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

INTEGRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES
1940-1965

DEFENSE STUDIES SERIES

INTEGRATION
OF THE ARMED FORCES
1940-1965

by
Morris J. MacGregor, Jr.

Defense Historical Studies Committee
(as of 6 April 1979)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

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

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

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

Foreword

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

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

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

The Author

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

Preface

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contents

Illustrations

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

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

Tables

INTEGRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES (p. 001)
1940-1965

CHAPTER 1 (p. 003)

Introduction

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

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

The Armed Forces Before 1940

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

Yet (p. 004) the fact that the British themselves were taking large
numbers of Negroes into their ranks proved more important than
revolutionary idealism in creating a place for Negroes in the American
forces. Above all, the participation of both slaves and freedmen in
the Continental Army and the Navy was a pragmatic response to a
pressing need for fighting men and laborers. Despite the fear of slave
insurrection shared by many colonists, some 5,000 Negroes, the
majority from New England, served with the American forces in the
Revolution, often in integrated units, some as artillerymen and
musicians, the majority as infantrymen or as unarmed pioneers detailed
to repair roads and bridges.

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

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

Crewmen of the USS Miami
During the Civil War

Military needs and idealistic impulses were not enough to guarantee
uninterrupted racial progress; in fact, the status of black servicemen
tended to reflect the changing patterns in American race relations.
During most of the nineteenth century, for example, Negroes served in
an integrated U.S. Navy, in the latter half of the century averaging
between 20 and 30 percent of the enlisted strength.[1-3] But the
employment of Negroes in the Navy was abruptly curtailed after
(p. 005) 1900. Paralleling the rise of Jim Crow and legalized
segregation in much of America was the cutback in the number of black
sailors, who by 1909 were mostly in the galley and the engine room. In
contrast to their high percentage of the ranks in the Civil War and
Spanish-American War, only 6,750 black sailors, including twenty-four
women reservists (yeomanettes), served in World War I; they
constituted 1.2 percent of the Navy’s total enlistment.[1-4] Their
service was limited chiefly to mess duty and coal passing, the latter
becoming increasingly rare as the fleet changed from coal to oil.

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

When postwar enlistment was resumed in 1923, the Navy recruited
Filipino stewards instead of Negroes, although a decade later it
reopened the branch to black enlistment. Negroes quickly took
advantage of this limited opportunity, their numbers rising from 441
in 1932 to 4,007 in June 1940, when they constituted 2.3 percent of
the Navy’s 170,000 total.[1-5] Curiously enough, because black (p. 006)
reenlistment in combat or technical specialties had never been barred,
a few black gunner’s mates, torpedomen, machinist mates, and the like
continued to serve in the 1930’s.

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

The Spanish-American War marked a break with the post-Civil War
tradition of limited recruitment. Besides the 3,339 black regulars,
approximately 10,000 (p. 007) black volunteers served in the Army
during the conflict. World War I was another exception, for Negroes
made up nearly 11 percent of the Army’s total strength, some 404,000
officers and men.[1-8] The acceptance of Negroes during wartime stemmed
from the Army’s pressing need for additional manpower. Yet it was no
means certain in the early months of World War I that this need for
men would prevail over the reluctance of many leaders to arm large
groups of Negroes. Still remembered were the 1906 Brownsville affair,
in which men of the 25th Infantry had fired on Texan civilians, and
the August 1917 riot involving members of the 24th Infantry at
Houston, Texas.[1-9] Ironically, those idealistic impulses that had
operated in earlier wars were operating again in this most Jim Crow of
administrations.[1-10] Woodrow Wilson’s promise to make the world safe
for democracy was forcing his administration to admit Negroes to the
Army. Although it carefully maintained racially separate draft calls,
the National Army conscripted some 368,000 Negroes, 13.08 percent of
all those drafted in World War I.[1-11]

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

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

Civil Rights and the Law in 1940 (p. 008)

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

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

In these circumstances, the economic and humanitarian programs of the
New Deal had a special appeal for black America. Encouraged by these
programs and heartened by Eleanor Roosevelt’s public support of civil
rights, black voters defected from their traditional allegiance to the
Republican Party in overwhelming numbers. But the civil rights leaders
were already aware, if the average black citizen was not, that despite
having made some considerable improvements Franklin Roosevelt never,
in one biographer’s words, “sufficiently challenged (p. 009) Southern
traditions of white supremacy to create problems for himself.”[1-16]
Negroes, in short, might benefit materially from the New Deal, but
they would have to look elsewhere for advancement of their civil
rights.

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

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

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

Historian Lee Finkle has suggested that the militancy advocated by
most of the civil rights leaders in the World War II era was merely a
rhetorical device; that for the most part they sought to avoid
violence over segregation, concentrating as before on traditional
methods of protest.[1-20] This reliance on traditional methods was
apparent when the leaders tried to focus the new sentiment among
Negroes on two war-related goals: equality of treatment in the armed
forces and equality of job opportunity in the expanding defense
industries. In 1938 the Pittsburgh (p. 010) Courier, the largest
and one of the most influential of the nation’s black papers, called
upon the President to open the services to Negroes and organized the
Committee for Negro Participation in the National Defense Program.
These moves led to an extensive lobbying effort that in time spread to
many other newspapers and local civil rights groups. The black press
and its satellites also attracted the support of several national
organizations that were promoting preparedness for war, and these
groups, in turn, began to demand equal treatment and opportunity in
the armed forces.[1-21]

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

Gunner’s Gang on the USS Maine.

A (p. 011) majority in both houses of Congress seemed to agree. During
floor debate on the Selective Service Act, Senator Robert F. Wagner of
New York proposed an amendment to guarantee to Negroes and other
racial minorities the privilege of voluntary enlistment in the armed
forces. He sought in this fashion to correct evils described some ten
days earlier by Rayford W. Logan, chairman of the Committee for Negro
Participation in the National Defense, in testimony before the House
Committee on Military Affairs. The Wagner proposal triggered critical
comments and questions. Senators John H. Overton and Allen J. Ellender
of Louisiana viewed the Wagner amendment as a step toward “mixed”
units. Overton, Ellender, and Senator Lister Hill of Alabama proposed
that the matter should be “left to the Army.” Hill also attacked the
amendment because it would allow the enlistment of Japanese-Americans,
some of whom he claimed were not loyal to the United States.[1-24]

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

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

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

The Wagner amendment was aimed at volunteers for military service.
Congressman Hamilton Fish, also of New York, later introduced a
similar measure in (p. 012) the House aimed at draftees. The Fish
amendment passed the House by a margin of 121 to 99 and emerged intact
from the House-Senate conference. The law finally read that in the
selection and training of men and execution of the law “there shall be
no discrimination against any person on account of race or color.”[1-26]

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

The Fish amendment had little immediate impact upon the services’
racial patterns. As long as official policy permitted separate draft
calls for blacks and whites and the officially held definition of
discrimination neatly excluded segregation—and both went unchallenged
in the courts—segregation would remain entrenched in the armed
forces. Indeed, the rigidly segregated services, their ranks swollen
by the draft, were a particular frustration to the civil rights forces
because they were introducing some black citizens to racial
discrimination more pervasive than any they had ever endured in
civilian life. Moreover, as the services continued to open bases
throughout the country, they actually spread federally sponsored
segregation into areas where it had never before existed with the
force of law. In the long run, however, the 1940 draft law and
subsequent draft legislation had a strong influence on the armed
forces’ racial policies. They created a climate in which progress
could be made toward integration within the services. Although not
apparent in 1940, the pressure of a draft-induced flood of (p. 013)
black conscripts was to be a principal factor in the separate
decisions of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to integrate their
units.

To Segregate Is To Discriminate

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

The White House may well have thought that Walter White of the NAACP
singlehandedly organized the demand for integration in 1939, but he
was merely applying a concept of race relations that had been evolving
since World War I. In the face of ever-worsening discrimination,
White’s generation of civil rights advocates had rejected the idea of
the preeminent black leader Booker T. Washington that hope for the
future lay in the development of a separate and strong (p. 014) black
community. Instead, they gradually came to accept the argument of one
of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, William E. B. DuBois, that progress was possible only
when Negroes abandoned their segregated community to work toward a
society open to both black and white. By the end of the 1930’s this
concept had produced a fundamental change in civil rights tactics and
created the new mood of assertiveness that Myrdal found in the black
community. The work of White and others marked the beginning of a
systematic attack against Jim Crow. As the most obvious practitioner
of Jim Crow in the federal government, the services were the logical
target for the first battle in a conflict that would last some thirty
years.

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

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

The White House ignored these demands, and on 17 October the secretary
to the President, Col. Edwin M. Watson, referred White to a War
Department report outlining the new black units being created under
presidential authorization. But the NAACP leaders were not to be
diverted from the main chance. Thurgood (p. 015) Marshall, then the
head of the organization’s legal department, recommended that White
tell the President “that the NAACP is opposed to the separate units
existing in the armed forces at the present time.”[1-32]

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

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

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

In a related move symbolizing the growing unity behind the campaign to
integrate the military, the leaders of the March on Washington
Movement, a group (p. 016) of black activists under A. Philip
Randolph, specifically demanded the end of segregation in the Army and
Navy. The movement was the first since the days of Marcus Garvey to
involve the black masses; in fact Negroes from every social and
economic class rallied behind Randolph, ready to demonstrate for equal
treatment and opportunity. Although some black papers objected to the
movement’s militancy, the major civil rights organization showed no
such hesitancy. Roy Wilkins, a leader of the NAACP, later claimed that
Randolph could supply only about 9,000 potential demonstrators and
that the NAACP had provided the bulk of the movement’s participants.[1-37]

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

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

CHAPTER 2 (p. 017)

World War II: The Army

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

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

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

A War Policy: Reaffirming Segregation

The experience of World War I cast a shadow over the formation of the
Army’s racial policy in World War II.[2-1] The chief architects of the
new policy, and many of its opponents, were veterans of the first war
and reflected in their judgments the passions and prejudices of that
era.[2-2] Civil rights activists were determined (p. 018) to eliminate
the segregationist practices of the 1917 mobilization and to win a
fair representation for Negroes in the Army. The traditionalists of
the Army staff, on the other hand, were determined to resist any
radical change in policy. Basing their arguments on their evaluation
of the performance of the 92d Division and some other black units in
World War I, they had made, but not publicized, mobilization plans
that recognized the Army’s obligation to employ black soldiers yet
rigidly maintained the segregationist policy of World War I.[2-3] These
plans increased the number of types of black units to be formed and
even provided for a wide distribution of the units among all the arms
and services except the Army Air Forces and Signal Corps, but they did
not explain how the skilled Negro, whose numbers had greatly increased
since World War I, could be efficiently used within the limitations of
black units. In the name of military efficiency the Army staff had, in
effect, devised a social rather than a military policy for the
employment of black troops.

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

The (p. 019) President’s “OK, F.D.R.” on the War Department statement
transformed what had been a routine prewar mobilization plan into a
racial policy that would remain in effect throughout the war. In fact,
quickly elevated in importance by War Department spokesmen who made
constant reference to the “Presidential Directive,” the statement
would be used by some Army officials as a presidential sanction for
introducing segregation in new situations, as, for example, in the
pilot training of black officers in the Army Air Corps. Just as
quickly, the civil rights leaders, who had expected more from the tone
of the President’s own comments and more also from the egalitarian
implications of the new draft law, bitterly attacked the Army’s
policy.

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

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

Judge Hastie spent his first ten months in office observing what was
happening to the Negro in the Army. He did not like what he saw. To
him, separating black soldiers from white soldiers was a fundamental
error. First, the effect on black morale was devastating. “Beneath the
surface,” he wrote, “is widespread discontent. Most white persons are
unable to appreciate the rancor and bitterness which the Negro, as a
matter of self-preservation, has learned to hide beneath a smile, a
joke, or merely an impassive face.” The inherent paradox of trying to
inculcate pride, dignity, and aggressiveness in a black soldier while
inflicting (p. 020) on him the segregationist’s concept of the
Negro’s place in society created in him an insupportable tension.
Second, segregation wasted black manpower, a valuable military asset.
It was impossible, Hastie charged, to employ skilled Negroes at
maximum efficiency within the traditionally narrow limitations of
black units. Third, to insist on an inflexible separation of white and
black soldiers was “the most dramatic evidence of hypocrisy” in
America’s professed concern for preserving democracy.

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

Judge Hastie

Judge Hastie gained little support from the Secretary of War, Henry L.
Stimson, or the Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, when he
called for progressive integration. Both considered the Army’s
segregated units to be in accord with prevailing public sentiment
against mixing the races in the intimate association of military life.
More to the point, both Stimson and Marshall were sensitive to
military tradition, and segregated units had been a part of the Army
since 1863. Stimson embraced segregation readily. While conveying to
the President that he was “sensitive to the individual tragedy which
went with it to the colored man himself,” he nevertheless urged
Roosevelt not to place “too much responsibility on a race which was
not showing initiative in battle.”[2-7] Stimson’s attitude was not
unusual for the times. He professed to believe in civil rights for
every citizen, but he opposed social integration. He never tried to
reconcile these seemingly inconsistent views; in fact, he probably did
not consider them inconsistent. Stimson blamed what he termed Eleanor
Roosevelt’s “intrusive and impulsive folly” for some of the criticism
visited upon the Army’s racial policy, just as he inveighed against
the “foolish leaders of the colored race” (p. 021) who were seeking
“at bottom social equality,” which, he concluded, was out of the
question “because of the impossibility of race mixture by
marriage.”[2-8] Influenced by Under Secretary Robert P. Patterson,
Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy, and Truman K. Gibson, Jr., who was
Judge Hastie’s successor, but most of all impressed by the performance
of black soldiers themselves, Stimson belatedly modified his defense
of segregation. But throughout the war he adhered to the traditional
arguments of the Army’s professional staff.

