of the local community emerged intact from the lengthy controversy, exceptions to its practical application continued to multiply. In the fall of 1959, less than a year after the administration suspended its campaign to integrate off-base schools in Arkansas, black Air Force dependents quietly entered the Little Rock school. At the same time, schools catering predominantly to military dependents near bases in Florida and Tennessee integrated with little public attention.[19-100] Under pressure from the courts, and after President Eisenhower had discussed the case in a national press conference in terms of the proper use of impact aid in segregated districts, the city of Norfolk, Virginia, agreed to integrate its 15,000 students, roughly one-third of whom were military dependents.[19-101]
[Footnote 19-100: Morton Puner, "What the Armed Forces Taught Us About Integration," Coronet (June 1960), reprinted in the Congressional Record, vol. 106, pp. 11564-65.]
[Footnote 19-101: Press Conference, 21 Jan 59, _Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1959_, p. 122; see also Washington Post January 28, 1959.]
The controversy over schools for dependents demonstrated the (p. 499) limits of federal intervention in the local community on behalf of the civil rights of servicemen. Before these limits could be breached a new administration would have to redefine the scope of the Defense Department's power. Nevertheless, the armed forces had scored some dramatic successes in the field of race relations by 1960. Some five million servicemen, civilians, and their dependents were proving the practicality of integration on the job, in schools, and in everyday living. Several writers even suggested that the services' experience had itself become a dynamic force for social change in the United States.[19-102] The New York Times's Anthony Lewis went so far as to say that the successful integration of military society led to the black crusade against discrimination in civilian society.[19-103] Others took the services' influence for granted, as Morton Puner did when he observed in 1959 that "the armed services are more advanced in their race relations than the rest of the United States. Perhaps it is uniquely fitting that this should be so, that in one of the greatest peacetime battles of our history, the armed forces should be leading the way to victory."[19-104]
[Footnote 19-102: See Fred Richard Bahr, "The Expanding Role of the Department of Defense as an Instrument of Social Change" (Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, February 1970), ch. III.]
[Footnote 19-103: As quoted, ibid., p. 87.]
[Footnote 19-104: Morton Puner, "Integration in the Army," The New Leader 42 (January 12, 1959).]
As such encomiums became more frequent, successful integration became a source of pride to the services. Military commanders with experience in Korea had, according to Assistant Secretary of Defense Hannah, universally accepted the new order as desirable, conceding that integration worked "very well" despite predictions to the contrary.[19-105] Nor was this attitude limited to military commanders, for there had been considerable change in sentiment among senior defense officials. Citing the major economies realized in the use of manpower and facilities, Secretary Wilson reported to President Eisenhower in March 1955 that the results of integration were encouraging:
Combat effectiveness is increased as individual capabilities rather than racial designations determine assignments and promotions. Economics in manpower and funds are achieved by the elimination of racially duplicated facilities and operations. Above all, our national security is improved by the more effective utilization of military personnel, regardless of race.[19-106]
[Footnote 19-105: Extracted from an interview given by Hannah and published in _U.S. News and World Report_ 35 (October 16, 1953):99. See also Ltr, Lt Col L. Hill, Chief, Public Info Div, CINFO, to Joan Rosen, WCBS Eye on New York, 17 Apr 64, CMH Misc 291.2 Negroes.]
[Footnote 19-106: Semiannual Report of the Secretary of Defense, January 1-June 30, 1954 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1955), pp. 21-22.]
In other reports he expatiated on this theme, explaining how integration cut down racial incidents in the services and improved "national solidarity and strength."[19-107] After years of claiming the contrary, defense officials were justifying integration in the name of military efficiency.
[Footnote 19-107: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Manpower, "Advances in the Utilization of Negro Manpower: Extracts From Official Reports of the Secretary of Defense, 1947-1961." The quotation is from Secretary Wilson's report, 10 Dec 53.]
Certainly racial incidents in the armed forces practically (p. 500) disappeared in the immediate post-integration period, and the number of complaints about on-base discrimination that reached the Pentagon from individual black servicemen dropped dramatically. Moreover, supporting Secretary Wilson's claim of national solidarity, major civil rights organizations began to cite the racial experiences of the armed forces to strengthen their case against segregated American society. Civil rights leaders continued to press for action against discrimination outside the military reservation, but in the years after Korea their sense of satisfaction with the department's progress was quite obvious. At its national conventions in 1953 and 1954, for example, the NAACP officially praised the services for their race policy. As one writer observed, integration not only increased black support for the armed forces and black commitment to national defense during the cold war, but it also boosted the department's prestige in the black and white community alike, creating indirect political support for those politicians who sponsored the racial reforms.[19-108]
[Footnote 19-108: Bahr, "The Expanding Role of the Department of Defense," pp. 86-87.]
But what about the black serviceman himself? A Negro enlisting in the armed forces in 1960, unlike his counterpart in 1950, entered an integrated military community. He would quickly discover traces of discrimination, especially in the form of unequal treatment in assignments, promotions, and the application of military justice, but for a while at least these would seem minor irritants to a man who was more often than not for the first time close to being judged by ability rather than race.[19-109] It was a different story in the civilian community, where the black serviceman's uniform commanded little more respect than it did in 1950. Eventually this contrast would become so intolerable that he and his sympathizers would beleaguer the Department of Defense with demands for action against discrimination in off-base housing, schools, and places of public accommodation.
[Footnote 19-109: Ginzberg, The Negro Potential, p. 90.]
20. (p. 501)
Limited Response to Discrimination
The good feelings brought on by the integration of the armed forces lasted less than a decade. By the early 1960's the Department of Defense and the civil rights advocates had begun once more to draw apart, the source of contention centering on their differing interpretations of the scope of the Truman order. The Defense Department professed itself unable to interfere with community laws and customs even when those laws and customs discriminated against men in uniform. The civil rights leaders, however, rejected the federal government's acceptance of the status quo. Reacting especially to the widespread and blatant discrimination encountered by servicemen both in communities adjacent to bases at home and abroad and in the reserve components of the services in many parts of the country, they stepped up demands for remedial action against a situation that they believed continued at the sufferance of the armed forces.
Nor were their demands limited to the problem of discrimination in the local community. Civil rights spokesmen backed the complaints of those black servicemen who had begun to question their treatment in the military community itself. Lacking what many of them considered an effective procedure for dealing with racial complaints, black servicemen usually passed on their grievances to congressmen and various civil rights organizations, and these, in turn, took the problems to the Defense Department. The number of complaints over inequalities in promotion, assignment, and racial representation never matched the volume of those on discrimination in the community, nor did their appearance attest to a new set of problems or any particular increase in discrimination. It seemed rather that the black serviceman, after the first flush of victory over segregation, was beginning to perceive from the vantage of his improved position that other and perhaps more subtle barriers stood in his way. Whatever the reason, complaints of discrimination within the services themselves, rarely heard in the Pentagon in the late 1950's, suddenly reappeared.[20-1] Actually, the complaints about discrimination both in the local civilian community and on the military reservation called for a basic alteration in the way the services interpreted their policies of equal treatment and opportunity. In the end it would prove easier for the services to attack the gaudier but ultimately less complicated problems outside their gates.
[Footnote 20-1: For discussion of charges of discrimination within the services, see Ltrs, ASD (M) to Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr., 15 Mar and 5 Sep 61; and the following Memos: Under SecNav for ASD (M), 16 Mar 62, sub: Discrimination in U.S. Military Services; Dep SecAF for Manpower, Personnel, and Organization for ASD (M), 29 Mar 62, sub: Alleged Racial Discrimination With the Air Force; Dep Under SA (M) For ASD (M), 30 Mar 62, sub: Servicemen's Complaints of Discrimination in the U.S. Military. All in ASD (M) 291.2.]
It would be a mistake to equate the notice given the persistent (p. 502) but subtle problem of on-base discrimination with the sometimes brutal injustice visited on black servicemen off-base in the early 1960's. Black servicemen often found the short bus ride from post to town a trip into the past, where once again they were forced to endure the old patterns of segregation. Defense Department officials were aware, for example, that decent housing open to black servicemen was scarce. With limited income, under military orders, and often forced by circumstances to reside in the civilian community, black servicemen were, in the words of Robert S. McNamara, President Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, "singularly defenseless against this bigotry."[20-2] While the services had always denied responsibility for combating this particular form of discrimination, many in the black community were anxious to remind them of John F. Kennedy's claim in the presidential campaign of 1960 that discrimination in housing could be alleviated with a stroke of the Chief Executive's pen.
[Footnote 20-2: Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 124.]
But housing was only part of a larger pattern of segregation that included restrictions on black servicemen's use of many places of public accommodation such as restaurants, theaters, and saloons, some literally on the doorstep of military reservations. James Evans listed some twenty-seven military installations in the United States where in 1961 segregation in transportation and places of public accommodation was established in adjacent communities by law or custom.[20-3] Moreover, instances of blatant Jim Crow tactics were rapidly multiplying near bases in Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and elsewhere as host communities began to adopt the prejudices of their visitors.[20-4] The United States Commission on Civil Rights charged that black servicemen were often reluctant to complain to their superiors or the Inspector General because of the repeated failure of local commands to show concern for the problem and suspicion that complainers would be subjected to reprisals.[20-5]
[Footnote 20-3: James C. Evans, OASD (M), "Suggested List of Military Installations," 9 Jun 61, copy in CMH. Evans's list was based on incomplete data. A great number of military installations were located in Jim Crow areas in 1961. See also Memo, Dep ASD (Military Personnel Policy) for ASD (M), 19 Oct 62, sub: Forthcoming Conference With Representatives From CORE, ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-4: Memo, Lee Nichols (UPI reporter) for SecDef, Attn: Adam Yarmolinsky, 13 May 63, sub: Racial Integration in the U.S. Armed Forces, copy in CMH. Nichols had recently toured military bases under Defense Department sponsorship. See also Puner, "Integration in the Army"; news articles in Overseas Weekly (Frankfurt), November 18 and 25, 1962, and Stars and Stripes, November 15, 1962.]
