Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 10

[Footnote 3-42: Memo, President for SW, 20 Mar 42, copy in QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

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.

[Footnote 3-43: Executive Order 9279, 5 Dec 42.]

The Navy issued its first call for inductees from Selective (p. 070) 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]

[Footnote 3-44: Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm Randall Jacobs, 5 Feb 43, 54-1-22, GenRecsNav.]

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. Mc.n.u.tt, 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]

[Footnote 3-45: Ltr, Paul Mc.n.u.tt to SecNav, 17 Feb 43, WMC Gen files, NARS.]

On top of this blow, the Navy came under fire from another quarter.

The President was evidently still thinking about Negroes in the Navy.

He wrote to the secretary on 22 February:

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 3-46: Memo, President for SecNav, 22 Feb 43, FDR Library.]

In an effort to save the quota concept, the Bureau of Naval (p. 071) 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 Mc.n.u.tt 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.

[Footnote 3-47: Ltr, Knox to Mc.n.u.tt, 26 Feb 43, WMC Gen files.]

Commissioner Mc.n.u.tt 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. Mc.n.u.tt 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.

[Footnote 3-48: Ltr, Mc.n.u.tt to Knox, 23 Mar 43, WMC Gen files.]

[Footnote 3-49: Ltr, SecNav to Paul Mc.n.u.tt, 13 Apr 43; Ltr, Mc.n.u.tt to Knox, 23 Apr 43; both in WMC Gen files.]

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]

[Footnote 3-50: Selective Service System, _Special Groups_, vol. II, pp. 198-201. See also Memos, Director of Planning and Control, BuPers, for Chief, BuPers, 25 Feb 43, sub: Increase in Colored Personnel for the Navy; and 1 Apr 43, sub; Increase in Negro Personnel in Navy. Both in P-14, BuPersRecs.]

Although it wrestled for several months with the problem of distributing the increased number of black draftees, the Bureau of Naval Personnel could invent nothing new. The Navy, Knox told President Roosevelt, would continue to segregate Negroes and restrict their service to certain occupations. Its increased black strength would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black Seabee battalions, in which Negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for harbor craft and local defense forces; and in billets for cooks and port hands. The rest would be sent to sh.o.r.e stations for guard (p. 072) 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]

[Footnote 3-51: Memos, SecNav for President, 25 Feb and 14 Apr 43, quoted in "BuPers Hist," pp. 13-14; Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, 24 Feb 43, sub: Employment of Colored Personnel in the Navy, Pers 10, GenRecsNav. For Roosevelt's approval see "BuPers Hist," p. 14.]

To smooth the racial adjustments implicit in these plans, the Bureau of Naval Personnel developed two operating rules: Negroes would be a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e duty, concentrated in large groups and a.s.signed 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.

[Footnote 3-52: "BuPersHist," p. 41.]

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 a.s.signments on warships, trained Negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the harbor defense, district, and small craft service. Although a.s.signing 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-cla.s.s citizenship in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more (p. 073) 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LABORERS AT NAVAL AMMUNITION DEPOT. _Sailors pa.s.sing 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 a.s.signed 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 sh.o.r.e billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section (p. 074) bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]

[Footnote 3-53: Naval districts organized section bases during the war with responsibility, among other things, for guarding beaches, harbors, and installations and maintaining equipment.]

[Footnote 3-54: See CNO ALNAV, 7 Aug 44, quoted in Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 46.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.signed 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 sh.o.r.e establishment, was a prime cause of racial tension.

[Footnote 3-55: Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for Cmdts, AlNav Districts et al., 26 Sep 44, sub: Enlisted Personnel--Utilization of in Field for which Specifically Trained, Pers 16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

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 pa.s.sed 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]

[Footnote 3-56: Ltr, Eleanor Roosevelt to SecNav, 20 Nov 43; Ltr, SecNav to Mrs. Roosevelt, 27 Nov 43; both in b.u.mED-S-EC, GenRecsNav. Well known for her interest in the cause of racial justice, the President's wife received many complaints during the war concerning discrimination in the armed forces. Mrs. Roosevelt often pa.s.sed such protests along to the service secretaries for action.

Although there is no doubt where Mrs. Roosevelt's sympathies lay in these matters, her influence was slight on the policies and practices of the Army or Navy. Her influence on the President's thinking is, of course, another matter. See White, _A Man Called White_, pp. 168-69, 190.]

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 compet.i.tion for the limited number of petty officer positions in the sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.signment 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]

[Footnote 3-57: For a discussion of these racial disturbances, see "BuPers Hist," pp. 75-80.]

_Progressive Experiments_

Since the inception of black enlistment there had been those in the Bureau of Naval Personnel who argued for the establishment of a group to coordinate plans and policies on the training and use of black sailors. Various proposals were considered, but only in the wake of the racial disturbances of 1943 did the bureau set up a Special Programs Unit in its Planning and Control Activity to oversee the whole black enlistment program. In the end the size of the unit governed the scope of its program. Originally the unit was to monitor all transactions involving Negroes in the bureau's operating divisions, thus relieving the Enlisted Division of the critical task of (p. 076) 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMMANDER SARGENT.]

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.

[Footnote 3-58: Interv, Lee Nichols with Rear Adm. R.