General Marshall and Secretary Stimson

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

would be tantamount to solving a social problem which has
perplexed the American people throughout the history of this
nation. The Army cannot accomplish such a solution and (p. 022)
should not be charged with the undertaking. The settlement of
vexing racial problems cannot be permitted to complicate the
tremendous task of the War Department and thereby jeopardize
discipline and morale.[2-10]

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

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

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

The Army is made up of individual citizens of the United States
who have pronounced views with respect to the Negro just as they
have individual ideas with respect to other matters in their
daily walk of life. Military orders, fiat, or dicta, will not
change their viewpoints. (p. 023) The Army then cannot be made
the means of engendering conflict among the mass of people
because of a stand with respect to Negroes which is not
compatible with the position attained by the Negro in civil
life…. The Army is not a sociological laboratory; to be
effective it must be organized and trained according to the
principles which will insure success. Experiments to meet the
wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for
the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency,
discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat.[2-14]

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

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

Segregation and Efficiency

In the years before World War II, Army planners never had to consider
segregation in terms of manpower efficiency. Conditioned by the
experiences of World War I, when the nation had enjoyed a surplus of
untapped manpower even at the height of the war, and aware of the
overwhelming manpower surplus of (p. 024) the depression years, the
staff formulated its mobilization plans with little regard for the
economical use of the nation’s black manpower. Its decision to use
Negroes in proportion to their percentage of the population was the
result of political pressures rather than military necessity. Black
combat units were considered a luxury that existed to indulge black
demands. When the Army began to mobilize in 1940 it proceeded to honor
its pledge, and one year after Pearl Harbor there were 399,454 Negroes
in the Army, 7.4 percent of the total and 7.95 percent of all enlisted
troops.[2-18]

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

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

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

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

Although there was considerable confusion on the subject, basically
the Army’s mental tests measured educational achievement rather than
native intelligence, and in 1941 educational achievement in the United
States hinged more on geography and economics than color. Though black
and white recruits of comparable educations made comparable scores,
the majority of Negroes came from areas of the country where inferior
schools combined with economic and cultural poverty to put them at a
significant disadvantage.[2-19] Many whites suffered (p. 025) similar
disadvantages, and in absolute numbers more whites than blacks
appeared in the lower categories. But whereas the Army could
distribute the low-scoring white soldiers throughout the service so
that an individual unit could easily absorb its few illiterate and
semiliterate white men, the Army was obliged to assign an almost equal
number of low-scoring Negroes to the relatively few black units where
they could neither be absorbed nor easily trained. By the same token,
segregation penalized the educated Negro whose talents were likely to
be wasted when he was assigned to service units along with the
unskilled.

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

The use of quotas to regulate inductees by race was itself a source of
tension between the Army and the Bureau of Selective Service.[2-20]
Selective Service questioned the legality of the whole procedure
whereby white and black selectees were delivered on the basis of
separate calls; in many areas of the country draft boards were under
attack for passing over large numbers of Negroes in order to fill
these racial quotas. With the Navy depending exclusively on
volunteers, Selective Service had by early 1943 a backlog of 300,000
black registrants who, according to their order numbers, should have
been called to service but had been passed over. Selective Service
wanted to eliminate the quota system altogether. At the very least it
demanded that the Army accept more Negroes to adjust the racial
imbalance of the draft rolls. The Army, determined to preserve the
quota system, tried to satisfy the Selective Service’s minimum
demands, making (p. 026) room for more black inductees by forcing its
arms and services to create more black units. Again the cost to
efficiency was high.

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

Engineer Construction Troops in Liberia, July 1942

The practice of creating units for the specific purpose of absorbing
Negroes was particularly evident in the Army Air Forces.[2-22] Long
considered the most recalcitrant (p. 027) of branches in accepting
Negroes, the Air Corps had successfully exempted itself from the
allotment of black troops in the 1940 mobilization plans. Black pilots
could not be used, Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps,
explained, “since this would result in having Negro officers serving
over white enlisted men. This would create an impossible social
problem.”[2-23] And this situation could not be avoided, since it
would take several years to train black mechanics; meanwhile black
pilots would have to work with white ground crews, often at distant
bases outside their regular chain of command. The Air Corps (p. 028)
faced strong opposition when both the civil rights advocates and the
rest of the Army attacked this exclusion. The civil rights
organizations wanted a place for Negroes in the glamorous Air Corps,
but even more to the point the other arms and services wanted this
large branch of the Army to absorb its fair share of black recruits,
thus relieving the rest of a disproportionate burden.

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

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

When the War Department supported these demands the Army Air Forces
capitulated. Its 1941 mobilization plans provided for the formation of
nine separate black aviation squadrons which would perform the
miscellaneous tasks associated with the upkeep of airfields. During
the next year the Chief of Staff set the allotment of black recruits
for the air arm at a rate that brought over 77,500 Negroes into the
Air Corps by 1943. On 16 January 1941 Under Secretary Patterson
announced the formation of a black pursuit squadron, but the Army Air
Forces, bowing to the opposition typified by General Arnold’s comments
of the previous year, trained the black pilots in separate facilities
at Tuskegee, Alabama, where the Army tried to duplicate the expensive
training center established for white officers at Maxwell Field, just
forty miles away.[2-24] Black pilots were at first trained exclusively
for pursuit flying, a very difficult kind of combat for which a Negro
had to qualify both physically and technically or (p. 029) else, in
Judge Hastie’s words, “not fly at all.”[2-25] The 99th Fighter Squadron
was organized at Tuskegee in 1941 and sent to the Mediterranean
theater in April 1943. By then the all-black 332d Fighter Group with
three additional fighter squadrons had been organized, and in 1944 it
too was deployed to the Mediterranean.

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

These squadrons could use only a limited number of pilots, far fewer
than those black cadets qualified for such training. All applicants in
excess of requirements were placed on an indefinite waiting list where
many became overage or were requisitioned for other military and
civilian duties. Yet when the Army Air Forces finally decided to
organize a black bomber unit, the 477th Bombardment Group, in late
1943, it encountered a scarcity of black pilots and crewmen. Because
of the lack of technical and educational opportunities for Negroes in
America, fewer blacks than whites were included in the manpower pool,
and Tuskegee, already overburdened with its manifold training
functions and lacking the means to train bomber crews, was unable to
fill the training gap. Sending black cadets to white training schools
was one obvious solution; the Army Air Forces chose instead to
postpone the operational date of the 477th until its pilots could be
trained at Tuskegee. In the end, the 477th was not declared (p. 030)
operational until after the war. Even then some compromise with the
Army Air Forces’ segregation principles was necessary, since Tuskegee
could not accommodate B-25 pilot transition and navigator-bombardier
training. In 1944 black officers were therefore temporarily assigned
to formerly all-white schools for such training. Tuskegee’s position
as the sole and separate training center for black pilots remained
inviolate until its closing in 1946, however, and its graduates, the
“Tuskegee Airmen,” continued to serve as a powerful symbol of armed
forces segregation.[2-26]

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

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

The Air Corps, like the Armor and the Artillery branches, was able to
form separate squadrons or battalions for black troops, but the
Infantry and Cavalry found it difficult to organize the growing number
of separate black battalions and regiments. The creation of black
divisions was the obvious solution, although this arrangement would
run counter to current practice, which was based in part on the Army’s
experience with the 92d Division in World War I. Convinced of the poor
performance of that unit in 1918, the War Department had decided in
the 1920’s not to form any more black divisions. The regiment would
serve as the basic black unit, and from time to time these regiments
would be employed as organic elements of divisions whose other
regiments and units would be white. In keeping with this decision, the
black 9th and 10th Cavalry (p. 031) regiments were combined in
October 1940 with white regiments to form the 2d Cavalry Division.

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

Even though it rejected the idea of a volunteer, integrated division,
the Army staff reviewed in the fall of 1942 a proposal for
the assignment of some black recruits to white units. The
Organization-Mobilization Group of G-3, headed by Col. Edwin W.
Chamberlain, argued that the Army General Classification Test scores
proved that black soldiers in groups were less useful to the Army than
white soldiers in groups. It was a waste of manpower, funds, and
equipment, therefore, to organize the increasingly large numbers of
black recruits into segregated units. Not only was such organization
wasteful, but segregation “aggravated if not caused in its entirety”
the racial friction that was already plaguing the Army. To avoid both
the waste and the strife, Chamberlain recommended that the Army halt
the activation of additional black units and integrate black recruits
in the low-score categories, IV and V, into white units in the ratio
of one black to nine whites. The black recruits would be used as
cooks, orderlies, and drivers, and in other jobs which required only
the minimum basic training and which made up 10 to 20 percent of those
in the average unit. Negroes in the higher categories, I through III,
would be assigned to existing black units where they could be expected
to improve the performance of those units. Chamberlain defended his
plan against possible charges of discrimination by pointing out that
the Negroes would be assigned wholly on the basis of native capacity,
not race, and that this plan would increase the opportunities for
Negroes to participate in the war effort. To those who objected on the
grounds that the proposal meant racial integration, Chamberlain
replied that (p. 032) there was no more integration involved than in
“the employment of Negroes as servants in a white household.”[2-31]

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

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

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

There (p. 033) were many reasons for the sudden shortage of black
inductees in the spring of 1943. Since more Negroes were leaving the
service for health or other reasons, the number of calls for black
draftees had increased. In addition, local draft boards were rejecting
more Negroes. But the basic reason for the shortage was that the
magnitude of the war had finally turned the manpower surpluses of the
1930’s into manpower shortages, and the shortages were appearing in
black as well as white levies for the armed forces. The Negro was no
longer a manpower luxury. The quota calls for Negroes rose in 1944,
and black strength stood at 701,678 men in September, approximately
9.6 percent of the whole Army. [2-36] The percentage of black women in
the Army stayed at less than 6 percent of the Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps—after July 1943 the Women’s Army Corps—throughout the war.
Training and serving under the same racial policy that governed the
employment of men, the women’s corps also had a black recruitment goal
of 10 percent, but despite the active efforts of recruiters and
generally favorable publicity from civil rights groups, the volunteer
organization was unable to overcome the attitude among young black
women that they would not be well received at Army posts.[2-37]

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

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

According (p. 034) to the War Department, the relationship between
Negroes and the Army was a mutual obligation. Negroes had the right
and duty to serve their country to the best of their abilities; the
Army had the right and the duty to see that they did so. True, the use
of black troops was made difficult because their schooling had been
largely inferior and their work therefore chiefly unskilled.
Nevertheless, the Army staff concluded, all races were equally endowed
for war and most of the less mentally alert could fight if properly
led.[2-40] A manual on leadership observed:

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

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

The Need for Change

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

Deteriorating morale in black units and pressure from a critical
audience of articulate Negroes and their sympathizers led the War
Department to focus special attention on its race problem. Early in
the war Secretary Stimson had agreed with a General Staff
recommendation that a permanent committee be formed to evaluate racial
incidents, propose special reforms, and answer questions involving the
training and assignment of Negroes.[2-43] On 27 August 1942 he
established the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, with
Assistant Secretary (p. 035) McCloy as chairman.[2-44] Caught in the
cross fire of black demands and Army traditions, the committee
contented itself at first with collecting information on the racial
situation and acting as a clearinghouse for recommendations on the
employment of black troops.[2-45]

Service Club, Fort Huachuca

Serious racial trouble was developing by the end of the first year of
the war. The trouble was a product of many factors, including the
psychological effects of segregation which may not have been so
obvious to the committee or even to the black soldier. Other factors,
however, were visible to all and begged for remedial action. For
example, the practice of using racially separated facilities on
military posts, which was not sanctioned in the Army’s basic plan for
black troops, took hold early in the war. Many black units were
located at camps in the south, where commanders insisted on applying
local laws and customs inside the military (p. 036) reservations.
This practice spread rapidly, and soon in widely separated sections of
the country commanders were separating the races in theaters, post
exchanges, service clubs, and buses operating on posts. The
accommodations provided Negroes were separate but rarely equal, and
substandard recreational and housing facilities assigned to black
troops were a constant source of irritation. In fact the Army, through
the actions of local commanders, actually introduced Jim Crow in some
places at home and abroad. Negroes considered such practices in
violation of military regulations and inconsistent with the announced
principles for which the United States was fighting. Many believed
themselves the victims of the personal prejudices of the local
commander. Judge Hastie reported their feelings: “The traditional
mores of the South have been widely accepted and adopted by the Army
as the basis of policy and practice affecting the Negro soldier…. In
tactical organization, in physical location, in human contacts, the
Negro soldier is separated from the white soldier as completely as
possible.”[2-46]

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

Black morale suffered further in the leadership crisis that developed
in black units early in the war. The logic of segregated units
demanded a black officer corps, but there were never enough black
officers to command all the black units. In 1942 only 0.35 percent of
the Negroes in the Army were officers, a shortcoming that could not be
explained by poor education alone.[2-48] But when the number of black
officers did begin to increase, obstacles to their employment
appeared: some white commanders, assuming that Negroes did not
possess (p. 037) leadership ability and that black troops preferred
white officers, demanded white officers for their units. Limited
segregated recreational and living facilities for black officers
prevented their assignment to some bases, while the active opposition
of civilian communities forced the Army to exclude them from others.
The Army staff practice of forbidding Negroes to outrank or command
white officers serving in the same unit not only limited the
employment and restricted the rank of black officers but also created
invidious distinctions between white and black officers in the same
unit. It tended to convince enlisted men that their black leaders were
not full-fledged officers. Thus restricted in assignment and
segregated socially and professionally, his ability and status in
question, the black officer was often an object of scorn to himself
and to his men.