[Footnote 20-5: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Civil Rights '63 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 206.]
Civil rights leaders were particularly distressed by this form of discrimination, which, considering the armed forces' persistent declaration of impotence in the matter, seemed destined to remain a permanent condition of service life. "These problems involve factors which are not directly under the control of the Department of Defense," Assistant Secretary for Manpower Carlisle P. Runge noted in a typical response.[20-6] Similar sentiments were often expressed by local commanders, although some tried to soften their refusal to act with the hope that the military example might change local community attitudes in the long run.[20-7] Congressman Charles C. Diggs, (p. 503) Jr., did not share this hope. Citing numerous examples for the President of discrimination against black servicemen, he charged that, far from influencing local communities to change, commanders actually cooperated in discrimination by punishing or otherwise identifying protesting servicemen as troublemakers.[20-8]
[Footnote 20-6: Memo, ASD (M) for Asst Legal Counsel to President, 7 Nov 61, sub: Racial Discrimination in the Armed Services, ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-7: See transcribed taped interviews conducted by Nichols of the UPI with military and civilian personnel in the Charleston, S.C., area in March 1963, copies in the James C. Evans Collection, AMHRC.]
[Footnote 20-8: Ltr, Diggs to President, 27 Jun 62, copy in Gesell Collection, John F. Kennedy Library.]
Especially galling to civil rights leaders was the conviction that the armed forces had set up artificial and self-imposed barriers to a needed social reform. In the end this conviction seemed to spur them on. The American Veterans Committee, for example, demanded that when a community "mistreats American troops, such as in Montgomery, Alabama, or flaunts its Ku Klux Klan membership, as does Selma, Alabama, the entire area should be placed 'off limits' to purchases by Defense installations and by Servicemen."[20-9] Others were convinced that the federal government was in effect supporting segregation through its widespread economic assistance programs to state and local governments and to private institutions in the fields of employment, housing, education, health service, military affairs, and agriculture. In August 1961 a group of fifty civil rights leaders petitioned the (p. 504) President to end such federal support.[20-10] On a more modest scale, the Congress of Racial Equality asked the Army in August 1962 to declare segregated restaurants in Aberdeen, Maryland, off limits to all military personnel. The activist group justified its demand by stating that "the Army declares dangerous or immoral establishments off limits to soldiers and what is more dangerous or immoral in a democracy than racial intolerance?"[20-11] In this they failed to distinguish between the commander's proper response to what was illegal, for example prostitution, and what was still legal, for example, segregated housing.
[Footnote 20-9: American Veterans Committee, "Audit of Negro Veterans and Servicemen," 1960, p. 16, copy in CMH.]
[Footnote 20-10: Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, "Proposals for Executive Action to End Federally Supported Segregation and Other Forms of Racial Discrimination," August 1961, copy in SD 291.2. See also U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Freedom to the Free: A Century of Emancipation (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), pp. 158ff.]
[Footnote 20-11: Baltimore Sun, August 8, 1962. On the particular problem in the Aberdeen area see Telg, President Kennedy to John Field, President's Cmte on Equal Employment Opportunity, 22 Sep 61, copy in CMH.]
The Kennedy Administration and Civil Rights
The strong connection between black morale and military efficiency made it likely that the new Secretary of Defense would be intimately concerned with problems of discrimination. Highly trained in modern managerial techniques, Robert S. McNamara came to the Pentagon with the idea of instituting a series of fundamental changes in the management of the armed forces through manpower reorganization and what was becoming known as systems analysis. Whatever his attitude toward racial justice, his initial interest in the Defense Department's black employees, military and civilian, was closely linked to his concern for military efficiency. Less than a week on the job, he called for information on the status of Negroes in the department. He had heard that some services were better integrated than others, and he wanted his Assistant Secretary for Manpower to investigate. He wanted to know if there was a "fair" proportion of Negroes in the higher civilian grades. If not, he asked, "what do you recommend be done about it?"[20-12] These questions, and indeed all action on civil rights matters originating in his office in the months to come, indicated that McNamara, like his predecessors, would limit his reforms to discrimination within the services themselves. But as time passed, McNamara, like President Kennedy, would warm to the civil rights cause and eventually both would become firmly committed.
[Footnote 20-12: Memo, SecDef for ASD (MP&R) Designate, 27 Jan 61, ASD (M) 291.2.]
The Kennedy administration has been closely identified with civil rights, yet the President's major biographers and several of his assistants agree that his commitment to civil rights reform did not emerge full-blown on inauguration day. It was only in the last months of his administration that Kennedy, subjected to civil rights demands and sharing the interests and experiences of his brother Robert, the Attorney General, threw himself wholeheartedly into the civil (p. 505) rights fray.[20-13] As senator and later as President, Kennedy was sympathetic to the aspirations of the black minority, appreciated its support in his campaign, but regarded civil rights as one, and not the most pressing, problem facing the Chief Executive. Even his administrations's use of federal marshals during the freedom rides in 1961 and its use of both marshals and troops at Oxford, Mississippi, in 1962 and troops again in Alabama in 1963 were justified in the name of enforcement of federal judicial processes. Well into 1963 he studiously downplayed the civil rights issues involved.
[Footnote 20-13: This discussion of Kennedy's civil rights position is based on Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965); Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965); and the following oral history interviews in the J. F. Kennedy Library: Berl Bernhard with Harris Wofford, 29 Nov 65, Roy Wilkins, 13 Aug 64, and Thurgood Marshall, 7 Apr 64; Joseph O'Connor with Theodore Hesburgh, 27 Mar 66. Also consulted were Sorensen's _The Kennedy Legacy_ (New York: New American Library, 1970); Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (New York: Atheneum, 1971); William G. Carlton, "Kennedy in History," in _Perspectives on 20th Century America: Readings and Commentary_, ed. Otis L. Graham, Jr. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973); Edwin Guthman, _We Band of Brothers: A Memoir of Robert F. Kennedy_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); Burke Marshall, Federation and Civil Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).]
Kennedy was convinced that the only answer to the injustices suffered by Negroes was a series of strong laws, but he was also certain that such legislation was impossible to achieve in 1961. To urge it on an unwilling Congress would only jeopardize his legislative program, increase the black minority's feeling of frustration, and divide the nation in a period of national crisis. Discussing the Civil Rights Commission's "non-negotiable" demands concerning the organized reserves, for example, commission member Father Theodore Hesburgh remembered the President saying:
Look, I have a serious problem in West Berlin, and I do not think this is the proper time to start monkeying around with the Army.... I have no problem with the principle of this, and we'll certainly be doing it, but at this precise moment I have to keep uppermost in mind that I may need these units ... and I can't have them in the midst of a social revolution while I'm trying to do this.[20-14]
[Footnote 20-14: Quoted from O'Connor's oral history interview with Hesburgh, 27 Mar 66.]
Kennedy temporized. He would promptly and positively endorse the principle of equal rights and enforce the civil rights decisions of the Supreme Court through negotiation, moral suasion, executive order, and, when necessary, through the use of federal marshals.[20-15] The Justice Department meanwhile would pursue a vigorous course of litigation to insure the franchise for Negroes from which, he believed, all civil blessings flowed.
[Footnote 20-15: For a critical interpretation of the Kennedy approach to enforcing the Court's decisions, see Navasky's Kennedy Justice, pp. 97-98, and Howard Zinn, Postwar America, 1945-1971 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), ch. iv.]
Civil rights was not mentioned in Kennedy's first State of the Union message. With the exception of a measure to outlaw literacy and poll tax requirements for voting, no civil rights bills were sent to the Eighty-seventh Congress. Yet at one of his first press conferences, the President told newsmen that a plan to withhold federal funds in certain segregation cases would be included in a general study "of where the Federal Government might usefully place its power and influence to expand civil rights."[20-16] On 6 March 1961 he signed Executive Order 10925, which combined the committees on government (p. 506) contracts and employment policy into a single Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity chaired by the Vice President.[20-17] His order, he believed, specified sanctions "sweeping enough to ensure compliance."[20-18] Finally, in November 1962, after numerous and increasingly pointed reminders from civil rights advocates, the President issued Executive Order 11063, directing executive agencies to take action against discrimination in the sale or lease of federal housing or any housing bought with loans from or insured by the federal government.[20-19]
[Footnote 20-16: Press Conference, 1 Mar 61, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1961, p. 137.]
[Footnote 20-17: 26 Federal Register 1977.]
[Footnote 20-18: Presidential statement, 7 Mar 61, Public Papers of the Presidents: Kennedy, 1961, p. 150. See also "President's Remarks on Meeting of Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity," New York Times, April 12, 1961; Memo, President for Heads of All Executive Departments and Agencies, 18 Apr 61, copy in CMH.]
[Footnote 20-19: Executive Order 11063, 20 Nov 62, 27 Federal Register 11527.]
Besides executive orders, the White House had other ways, less formal but perhaps more efficient, of getting the federal bureaucracy to move on civil rights. Upon the recommendation of Special Assistant Frederick G. Dutton, the President created the Civil Rights Subcabinet Group in March 1961 to coordinate the administration's civil rights actions. Under Dutton's chairmanship, this group included the assistant secretaries responsible for racial matters in their respective agencies, with White House Special Civil Rights Assistant Harris Wofford serving as executive secretary.[20-20] The group regularly scrutinized the racial programs of the various departments, demanding reports and investigations of racial matters and insuring that the interests and criticisms of the administration were quickly disseminated at the operations level of the federal agencies affected.[20-21]
[Footnote 20-20: Memo, Frederick G. Dutton, Spec Asst to President, for Secy of State et al., 31 Mar 61, and Memo, ASD (M) for Dutton (ca. 10 Apr 61), both in ASD (M) 291.2; Memo, Nicholas D. Katzenbach for Vice President Elect, 23 Nov 64, Burke Marshall Papers, and Interv, Bernhard with Wofford, both in J. F. Kennedy Library. According to Wofford there was some discussion over just who would represent the Department of Defense in the group. The department's initial choice seems to have been Evans, but Wofford rejected this selection on the grounds that Evans's position did not place him in the department's power structure. He preferred to have Yarmolinsky or Assistant Secretary Carlisle P. Runge. Yarmolinsky insisted that Runge be included so that it would not appear that racial reform in the Department of Defense was a duty only for the administration's men.]