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

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

Actually, the Army had a clear-cut plan for the overseas employment of
both black service and combat units. In May 1942 the War Department
directed the Army Air Forces, Ground Forces, and Service Forces to
make sure that black troops were ordered overseas in numbers not less
than their percentage in each of these commands. Theater commanders
would be informed of orders moving black troops to their commands, but
they would not be asked to agree to their shipment beforehand. Since
troop shipments to the British Isles were the chief concern (p. 038)
at that time, the order added that “there will be no positive
restrictions on the use of colored troops in the British Isles, but
shipment of colored units to the British Isles will be limited,
initially, to those in the service categories.”[2-51]

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

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

Black soldiers were often the victims of gross discrimination that
transcended their difficulties with the Army’s administration. For
instance, black soldiers, particularly those from more integrated
regions of the country, resented local ordinances governing
transportation and recreation facilities that put them at a great
disadvantage in the important matters of leave and amusement.
Infractions of local rules were inevitable and led to heightened
racial tension and recurring violence.[2-54] At times black soldiers
themselves, reflecting the low morale and lack of discipline in their
units, instigated the violence. Whoever the culprits, the Army’s files
are replete with cases of discrimination charged, investigations
launched, and exonerations issued or reforms ordered.[2-55] An
incredible amount of time and effort went into handling these cases
during the darkest days (p. 039) of the war—cases growing out of a
policy created in the name of military efficiency.

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

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

Internal Reform: Amending Racial Practices

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

Had the debate been reopened in 1943, the traditionalists on the Army
staff would have found new support for their views in a series of
surveys made of white and black soldiers in 1942 and 1943. These
surveys supported the theory that (p. 040) the Army, a national
institution composed of individual citizens with pronounced views on
race, would meet massive disobedience and internal disorder as well as
national resistance to any substantial change in policy. One extensive
survey, covering 13,000 soldiers in ninety-two units, revealed that 88
percent of the whites and 38 percent of the Negroes preferred
segregated units. Among the whites, 85 percent preferred separate
service clubs and 81 percent preferred separate post exchanges. Almost
half of the Negroes thought separate service clubs and post exchanges
were a good idea.[2-60] These attitudes merely reflected widely held
national views as suggested in a 1943 survey of five key cities by the
Office of War Information.[2-61] The survey showed that 90 percent of
the whites and 25 percent of the blacks questioned supported
segregation.

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

By 1943 Negroes within and without the War Department had just about
exhausted arguments for a policy change. After two years of trying,
Judge Hastie came to believe that change was possible only in response
to “strong and manifest public opinion.” He concluded that he would be
far more useful as a private citizen who could express his views
freely and publicly than he was as a War Department employee, bound to
conform to official policy. Quitting the department, Hastie joined the
increasingly vocal black organizations in a sustained attack on the
Army’s segregation policy, an attack that was also being translated
into political action by the major civil rights organizations. In
1943, a full year before the national elections, representatives of
twenty-five civil rights groups (p. 041) met and formulated the
demands they would make of the presidential candidates: full
integration (some groups tempered this demand by calling for
integrated units of volunteers); abolition of racial quotas; abolition
of segregation in recreational and other Army facilities; abolition of
blood plasma segregation; development of an educational program in
race relations in the Army; greater black participation in combat
forces; and the progressive removal of black troops from areas where
they were subject to disrespect, abuse, and even violence.[2-64]

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

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

The Advisory Committee’s first campaign was directed at local
commanders. After a long review of the evidence, the committee was
convinced that the major cause of racial disorder was the failure of
commanders in some echelons to appreciate the seriousness of racial
unrest and their own responsibility for dealing with (p. 042) the
discipline, morale, and welfare of their men. Since it found that most
disturbances began with real or fancied incidents of discrimination,
the committee concluded that there should be no discrimination against
Negroes in the matter of privileges and accommodations and none in
favor of Negroes that compromised disciplinary standards. The
committee wanted local commanders to be reminded that maintaining
proper discipline and good order among soldiers, and between soldiers
and civilians, was a definite command responsibility.[2-68]

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

Next, the Advisory Committee turned its attention to the black press.
Judge Hastie and the representatives of the senior civil rights
organizations were judicious in their criticism and accurate in their
charges, but this statement could not be made for much of the black
press. Along with deserving credit for spotlighting racial injustices
and giving a very real impetus to racial progress, a segment of the
black press had to share the blame for fomenting racial disorder by
the frequent publication of inaccurate and inflammatory war stories.
Some field commanders charged that the constant criticism was
detrimental to troop morale and demanded that the War Department
investigate and even censor particular black newspapers. In July 1943
the Army Service Forces recommended that General Marshall officially
warn the editors against printing inciting and untrue stories and
suggested that if this caution failed sedition proceedings be
instituted against the culprits.[2-70] General Marshall followed a more
moderate course suggested by Assistant Secretary McCloy.[2-71] The Army
staff amplified and improved the services of the Bureau of Public
Relations by appointing Negroes to the bureau and by releasing more
news items of special interest to black journalists. The result was a
considerable increase in constructive and accurate stories on (p. 043)
black participation in the war, although articles and editorials
continued to be severely critical of the Army’s segregation policy.

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

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

The belated introduction of major black units into combat helped
alleviate the Army’s racial problems. After elements of the 93d
Division were committed on Bougainville in March 1944 and an advanced
group of the 92d landed in Italy in July, the Army staff found it
easier to ship smaller supporting units to combat theaters, either as
separate units or as support for larger units, a course that reduced
the glut of black soldiers stationed in the United States. Recognizing
that many of these units had poor leaders, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair,
head of the Army Ground Forces, ordered that, “if practicable,” all
leaders of black units (p. 044) who had not received “excellent” or
higher in their efficiency ratings would be replaced before the units
were scheduled for overseas deployment.[2-75] Given the “if practicable”
loophole, there was little chance that all the units would go overseas
with “excellent” commanders.

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

A source of pride to the black community, the troop commitments also
helped to reduce national racial tensions, but they did little for the
average black soldier who remained stationed in the United States. He
continued to suffer discrimination within and without the gates of the
camp. The committee attributed that discrimination to the fact that
War Department policy was not being carried out in all commands. In
some instances local commanders were unaware of the policy; in others
they refused to pay sufficient attention to the seriousness of what
was, after all, but one of many problems facing them. For some time
committee members had been urging the War Department to write special
instructions, and finally in February 1944 the department issued a
pamphlet designed to acquaint local commanders with an official
definition of Army racial policy and to improve methods of developing
leaders in black units. Command (p. 045) of Negro Troops was a
landmark publication.[2-76] Its frank statement of the Army’s racial
problems, its scholarly and objective discussion of the disadvantages
that burdened the black soldier, and its outline of black rights and
responsibilities clearly revealed the committee’s intention to foster
racial harmony by promoting greater command responsibility. The
pamphlet represented a major departure from previous practice and
served as a model for later Army and Navy statements on race.[2-77]

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

Little dramatic change ensued in day-to-day life on base. Some
commanders, emphasizing that part of the directive which allowed the
designation of facilities for units and areas, limited the degree of
the directive’s application to post exchanges and theaters and ignored
those provisions concerned with individual rights. This interpretation
only added to the racial unrest that culminated in several incidents,
of which the one at the officers’ club at Freeman Field, Indiana, was
the most widely publicized.[2-79] After this incident the committee
promptly asked for a revision of WD Pamphlet 20-6 on the command of
black troops that would clearly spell out the intention of the authors
of the directive to apply its integration provisions explicitly to
“officers’ clubs, messes, or similar social organizations.”[2-80] In
effect the War Department was declaring that racial separation applied
to units only. For the first time it made a clear (p. 046)
distinction between Army race policy to be applied on federal military
reservations and local civilian laws and customs to be observed by
members of the armed forces when off post. In Acting Secretary
Patterson’s words:

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

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

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

Two Exceptions

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

The Army integrated its officer candidate training in an effort to
avoid the mistakes of the World War I program. In 1917 Secretary of
War Newton D. Baker (p. 047) had established a separate training
school for black officer candidates at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, with
disappointing results. To fill its quotas the school had been forced
to lower its entrance standards, and each month an arbitrary number of
black officer candidates were selected and graduated with little
regard for their qualifications. Many World War I commanders agreed
that the black officers produced by the school proved inadequate as
troop commanders, and postwar staff studies generally opposed the
future use of black officers. Should the Army be forced to accept
black officers in the future, these commanders generally agreed, they
should be trained along with whites.[2-85]

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

Despite these criticisms, mobilization plans between the wars all
assumed that black officers would be trained and commissioned,
although, as the 1937 mobilization plan put it, their numbers would be
limited to those required to provide officers for organizations
authorized to have black officers.[2-86] No detailed plans were drawn up
on the nature of this training, but by the eve of World War II a
policy had become fixed: Negroes were to be chosen and trained
according to the same standards as white officers, preferably in the
same schools.[2-87] (p. 048) The War Department ignored the subject of
race when it established the officer candidate schools in 1941. “The
basic and predominating consideration governing selections to OCS,”
The Adjutant General announced, would be “outstanding qualities of
leadership as demonstrated by actual services in the Army.”[2-88]
General Davis, who participated in the planning conferences, reasoned
that integrated training would be vital for the cooperation that would
be necessary in battle. He agreed with the War Department’s silence on
race, adding, “you can’t have Negro, white, or Jewish officers, you’ve
got to have American officers.”[2-89]

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

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

Some (p. 049) civil rights spokesmen argued for the establishment of a
quota system, and a few Negroes even asked for a return to segregated
schools to insure a more plentiful supply of black officers. Even
before the schools opened, Judge Hastie warned Secretary Stimson that
any effective integration plan “required a directive to Corps Area
Commanders indicating that Negroes are to be selected in numbers
exactly or approximately indicated for particular schools.”[2-91] But
the planners had recommended the integrated schools precisely to avoid
a quota system. They were haunted by the Army’s 1917 experience,
although the chief of the Army staff’s Organizations Division did not
allude to these misgivings when he answered Judge Hastie. He argued
that a quota could not be defended on any grounds “except those of a
political nature” and would be “race discrimination against the
whites.”[2-92]

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

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

WAAC Replacements
training at Fort Huachuca, December 1942.

The (p. 050) segregationists attacked integration of the officer
candidate schools for the obvious reasons. A group of Florida
congressmen, for example, protested to the Army against the
establishment of an integrated Air Corps school at Miami Beach. The
War Department received numerous complaints when living quarters at
the schools were integrated. The president of the White Supremacy
League complained that young white candidates at Fort Benning “have to
eat and sleep with Negro candidates,” calling it “the most damnable
outrage that was ever perpetrated on the youth of the South.” To all
such complaints the War Department answered that separation was not
always possible because of the small number of Negroes involved.[2-96]

In answering these complaints the Army developed its ultimate
justification for integrated officer schools: integration was
necessary on the grounds of efficiency and economy. As one Army
spokesman put it, “our objection to separate schools (p. 051) is
based primarily on the fact that black officer candidates are eligible
from every branch of the Army, including the Armored Force and tank
destroyer battalions, and it would be decidedly uneconomical to
attempt to gather in one school the materiel and instructor personnel
necessary to give training in all these branches.”[2-97]

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

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

The (p. 052) revolutionary nature of General Lee’s plan was not lost
on Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. Arguing that the
circular promising integrated service would embarrass the Army, Lt.
Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, the chief of staff, recommended that General
Eisenhower warn the War Department that civil rights spokesmen might
seize on this example to demand wider integration. To avoid future
moves that might compromise Army policy, Smith wanted permission to
review any Communications Zone statements on Negroes before they were
released.

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

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

Unaware of how close they had come to being integrated as individuals,
so many Negroes volunteered for combat training and duty that the
operations of some service units were threatened. To prevent
disrupting these vital operations, the theater limited the number to
2,500, turning down about 3,000 men. Early in January 1945 the
volunteers assembled for six weeks of standard infantry conversion
training. After training, the new black infantrymen were organized
into fifty-three platoons, each under a white platoon leader and
sergeant, and were dispatched to the field, two to work with armored
divisions and the rest with infantry divisions. Sixteen were shipped
to the 6th Army Group, the rest to the 12th (p. 053) Army Group, and
all saw action with a total of eleven divisions in the First and
Seventh Armies.

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

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

The experiment with integration of platoons was carefully scrutinized.
In May and June 1945, the Research Branch of the Information and
Education Division (p. 054) of Eisenhower’s theater headquarters made
a survey solely to discover what white company-grade officers and
platoon sergeants thought of the combat performance of the black rifle
platoons. Trained interviewers visited seven infantry divisions and
asked the same question of 250 men—all the available company officers
and a representative sample of platoon sergeants in twenty-four
companies that had had black platoons. In addition, a questionnaire,
not to be signed, was submitted to approximately 1,700 white enlisted
men in other field forces for the purpose of discovering what their
attitudes were toward the use of black riflemen. No Negro was asked
his opinion.

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

General Brehon B. Somervell, commanding general of the Army Service
Forces, questioned the advisability of releasing the report. An
experiment involving 1,000 volunteers—his figure was inaccurate,
actually 2,500 were involved—was hardly, he believed, a conclusive
test. Furthermore, organizations such as the NAACP might be encouraged
to exert pressure for similar experiments among troops in training in
the United States and even in the midst of active operations in the
Pacific theater—pressure, he believed, that might hamper training and
operations. What mainly concerned Somervell were the political
implications. Many members of Congress, newspaper editors, and others
who had given strong support to the War Department were, he contended,
“vigorously opposed” to integration under any conditions. A strong
adverse (p. 055) reaction from this influential segment of the
nation’s opinion-makers might alienate public support for a postwar
program of universal military training.[2-106]

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

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

The platoon experiment was illuminating in several respects. The fact
that so late in the war thousands of Negroes volunteered to trade the
safety of the rear for duty at the front said something about black
patriotism and perhaps something about the Negro’s passion for
equality. It also demonstrated that, when (p. 056) properly trained
and motivated and treated with fairness, blacks, like whites,
performed with bravery and distinction in combat. Finally, the
experiment successfully attacked one of the traditionalists’
shibboleths, that close association of the races in Army units would
cause social dissension.

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

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

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

The Army received no end of advice on its manpower policy during the
war. Civil rights spokesmen continually pointed out that segregation
itself was discriminatory, and Judge Hastie in particular hammered on
this proposition before (p. 057) the highest officials of the War
Department. In fact Hastie’s recommendations, criticisms, and
arguments crystallized the demands of civil rights leaders. The Army
successfully resisted the proposition when its Advisory Committee on
Negro Troop Policies under John McCloy modified but did not
appreciably alter the segregation policy. It was a predictable course.
The Army’s racial policy was more than a century old, and leaders
considered it dangerous if not impossible to revise traditional ways
during a global war involving so many citizens with pronounced and
different views on race.

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

CHAPTER 3 (p. 058)

World War II: The Navy

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

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

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

Development of a Wartime Policy (p. 059)

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

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

Dorie Miller

The Bureau of Navigation, which was charged with primary
responsibility for all personnel matters, was opposed to change in the
racial composition of the Navy. Less than two weeks after Knox’s
appointment, it prepared for his signature a letter to Lieutenant
Governor Charles Poletti of New York defending the Navy’s policy. The
bureau reasoned that since segregation was impractical, exclusion was
necessary. Experience had proved, the bureau claimed, that when given
supervisory responsibility the Negro was unable to maintain discipline
among white subordinates with the result that teamwork, harmony, and
ship’s efficiency suffered. The Negro, therefore, had to be segregated
from the white sailor. All-black units were impossible, the bureau
argued, because the (p. 060) service’s training and distribution
system demanded that a man in any particular rating be available for
any duty required of that rating in any ship or activity in the Navy.
The Navy had experimented with segregated crews after World War I,
manning one ship with an all-Filipino crew and another with an
all-Samoan crew, but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and
reasoned that ships with black crews would be no more satisfactory.[3-6]

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

Admiral King and Secretary Knox
on the USS Augusta.

The White House conference revealed an interesting contrast between
Roosevelt and Knox. Whatever his personal feelings, Roosevelt agreed
with Knox (p. 061) that integration of the Navy was an impractical
step in wartime, but where Knox saw exclusion from general service as
the alternative to integration Roosevelt sought a compromise. He
suggested that the Navy “make a beginning” by putting some “good Negro
bands” aboard battleships. Under such intimate living conditions white
and black would learn to know and respect each other, and “then we can
move on from there.”[3-11] In effect the President was trying to lead
the Navy toward a policy similar to that announced by the Army in
1940. While his suggestion about musicians was ignored by Secretary
Knox, the search for a middle way between exclusion and integration
had begun.

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

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

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

Demonstrating (p. 062) changing social attitudes and also reflecting
the compromise solution suggested by the President in June, Addison
Walker’s minority report recommended that a limited number of Negroes
be enlisted for general duty “on some type of patrol or other small
vessel assigned to a particular yard or station.” While the
enlistments could frankly be labeled experiments, Walker argued that
such a step would mute black criticism by promoting Negroes out of the
servant class. The program would also provide valuable data in case
the Navy was later directed to accept Negroes through Selective
Service. Reasoning that a man’s right to fight for his country was
probably more fundamental than his right to vote, Walker insisted that
the drive for the rights and privileges of black citizens was a social
force that could not be ignored by the Navy. Indeed, he added, “the
reconciliation of social friction within our own country” should be a
special concern of the armed forces in wartime.[3-14]

Although the committee’s majority won the day, its arguments were
overtaken by events that followed Pearl Harbor. The NAACP, viewing the
Navy’s rejection of black volunteers in the midst of the intensive
recruiting campaign, again took the issue to the White House. The
President, in turn, asked the Fair Employment Practices Committee to
consider the case.[3-15] Committee chairman Mark Ethridge conferred with
Assistant Secretary Bard, pointing out that since Negroes had been
eligible for general duty in World War I, the Navy had actually taken
a step backward when it restricted them to the Messman’s Branch. The
committee was even willing to pay the price of segregation to insure
the Negro’s return to general duty. Ethridge recommended that the Navy
amend its policy and accept Negroes for use at Caribbean stations or
on harbor craft.[3-16] Criticism of Navy policy, hitherto emanating
almost exclusively from the civil rights (p. 063) organizations and a
few congressmen, now broadened to include another government agency.
As President Roosevelt no doubt expected, the Fair Employment
Practices Committee had come out in support of his compromise solution
for the Navy.

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

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

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

Adamant (p. 064) in its opposition to any change in the Navy’s policy,
the Bureau of Navigation ignored Admiral Snyder’s suggestions. The
spokesman for the bureau warned that the 5,000 Negroes under
consideration were just an opening wedge. “The sponsors of the
program,” Capt. Kenneth Whiting contended, “desire full equality on
the part of the Negro and will not rest content until they obtain it.”
In the end, he predicted, Negroes would be on every man-of-war in
direct proportion to their percentage of the population. The
Commandant of the Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, echoed the
bureau’s sentiments. He viewed the issue of black enlistments as
crucial.

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

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

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

Secretary Knox was certainly not one to dispute the board’s findings,
but it was a different story in the White House. President Roosevelt
refused to accept the argument that the only choice lay between
exclusion in the Messman’s Branch and total integration in the general
service. His desire to avoid the race issue was understandable; the
war was in its darkest days, and whatever his aspirations for American
society, the President was convinced that, while some change was
necessary, “to go the whole way at one fell swoop would seriously
impair the general average efficiency of the Navy.”[3-21] He wanted the
board to study the question further, noting that there were some
additional tasks and some (p. 065) special assignments that could be
worked out for the Negro that “would not inject into the whole
personnel of the Navy the race question.”[3-22]

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

The Navy got the message. Armed with these instructions from the White
House, the General Board called on the bureaus and other agencies to
furnish lists of stations or assignments where Negroes could be used
in other than the Messman’s Branch, adding that it was “unnecessary
and inadvisable” to emphasize further the undesirability of recruiting
Negroes. Freely interpreting the President’s directive, the board
decided that its proposals had to provide for segregation in order to
prevent the injection of the race issue into the Navy. It rejected the
idea of enlisting Negroes in such selected ratings as musician and
carpenter’s mate or designating a branch for Negroes (the possibility
of an all-black aviation department for a carrier was discussed).
Basing its decision on the plans quickly submitted by the bureaus, the
General Board recommended a course that it felt offered “least
disadvantages and the least difficulty of accomplishment as a war
measure”: the formation of black units in the shore establishment,
black crews for naval district local defense craft and selected Coast
(p. 066) Guard cutters, black regiments in the Seabees, and composite
battalions in the Marine Corps. The board asked that the Navy
Department be granted wide latitude in deciding the number of Negroes
to be accepted as well as their rate of enlistment and the method of
recruiting, training, and assignment.[3-23] The President agreed to the
plan, but balked at the board’s last request. “I think this is a
matter,” he told Secretary Knox, “to be determined by you and me.”[3-24]

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

Members of the black community received the news with mixed emotions.
Some reluctantly accepted the plan as a first step; the NAACP’s
Crisis called it “progress toward a more enlightened point of view.”
Others, like the National Negro Congress, complimented Knox for his
“bold, patriotic action.”[3-27] But almost all were quick to point out
that the black sailor would be segregated, limited to the rank of
petty officer, and, except as a steward, barred from sea duty.[3-28] The
Navy’s plan offered all the disadvantages of the Army’s system with
none of the corresponding advantages for participation and
advancement. The NAACP hammered away at the segregation angle,
informing its public that the old system, which had fathered
inequalities and humiliations in the Army and in civilian life, was
now being followed by the Navy. A. Philip Randolph complained that the
change in Navy policy merely “accepts and extends and consolidates the
policy of Jim-Crowism in the Navy as well as proclaims it as an
accepted, recognized (p. 067) government ideology that the Negro is
inferior to the white man.”[3-29] The editors of the National Urban
League’s Opportunity concluded that, “faced with the great
opportunity to strengthen the forces of Democracy, the Navy Department
chose to affirm the charge that Japan is making against America to the
brown people … that the so-called Four Freedoms enunciated in the
great ‘Atlantic Charter’ were for white men only.”[3-30]

A Segregated Navy

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

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

Electrician Mates
string power lines in the Central Pacific.

During the first six months of the new segregated training program,
before the great influx of Negroes from the draft, the Navy set the
training period at twelve weeks. Later, when it had reluctantly
abandoned the longer period, the Navy discovered that the regular
eight-week course was sufficient. Approximately 31 percent of those
graduating from the recruit course were qualified for Class (p. 068)
A schools and entered advanced classes to receive training that would
normally lead to petty officer rating for the top graduates and
prepare men for assignment to naval stations and local defense and
district craft. There they would serve in such class “A” specialties
as radioman, signalman, and yeoman and the other occupational
specialties such as machinist, mechanic, carpenter, electrician, cook,
and baker.[3-34] Some of these classes were held at Hampton, but, as the
number of black recruits increased, the majority remained at Camp
Smalls for advanced training.

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

The Navy proceeded to assimilate the black volunteers along these
lines, suffering few of the personnel problems that plagued the Army
in the first months of the war. In contrast to the Army’s chaotic
situation, caused by the thousands of black recruits streaming in from
Selective Service, the Navy’s plans for its volunteers were disrupted
only because qualified Negroes showed little inclination to flock to
the Navy standard, and more than half of those who did were rejected.
The Bureau of Naval Personnel[3-36] reported that during the first three
weeks of recruitment only 1,261 Negroes volunteered for general
service, and 58 percent of these had to be rejected for physical and
other reasons. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Adm. Randall Jacobs,
was surprised at the small number of volunteers, a figure far below
the planners’ expectations, and his surprise turned to concern in the
next months as the seventeen-year-old volunteer inductees, the primary
target of the armed forces recruiters, continued to choose the Army
over the Navy at a ratio of 10 to 1.[3-37] The Navy’s personnel
officials agreed that they had to attract their proper share of
intelligent and able Negroes but (p. 069) seemed unable to isolate the
cause of the disinterest. Admiral Jacobs blamed it on a lack of
publicity; the bureau’s historians, perhaps unaware of the Navy’s
nineteenth century experience with black seamen, later attributed it
to Negroes’ “relative unfamiliarity with the sea or the large inland
waters and their consequent fear of the water.”[3-38]

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

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

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

The (p. 070) Navy issued its first call for inductees from Selective
Service in February 1943, adopting the Army’s policy of placing its
requisition on a racial basis and specifying the number of whites and
blacks needed for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The Bureau
of Naval Personnel planned to continue its old monthly quota of about
1,200 Negroes for general service and 1,500 for the Messman’s Branch.
Secretary Knox explained to the President that it would be impossible
for the Navy to take more Negroes without resorting to mixed crews in
the fleet, which, Knox reminded Roosevelt, was a policy “contrary to
the President’s program.” The President agreed with Knox and told him
so to advise Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective
Service.[3-44]

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

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

In (p. 071) an effort to save the quota concept, the Bureau of Naval
Personnel ground out new figures that would raise the current call of
2,700 Negroes per month to 5,000 in April and 7,350 for each of the
remaining months of 1943. Armed with these figures, Secretary Knox was
able to promise Commissioner McNutt that 10 percent of the men
inducted for the rest of 1943 would be Negroes, although separate
calls had to be continued for the time being to permit adjusting the
flow of Negroes to the expansion of facilities.[3-47] In other words,
the secretary promised to accept 71,900 black draftees in 1943; he did
not promise to increase the black strength of the Navy to 10 percent
of the total.

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

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

Although it wrestled for several months with the problem of
distributing the increased number of black draftees, the Bureau of
Naval Personnel could invent nothing new. The Navy, Knox told
President Roosevelt, would continue to segregate Negroes and restrict
their service to certain occupations. Its increased black strength
would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black Seabee battalions, in
which Negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for
harbor craft and local defense forces; and in billets for cooks and
port hands. The rest would (p. 072) be sent to shore stations for
guard and miscellaneous duties in concentrations up to about 50
percent of the total station strength. The President approved the
Navy’s proposals, and the distribution of Negroes followed these
lines.[3-51]

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

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

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

Most Negroes performed humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black
sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs
remained in the Negro’s eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship
in the naval establishment. Under (p. 073) pressure to provide more
stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early
months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for
that separate duty. Often recruiters took in many as stewards who were
equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men
were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local
naval stations the result was often dismaying. The Navy thus received
poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a
segregated servants’ branch. In an effort to standardize the training
of messmen, the Bureau of Naval Personnel established a stewards
school in the spring of 1943 at Norfolk and later one at Bainbridge,
Maryland. The change in training did little to improve the standards
of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among
many stewards.

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

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

Approximately half the Negroes in the Navy were detailed to shore
billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers
at ammunition or supply (p. 074) depots, at air stations, and at
section bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and
sometimes commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]

Seabees in the South Pacific
righting an undermined water tank.

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

No black women had been admitted to the Navy. Race was not mentioned
in the legislation establishing the WAVES in 1942, but neither was
exclusion on account of color expressly forbidden. The WAVES and the
Women’s Reserve of both the Coast Guard (SPARS) and the Marine Corps
therefore celebrated their second birthday exclusively white. The Navy
Nurse Corps was also totally white. In answer to protests passed to
the service through Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy admitted in November
1943 that it had a shortage of 500 nurses, but since another (p. 075)
500 white nurses were under indoctrination and training, the Bureau of
Medicine and Surgery explained, “the question relative to the
necessity for accepting colored personnel in this category is not
apparent.”[3-56]

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

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

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

Progressive Experiments

Commander Sargent

Since the inception of black enlistment there had been those in the
Bureau of Naval Personnel who argued for the establishment of a group
to coordinate plans and policies on the training and use of black
sailors. Various proposals were considered, but only in the wake of
the racial disturbances of 1943 did the bureau set up a Special
Programs Unit in its Planning and Control Activity to oversee the
whole black enlistment program. In the end the size of the unit
governed the scope of its program. Originally the unit was to monitor
all transactions involving Negroes in the bureau’s operating
divisions, thus relieving the Enlisted (p. 076) Division of the
critical task of distributing billets for Negroes. It was also
supposed to advise local commanders on race problems and interpret
departmental policies for them. When finally established in August
1943, the unit consisted of only three officers, a size which
considerably limited its activities. Still, the unit worked diligently
to improve the lot of the black sailor, and eventually from this
office would emerge the plans that brought about the integration of
the Navy.