[Footnote 20-21: See Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et al., 7 Nov 61, sub: Minority Representation in Officer Procurement and Training, ASD (M) 291.2. See also Memos, Wofford for Civil Rights Subcabinet Group, 15 Sep, 20 Oct, and 10 Nov 61, copies in CMH.]
There is evidence that the subcabinet group was responsible for considerable cross-fertilization of civil rights programs among the departments. For example, it appears to have used the experience of black servicemen in interstate travel to move the Department of Justice and, with the assistance of Attorney General Kennedy, the Interstate Commerce Commission toward eliminating such discrimination.[20-22] And it was through the subcabinet group that the Attorney General's interest in minority voting rights was translated into a voting registration campaign among servicemen.[20-23]
[Footnote 20-22: Memo for Rcd, James C. Evans, 21 Jul 61, sub: Meeting, Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights, Friday, July 21, 1961 (Judge Jackson represented Mr. Runge); Ltr, SecDef to Atty Gen, 23 Jun 61; both in ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-23: Civil Rights Subcabinet Group, Notes on Meeting of 16 Jun 61; Ltr, Spec Asst to Postmaster Gen to James C. Evans, 26 Jan 62; Memo, Evans for Spec Asst to ASD (M), James W. Platt, 20 Mar 62; Memo, Harris Wofford for Subcabinet Group, 30 Jan 62. Copies of all in CMH.]
The existence of this group, with its surveys, questions, and (p. 507) investigations, put constant pressure on the armed services. They were not singled out for special treatment, but they obviously attracted the attention of both the White House and the civil rights organizations because their commitment to equal treatment and opportunity affected so many people and their past successes and remaining problems were having a decided impact on American society. In the words of presidential assistant Wofford, the Defense Department was "a world within itself," a world which by its magnitude could make a "significant contribution by its example" to the solution of the nation's racial problems.[20-24]
[Footnote 20-24: Memo for Rcd, James C. Evans, 21 Jul 61, sub: Meeting, Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights, Friday, July 21, 1961 (Judge Jackson represented Mr. Runge), ASD (M&P) 291.2.]
The size of the department's racial program alluded to by Wofford also invited the attention of a federal agency outside White House control. The United States Commission on Civil Rights was continually investigating the services, probing allegations of discrimination against black servicemen and evaluating the role of the department in community race relations.[20-25] Of particular interest to an understanding of racial policy in the 1960's is the commission's comprehensive survey, titled "The Services and Their Relations with the Community," which concluded that the continued existence of community discrimination against servicemen and their dependents had a detrimental effect on the morale and efficiency of significant numbers of them. The commission cataloged the traditional alibis of military commanders: "it is not the mission of the services to concern themselves with the practices of the local community"; the commander's responsibility "stops at the gate"; harmonious relations with the community must be maintained; and, finally, in order to achieve harmony, servicemen must comply with local laws and customs. Yet when it came to other areas of community relations, particularly where the general health, welfare, and morale of the servicemen were involved, the commission found that commanders did not hesitate to ally themselves with servicemen, local community controversy and opposition notwithstanding. The commission wanted the services to take a similar stand against racial discrimination in the community. Although its specific recommendations differed little from those of civil rights leaders, its position as an independent federal agency and its access to the news media added a constant and special pressure on the services.[20-26]
[Footnote 20-25: See, for example, Ltr, Chmn, Commission on Civil Rights, to SecDef, 26 Mar 62; Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et al., 7 May 62, sub: Survey, United States Commission on Civil Rights; Memo, Under SecNav for ASD (M), 25 May 62, sub: United States Commission on Civil Rights Survey of the Department of Defense; Ltr, Yarmolinsky to Berl I. Bernhard, Staff Dir, U.S. Comm on Civil Rights, 14 Nov 62; Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et al., 31 May 61; Ltr, Bernhard to Runge, 6 Jul 61; Ltr Runge to Bernhard, 17 Jul 61. Copies of all in CMH.]
[Footnote 20-26: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, "The Services and Their Relations With the Community," 17 Jun 63.]
Another pressure on the armed forces in the early sixties was exerted by the civil rights bureaucracy in the White House itself. Various presidential assistants subjected the services' reports on progress in the equal opportunity field to unprecedented scrutiny, asking questions that forced the Defense Department to explain or justify its racial policies and practices.[20-27] In March 1961, civil rights assistants on the President's staff inquired about the number of (p. 508) Negroes on the Defense Department's military and civilian screening boards.[20-28] Later, Special Assistant Frank D. Reeves inquired about the employees working in the executive area of the department and suggested that the front offices do something about hiring more black office workers.[20-29] And again as a result of a number of questions raised about the Navy's race policy, presidential assistant Wofford sponsored a White House meeting on 18 September 1961 for several civil rights representatives and Adam Yarmolinsky, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, with the Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Adm. William R. Smedberg. Beginning with Yarmolinsky's probing questions concerning the perennial problem of racial composition of the Steward's Branch, the meeting evolved into a general review of the Navy's recent problems and achievements in race relations.[20-30]
[Footnote 20-27: For examples of DOD reports submitted to the White House on this subject, see Memo, ASD (M) for Harris Wofford, 15 Nov 61, and idem for Frank D. Reeves, Spec Asst to President, 29 Jun 61. For examples of White House interest in these reports, see James C. Evans, OASD (M), Notes on Civil Rights Subcabinet Group Meeting, 2 Feb and 2 Mar 62. All in ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-28: Memo, Yarmolinsky for Runge, 13 May 61; Memo, ASD (M) for SA et al., 16 Mar 61, sub: Personnel Screening Boards; both in ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-29: Memo, Frank D. Reeves, Spec Asst to President, for SecDef, Attn: Adam Yarmolinsky, 19 Apr 61, copy in CMH.]
[Footnote 20-30: Ltr, Harris Wofford to ASD (M), 18 Sep 61; Memo for Rcd, James C. Evans, 25 Sep 61, sub: Negro Naval Personnel; Informal Memo, Evans for Runge, 22 Sep 61, same sub. All in ASD (M) 291.2.]
At times this White House scrutiny could be aggressively critical. There was, for example, small comfort for Defense Department officials in Dutton's review of department comments on the recommendations of the Civil Rights Leadership Conference submitted to the White House in August 1961.[20-31] Dutton wanted to know more about the department's inquiry into possible racial discrimination in the sentences meted out by military courts. He was concerned with the allegation, categorically denied by the Defense Department, that black servicemen with school-aged dependents were being moved off bases to avoid integrating base schools. He wanted a prompt investigation. Dutton was impatient with the Navy's explanation for the continuing predominance of Negroes in the Steward's Branch, and he was especially critical of the racial situation in the National Guard. He wanted a progress report on these points. Finally, he was unhappy with the lack of Negroes in officer training, an executive area, he claimed, in which civilian agencies were forging ahead. He wanted something done about that also.[20-32]
[Footnote 20-31: Composed of representatives of some fifty civil rights groups under the chairmanship of Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights presented to President Kennedy a list of proposals for executive action to end federally supported segregation. See U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Freedom to the Free, p. 129.]
[Footnote 20-32: Memo, Dutton for Yarmolinsky, 26 Oct 61, copy in ASD (M) 291.2 (22 May 61).]
The disquietude White House staff members produced among Defense Department officials was nothing compared to the trauma induced by the President's personal attention. John Kennedy rarely intervened but he did so on occasion quickly and decisively and in a way illustrative of his administration's civil rights style. He acted promptly, for example, when he noticed an all-white unit from the Coast Guard Academy marching in his inaugural parade. His call to the Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon on inauguration night led to the admission of the first black students to the Coast Guard Academy. He elaborated on the incident during his first cabinet meeting, asking each (p. 509) department head to analyze the minority employment situation in his own department. He was also upset to see "few, if any" black honor guardsmen in the units that greeted visiting Ghanian President Kwame Nkrumah on 13 March, an observation not lost on Secretary McNamara. "Would it be possible," the new defense chief asked his manpower assistant, "to introduce into these units a reasonable number of negro personnel?"[20-33] An immediate survey revealed that Negroes accounted for 14 percent of the Air Force honor unit, 8 percent of the Army's, and 2.2 percent of the Marines Corps'. The 100-man naval unit had no black members.[20-34]
[Footnote 20-33: Memo, SecDef for ASD (M), 13 Mar 61, ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-34: Memo, ASD (M) for SecDef, 14 Mac 61, sub: Ceremonial Units and Honor Guard Details, ASD (M) 291.2.]
These were minor incidents, yet Kennedy's interest was bound to make a difference. As Evans wryly put it in regard to the survey of blacks in the honor guard: "Pending any further instructions it is submitted that the alert which has been given in person and by telephone in connection with the securing of the above data may be adequate for accomplishing the objectives contemplated in the [McNamara] (p. 510) memorandum."[20-35] If not conducive to substantive change in the lot of the black serviceman, the President's intervention signaled in a way clearly understood by Washington bureaucrats that a new style in executive politics was at hand and a new awareness of the racial implications of their actions was expected of them.[20-36]
[Footnote 20-35: Informal Memo, Evans for Judge Jackson, 14 Mar 61, sub: Ceremonial Units and Honor Guard Details. Remark repeated by ASD (M) in his Memo for SecDef, 14 Mar 61, same sub. Both in ASD (M) files.]
[Footnote 20-36: The Coast Guard incident in particular seems to have impressed Washington. It was cited by Mitchell, Wilkins, and Hesburgh during their oral history interviews at the J. F. Kennedy Library, and it continued to be discussed for some time after the inauguration in official channels. See, for example, Memos, Frederick Dutton for Secy of Treas, 21 Mar 61, sub: Coast Guard Academy, and Theodore Eliot (Spec Asst to Secy of Treas) for Richard N. Goodwin (Asst Spec Counsel to President), 25 Jun 61, sub: Negro in the Coast Guard, with attached note, Dick [Goodwin] to President; Ltr, Asst Secy of Treas to Tim Reardon, 31 Jan 62. All in White House Gen files, J. F. Kennedy Library. The Coast Guard, it should be recalled, was not part of the Department of Defense in 1961.]