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

During its first months of existence the Special Programs Unit tried
to quiet racial unrest by a rigorous application of the separate but
equal principle. It began attacking the concentration of Negroes in
large segregated groups in the naval districts by creating more
overseas billets. Toward the end of 1943, Negroes (p. 077) were being
assigned in greater numbers to duty in the Pacific at shore
establishments and aboard small defense, district, and yard craft. The
Bureau of Naval Personnel also created new specialties for Negroes in
the general service. One important addition was the creation of black
shore patrol units for which a school was started at Great Lakes. The
Special Programs Unit established a remedial training center for
illiterate draftees at Camp Robert Smalls, drawing the faculty from
black servicemen who had been educators in civilian life. The
twelve-week course gave the students the equivalent of a fifth grade
education in addition to regular recruit training. Approximately
15,000 Negroes took this training before the school was consolidated
with a similar organization for whites at Bainbridge, Maryland, in the
last months of the war.[3-60]

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

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

USS Mason.
Sailors look over their new ship.

Although (p. 078) both ships continued to operate with black crews
well into 1945, the Mason on escort duty in the Atlantic, only four
other segregated patrol craft were added to the fleet during the
war.[3-64] The Mason passed its shakedown cruise test, but the Bureau
of Naval Personnel was not satisfied with the crew. The black petty
officers had proved competent in their ratings and interested in their
work, but bureau observers agreed that the rated men in general were
unable to maintain discipline. The nonrated men tended to lack respect
for the petty officers, who showed some disinclination to put their
men on report. The Special Programs Unit admitted the truth of these
charges but argued that the experiment only proved what the Navy
already knew: black sailors did not respond well when assigned to
all-black organizations under white officers.[3-65] On the other hand,
the experiment demonstrated that the Navy possessed a reservoir of
able seamen who were not being efficiently employed, and—an
unexpected dividend from the presence of white noncommissioned
officers—that integration worked on board ship. The white petty
officers messed, worked, and slept with their men in the close contact
inevitable aboard small ships, with no sign of racial friction.

Opportunity (p. 079) for advancement was as important to morale as
assignment according to training and skill, and the Special Programs
Unit encouraged the promotion of Negroes according to their ability
and in proportion to their number. Although in July 1943 the Bureau of
Naval Personnel had warned commanders that it would continue to order
white enlisted men to sea with the expectation that they would be
replaced in shore jobs by Negroes,[3-66] the Special Programs Unit
discovered that rating and promotion of Negroes was still slow. At the
unit’s urging, the bureau advised all naval districts that it expected
Negroes to be rated upward “as rapidly as practicable” and asked them
to report on their rating of Negroes.[3-67] It also authorized stations
to retain white petty officers for up to two weeks to break in their
black replacements, but warned that this privilege must not be abused.
The bureau further directed that all qualified general service
candidates be advanced to ratings for which they were eligible
regardless of whether their units were authorized enough spaces to
take care of them. This last directive did little for black promotions
at first because many local commanders ruled that no Negroes could be
“qualified” since none were allowed to perform sea duties. In January
1944 the bureau had to clarify the order to make sure that Negroes
were given the opportunity to advance.[3-68]

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

Despite its 100,000 enlisted Negroes, the absence of black
commissioned officers in the fall of 1943 forced the Navy to answer an
increasing number of queries from civil rights organizations and
Congress.[3-69] Several times during 1942 suggestions were made within
the Bureau of Naval Personnel that the instructors at the Hampton
specialist school and seventy-five other Negroes be commissioned
(p. 080) for service with the large black units, but nothing happened.
Secretary Knox himself thought that the Navy would have to develop a
considerable body of black sailors before it could even think about
commissioning black officers.[3-70] But the secretary failed to
appreciate the effect of the sheer number of black draftees that
overwhelmed the service in the spring of 1943, and he reckoned without
the persuasive arguments of his special assistant, Adlai
Stevenson.[3-71]

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

There were in fact three avenues to a Navy commission: the Naval
Academy, the V-12 program, and direct commission from civilian life or
the enlisted ranks. But Annapolis had no Negroes enrolled at the time
Stevenson spoke, and only a dozen Negroes were enrolled in V-12
programs at integrated civilian colleges throughout the country.[3-74]
The lack of black students in the V-12 program could be attributed in
part to the belief of many black trainees that the program barred
Negroes. Actually, it never had, and in December 1943 the bureau
publicized this fact. It issued a circular letter emphasizing to all
commanders that enlisted men were entitled to consideration for
transfer to the V-12 program regardless (p. 081) of race.[3-75] Despite
this effort it was soon apparent that the program would produce only a
few black officers, and the Bureau of Naval Personnel, at the urging
of its Special Programs Unit, agreed to follow Stevenson’s suggestion
and concentrate on the direct commissioning of Negroes. Unlike
Stevenson the bureau preferred to obtain most of the men from the
enlisted ranks, and only in the case of certain specially trained men
did the Navy commission civilians.

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

The Bureau of Naval Personnel concluded that, since many units were
substantially or wholly manned by Negroes, black officers could be
used without undue difficulty, and when Secretary Knox, prodded by
Stevenson, turned to the (p. 082) bureau, it recommended that the
Navy commission twelve line and ten staff officers from a selected
list of enlisted men.[3-76] Admiral King endorsed the bureau’s
recommendation and on 15 December 1943 Knox approved it, although he
conditioned his approval by saying: “After you have commissioned the
twenty-two officers you suggest, I think this matter should again be
reviewed before any additional colored officers are commissioned.”[3-77]

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

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

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

Since only a handful of the Negroes in the Navy were officers, the
preponderance of the race problems concerned relations between black
enlisted men and their white officers. The problem of selecting the
proper officers to command black sailors was a formidable one never
satisfactorily solved during the war. As in the Army, most of the
white officers routinely selected for such assignments were
southerners, chosen by the Bureau of Naval Personnel for their assumed
“understanding” of Negroes rather than for their general competency.
The Special Programs Unit tried to work with these officers,
assembling them for conferences to discuss the best techniques and
procedures for dealing with groups of black subordinates. Members of
the unit sought to disabuse the officers of preconceived biases,
constantly reminding them that “our prejudices must (p. 083) be
subordinated to our traditional unfailing obedience to orders.”[3-78]
Although there was ample proof that many Negroes actively resented the
paternalism exhibited by many of even the best of these officers, this
fact was slow to filter through the naval establishment. It was not
until January 1944 that an officer who had compiled an enviable record
in training Seabee units described how his organization had come to
see the light:

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

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

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

This conclusion was embodied in a pamphlet entitled Guide to the
Command of Negro Naval Personnel and published by the Bureau of Naval
Personnel in February 1944.[3-80] The Special Programs Unit had to
overcome much opposition within the bureau to get the pamphlet
published. Some thought the subject of racial tension was best
ignored; others objected to the “sociological” content of the work,
considering this approach outside the Navy’s province. The unit
(p. 084) argued that racial tension in the Navy was a serious problem
that could not be ignored, and since human relations affected the
Navy’s mission the Navy should deal with social matters objectively
and frankly.[3-81]

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

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

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

Forrestal Takes the Helm

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

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

Forrestal (p. 085) accepted Jacob’s argument that as long as the war
continued any move toward integrating the fighting ships was
impractical. At the same time, he agreed with the Special Programs
Unit that large concentrations of Negroes in shore duties lowered
efficiency and morale. Forrestal compromised by ordering the bureau to
prepare as an experiment a plan for the integration of some fleet
auxiliary ships. On 20 May 1944 he outlined the problem for the
President:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actually, both arguments served to mask other motives, as did Knox’s
rejection of recruitment on the grounds that integrating women into
the Navy was difficult (p. 087) enough without taking on the race
problem.[3-94] In April 1943 Knox “tentatively” approved the “tentative”
outline of a bureau plan for the induction of up to 5,000 black WAVES,
but nothing came of it.[3-95] Given the secretary’s frequent
protestation that the subject was under constant review,[3-96] and his
statement to Captain McAfee that black WAVES would be enlisted “over
his dead body,”[3-97] the tentative outline and approval seems to have
been an attempt to defer the decision indefinitely.

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

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

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

The first two black WAVE officers graduated from training at Smith
College on 21 December, and the enlistment of black women began a week
later. The program turned out to be more racially progressive than
initially outlined by Forrestal. He had explained to the President
that the women would be quartered (p. 088) separately, a provision
interpreted in the Bureau of Naval Personnel to mean that black
recruits would be organized into separate companies. Since a recruit
company numbered 250 women, and since it quickly became apparent that
such a large group of black volunteers would not soon be forthcoming,
some of the bureau staff decided that the Navy would continue to bar
black women. In this they reckoned without Captain McAfee who insisted
on a personal ruling by Forrestal. She warned the secretary that his
order was necessary because the concept “was so strange to Navy
practice.”[3-103] He agreed with her that the Negroes would be
integrated along with the rest of the incoming recruits, and the
Bureau of Naval Personnel subsequently ordered that the WAVES be
assimilated without making either special or separate arrangements.[3-104]

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

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

He [Forrestal] said he spoke to Admiral King, who was then chief
of staff, and said, “Admiral King, I’m not satisfied with the
situation here—I don’t think that our Navy Negro personnel are
getting a square break. I want to do something about it, but I
can’t do anything about it unless the officers are behind me. I
want your help. What do you say?”

He (p. 089) said that Admiral King sat for a moment, and looked
out the window and then said reflectively, “You know, we say that
we are a democracy and a democracy ought to have a democratic
Navy. I don’t think you can do it, but if you want to try, I’m
behind you all the way.” And he told me, “And Admiral King was
behind me, all the way, not only he but all of the Bureau of
Personnel, BuPers. They’ve been bricks.”[3-105]
Admiral Jacobs, the Chief of Naval Personnel, also pledged his
support.[3-106]

Sailors in the General Service
Move Ammunition

As news of the King-Forrestal conversation filtered through the
department, many of the programs long suggested by the Special
Programs Unit and heretofore treated with indifference or disapproval
suddenly received respectful attention.[3-107] With the high-ranking
officers cooperating, the Navy under Forrestal began to attack some of
the more obvious forms of discrimination and causes of racial tension.
Admiral King led the attack, personally directing in August 1944 that
all elements give close attention to the proper selection of officers
to command black sailors. As he put it: “Certain officers will be
temperamentally better suited for such commands than others.”[3-108] The
qualifications (p. 090) of these officers were to be kept under
constant review. In December he singled out the commands in the
Pacific area, which had a heavy concentration of all-black base
companies, calling for a reform in their employment and advancement of
Negroes.[3-109]

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

The Bureau of Naval Personnel also stepped up the tempo of its
reforms. In March 1944 it had already made black cooks and bakers
eligible for duty in all commissary branches of the Navy.[3-110] In June
it got Forrestal’s approval for putting all rated cooks and stewards
in chief petty officer uniforms.[3-111] (While providing finally for the
proper uniforming of the chief cooks and stewards, this reform set
their subordinates, the rated cooks and stewards, even further apart
from their counterparts in the general service who of course continued
to wear the familiar bell bottoms.) The bureau also began to attack
the concentration of Negroes in ammunition depots and base companies.
On 21 February 1945 it ordered that all naval magazines and ammunition
depots in the United States and, wherever practical, overseas limit
their black seamen to 30 percent of the total (p. 091) employed.[3-112]
It also organized twenty logistic support companies to replace the
formless base companies sent to the Pacific in the early months of the
recruitment program. Organized to perform supply functions, each
company consisted of 250 enlisted men and five officers, with a
flexible range of petty officer billets.

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

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

There were other examples of backsliding in the Navy’s racial
practices. Use of Negroes in general service had created a shortage of
messmen, and in August 1944 the Bureau of Naval Personnel authorized
commanders to recruit among black seamen for men to transfer to the
Steward’s Branch. The bureau suggested as (p. 092) a talking point
the fact that stewards enjoyed more rapid advancement, shorter hours,
and easier work than men in the general service.[3-116] And,
illustrating that a move toward integration was sometimes followed by
a step backward, a bureau representative reported in July 1945 that
whereas a few black trainees at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center
had been integrated in the past, many now arriving were segregated in
all-black companies.[3-117]

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

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

A riot on Guam in December 1944 was the climax of months of friction
between black seamen and white marines. A series of shootings in and
around the town of Agana on Christmas Eve left a black and a white
marine dead. Believing one of the killed a member of their group,
black sailors from the Naval Supply Depot drove into town to confront
the outnumbered military police. No violence ensued, but the next day
two truckloads of armed Negroes went to the white Marine camp. A riot
followed and forty-three Negroes were arrested, charged with rioting
and theft of the trucks, and sentenced to up to four years in prison.
(p. 093) The authorities also recommended that several of the white
marines involved be court-martialed. These men too were convicted of
various offenses and sentenced.[3-120] Walter White went to Guam to
investigate the matter and appeared as a principal witness before the
Marine Court of Inquiry. There he pieced together for officials the
long history of discrimination suffered by men of the base company.
This situation, combined with poor leadership in the unit, he
believed, caused the trouble. His efforts and those of other civil
rights advocates led to the release of the black sailors in early
1946.[3-121]

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

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

The riots, mutinies, and other incidents increased the pressure for
further modifications of policy. Some senior officers became convinced
that the only way (p. 094) to avoid mass rebellion was to avert the
possibility of collective action, and collective action was less
likely if Negroes were dispersed among whites. As Admiral Chester W.
Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet and an eloquent proponent of
the theory that integration was a practical means of avoiding trouble,
explained to the captain of an attack cargo ship who had just received
a group of black crewmen and was segregating their sleeping quarters:
“If you put all the Negroes together they’ll have a chance to share
grievances and to plot among themselves, and this will damage
discipline and morale. If they are distributed among other members of
the crew, there will be less chance of trouble. And when we say we
want integration, we mean integration.”[3-122] Thus integration grew
out of both idealism and realism.