The Department of Defense, 1961-1963
The White House approach to civil rights matters was faithfully adopted in McNamara's department. Despite a reputation for foot-dragging in some quarters--Deputy Secretary Roswell L. Gilpatric admitted that neither he nor McNamara was especially interested in personnel matters and that some of their early appointments in the personnel field were inappropriate--[20-37]the secretary and his assistants issued a spate of directives and policy memorandums and inaugurated a whole series of surveys and investigations. Yarmolinsky was later able to recall eleven major papers produced by the secretary's office during the first thirty months of McNamara's incumbency. Evans's more comprehensive list of actions taken by the office of the secretary's manpower assistant with regard to equal opportunity contained some forty items.[20-38] These totals did not include 1,717 racial complaints the Defense Department investigated and adjudicated before September 1963 nor the scores of contract compliance reviews conducted under the equal opportunity clauses in defense contracts.[20-39]
[Footnote 20-37: Interv, Dennis O'Brien with Roswell L. Gilpatric, 5 May 70, in J. F. Kennedy Library; see also Interv, Bernhard with Wofford.]
[Footnote 20-38: Memo, Spec Asst to SecDef for Paul Southwick, White House, 22 Oct 63; James C. Evans, "Equality of Opportunity in the Armed Forces, A Summary Report on Actions and Contributions of the ASD (M), January 1961-July 1962"; copies of both in CMH.]
[Footnote 20-39: Although it did not directly affect black servicemen, the contract compliance program deserves mention as a field in which the Department of Defense pioneered for the federal government. During the Kennedy administration the department hired hundreds of contract compliance officers to scrutinize its vast purchasing program, insuring compliance with Executive Order 10925. See Ltr, Adam Yarmolinsky to author, 22 Nov 74, CMH files.]
The number of Department of Defense rulings that pertained directly to black servicemen was matched by the comprehensiveness of their subject matter. Many concerned the recruitment of Negroes and the increase in their proportion of the military establishment. Others pertained to off-base matters, ranging from prohibitions against the use of segregated facilities during field exercises to the use of military units in ceremonies and shows involving segregated audiences. Continued segregation in the reserves, the racial policies of the United Services Organization, and even the racial rule of (p. 511) morticians who dealt with the services came in for attention.
Yet if these investigations and directives bespoke a quickened tempo in the fight for equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, they did not herald a substantive reinterpretation of policy. The Defense Department continued to limit its actions to matters obviously and directly within its purview. The same self-imposed restriction that kept McNamara's immediate predecessors from dealing with the most pressing demands for reforms by black servicemen and the civil rights leaders continued to be observed. This fact was especially clear in the case of the Defense Department's four major policy pronouncements involving the complex problem of discrimination visited upon servicemen and their dependents outside the gates of the military reservation.
Discrimination Off the Military Reservation
In the first of these directives, which was derived from President Kennedy's executive order on equal employment opportunity,[20-40] Secretary McNamara laid down that no departmental facility could be used by employee recreational organizations that practiced racial or religious discrimination. Included were facilities financed from nonappropriated funds as well as all organizations to which civilian as well as military personnel belonged.[20-41] A straightforward enough commitment to a necessary racial reform, the secretary's order could by logical extension also be viewed as carrying the department's fight against racial discrimination into the civilian community. Yet precisely because of these implications, the directive was subjected to later clarification. Official interpretation revealed that secretarial rhetoric aside, the Department of Defense was not yet ready to involve civilians in its equality crusade.
[Footnote 20-40: The Office of the Secretary of Defense also issued several other statements implementing sections of Executive Order 10925; see DOD Dir 1125.4, 2 Jan 62, and OSD Admin Instr No. 31, 13 July 62, both in SD files.]
[Footnote 20-41: Memo, SecDef for Secys of Military Departments et al., 28 Apr 61, sub: Military and Civilian Employee Recreational Organizations, copy in ASD (M) 291.2.]
The problem emerged when the commander of Maxwell Air Force Base, in keeping with his reading of the McNamara order, prohibited the use of Maxwell's dining halls for a segregated luncheon of the American Legion's Boys' State and its playing fields for the segregated Maxwell Little League teams. Assistant Secretary Runge quickly reassured Senator Lister Hill of Alabama that the 28 April order was limited to employee organizations and so informed the Under Secretary of the Air Force.[20-42] But a further clarification and, in effect, a further restriction of the department's policy in discrimination cases was issued when the Civil Rights Commission became interested in the case. "If these activities are not covered by the April 28 directive," the commission's staff director-designate wanted to know, "what is the position of the Department of Defense on them?"[20-43] Runge's (p. 512) response, cleared through Special Assistant Yarmolinsky, was hardly reassuring to the commission. The department did not inquire into the racial rules of private organizations that used departmental facilities, Runge explained, nor did it object when its departmentally sponsored teams and groups played or performed with segregated private recreational groups.[20-44]
[Footnote 20-42: Ltr, Runge to Hill, 14 Jun 61; Memo, Runge for Under SecAF, 28 Jan 61, sub: Military and Civilian Employee Recreational Organizations both in ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-43: Ltr, Bernhard to Runge, 6 Jul 61, ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-44: Ltr, Runge to Bernhard, 17 Jul 61, with attached Handwritten Note, signed SSJ [Stephen Jackson], 13 Jul 61, ASD (M) 291.2.]
With the effect of a stone dropped into water, the implications of the anti-discrimination memorandum continued to ripple outward. The commander of Brookley Air Force Base, Alabama, canceled the sale of subsidized tickets to the Mobile Bears baseball games by the base's civilian welfare council on the grounds that the ball park's segregated seating of Air Force personnel violated the secretary's order. Inquiries from Capitol Hill set off another round of clarifications.[20-45] While the secretary's manpower advisers were inclined to support the base commander's action, some of the department's legal advisers had reservations. Canceling the sale of tickets, a lawyer in the general counsel's office noted, was consistent with one construction of the secretary's memorandum but was not the "inevitable interpretation" since it was the ball club and not the Air Force recreational organization that discriminated.[20-46] Another departmental lawyer warned that if the commander's interpretation was sustained the department would next have to prohibit welfare groups from selling unsubsidized tickets to events where the seating or even perhaps the performers themselves were segregated.[20-47]
[Footnote 20-45: Ltr, Hill to Runge, 26 Jul 61; Memo, ASD (M) for SecAF, 25 Sep 61, sub: Purchase and Sale of Baseball Tickets at Brookley AFB; both in ASD (M) 353.8.]
[Footnote 20-46: Memo, R.C. Gilliat for Bartimo, 31 Jul 61, attached to Draft Ltr, Runge to Hill, ASD (M) 353.8.]
[Footnote 20-47: Memo, RTA [Robert T. Andrews] for FAB [Frank A. Bartimo], 1 Aug 61, ASD (M) 353.8.]
Yarmolinsky ignored such speculations, and on 4 August 1961 informed special presidential assistant Dutton that the secretary's office approved the base commander's action. Although the sale of tickets did not technically violate Executive Order 10925, the department's sponsorship and subsidy of segregated events, he said, "is, in our opinion, not consonant with the clear intent of the President's memorandum."[20-48] Yarmolinsky suggested the White House might want to consider proposing to the ball club that the air base would resume the sale of tickets if it could sell a block of unsegregated seats. The White House reply was postponed until after the passage of the foreign aid bill, but the Air Force eventually received notice to proceed along these lines.[20-49]
[Footnote 20-48: Memo, Yarmolinsky for Dutton, 4 Aug 61, sub: President's Memorandum of 18 April 1961, ASD (M) 291.2 (22 May 61).]
[Footnote 20-49: Note, signed, "MB," 16 Aug 61, sub: Call From Virginia McGuire, attached to Draft Ltr, ASD (M) to Sen. Hill; Memo, ASD (M) for SecAF, 25 Sep 61, sub: Purchase and Sale of Baseball Tickets at Brookley AFB; both in ASD (M) 291.2 (22 May 61).]
On 19 June 1961 Deputy Secretary Gilpatric issued a second major policy statement. This one ostensibly dealt with the availability of integrated community facilities for servicemen, but was in fact far wider in scope, and brought the department nearer the uncharted (p. 513) shoals of community race relations. A testament to the extraordinary political sensitivity of the subject was the long time the document spent in the drafting stage. Its wording incorporated the suggestions of representatives of the three service secretaries and was carefully reviewed by the President's civil rights advisers, who wanted the draft shown to the President "because of his particular interest in Civil Rights matters."[20-50] With their request in mind, and because of what he considered "the tense situation now existent in the South," Runge urged the secretary to send the President the memorandum. Before doing so McNamara asked his general counsel, Cyrus R. Vance, to discuss the draft with the under secretaries of the services and Assistant Attorney General Nicholas B. Katzenbach and Burke Marshall. At the suggestion of the justice officials, the draft was slightly revised; then it was sent once again to the services for review. Finally on 19 June 1961, and only after Yarmolinsky had rejected certain minor alterations suggested by the services, was the memorandum issued under Gilpatric's signature and its provisions passed down to the local commanders by the service secretaries.[20-51]
[Footnote 20-50: Memo, ASD (M) for SecDef, 22 May 61, sub: Availability of Facilities to Military Personnel, ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-51: Memo, Dep SecDef for Service Secys, 19 Jun 61, sub: Availability of Facilities to Military Personnel, SD 291.2. For various comments on the draft memo, see the following Memos: Vance and Runge for SecDef, 5 Jun 61; ASD (M) for Dep SecDef, 16 Jun 51, sub: Availability of Facilities to Military Personnel; Dep SecDef for Service Secys, 5 Jun 61, same sub; SecAF for Dep SecDef, 13 Jun 61, same sub. All in ASD (M) 291.2 (22 May 61).]
The policy that emerged from all this careful labor committed the services to very little change. In the first place the title, The Availability of Facilities to Military Personnel, was vague, a legacy of the department's fear of congressional retaliation for any substantive move in the politically sensitive area of race relations. Actually the secretary's office was primarily concerned with discrimination in places of public accommodation such as swimming pools, recreational facilities, meeting halls, and the like while the explosive subject of off-base housing was ignored. Although the order's ambiguity did not preclude initiatives in the housing field by some zealous commanders, neither did it oblige any commander to take any specific action, thus providing a convenient excuse for no action at all.[20-52] Commanders, for example, were ordered to provide integrated facilities off post for servicemen "to the extent possible," a significant qualification in areas where such facilities were not available in the community. Commanders were also "expected to make every effort" to obtain integrated facilities off base through the good offices of their command-community relations committees. In effect the department was asking its commanders to achieve through tact what the courts and the Justice Department were failing to achieve through legal process.
[Footnote 20-52: Interv, author with James C. Evans, 15 Nov 72, CMH files.]
Where the order was specific, it carefully limited the extent of reforms. It barred the use of military police in the enforcement of local segregation laws, a positive step but a limited reform since only in very rare instances had military police ever been so employed. The order also provided "as circumstances warranted" for legal assistance to servicemen to insure that they were afforded due process of law in cases growing out of the enforcement of local (p. 514) segregation ordinances. Again what seemed a broad commitment and extensive interference with local matters was in practice very carefully circumscribed, as demonstrated by the Air Force policy statement issued in the wake of the secretary's order.
The Air Force announced that in the case of discrimination in the community, the local Air Force commander and his staff judge advocate would interview the aggrieved serviceman to ascertain the facts and advise him of his legal recourses, "but will neither encourage nor discourage the filing of a criminal complaint." The purpose of the policy, the Air Force Chief of Staff explained, was to assist servicemen and at the same time avoid disrupting good community relations. The commander should remain interested, but he should leave the work to his judge advocate so that the commander would not personally be "caught in the middle" to the detriment of his community relations program. If local authorities refused to cooperate, the matter should be referred to higher authority who might pursue it with local government officials. Such procedures might keep the commander from becoming embroiled in locally sensitive issues.[20-53] In short, discrimination was to be fought through voluntary action at the local command level, but nothing was to be done that might compromise the commander's standing with the local authorities.
[Footnote 20-53: Memo, Maj Gen Albert M. Kuhfeld, USAFJAG (for CofSAF), for ALMAJCOM (SJA), 2 Feb 62, sub: Air Force Policy Statement Concerning Violations of Anti-Discrimination Law, and attached Memo, Dep CofS, Pers, for ALMAJCOM, 30 Jan 62, same sub, SecAF files.]
McNamara's office displayed the same good intentions and crippling inhibitions when it considered policy on the participation of servicemen in civil rights demonstrations. The secretary had inherited a policy from his predecessor who, in the wake of a series of sit-in demonstrations involving black airmen in the spring of 1960, had approved a plan devised by the judge advocate generals of the services and other Defense Department officials. Declaring such activity "inappropriate" in light of the services' mission, these officials banned the participation of servicemen in civil rights demonstrations and gave local commanders broad discretionary powers to prevent such participation, including the right to declare the place of demonstration off limits or to restrict servicemen to the base. Although all the services adopted the new policy, only the Air Force published detailed instructions.[20-54]
[Footnote 20-54: Memo for Rcd, ASD (P), 23 Mar 60; Memo, Dep Chief, NavPers, for Asst SecNav (Pers and Reserve Forces), 23 Mar 60, sub: Considerations Relative to Department of Defense Policy Concerning Disputes Over Local Laws or Customs; copies of both in ASD (M) 291.2. For the Air Force instructions, see Memo, AF Dep CofS (P) for All Major Cmdrs, 30 Mar 60, sub: Air Force Policy Statement Concerning Involvement of Air Force Personnel in Local Civil Disturbances, SecAF files.]
This prohibition did not deter all black servicemen, and some commanders, in their zeal to enforce departmental policy, went beyond the methods McNamara's predecessor had recommended. Such was the case during a series of sit-ins at Killeen, Texas, near the Army's Fort Hood, where, as reported in the national press and subsequently investigated by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the commander used military police to break up two demonstrations.[20-55] The secretary's office reacted quickly to the incidents. A (p. 515) prohibition against the use of military police to quell civil rights demonstrations was quickly included in the secretary's policy statement, The Availability of Facilities to Military Personnel, then being formulated. "This memorandum," Assistant Secretary Runge assured McNamara, "should preclude any further such incidents."[20-56] In specific reference to the situation in the Fort Hood area, the Deputy Under Secretary of the Army reported that as a result of a new policy and the emphasis placed on personal contact by commanders with local community representatives, "a cordial relationship now exists between Fort Hood and the surrounding communities."[20-57]
[Footnote 20-55: Memo, ASD (M) for SecDef, 18 Jul 61, sub: Use of Military Police to Halt Sit-ins as Reported by Drew Pearson's Column of July 19 in the Washington Post; Ltr, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Staff Dir Designate to ASD (M), 26 Jul 61; both in ASD (M) 291.2. The President's office received considerable mail on the subject; see White House Cen files, J. F. Kennedy Library.]
[Footnote 20-56: Memo, ASD (M) for SecDef, 18 Jul 61, sub: Use of Military Police..., ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-57: Memo, Dep Under SA for Counselor, OASD (M), 12 Jan 62, sub: Off-Base Racial Discrimination in the Fort Hood Area, ASD (M) 291.2.]
But to ban the use of military police and to urge commanders to deal with local business leaders to end segregation actually begged the question. Significantly, the much-heralded memorandum on the availability of integrated facilities failed to review the rules governing participation in demonstrations, a subject of pressing interest to an increasing number of Negroes as the civil rights struggle moved into a more active phase. Bothered by this failure, Air Force representatives on the policy drafting team had wanted to provide local commanders with guidance before civil rights incidents occurred. The justice officials who reviewed the memorandum at McNamara's invitation, however, were reluctant to see specific reference to such incidents incorporated, and the matter was ignored.[20-58]
[Footnote 20-58: Memo, Vance and Runge for SecDef, 5 Jun 61, ASD (M) 291.2.]
In fact, justice officials were not the only ones reluctant to see the issue raised. It was a common belief in the Defense Department that military service placed some limitations on a man's basic liberties. Because servicemen were assigned to their duty station, subject to immediate transfers and on duty twenty-four hours a day, they were allowed no opportunity for participating in demonstrations.[20-59] The department's general counsel was even more specific, saying that a prohibition against picketing would not conflict with the department's anti-discrimination policies and could be lawfully imposed by the services. "Indeed," he believed, "the role of the military establishment in our society required the imposition of such a limitation on the off-duty activities of service personnel."[20-60] Blessed by such authority, the 1960 prohibition against participation in civil rights demonstrations remained in effect for more than three years.[20-61]
[Footnote 20-59: Ltr, ASD (M) to John de J. Pemberton, Jr., Exec Dir, American Civil Liberties Union, 31 Jul 63; Memos for Rcd, OSD Counselor, 26 Apr 61 and 9 Jul 63. All in ASD (M) 291.2 (16 Jul 63).]
[Footnote 20-60: Memo, General Counsel for ASD (M), 15 Jun 62, sub: Picketing by Members of the Armed Forces, copy in CMH.]
[Footnote 20-61: See Memo, James P. Goode, Office of SecAF, for Stephen Jackson and Carlisle Runge, attached to Memo, AF Dep CofS (P) for All Major Cmdrs, 30 Mar 60, sub: Air Force Policy Statement Concerning Involvement of Air Force Personnel in Local Civil Disturbances, SecAF files; Ltr, Under SecNav to Jesse H. Turner, 6 Oct 61, copy in CMH. See also Ltr, Adam Yarmolinsky to Adam C. Powell, 30 Oct 63, SD 291.2 (14 Jul 63).]
Such restrictions could not last much longer. Given the civil (p. 516) rights temper of the times--1963 witnessed the mammoth march on Washington, the introduction of President Kennedy's civil rights bill, and the landmark directive of the Secretary of Defense on equal opportunity in the armed forces--a total prohibition on servicemen's participation in demonstrations appeared more and more incongruous. Finally, on 16 July 1963, McNamara relaxed the department's policy. Still declaring such participation inappropriate and unnecessary for servicemen in view of their "special obligations of citizenship," he nevertheless lifted the ban on military participation in demonstrations, provided that the uniform was not worn; such activity took place during off-duty hours, off the military reservation, and did not constitute a breach of law and order; and no violence was reasonably likely to result.[20-62]
[Footnote 20-62: Memo, SecDef for Secys of Mil Depts et al., 16 Jul 63, SD files; see also New York Times, July 16, 17, 20, 22, 28, and 30, 1963.]
Again an apparent liberalization of departmental racial policy actually promised very little change. First, the continuing prohibitions on participation in demonstrations were so broad and so vague that they could be interpreted to cover almost any civil rights activity. Then, too, the secretary left the interpretation of his order to the judgment of local commanders, a dubious blessing in the eyes of the civil libertarians and concerned servicemen in light of the narrow constructions commanders had given recent Defense Department memorandums. Finally, the relaxation of the ban was applicable only to the continental United States. In response to a request for guidance from the European commander, the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed all overseas commanders that as guests of Allied nations, U.S. servicemen had no right to picket, demonstrate, or otherwise participate in any act designed to "alter the policies, practices, or activities of the local inhabitants who are operating within the framework of their own laws."[20-63]
[Footnote 20-63: Msg, USCINCEUR to JCS, 201256Z Aug 63; Msg, JCS 2190 to CINSCO et al. (info copies to Service Chiefs of Staff, CINCAL, ASD [M], and ASD [PA]), 221630Z Aug 63.]