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

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

These ideas had merit. The Special Programs Unit had for some time
been urging a public relations effort, pointing to the existence of an
influential black press (p. 095) as well as to the desirability of
fostering among whites a greater knowledge of the role of Negroes in
the war. Forrestal brought two black officers to Washington for
possible assignment to public relations work, and he asked the
director of public relations to arrange for black newsmen to visit
vessels manned by black crewmen. Finally, in June 1945, a black
officer was added to the staff of the Navy’s Office of Public
Relations.[3-126]

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

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

At Forrestal’s request, Granger explained how he viewed the special
adviser’s role. He thought he could help the secretary by smoothing
the integration process in the general service through consultations
with local commanders and their men in a series of field visits. He
could also act as an intermediary between the department and the civil
rights organizations and black press. Granger (p. 096) urged the
formation of an advisory council, which would consist of ranking
representatives from the various branches, to interpret and administer
the Navy’s racial policy. The need for such intradepartmental
coordination seemed fairly obvious. Although in 1945 the Bureau of
Naval Personnel had increased the resources of its Special Programs
Unit, still the only specialized organization dealing with race
problems, that group was always too swamped with administrative detail
to police race problems outside Washington. Furthermore, the Seabees
and the Medical and Surgery Department were in some ways independent
of the bureau, and their employment of black sailors was different
from that of other branches—a situation that created further
confusion and conflict in the application of race policy.[3-131]

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

It was obvious that Forrestal, convinced that the Navy’s senior
officials had made a fundamental shift in their thinking on equal
treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Navy, was content to let
specific reforms percolate slowly throughout the department. He would
later call the Navy’s wartime reforms “a start down a long road.”[3-133]
In these last months of the war, however, more barriers to equal
treatment of Negroes were quietly falling. In March 1945, after months
of prodding by Forrestal, the Surgeon General announced that the Navy
would accept a “reasonable” number of qualified black nurses and was
now recruiting for them.[3-134] In June the Bureau of Naval Personnel
ordered the integration of recruit training, assigning black general
service recruits to the nearest recruit training command “to obtain
the maximum utilization of naval training and housing facilities.”[3-135]
Noting that this integration was at variance with some individual
attitudes, the bureau justified the change on the grounds of
administrative efficiency. Again at the secretary’s urging, plans were
set in motion in July for the assignment of Negroes to submarine and
aviation pilot training.[3-136] At the same time Lester Granger,
acting as the secretary’s personal representative, (p. 097) was
visiting the Navy’s continental installations, prodding commanders and
converting them to the new policy.[3-137]

The 22d Special Construction Battalion Celebrates V-J
Day

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

The influence of the civil rights forces can be overstated. Their
attention tended to focus on the Army, especially in the later years
of the war; their attacks on the Navy were mostly sporadic and
uncoordinated and easily deflected by naval spokesmen. Equally
important to race reform was the fact that the Navy was developing its
own group of civil rights advocates during the war, influential men in
key positions who had been dissatisfied with the prewar status of the
Negro and who pressed for racial change in the name of military
efficiency. Under (p. 098) the leadership of a sympathetic secretary,
himself aided and abetted by Stevenson and other advisers in his
office and in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, the Navy was laying plans
for a racially integrated general service when Japan capitulated.

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

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

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

CHAPTER 4 (p. 099)

World War II: The Marine Corps and the Coast Guard

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

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

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

At (p. 100) first a division under the Chief of Naval Operations, the
headquarters of the Coast Guard was later granted considerably more
administrative autonomy. In March 1942 Secretary Knox carefully
delineated the Navy’s control over the Coast Guard, making the Chief
of Naval Operations responsible for the operation of those Coast Guard
ships, planes, and stations assigned to the naval commands for the
“proper conduct of the war,” but specifying that assignments be made
with “due regard for the needs of the Coast Guard,” which must
continue to carry out its regular functions. Such duties as providing
port security, icebreaking services, and navigational aid remained
under the direct control and supervision of the commandant, the local
naval district commander exercising only “general military control” of
these activities in his area.[4-3] Important to the development of
racial policy was the fact that the Coast Guard also retained
administrative control of the recruitment, training, and assignment of
personnel. Like the Marine Corps, it also had a staff agency for
manpower planning, the Commandant’s Advisory Board, and one for
administration, the Personnel Division, independent of the Navy’s
bureaus.[4-4] In theory, the Coast Guard’s manpower policy, at least in
regard to those segments of the service that operated directly under
Navy control, had to be compatible with the racial directives of the
Navy’s Bureau of Naval Personnel. In practice, the Commandant of the
Coast Guard, like his colleague in the Marine Corps, was left free to
develop his own racial policy in accordance with the general
directives of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval
Operations.

The First Black Marines

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

Such (p. 101) evasions could no longer be practiced after President
Roosevelt decided to admit Negroes to the general service of the naval
establishment. According to Secretary Knox the President wanted the
Navy to handle the matter “in a way that would not inject into the
whole personnel of the Navy the race question.”[4-8] Under pressure to
make some move, General Holcomb proposed the enlistment of 1,000
Negroes in the volunteer Marine Corps Reserve for duty in the general
service in a segregated composite defense battalion. The battalion
would consist primarily of seacoast and antiaircraft artillery, a
rifle company with a light tank platoon, and other weapons units and
components necessary to make it a self-sustaining unit.[4-9] To inject
the subject of race “to a less degree than any other known scheme,”
the commandant planned to train the unit in an isolated camp and
assign it to a remote station.[4-10] The General Board accepted this
proposal, explaining to Secretary Knox that Negroes could not be used
in the Marine Corps’ amphibious units because the inevitable
replacement and redistribution of men in combat would “prevent the
maintenance of necessary segregation.” The board also mentioned that
experienced noncommissioned officers were at a premium and that
diverting them to train a black unit would be militarily
inefficient.[4-11]

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

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

The (p. 102) enlistment process proved difficult. The commandant
reported that despite predictions of black educators to the contrary
the corps had netted only sixty-three black recruits capable of
passing the entrance examinations during the first three weeks of
recruitment.[4-14] As late as 29 October the Director of Plans and
Policies was reporting that only 647 of the scheduled 1,200 men (the
final strength figure decided upon for the all-black unit) had been
enlisted. He blamed the occupational qualifications for the delay,
adding that it was doubtful “if even white recruits” could be procured
under such strictures. The commandant approved his plan for enlisting
Negroes without specific qualifications and instituting a modified
form of specialist training. Black marines would not be sent to
specialist schools “unless there is a colored school available,” but
instead Marine instructors would be sent to teach in the black
camp.[4-15] In the end many of these first black specialists received
their training in nearby Army installations.

Segregation (p. 103) was the common practice in all the services in
1942, as indeed it was throughout much of American society. If this
practice appeared somehow more restrictive in the Marine Corps than it
did in the other services, it was because of the corps’ size and
traditions. The illusion of equal treatment and opportunity could be
kept alive in the massive Army and Navy with their myriad units and
military occupations; it was much more difficult to preserve in the
small and specialized Marine Corps. Given segregation, the Marine
Corps was obliged to put its few black marines in its few black units,
whose small size limited the variety of occupations and training
opportunities.

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

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

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

The immediate problem of what to do with this sudden influx of Negroes
was complicated by the fact that many of the draftees, the product of
vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. Where black volunteers
had to pass the corps’ (p. 104) rigid entrance requirements, draftees
had only to meet the lowest selective service standards. An exact
breakdown of black Marine Corps draftees by General Classification
Test category is unavailable for the war period. A breakdown of some
15,000 black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after V-J
day and included many of those drafted during the war. Category I
represents the most gifted men:[4-18]

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

Segregation, not the draft, forced the Marine Corps to devise new jobs
and units to absorb the black inductees. A plan circulated in the
Division of Plans and Policies called for more defense battalions, a
branch for messmen, and the assignment of large black units to local
bases to serve as chauffeurs, messengers, clerks, and janitors.
Referring to the janitor assignment, one division official admitted
that “I don’t think we can get away with this type duty.”[4-19] In the
end the Negroes were not used as chauffeurs, messengers, clerks, and
janitors. Instead the corps placed a “maximum practical number” in
defense battalions. The number of these units, however, was limited,
as Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt, the acting commandant, explained in March
1943, by the number of black noncommissioned officers available. Black
noncommissioned officers were necessary, he continued, because in the
Army’s experience “in nearly all cases to intermingle colored and
white enlisted personnel in the same organization” led to “trouble and
disorder.”[4-20] Demonstrating his own and the Marine Corps’ lack of
experience with black troops, the acting commandant went on to provide
his commanders with some rather dubious advice based on what he
perceived as the Army’s experience: black units should be commanded by
men “who thoroughly (p. 105) knew their [Negroes’] individual and
racial characteristics and temperaments,” and Negroes should be
assigned to work they preferred.

Shore Party in Training, Camp Lejeune, 1942

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

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

These were generally progressive sentiments, evidence of the
commandant’s desire to provide for the peaceful assimilation and
advancement of Negroes in the corps. Unfortunately for his reputation
among the civil rights advocates, General Holcomb seemed overly
concerned with certain social implications of rank (p. 106) and
color. Undeterred by a lack of personal experience with interracial
command, he was led in the name of racial harmony to an unpopular
conclusion. “It is essential,” he told his commanders, “that in no
case shall there be colored noncommissioned officers senior to white
men in the same unit, and desirable that few, if any be of the same
rank.”[4-22] He was particularly concerned with the period when white
instructors and noncommissioned officers were being phased out of
black units. He wanted Negroes up for promotion to corporal
transferred, before promotion, out of any unit that contained white
corporals.

Medical Attendants at Rest, Peleliu, October, 1944

The Division of Plans and Policies tried to follow these strictures as
it set about organizing the new black units. Job preference had
already figured in the organization of the new Messman’s Branch
established in January 1943. At that time Secretary Knox had approved
the reconstitution of the corps’ all-white Mess Branch as the
Commissary Branch and the organization of an all-black Messman’s
(p. 107) Branch along the lines of the Navy’s Steward’s Branch.[4-23] In
authorizing the new branch, which was quickly redesignated the
Steward’s Branch to conform to the Navy model, Secretary Knox
specified that the members must volunteer for such duty. Yet the
corps, under pressure to produce large numbers of stewards in the
early months of the war, showed so little faith in the volunteer
system that Marine recruiters were urged to induce half of all black
recruits to sign on as stewards.[4-24] Original plans called for the
assignment of one steward for every six officers, but the lack of
volunteers and the needs of the corps quickly caused this estimate to
be scaled down.[4-25] By 5 July 1944 the Steward’s Branch numbered
(p. 108) 1,442 men, roughly 14 percent of the total black strength of
the Marine Corps.[4-26] It remained approximately this size for the rest
of the war.

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

The increased allotment of black troops entering the corps and the
commandant’s call for replacing all white noncommissioned officers
with blacks as quickly as they could be sufficiently trained caused
problems for the black combat units. The 51st Defense Battalion in
particular suffered many vicissitudes in its training and deployment.
The 51st was the first black unit in the Marine Corps, a doubtful
advantage considering the frequent reorganization and rapid troop
turnover that proved its lot. At first the reception and training of
all black inductees fell to the battalion, but in March 1943 a
separate Headquarters Company, Recruit Depot Battalion, was organized
at Montford Point.[4-28] Its cadre was drawn (p. 109) from the 51st, as
were the noncommissioned officers and key personnel of the newly
organized ammunition and depot companies and the black security
detachments organized at Montford Point and assigned to the Naval
Ammunition Depot, McAlester, Oklahoma, and the Philadelphia Depot of
Supplies.

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

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

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

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

The experience of the two defense battalions demonstrates that racial
consideration governed their eventual deployment just as it had
decided their organization. With no further strategic need for defense
battalions, the Marine Corps began to dismantle them in 1944, just as
the two black units became operational and were about to be sent to
the Central and South Pacific. The eighteen (p. 110) white defense
battalions were subsequently reorganized as antiaircraft artillery
battalions for use with amphibious groups in the forward areas. While
the two black units were similarly reorganized, only they and one of
the white units retained the title of defense battalion. Their
deployment was also different. The policy of self-contained,
segregated service was, in the case of a large combat unit, best
followed in the rear areas, and the two black battalions were assigned
to routine garrison duties in the backwaters of the theater, the 51st
at Eniwetok in the Marshalls, the 52d at Guam. The latter unit saw
nearly half its combat-trained men detailed to work as stevedores. It
was not surprising that the morale in both units suffered.[4-31]

Even more explicitly racial was the warning of a senior combat
commander to the effect that the deployment of black depot units to
the Polynesian areas of the Pacific should be avoided. The
Polynesians, he explained, were delightful people, and their
“primitively romantic” women shared their intimate favors with one and
all. Mixture with the white race had produced “a very high-class
half-caste,” mixture with the Chinese a “very desirable type,” but the
union of black and “Melanesian types … produces a very undesirable
citizen.” The Marine (p. 111) Corps, Maj. Gen. Charles F. B. Price
continued, had a special moral obligation and a selfish interest in
protecting the population of American Samoa, especially, from intimacy
with Negroes; he strongly urged therefore that any black units
deployed to the Pacific should be sent to Micronesia where they “can
do no racial harm.”[4-32]

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

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

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

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

Personal prejudices aside, the desire for social harmony and the fear
of the unknown go far toward explaining the Marine Corps’ wartime
racial policy. A small, specialized, and racially exclusive
organization, the Marine Corps reacted to the directives of the
Secretary of the Navy and the necessities of wartime operation with a
rigid segregation policy, its black troops restricted to about 4
percent of its enlisted strength. A large part of this black strength
was assigned to labor units where Negroes performed valuable and
sometimes dangerous service in the Pacific war. Complaints from civil
rights advocates abounded, but neither protests nor the cost to
military efficiency of duplicating training facilities (p. 112) were
of sufficient moment to overcome the sentiment against significant
racial change, which was kept to a minimum. Judged strictly in terms
of keeping racial harmony, the corps policy must be considered a
success. Ironically this very success prevented any modification of
that policy during the war.