The fourth major memorandum on racial matters outlined the department's application of Executive Order 11063 on housing. Racial discrimination in off-base housing had become perhaps the chief complaint of black servicemen who were further incensed by many (p. 517) local commanders who maintained lists of segregated houses in their base housing offices. In some cases commanders referred their black servicemen to the Urban League or similar organizations for help in finding suitable housing.[20-64] Demands that the services do something about the situation were rebuffed. As the Assistant Secretary of Defense explained to a White House official, the Department of Defense had "virtually no direct involvement" in off-base housing, the segregation of which was "not readily susceptible to change by actions that are within the control of the military departments."[20-65]
[Footnote 20-64: Omaha World Herald, August 17, 1962; see also Memo, Adam [Yarmolinsky] for L. White, 7 Sep 62, Lee White Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]
[Footnote 20-65: Memo, ASD (M) for Asst Legal Counsel to President, 7 Nov 61, sub: Racial Discrimination in the Armed Services, ASD (M) 291.2.]
Several of McNamara's assistants disagreed. They drafted a housing order for the secretary but not without opposition at first from some of their colleagues. An Army representative, for example, suggested a counterproposal that commanders be ordered to work through the federal agencies established in various geographical areas of the country by Executive Order 11063. An Air Force spokesman recommended the creation of special regional and local community committees, chaired by representatives of the Housing and Home Finance Agency and including members from all major federal agencies. For his part, Stephen S. Jackson, a special assistant in the manpower office, thought these service proposals had merit, and he wanted to postpone action until they had been discussed with other interested federal agencies.[20-66]
[Footnote 20-66: Memo, Jackson for Dep ASD, Family Housing-OASD (I&L), 8 Feb 63, sub: Implementation of EX 11063, Equal Opportunity in Housing, copy in CMH.]
McNamara, however, "readily agreed" with his housing experts that a letter on nondiscrimination in family housing was necessary. On 8 March 1963 he informed the service secretaries that effective immediately all military leases for family housing, that is, contracts for private housing rented by the services for servicemen, would contain a nondiscrimination clause in accordance with the President's executive order. He also ordered military bases to maintain listings only on nonsegregated private housing.[20-67] Again an attempt to bring about a needed change was severely limited in effectiveness by the department's concern for the scope of the commander's authority in the local community. The application of the President's order would end segregation in leased housing, but only a small percentage of black servicemen lived in such housing. The majority of service families lived off base in private housing, which the new order, except for banning the listing of segregated properties by base housing offices, ignored. Barring the use of segregated private housing to all servicemen, a more direct method of changing the racial pattern surrounding military installations, would have to wait for a substantive change in departmental thinking.
[Footnote 20-67: Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 8 Mar 63, sub: Non-Discrimination in Family Housing; Memo, ASD (I&L) for Dep ASD (Family Housing), 8 Mar 63; copies of both in ASD (M) 291.2. The quote is from the latter document.]
Reserves and Regulars: A Comparison
While the interest of both civil rights advocates and defense officials was focused on off-base concerns during the early 1960's, discrimination continued to linger in the armed forces. A (p. 518) particularly sensitive issue to the services, which in the public mind had complete jurisdiction over all men in uniform, was the position of the Negro in the reserve components. To generalize on the racial policies of the fifty-four National Guard organizations is difficult, but whereas some state guards had been a progressive force in the integration of the services in the early postwar period, others had become symbols of racism by 1961. Some fourteen years after the Truman order, ten states with large black populations and understaffed guard units still had no Negroes in the guard. The Kennedy administration was not the first to wrestle with the problem of applying a single racial policy to both the regulars and the guard. It was aware that too much tampering with the politically influential and volatile guard could produce an explosion. At the same time any appearance of timidity courted antagonism from another quarter.
From the beginning the new administration found itself criticized by civil rights organizations, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, for not moving quickly against segregated National Guard units.[20-68] A delegation from the NAACP's 1961 convention visited Assistant Secretary Runge in July and criticized--to the exclusion of all other subjects--discrimination in the National Guard. This group wanted the federal government to withhold funds from states that continued to bar black participation. Repeating the old claim that special federal-state relationships precluded direct action by the Secretary of Defense, Runge nevertheless promised the delegates a renewed effort to provide equal opportunity. He also made a somewhat irrelevant reference to the recent experience of a black citizen in Oklahoma who had secured admission to the state guard by a direct appeal to the governor.[20-69] How futile such appeals would be in some states was demonstrated a week later when the Adjutant General of Florida declared that since the guard was a volunteer organization and his state had always drawn its members from among white citizens, Florida was under no obligation to enlist black men.[20-70]
[Footnote 20-68: See petitions signed by thousands of Negroes to the President demanding redress of grievances against the discriminatory practices of the National Guard, in White House Cen files, 1962, J. F. Kennedy Library.]
[Footnote 20-69: Memo for Rcd, James C. Evans, OASD (M), 17 Jul 61, sub: Mr. Runge Receives NAACP Delegation, ASD (M) 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-70: Washington Post, July 28, 1961.]
That the new administration had quietly adopted different policies toward the guard and the regular forces was confirmed when Runge responded to a report prepared by the American Veterans Committee on the lack of racial progress in the guard. The veterans group called on the administration to use the threat of withdrawal of federal recognition to alter guard practices.[20-71] The administration refused. A policy of force might be acceptable for the active armed forces, but voluntary persuasion seemed more appropriate for the National Guard. Enunciating what would become the Defense Department's position on the National Guard through 1963, Runge declared that the federal government had no legal authority to force integration on the guard when it was not serving in a federal status. Furthermore, (p. 519) withdrawal of federal recognition or withholding federal funds as a means of bringing about integration, though legally sound, would cause some states to reject federal support and inactivate their units, thereby stripping the country of a portion of its military reserve and damaging national security. Citing the progress being made by persuasion, Runge predicted that some recalcitrant states might in time voluntarily move toward integration.[20-72] Noting instances of recent progress and citing legal restrictions against forcing state compliance, McNamara endorsed the policy of encouraging voluntary compliance.[20-73]
[Footnote 20-71: Ltr, Murray Gross, Chmn of the AVC, to SecDef, 22 Jun 61, SD 291.2. The report on the integration of the National Guard was inclosed.]
[Footnote 20-72: Ltrs, Runge to Murray Gross, 19 Jul and 29 Nov 61, ASD (M) 291.2, and n.d. (ca. Nov 61), copy in Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]
[Footnote 20-73: Ltr, SecDef to Rep. Carl Vinson of Georgia, Chmn, House Armed Services Cmte, 5 Aug 61, reprinted in Appendix to Congressional Record, 87th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 107, p. A6589.]
Although unauthorized, similar patterns of discrimination persisted in parts of the organized reserves. Reserve units had links with both the regular forces and the guard. Like the regulars, the reserve was legally a creature of the federal government and subject to policies established by the Secretary of Defense. Moreover, the reserve drew much of its manpower from the pool of soldiers separating from active duty with a reserve obligation still to fulfill, and within some limits the Defense Department could assign such men to units in a manner that could influence the reserve's racial composition. But like the guard, the reserve also had a distinct local flavor, serving almost as a social club in some parts of the country. This characteristic was often an important factor in maintaining a unit at satisfactory strength. Since segregation sometimes went hand in hand with the clublike atmosphere, the services feared that a strong stand on integration might cause a severe decline in the strength of some units.[20-74] When the Army staff reviewed the situation in 1956, therefore, it had not pressed for integration of all units, settling instead for merely "encouraging" commanders to open their units to Negroes.[20-75]
[Footnote 20-74: ACofS (Reserve Components) Summary Sheet, 11 Feb 57, sub: Race Issue in Armory Debate, copy in DCSPER 291.2.]
[Footnote 20-75: DCSPER Summary Sheet, 6 Apr 56, sub: Policy for Reserve Training Assignments of Obligated Non-Caucasian Personnel of the Ready Reserve Who Reside in Segregated Areas, DCSPER 291.2.]
The move toward complete integration of the reserves was slow. In 1956, for example, more than 75 percent of the Army's reserve units in southern states were still segregated. The other services followed a similar pattern; in 1962 more than 40 percent of all reserve units in the country were white; the Army retained six all-black reserve units as well. Racial exclusion persisted in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps also, although here the fault was probably not so much a matter of reserve policy as the lingering segregation pattern in some state school systems. At the same time, the reserves had more blacks in nondrill status than in drill status. In other words, more blacks were in reserve pools where, unassigned to specific units, they did not participate in active duty training. In 1962, some 75 percent of the black reservists in the Army and Air Force, 85 percent in the Navy, and 38 percent in the Marine Corps were assigned to such pools. For many reservists, paid drill status was desirable; apart from the money received for such active duty, they had the opportunity to gain (p. 520) credit toward retirement and pensions.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric reminded the services in April 1962 that the Truman order applied to the reserves and called on the under secretaries to integrate the all-black and all-white units "as rapidly as is consistent with military effectiveness."[20-76] He also wanted a review of black assignments for the purpose of removing the disproportionate number of Negroes in pools "consistent with the military requirements and the skills of the personnel involved."
[Footnote 20-76: Memo, Dep SecDef for Under Secys, 3 Apr 62, sub: Compliance With E.O. 9981 in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps Reserves, in SD files. The secretary's memo was distributed to the commands; see, for example, Memo, TAG for CINCARPAC et al., 15 May 62 (TAG 291.2/15 May 62).]
A defense manpower team surveyed the reserves in November 1962. It tried to soften the obvious implication of its racial statistics by pointing out that the all-black units were limited to two Army areas, and action had already been taken by the Third Army and Fourth Army commanders to integrate the six units as soon as possible. The team also announced initiation of a series of administrative safeguards against discrimination in the enlistment and assignment of men to drilling units. As for the all-white units, the reviewers cautioned that discrimination was not necessarily involved since Negroes constituted a relatively small proportion of the strength of the reserves--4.8 percent of the Army, 4.4 percent of the Air Force, and an estimated 3.2 percent of the Navy. Furthermore, the data neither proved nor disproved allegations of discrimination since the degree to which individuals volunteered, the skills and aptitudes they possessed, and the needs of the services were all factors in the assignment and use of the men involved.[20-77]
[Footnote 20-77: Office of the ASD (M), Review of Compliance With E.O. 9981 in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps Reserves, 7 Nov 62, copy in CMH.]