New Roles for Black Coast Guardsmen

The Coast Guard’s pre-World War II experience with Negroes differed
from that of the other branches of the naval establishment. Unlike the
Marine Corps, the Coast Guard could boast a tradition of black
enlistment stretching far back into the previous century. Although it
shared this tradition with the Navy, the Coast Guard, unlike the Navy,
had always severely restricted Negroes both in terms of numbers
enlisted and jobs assigned. A small group of Negroes manned a
lifesaving station at Pea Island on North Carolina’s outer banks.
Negroes also served as crewmen at several lighthouses and on tenders
in the Mississippi River basin; all were survivors of the transfer of
the Lighthouse Service to the Coast Guard in 1939. These guardsmen
were almost always segregated, although a few served in integrated
crews or even commanded large Coast Guard vessels and small (p. 113)
harbor craft.[4-36] They also served in the separate Steward’s Branch,
although it might be argued that the small size of most Coast Guard
vessels integrated in fact men who were segregated in theory.

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

The lot of the black Coast Guardsman on a small cutter was not
necessarily a happy one. To a surprising extent the enlisted men of
the prewar Coast Guard were drawn from the eastern shore and outer
banks region of the Atlantic coast where service in the Coast Guard
had become a strong family tradition among a people whose attitude
toward race was rarely progressive. Although these men tolerated an
occasional small black Coast Guard crew or station, they might well
resist close service with individual Negroes. One commander reported
that racial harassment (p. 114) drove the solitary black in the
prewar crew of the cutter Calypso out of the service.[4-37]

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

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

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

The plan was a major innovation in the Coast Guard’s manpower policy.
For the first time a number of Negroes, approximately 1.6 percent of
the guard’s total (p. 115) enlisted complement, would undergo regular
recruit and specialized training.[4-41] More than half would serve
aboard ship at close quarters with their white petty officers. The
rest would be assigned to port duty with no special provision for
segregated service. If the provision for segregating nonrated Coast
Guardsmen when they were at sea was intended to prevent the
development of racial antagonism, the lack of a similar provision for
Negroes ashore was puzzling; but whatever the Coast Guard’s reasoning
in the matter, the General Board was obviously concerned with the
provisions for segregation in the plan. Its chairman told Secretary
Knox that the assignment of Negroes to the captains of the ports was a
practical use of Negroes in wartime, since these men could be
segregated in service units. But their assignment to small vessels,
Admiral Sexton added, meant that “the necessary segregation and
limitation of authority would be increasingly difficult to maintain”
and “opportunities for advancement would be few.” For that reason, he
concluded, the employment of such black crews was practical but not
desirable.[4-42]

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

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

The (p. 116) commandant’s program for the orderly induction and
assignment of a limited number of black volunteers was, as in the case
of the Navy and Marine Corps, abruptly terminated in December 1942
when the President ended volunteer enlistment for most military
personnel. For the rest of the war the Coast Guard, along with the
Navy and Marine Corps, came under the strictures of the Selective
Service Act, including its racial quota system. The Coast Guard,
however, drafted relatively few men, issuing calls for a mere 22,500
and eventually inducting only 15,296. But more than 12 percent of its
calls (2,500 men between February and November 1943) and 13 percent of
all those drafted (1,667) were Negro. On the average, 137 Negroes and
1,000 whites were inducted each month during 1943.[4-46]
Just over 5,000
Negroes served as Coast Guardsmen in World War II.[4-47]

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

The majority of black Coast Guardsmen were only peripherally concerned
with this wartime evolution of racial policy. Some 2,300 Negroes
served in the racially separate Steward’s Branch, performing the same
duties in officer messes and quarters as stewards in the Navy and
Marine Corps. But not quite, for the size of Coast Guard vessels and
their crews necessitated the use of stewards at more important battle
stations. For example, a group of stewards under the leadership of a
black gun captain manned the three-inch gun on the afterdeck of the
cutter Campbell and won a citation for helping to destroy an enemy
submarine in February 1943.[4-49] The
Personnel Division worked to make
the separate Steward’s Branch equal to the rest of the service in
terms of promotion and emoluments, and there were instances when
individual stewards successfully applied for ratings in general
service.[4-50] Again,
the close quarters aboard Coast Guard (p. 117)
vessels made the talents of stewards for general service duties more
noticeable to officers.[4-51] The
evidence suggests, however, that the
majority of the black stewards, about 63 percent of all the Negroes in
the Coast Guard, continued to function as servants throughout the war.
As in the rest of the naval establishment, the stewards in the Coast
Guard were set apart not only by their limited service but also by
different uniforms and the fact that chief stewards were not regarded
as chief petty officers. In fact, the rank of chief steward was not
introduced until the war led to an enlargement of the Coast
Guard.[4-52]

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

The majority of black guardsmen in general service served ashore under
the captains of the ports, local district commanders, or at
headquarters establishments. Men in these assignments included
hundreds in security and labor details, but more and more served as
yeomen, radio operators, storekeepers, and the like. Other Negroes
were assigned to local Coast Guard stations, and a second all-black
station was organized during the war at Tiana Beach, New York. Still
others participated in the Coast Guard’s widespread
beach (p. 118)
patrol operations. Organized in 1942 as outposts and lookouts against
possible enemy infiltration of the nation’s extensive coastlines, the
patrols employed more than 11 percent of all the Coast Guard’s
enlisted men. This large group included a number of horse and dog
patrols employing only black guardsmen.[4-53] In
all, some 2,400 black
Coast Guardsmen served in the shore establishment.

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

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

At least one officer in Coast Guard headquarters was concerned enough
to recommend that the policy be revised. With two years’ service in
Greenland waters, the last year as executive officer of the USCGC
Northland, Lt. Carlton Skinner had firsthand experience with the
limitations of the Coast Guard’s racial policy. While on the
Northland Skinner had recommended that a skilled
black (p. 119)
mechanic, then serving as a steward’s mate, be awarded a motor
mechanic petty officer rating only to find his recommendation rejected
on racial grounds. The rating was later awarded after an appeal by
Skinner, but the incident set the stage for the young officer’s later
involvement with the Coast Guard’s racial traditions. On shore duty at
Coast Guard headquarters in June 1943, Skinner recommended to the
commandant that a group of black seamen be provided with some
practical seagoing experience under a sympathetic commander in a
completely integrated operation. He emphasized practical experience in
an integrated setting, he later revealed, because he was convinced
that men with high test scores and specialized training did not
necessarily make the best sailors, especially when their training was
segregated. Skinner envisioned a widespread distribution of Negroes
throughout the Coast Guard’s seagoing vessels. His recommendation was
no “experiment in social democracy,” he later stressed, but was a
design for “an efficient use of manpower to help win a
war.”[4-55]

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

It was a chance well taken. Before decommissioning in November 1944,
the Sea Cloud served on ocean weather stations off the coasts of
Greenland, Newfoundland, and France. It received no special treatment
and was subject to the same tactical, operating, and engineering
requirements as any other unit in the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. It passed
two Atlantic Fleet inspections with no deficiencies and was officially
credited with helping to sink a German submarine in June 1944. The
Sea Cloud boasted a completely integrated operation, its 4 black
officers and some 50 black petty officers and seamen serving
throughout the ship’s 173-man complement.[4-58]
No problems of a racial
nature arose on the ship, although its captain reported that his crew
experienced some hostility in the various departments of the Boston
Navy Yard from time to time. Skinner was determined to provide truly
integrated conditions. He personally introduced his
black (p. 120)
officers into the local white officers’ club, and he saw to it that
when his men were temporarily detached for shore patrol duty they
would go in integrated teams. Again, all these arrangements were
without sign of racial incident.[4-59]

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

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

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

The success of the Sea Cloud experiment did not lead to the
widespread integration implied in Commander Skinner’s recommendation.
The only other extensively integrated Coast Guard vessel assigned to a
war zone was the destroyer (p. 121) escort Hoquim,
operating in
1945 out of Adak in the Aleutian Islands, convoying shipping along the
Aleutian chain. Again, the commander of the ship was Skinner.
Nevertheless the practical reasons for Skinner’s first recommendation
must also have been obvious to the commandant, and the evidence
suggests that the Sea Cloud project was but one of a series of
liberalizing moves the Coast Guard made during the war, not only to
still the criticism in the black community but also to solve the
problems created by the presence of a growing number of black seamen
in the general service. There is also reason to believe that the Coast
Guard’s limited use of racially mixed crews influenced the Navy’s
decision to integrate the auxiliary fleet in 1945. Senior naval
officials studied a report on the Sea Cloud, and one of Secretary
Forrestal’s assistants consulted Skinner on his experiences and their
relation to greater manpower efficiency.[4-61]

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

The position of instructor at Manhattan Beach became the usual avenue
to a commission for a Negro. Joseph C. Jenkins went from Manhattan
Beach to the officer candidate school at the Coast Guard Academy,
graduating as an ensign in the Coast Guard Reserve in April 1943,
almost a full year before Negroes were commissioned in the Navy.
Clarence Samuels, a warrant officer and instructor at Manhattan
(p. 122) Beach, was
commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade) and
assigned to the Sea Cloud in 1943. Harvey C. Russell was a signal
instructor at Manhattan Beach in 1944 when all instructors were
declared eligible to apply for commissions. At first rejected by the
officer training school, Russell was finally admitted at the
insistence of his commanding officer, graduated as an ensign, and was
assigned to the Sea Cloud.[4-63]

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 5 (p. 123)

A Postwar Search

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

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

Black Demands

World War II marked the beginning of an important step in the
evolution of the civil rights movement. Until then the struggle for
racial equality had been sustained chiefly by the “talented tenth,”
the educated, middle-class black citizens who formed an economic and
political alliance with white supporters. Together (p. 124)
they
fought to improve the racial situation with some success in the
courts, but with little progress in the executive branch and still
less in the legislative. The efforts of men like W. E. B. DuBois,
Walter White, and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Lester Granger of
the National Urban League were in the mainstream of the American
reform movement, which stressed an orderly petitioning of government
for a redress of grievances.

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

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

The reasons for the transformation that was beginning in the civil
rights struggle were varied and complex.[5-1] Fundamental was the
growing urbanization of the Negro. By 1940 almost half the black
population lived in cities. As the labor shortage became more acute
during the next five years, movement toward the cities continued, not
only in the south but in the north and west. Attracted by economic
opportunities in Los Angeles war industries, for example, over 1,000
Negroes moved to that city each month during the war. Detroit,
Seattle, and San Francisco, among others, reported similar migrations.
The balance finally shifted during the war, and the 1950 census showed
that 56 percent of the (p. 125) black population resided in
metropolitan areas, 32 percent in cities of the north and west.[5-2]

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

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

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

The (p. 126) black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for
equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press
was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the Negro, so was the
civil rights movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh
Courier was but one of many black papers and journals that developed
a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject
of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that
it was “no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major
influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights
during World War II.”[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and
always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied
the opposition to segregation during and after the war.

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

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

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

Nevertheless, the sentiment was widespread. Traveling cross-country in
a train during Christmastime, 1945, the celebrated American essayist
Bernard De Voto (p. 127) was astonished to hear expressions of
antiblack sentiment. In Wisconsin, “a state where I think I had never
before heard the word ‘nigger,’ that [dining] car was full of talk
about niggers and what had to be done about them.”[5-7] A white veteran
bore out the observation. “Anti-Negro talk … is cropping up in many
places … the assumption [being] that there is more prejudice, never
less…. Throughout the war the whites were segregated from the
Negroes (why not say it this way for a change?) so that there were
almost no occasions for white soldiers to get any kind of an
impression of Negroes, favorable or otherwise.” There had been some
race prejudice among servicemen, but, the veteran asked, “What has
caused this anti-Negro talk among those who stayed at home?”[5-8] About
the same time, a U.S. senator was complaining to the Secretary of
(p. 128) War that white and black civilians at Kelly Field, Texas,
shared the same cafeterias and other facilities. He hoped the
secretary would look into the matter to prevent disturbances that
might grow out of a policy of this sort.[5-9]

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

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

In December 1945 the press reported and the War and Navy Departments
investigated an incident at Le Havre, France, where soldiers were
embarking for the United States for demobilization. Officers of a Navy
escort carrier objected to the inclusion of 123 black enlisted men on
the grounds that the ship was unable to provide separate
accommodations for Negroes. Army port authorities then substituted
another group that included only one black officer and five black
enlisted men who were placed aboard over the protests of the ship’s
officers.[5-12] The Secretary of the Navy had already declared that the
Navy did not differentiate (p. 129) between men on account of race,
and on 12 December 1945 he reiterated his statement, adding that it
applied to members of all the armed forces.[5-13] Demonstrating the
frequent gap between policy and practice, Forrestal’s order was
ignored six months later by port officials when a group of black
officers and men was withdrawn from a shipping list at Bremerhaven,
Germany, on the grounds that “segregation is a War Department
policy.”[5-14]

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

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

Assistant Secretary McCloy

Civil rights spokesmen had several points to make regarding the use of
Negroes in the postwar armed forces. Referring to the fact that World
War II began with Negroes fighting for the right to fight, they
demanded that the services guarantee a fair representation of Negroes
in the postwar forces. Furthermore, to avoid the frustration suffered
by Negroes trained for combat and then converted into service troops,
they demanded that Negroes be trained and employed in all military
specialties. They particularly stressed the correlation between poor
leaders and poor units. The services’ command practices, they charged,
had frequently led to the appointment of the wrong men, either black
or white, to command black units. Their principal solution was to
provide for the promotion and proper employment of a proportionate
share of competent black officers and noncommissioned officers. Above
all, they pointed to the humiliations (p. 130) black soldiers
suffered in the community outside the limits of the base.[5-17] One
particularly telling example of such discrimination that circulated in
the black press in 1945 described German prisoners of war being fed in
a railroad restaurant while their black Army guards were forced to eat
outside. But such discrimination toward black servicemen was hardly
unique, and the civil rights advocates were quick to point to the
connection between such practices and low morale and performance. For
them there was but one answer to such discrimination: all men must be
treated as individuals and guaranteed equal treatment and opportunity
in the services. In a word, the armed forces must integrate. They
pointed with pride to the success of those black soldiers who served
in integrated units in the last months of the European war, and they
repeatedly urged the complete abolition of segregation in the
peacetime Army and Navy.[5-18]

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

The Army’s Grand Review

In the midst of this intensifying sentiment for integration, in fact a
full year before the war ended, the Army began to search for a new
racial policy. The invasion of Normandy and the extraordinary advance
to Paris during the summer of 1944 had led many to believe that the
war in Europe would soon be over, perhaps by fall. As the Allied
leaders at the Quebec Conference in September discussed arrangements
to be imposed on a defeated Germany, American officials in Washington
began to consider plans for the postwar period. Among them was
Assistant Secretary of War McCloy. Dissatisfied with the manner in
which the Army was using black troops, McCloy believed it was time to
start planning (p. 131) how best to employ them in the postwar Army,
which, according to current assumptions, would be small and
professional and would depend upon a citizen reserve to augment it in
an emergency.