Pleas of an absence of legal authority in regard to the National Guard and generalized promises of racial reform in the reserves were not going to still the complaints of the civil rights organizations nor discourage the interest of their allies in the administration. Clearly, the Department of Defense would be hearing more about race in the reserve components in the months to come.
The sudden reemergence in the early 1960's of complaints of discrimination in the regular forces centered around a familiar litany: the number of Negroes in some of the services still fell significantly short of the black percentage of the national population; and separate standards, favorable to whites, prevailed in the promotion and assignment systems of all the services. There had to be some discrimination involved, Congressman Diggs pointed out to the Secretary of the Air Force in July 1960. With extensive help from the services, Diggs had been investigating servicemen's complaints for some time. While his major concern remained the discrimination suffered by black servicemen off base, he nevertheless concluded that the service regulations developed in consultation with the Fahy Committee more than a decade earlier had not been fully implemented and discriminatory practices existed "in varying degrees" at (p. 521) military installations around the world. Diggs admitted that a black serviceman might well charge discrimination to mask his failure to compete successfully for a job or grade, but to accept such failures as a universal explanation for the disproportionate number of Negroes in the lower ranks and undesirable occupations was to accept as true the canard that Negroes as a group were deficient. Diggs's conclusion, which he pressed upon the department with some notice in the press, was that some black servicemen were being subtly but deliberately and arbitrarily restricted to inferior positions because their military superiors exercised judgments based on racial considerations. These judgments, he charged, were inconsistent with the spirit of the Truman order.[20-78]
[Footnote 20-78: Ltr, Diggs to SecAF, 7 Jul 60; see also Memo, Dir, AF Legis Liaison, for Spec Asst for Manpower, Personnel, and Reserve Forces, USAF, 14 Jul 60, with attached Summary of Findings and Highlights of the Diggs Report Concerning Alleged Discriminatory Practices in the Armed Forces; both in SecAF files.]
At first glance the 1963 study of racial discrimination by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights seemed to contradict Diggs's charges. The commission concluded that taken as a whole the status of black servicemen had improved considerably since the Truman order. It noted that black representation had remained relatively constant since the early days of integration, 8.2 percent of the total, 9.2 percent of the enlisted strength, and approached national population averages. The percentage of black officers, 1.6 percent of all officers, while admittedly low, had been rising steadily and compared favorably with the number of black executives in the civilian economy. The occupational status of the black enlisted man had also undergone steady improvement since the early days of integration, especially when one compared the number and variety of military occupation specialties held by black servicemen with opportunities in the rest of the civil service and the business community.
Finally, and perhaps most important, the commission found that in their daily operations, military installations were "generally free from the taint of racial discrimination."[20-79] It confirmed the general assessments of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Veterans Committee among others, pointing out that black and white servicemen not only worked side by side, but also mingled in off-duty hours.[20-80] In sum, the study demonstrated general satisfaction with the racial situation on military bases. Its major concern, and indeed the major concern of Diggs and most black servicemen, remained the widespread discrimination prevailing against black servicemen in the local community.
[Footnote 20-79: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Civil Rights '63, pp. 173-85. The quotation is from page 185.]
[Footnote 20-80: See, for example, Morton Puner, "The Armed Forces: An Integration Success Story," Anti-Defamation League Bulletin, Nov 62, pp. 3, 7; and American Veterans Committee, "Audit of Negro Veterans and Servicemen," 1960.]
These important generalizations aside, the commission nevertheless offered impressive statistical support for some of Diggs's charges when it investigated the diverse and conflicting enlistment and assignment patterns of the different services. The Navy and Marine Corps came in for special criticism. Even when the complexities of mental aptitude requirements and use of draftees versus enlistees (p. 522) were discounted, the commission found that these two services consistently employed a significantly smaller percentage of Negroes than the Army and Air Force. A similar disparity existed in assignment procedures. The commission found that both services failed to match the record of the civilian economy in the use of Negroes in technical, mechanical, administrative, clerical, and craft fields. It suspected that the services' recruiting and testing methods intensified these differences and wondered whether they might not operate to exclude Negroes in some instances.
Despite general approval of conditions on the bases, the commission found what it called "vestiges of discrimination on some bases." It reported some segregated noncommissioned officer clubs, some segregated transportation of servicemen to the local community, and some discriminatory employment patterns in the hiring of civilians for post jobs. Partly the legacy of the old segregated services, this discrimination, the commission concluded, was to a greater extent the result of the intrusion of local civilian attitudes. The commission's attention to outside influences on attitudes at the base suggested that it found the villain of the Diggs investigation, the prejudiced military official, far too simplistic an explanation for what was in reality institutional racism, a complex mixture of sociological forces and military traditions acting on the services. The Department of Defense's manpower experts dwelt on these forces and traditions when they analyzed recruitment, promotion, and assignment trends for McNamara in 1963.[20-81]
[Footnote 20-81: Memo, DepASD (Special Studies and Requirements) for ASD (M), 16 Jul 63, with attachment, Utilization of Negroes in the Armed Forces, July 1963, copy in CMH. All the tables accompanying this discussion are from the preceding source, with the exception of Table 16, which is from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Policy Planning and Research, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Mar 64, p. 75, where it is reproduced from DOD sources.]
They found a general increase in black strength ratios between 1949 and 1962 (Table 13). They blamed the "selective" recruiting practices in vogue before the Truman order for the low enlistment ratios in 1949, just as they attributed the modest increases since that time to the effects of the services' equal treatment and opportunity programs. In the judgment of these analysts, racial differences in representation since the Truman order, and indeed most of the other discrepancies between black and white servicemen, could usually be explained by the sometimes sharp difference in aptitude test results (Table 14). A heritage of the Negro's limited, often segregated and inferior education and his economic and related (p. 523) environmental handicaps, low aptitude scores certainly explained the contrast in disqualification rates (Tables 15 and 16). By 1962 fully half of all Negroes--as compared to 8 percent of all whites--failed to qualify for service under minimum mental test standards. In some southern states, the draftee rejection rate for Negroes exceeded 80 percent.
Table 13--Black Strength in the Armed Forces for Selected Years (In Percentage)
Army Navy Marine Corps Air Force Enlisted Enlisted Enlisted Enlisted Year Men Officers Men Officers Men Officers Men Officers
1949 12.4 1.8 4.7 0.0 2.1 0.0 5.1 0.6 1954 13.7 3.0 3.6 0.1 6.5 0.1 8.6 1.1 1962 12.2 3.2 5.2 0.2 7.6 0.2 9.2 1.2
Table 14--Estimated Percentage Distribution of Draft-Age Males in U.S. Population by AFQT Groups (Based on Preinduction Examination, 1959-1962)
Group White Nonwhite I 11.8 0.3 II 31.3 2.6 III 31.9 15.0 IV 19.0 40.1 V 6.0 42.0
Table 15--Rate of Men Disqualified for Service in 1962 (In Percentage)
Cause White Nonwhite Medical and other 21.8 10.1 Mental test failure 8.4 50.6 Total 30.2 60.7
Table 16--Rejection Rates for Failure to Pass Armed Forces Mental Test, 1962
Failed Mental Test Number Area Examined Number Percent Grand total, Continental United States 286,152 64,536 22.6 Total, white 235,678 36,204 15.4 Total, black 50,474 28,332 56.1
First Army: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont
White 49,171 12,989 26.4 Black 7,937 3,976 50.1
Second Army: Delaware, Washington, D.C., Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia
White 48,641 5,888 12.1 Black 9,563 4,255 44.5
Third Army: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee
White 30,242 5,786 19.1 Black 20,343 13,772 67.7
Fourth Army: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas
White 15,048 2,039 13.5 Black 4,796 2,988 62.3
Fifth Army: Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming
White 51,117 4,495 8.9 Black 5,723 2,684 46.9
Sixth Army: Arizona, California, Idaho, 1 1 1 Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington
White 41,459 5,007 12.1 Black 2,112 657 31.1
This problem became critical for black enlistments in the mid-1950's when the services, with less need for new servicemen, raised the mental standards for enlistees, denying Group IV men the right to enlist. (An exception to this pattern was the Navy's decision to accept Group IV enlistments in 1956 and 1957 to replace post-Korean enlistment losses.) In terms of total black representation, however, the new mental standards made a lesser difference (Table 17). Denying Group IV men enlistment during the 1950's only increased their number in the draft pool, and when the Army stepped up draft inductions in the early 1960's the number of Group IV men in uniform, including Negroes, rapidly increased.
Table 17--Nonwhite Inductions and First Enlistments, Fiscal Years 1953-1962[1]
Fiscal | Total | Percent Nonwhite Year |Accessions| DOD| Army |Navy|Marine| Air | (000)[1] | |Inductees[2]|Enlistees| |Corps |Force
1953 886.1 12.8 14.7 13.4 4.3 8.0 11.1 1954 576.3 10.0 9.9 13.0 4.0 7.8 11.9 1955 622.6 10.6 8.8 12.7 9.0 5.4 13.5 1956 481.9 11.2 10.3 15.1 9.5 10.6 12.2 1957 456.7 9.1 10.8 9.3 3.6 9.5 9.7 1958 367.1 7.9 13.2 6.4 2.8 5.1 7.1 1959 392.0 7.1 10.4 8.1 2.4 5.0 6.5 1960 389.4 8.1 12.3 8.4 3.0 7.9 8.4 1961 394.7 8.2 14.4 8.2 2.9 5.9 9.5 1962 518.6 9.7 15.3 9.0 4.1 6.5 8.6 Total 5,085.4 9.9 12.3 10.3 4.9 7.4 10.4
[Tablenote 1: Includes inductions and male "non-prior service" enlistments into the Regular components.]
[Tablenote 2: The Army was the only service drafting men during this decade.]