Truman Gibson

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

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

The idea of a staff study on the postwar use of black troops also
found favor with Secretary Stimson, and a series of conferences and
informal discussions on the best way to go about it took place in the
highest echelons of the Army during the early months of 1945. The
upshot was a decision to ask the senior commanders at home and
overseas for their comments. How did they train and use their black
troops? What irritations, frictions, and disorders arising from racial
conflicts (p. 132) had hampered their operations? What were their
recommendations on how best to use black troops after the war? Two
weeks after the war ended in Europe, a letter with an attached
questionnaire was sent to senior commanders.[5-23] The questionnaire
asked for such information as: “To what extent have you maintained
segregation beyond the actual unit level, and what is your
recommendation on this subject? If you have employed Negro platoons in
the same company with white platoons, what is your opinion of the
practicability of this arrangement?”

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

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

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

Gibson had become, perforce, an expert on public opinion. During the
last several months he had suffered the slings and arrows of an
outraged black press for his widely publicized analysis of the
performance of black troops. Visiting black units and commanders in
the Mediterranean and European theaters to observe, in McCloy’s words,
“the performance of Negro troops, their attitudes, and the attitudes
of their officers toward them,”[5-25] Gibson had arrived in Italy at the
end of February 1945 to find theater officials concerned over the poor
combat record of the 92d Infantry Division, the only black division in
the theater and one of three activated by the War Department. After a
series of discussions with senior commanders and a visit to the
division, Gibson participated in a press conference in Rome during
which he spoke candidly of the problems of the division’s infantry
units.[5-26] Subsequent news reports of the conference stressed Gibson’s
confirmation of the division’s disappointing performance, but
neglected the reasons he advanced to explain its failure. The reports
earned a swift (p. 133) and angry retort from the black community.
Many organizations and journals condemned Gibson’s evaluation of the
92d outright. Some seemed less concerned with the possible accuracy of
his statement than with the effects it might have on the development
of future military policy. The NAACP’s Crisis, for example, charged
that Gibson had “carried the ball for the War Department,” and that
“probably no more unfortunate words, affecting the representatives of
the entire race, were ever spoken by a Negro in a key position in such
a critical hour. We seem destined to bear the burden of Mr. Gibson’s
Rome adventure for many years to come.”[5-27]

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

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

Another officer, who as commander of a divisional artillery unit was
intimately acquainted with the division’s shortcomings, delineated an
entirely different set of causes. The division was doomed to
mediocrity and worse, Lt. Col. Marcus H. Ray concluded, from the
moment of its activation. Undercurrents of racial antipathy as well as
distrust and prejudice, he believed, infected the organization from
the outset and created an unhealthy beginning. The practice of
withholding promotion from deserving black officers along with
preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. The
basic misconception was that southern white officers understood
Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern
stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those
who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect—necessary attributes of
leadership—were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. “I
was astounded,” he said, “by the willingness of the white officers who
preceded us to place their own lives in a hazardous position in order
to have tractable Negroes around them.”[5-30] In short, the men of the
92d who fought and died bravely should be honored, but their unit,
which on balance (p. 134) did not perform well, should be considered a
failure of white leadership.

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

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

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

Years (p. 135) later General Almond, the division’s commander, was to
claim that the 92d Division had done “many things well and some things
poorly.” It fought in extremely rugged terrain against a determined
enemy over an exceptionally broad front. The division’s artillery as
well as its technical and administrative units performed well. Negroes
also excelled in intelligence work and in dealing with the Italian
partisans. On the other hand, General Almond reported, infantry
elements were unable to close with the enemy and destroy him. Rifle
squads, platoons, and companies tended “to melt away” when confronted
by determined opposition. Almond blamed this on “a lack of dedication
to purpose, pride of accomplishment and devotion to duty and teammates
by the majority of black riflemen assigned to Infantry Units.”[5-35]

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

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

Black officers of the 93d, however, entertained a different view. They
generally cited command and staff inefficiencies as the major cause of
the division’s discipline and morale problems. One respondent, a
company commander in (p. 136) the 25th Infantry, singled out the
“continuous dissension and suspicion characterizing the relations
between white and colored officers of the division.” All tended to
stress what they considered inadequate jungle training, and, like many
white observers, they all agreed the combat period was too brief to
demonstrate the division’s developing ability.[5-40]

92d Division Engineers Prepare a Ford for Arno River
Traffic

Despite the performance of some individuals and units praised by all,
the combat performance of the 92d and 93d Infantry Divisions was
generally considered less than satisfactory by most observers. A much
smaller group of commentators, mostly black journalists, never
accepted the prevailing view. Pointing to the decorations and honors
received by individuals in the two divisions, they charged that the
adverse reports were untrue, reflections of the prejudices of white
officers. Such an assertion presupposed that hundreds of officers and
War Department officials were so consumed with prejudice that they
falsified the record. And the argument from decorations, as one expert
later pointed out, faltered (p. 137) once it was understood that the
92d and 93d Infantry Divisions combined a relatively high number of
decorations with relatively few casualties.[5-41]

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

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

Table 2—AGCT Percentages in
Selected World War II Divisions

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

Gibson (p. 138) was not trying to magnify the efficiency of segregated units.
He made a special effort to compare the performance of the 92d
Division with that of the integrated black platoons in Germany because
such a comparison would demonstrate, he believed, that the Army’s
segregation policy was in need of critical reexamination. He cited
“many officers” who believed that the problems connected with large
segregated combat units justified their abolition in favor of the
integration of black platoons into larger white units. Although such
unit integration would not abolish segregation completely, Gibson
concluded, it would permit the Army to use men and small units on the
basis of ability alone.[5-42]

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

These responses were summarized by the commanding generals of the
major force commands at the request of the War Department’s Special
Planning Division.[5-44] For example, the study prepared by the Army
Service Forces, which had employed a high proportion of black troops
in its technical services during the war, passed on the
recommendations made by these far-flung commands and touched
incidentally on several of the points raised by Gibson.[5-45] Like
Gibson, the (p. 139) Army Service Forces recommended that Negroes of
little or no education be denied induction or enlistment and that no
deviation from normal standards for the sake of maintaining racial
quotas in the officer corps be tolerated. The Army Service Forces also
wanted Negroes employed in all major forces, participating
proportionately in all phases of the Army’s mission, including
overseas and combat assignments, but not in every occupation. For the
Army Service Forces had decided that Negroes performed best as truck
drivers, ammunition handlers, stevedores, cooks, bakers, and the like
and should be trained in these specialties rather than more highly
skilled jobs such as armorer or machinist. Even in the occupations
they were best suited to, Negroes should be given from a third more to
twice as much training as whites, and black units should have 25 to 50
percent more officers than white units. At the same time, the Army
Service Forces wanted to retain segregated units, although it
recommended limiting black service units to company size. Stating in
conclusion that it sought only “to insure the most efficient training
and utilization of Negro manpower” and would ignore the question of
racial equality or the “wisdom of segregation in the social sense,”
the Army Service Forces overlooked the possibility that the former
could not be attained without consideration of the latter.

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

The Army Ground Forces was also particularly concerned with racial
disturbances, which, it believed, stemmed from conflicting white and
black concepts of the Negro’s place in the social pattern. The Army
Ground Forces saw no military solution for a problem that transcended
the contemporary national emergency, and its conclusion—that the
solution lay in society at large and not primarily in the armed
forces—had the effect, whether or not so intended, of neatly
exonerating the Army. In fact, the detailed conclusions and
recommendations of the Army Ground Forces were remarkably similar to
those of the Army Service Forces, but the Ground Forces study, more
than any other, was shot full with blatant racism. The study quoted a
1925 War College study to the effect (p. 140) that the black officer
was “still a Negro with all the faults and weaknesses of character
inherent in the Negro race.” It also discussed the “average Negro” and
his “inherent characteristics” at great length, dwelling on his
supposed inferior mentality and weakness of character, and raising
other racial shibboleths. Burdened with these prejudices, the Army
Ground Forces study concluded

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

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

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

The commanding general of the Army Air Forces recommended Negroes be
apportioned among the three major forces—the Army Ground Forces, the
Army Service Forces, and the Army Air Forces—but that their numbers
in no case exceed 10 percent of any command; that black servicemen be
trained exactly as whites; (p. 141) and that Negroes be segregated in
units not to exceed air group size. Unlike the others, the Army Air
Forces wanted black units to have black commanders as far as possible
and recommended that the degree of segregation in messing, recreation,
and social activities conform to the custom of the surrounding
community. It wanted Negroes assigned overseas in the same proportion
as whites, and in the United States, to the extent practicable, only
to those areas considered favorable to their welfare. Finally, the Air
Forces wanted Negroes to be neither favored nor discriminated against
in disciplinary matters.[5-47]

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

Truman Gibson took much the same approach when he summed up for McCloy
his estimate of the situation facing the Army. After rehearsing the
recent history of segregation in the armed forces, he suggested that
it was not enough to compare the performance of black and white
troops; the reports of black performance should be examined to
determine whether the performance would be improved or impaired by
changing the policy of segregation. Any major Army review, he urged,
should avoid the failure of the old studies on race that (p. 142)
based differences in performance on racial characteristics and should
question instead the efficiency of segregation. For him, segregation
was the heart of the matter, and he counseled that “future policy
should be predicated on an assumption that civilian attitudes will not
remain static. The basic policy of the Army should, therefore, not
itself be static and restrictive, but should be so framed as to make
further progress possible on a flexible basis.”[5-51]

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

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

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

Even (p. 143) among officers troubled by the contradictory aspects of
an issue clouded by morality, many felt impelled to give their prime
allegiance to the Army as it was then constituted. The Army’s
impressive achievement during the war, they reasoned, argued for its
continuation in conformance with current precepts, particularly in a
world still full of hostilities. The stability of the Army came first;
changes would have to be made slowly, without risking the menace of
disruption. An attempt to mix the races in the Army seemed to most
officers a dangerous move bordering on irresponsibility. Furthermore,
the majority of Army officers, dedicated to the traditions of the
service, saw the Army as a social as well as a military institution.
It was a way of life that embraced families, wives and children. The
old manners and practices were comfortable because they were well
known and understood, had produced victory, and had represented a life
that was somewhat isolated and insulated—particularly in the
field—from the currents and pressures of national life. Why then
should the old patterns be modified; why exchange comfort for possible
chaos? Why should the Army admit large numbers of Negroes; what had
Negroes contributed to winning World War II; what could they possibly
contribute to the postwar Army?

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

The Navy’s Informal Inspection

In contrast to the elaborate investigation conducted by the Army, the
Navy’s search for a policy consisted mainly of an informal
intradepartmental review and an inspection of its black units by a
civilian representative of the Secretary of the Navy. In general this
contrast may be explained by the difference in the services’ postwar
problems. The Army was planning for the enlistment of a large cross
section of the population through some form of universal military
training; the Navy was planning for a much smaller peacetime
organization of technically trained volunteers. Moreover, the Army
wanted to review the performance of its many (p. 144) black combat
units, whereas the naval establishment, which had excluded most of its
Negroes from combat, had little to gain from measuring their wartime
performance.

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

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

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

By pressing for the uniform treatment of Negroes, Forrestal doubtless
hoped to pull backward branches into line with more liberal ones so
that the progressive reforms of the past year would be accepted
throughout the Navy. But if Forrestal’s ultimate goal was plain, his
failure to give clear-cut directions to his informal committee was
characteristic of his handling of racial policy. He carefully followed
the recommendations of the Chief of Naval Personnel, who wanted the
committee to be a military group, despite having earlier expressed his
intention of inviting Granger to chair the committee. As announced on
25 April, the committee was headed by a senior official of the Bureau
of Naval Personnel, Capt. (p. 145) Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, with
another of the bureau’s officers serving as committee recorder.[5-58]
Restricting the scope of the inquiry, Forrestal ordered that “whenever
practical” the committee should assign each of its members to
investigate the racial practices in his own organization.

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

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

The committee wanted the Judge Advocate General to assign legal
advisers to all major trials, especially those involving minorities,
to prevent errors in courts-martial that might be construed as
discrimination. It further recommended that Negroes be represented in
the secretary’s public relations office; that news items concerning
Negroes be more widely disseminated through bureau bulletins; and,
finally, that all bureaus as well as the Coast Guard and Marine Corps
be encouraged to enroll commanders in special indoctrination programs
(p. 146) before they were assigned to units with substantial numbers
of Negroes.[5-60]

Granger Interviewing Sailors
on inspection tour in the Pacific.

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