While the Army's dependence on the draft, and thus Group IV men, explained part of the continuing high percentage of Negroes in that service, the Defense Department manpower group was at a loss to explain the notable variation in black enlistments among the services. All employed similar enlistment standards, yet during the period 1958--1960, for example, black enlistment in the Army and Air Force averaged 7 percent, the Marine Corps 6 percent, and the Navy 2.7 percent. Nor could the analysts isolate the factors contributing to the low officer ratios in all four services. Almost all military officers during the period under analysis were college graduates, Negroes comprised about 4 percent of all male college graduates, yet only the Army maintained a black officer ratio approaching that figure. (See Table 13.)
The inability of many black servicemen to score highly in the tests might also explain why training in some technical occupations continued more restricted for them (Tables 18 and 19). In (p. 524) contrast to ground combat and service occupations, which required little formal school training, some occupation groups--electronics, for example--had high selection standards. The Defense Department group admitted that occupations for blacks in the armed forces had also been influenced by historical patterns of segregated assignments to food service and other support occupations. Among men with twenty or more years in uniform, 40 percent of the blacks and 12 percent (p. 525) of the whites were assigned to service occupations. But this pattern was changing, the analysts pointed out. The reduction in the differential between whites and blacks in service occupations among more recent recruits clearly reflected the impact of policies designed to equalize opportunities (Table 20). These policies had brought (p. 526) about an increasing proportion of Negroes in white collar skills as well as in ground combat skills.
Table 18--Distribution of Enlisted Personnel in Each Major Occupation, 1956
Percentage Distribution by AFQT Groups Occupation I&II III IV
Electronics 60.3 31.4 8.3 Other technical 57.9 30.7 11.4 Admin. & clerical 51.5 37.4 11.1 Mechanics & repairmen 37.6 43.8 18.6 Crafts 30.0 44.1 25.9 Services 21.5 43.3 35.2 Ground combat 24.5 37.1 38.4
Table 19--Occupational Group Distribution by Race. All DOD, 1962
Total Percent Occupational Group Percentage Distribution of Negroes in Negroes White Each Group Ground combat 23.7 15.0 14.3 Electronics 7.0 14.9 4.7 Other technical 6.8 7.7 8.5 Admin. & clerical 21.5 19.2 10.6 Mechanics & repairmen 15.1 26.0 5.8 Crafts 5.6 6.6 8.4 Services 20.3 10.7 16.6 Total 100.0 100.0 9.2
Table 20--Occupational Group Distribution of Enlisted Personnel By Length of Service and Race
12-20 Over Occupational 0-4 Years 4-8 Years 8-12 Years Years 20 Years Group White Black White Black White Black White Black White Black
Ground combat 20.3 32.7 9.8 17.7 9.6 17.8 9.8 14.5 8.4 12.5 Electronics 14.1 5.6 19.7 10.3 15.6 8.1 14.2 6.7 10.5 3.6 Other technical 7.5 7.1 7.3 7.0 7.8 6.8 8.6 6.1 7.3 5.0 Admin. & clerical 18.3 22.3 17.5 22.6 19.6 22.0 22.0 18.5 24.5 18.7 Mechanics 23.9 12.8 29.6 20.5 28.9 16.2 24.2 15.1 29.1 13.6 Crafts 5.3 4.0 6.9 7.4 7.7 6.8 8.8 7.2 8.6 6.1 Services 10.6 15.5 9.2 15.1 10.8 22.3 12.3 31.9 11.7 40.4
This change was dramatically highlighted by the occupational distribution of naval personnel in 1962 (Table 21). Among General Qualification Test Groups I and II, the percentage of Negroes assigned to service occupations, mainly stewards, commissarymen, and the (p. 527) like, declined from 22 percent of those with more than twelve years' service to 2 percent of those with less than twelve years' service, with sharp increases in the "other technical" group, mainly medical and dental specialists, and smaller increases in other technical skills. A similar trend also appeared in the lower mental categories. One persisting occupational difference was the tendency to assign a relatively large percentage of Negroes with high aptitudes to "other technical" skills and those of low aptitude to service occupations. The group admitted that these differences required further analysis.
Table 21--Percentage Distribution of Navy Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups and Occupational Areas, and Length of Service, 1962
AFQT Group and 0-12 Years 12 Years & Over Occupational Area[1] White Negro White Negro
Groups I and II Electronics 35.7 29.5 25.6 21.1 Other technical 11.4 25.9 10.4 10.5 Admin. & clerical 8.5 10.9 14.6 14.0 Mechanics & repairmen 37.5 26.1 33.1 22.5 Crafts 6.4 5.4 12.9 10.3 Services .6 2.2 3.5 21.6 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Group III Electronics 10.3 9.1 8.8 4.2 Other technical 7.1 12.3 6.2 3.0 Admin. & clerical 9.7 12.9 12.4 8.2 Mechanics & repairmen 56.7 42.2 36.7 16.5 Crafts 13.2 11.1 25.2 16.9 Services 3.0 12.4 10.8 51.2 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Group IV Electronics 5.3 1.4 2.9 .5 Other technical 3.7 1.7 2.9 .4 Admin. & clerical 6.9 8.1 7.0 2.5 Mechanics & repairmen 60.8 44.2 35.8 7.3 Crafts 16.4 13.5 32.5 9.5 Services 6.9 31.1 19.4 79.7 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
[Tablenote 1: Excludes personnel not classified by occupation, such as recruits and general duty seamen.]
Reporting on promotions, the Defense Department group found that the relatively limited advancement of black officers was caused chiefly by their disadvantage in point of time in service and grade, branch of service, and educational background (Table 22). Although the difference in grade distribution among black and white enlisted men was much smaller, it too seemed related to disadvantages in education and service occupation. Again, for Negroes entering the services since 1950, the grade distribution had become similar to that of whites. The Navy's experience illustrated this point. In the case of those entering the Navy since the Korean War, the grade distribution of whites and nonwhites within the first three mental categories was nearly identical (Table 23). The divergences were much wider among the more senior men in the service groups, but this was probably due at least in part to the concentration of senior black servicemen in relatively overmanned specialties, such as food service, where promotional opportunities were limited. With this exception little evidence exists that whites enjoyed an advantage over blacks in the matter of promotions in the enlisted ranks.
Table 22--Percentage Distribution of Blacks and Whites by Pay Grade, All DOD, 1962
Grade Black White
Officers O-1 to O-2 35.9 34.5 O-3 47.7 30.2 O-4 12.1 18.0 O-5 4.0 12.0 O-6 to O-10 .3 5.3 Total 100.0 100.0
Enlisted Men E-1 to E-3 45.5 46.9 E-4 23.1 19.6 E-5 20.1 16.1 E-6 8.2 10.0 E-7 to E-9 3.0 7.5 Total 100.0 100.0
Table 23--Percentage Distribution of Navy Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups, Pay Grade, and Length of Service, 1962
0-12 Years Over 12 Years Pay Grade White Negro White Negro
AFQT Groups I & II E-1 to E-3 50.0 50.4 0.1 0.5 E-4 22.5 21.8 1.0 5.3 E-5 17.8 18.6 6.6 16.8 E-6 8.3 8.5 30.8 33.9 E-7 to E-9 1.4 .7 61.5 43.6 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
AFQT Group III E-1 to E-3 60.6 60.5 0.5 3.5 E-4 20.7 20.4 4.4 14.7 E-5 13.1 14.2 19.3 28.8 E-6 5.1 4.6 40.1 33.7 E-7 to E-9 .5 .3 35.7 19.3 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
AFQT Group IV E-1 to E-3 77.1 61.2 2.2 12.2 E-4 13.0 23.3 14.9 32.6 E-5 7.9 13.0 34.0 29.9 E-6 1.9 2.4 32.4 19.3 E-7 to E-9 .1 [a] 16.5 6.0 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
[Tablenote a: Less than .05 percent.]
All these figures could be conjured up when the services had to answer complaints of discrimination, but more often than not the services contented themselves with a vague defense of the status quo[20-82] Such answers were clearly unacceptable to civil rights leaders (p. 528) and their allies in the administration, and it is not surprising that the complaints persisted. To the argument that higher enlistment standards were a matter of military economy during a period of partial mobilizations, those concerned about civil rights responded that, since marginal manpower was a necessary ingredient of full mobilization, the services should learn to deal in peacetime with what would be a wartime problem.[20-83] To pleas of helplessness against off-base discrimination, the activists argued that these practices had demonstrably adverse effects on the morale of more than 9 percent of the armed forces and were, therefore, a clear threat to the accomplishment of the services' military mission.[20-84]
[Footnote 20-82: See, for example, the following Memos: Dep Under SA (Manpower) for ASD (M), 30 Mar 62, sub: Servicemen's Complaints of Discrimination in the U.S. Military; AF Dep for Manpower, Pers, and Organization for ASD (M), 29 Mar 62, sub: Alleged Racial Discrimination Within the Air Force; Under SecNav for ASD (M), 16 Mar 62, sub: Discrimination in the U.S. Military Services. All in ASD (M) 291.2 (12 Feb 62).]
[Footnote 20-83: Ginzberg, The Negro Potential, p. 90.]
[Footnote 20-84: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Civil Rights '63, pp. 210-11.]
Integration of black servicemen and general political and economic gains of the black population had combined in the last decade to create a ground swell for reform that resulted in ever more frequent and pressing attacks on the community policies of the Department (p. 529) of Defense. Some members of the administration rode with the reform movement. Although he was speaking particularly of increased black enrollment at the military academies, Special White House Assistant Wofford betrayed the reformer's attitude toward the whole problem of equal opportunity when he told James Evans "I am sure that much work has been done, but there is, of course, still a long way to go."[20-85] But by 1962 the services had just about exhausted the traditional reform methods available to them. To go further, as Wofford and the civil rights advocates demanded, meant a fundamental change in the department's commitment to equal treatment and opportunity. The decision to make such a change was clearly up to Secretary McNamara and the Kennedy administration.
[Footnote 20-85: Memo, Wofford for Evans, 2 Feb 62, Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]