Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 23

[Footnote 6-21: Memo, CofS for SW, 1 Feb 46, sub: Supplemental Report of Board of Officers on Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Post-War Army, WDCSA 320.2 (1 Feb 46).]

[Footnote 6-22: Ltr, TAG for CG's, AGF et al., 6 May 46, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Post-War Army, WDGAP 291.2.]

[Footnote 6-23: WD Press Release, 4 Mar 46, "Report of Board of Officers on Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Post-War Army."]

Att.i.tudes toward the new policy varied with interpretations of the board's statement of objectives. Secretary Patterson saw in the report "a significant development in the status of the Negro soldiers in the Army." The immediate effect of using Negroes in composite units and overhead a.s.signments, he predicted, would be to change War Department policy on segregation.[6-24] But the success of the policy could not be guaranteed by a secretary of war, and some of his advisers were more guarded in their estimates. To Truman Gibson, once again in government service, but briefly this time, the report seemed a good beginning because it offered a new approach, one that had originated within the Army itself. Yet Gibson was wary of its chances for success: The board's recommendations, he told the a.s.sistant Secretary of War, would make for a better Army "only if they are effectively carried out."[6-25]

The newly appointed a.s.sistant secretary, Howard C. Petersen, was equally cautious. Explaining the meaning of the report to the Negro Newspaper Publishers a.s.sociation, he warned that "a strong policy weakly enforced will be of little value to the Army."[6-26]

[Footnote 6-24: Memo, SW for CofS, 28 Feb 46, WDCSA 320.2 (28 Feb 46).]

[Footnote 6-25: Memo, Truman Gibson, Expert Consultant to the SW, for Howard C. Petersen, 28 Feb 46, ASW 291.2 Negro Troops (Post-War).]

[Footnote 6-26: Remarks of the a.s.sistant Secretary of War at Luncheon for Negro Newspaper Publishers a.s.sociation, 1 Mar 46, ASW 291.2.]

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

[Footnote 6-27: Ray, a former commander of an artillery battalion in the 92d Infantry Division, was appointed civilian aide on 2 January 1946; see WD Press Release, 7 Jan 46.]

[Footnote 6-28: Ltr, Marcus Ray to Capt Warman K.

Welliver, 10 Apr 46, copy in CMH. Welliver, the commander of a black unit during the war, was a student of the subject of Negroes in the Army; see his "Report on the Negro Soldier."]

On the whole, the black community was considerably less sanguine about the new policy. The _Norfolk Journal and Guide_ called the report a step in the right direction, but reserved judgment until the Army carried out the recommendations.[6-29] To a distinguished black historian who was writing an account of the Negro in World War II, the Gillem Board Report reflected the Army's ambiguity on racial matters.

"It is possible," L. D. Redd.i.c.k of the New York Public Library wrote, "to interpret the published recommendations as pointing in opposite directions."[6-30] One NAACP official charged that it "tries to dilute Jim-Crow by presenting it on a smaller scale." After citing the tremendous advances made by Negroes and all the reasons for ending segregation, he accused the Gillem Board of refusing to take the (p. 164) last step.[6-31] Most black papers adopted the same att.i.tude, characterizing the new policy as "the same old Army." The Pittsburgh _Courier_, for one, observed that the new policy meant that the Army command had undergone no real change of heart.[6-32] Other segments of the public were more forebearing. One veterans' organization commended the War Department for the work of the Gillem Board but called its a.n.a.lysis and recommendations incomplete. Citing evidence that Jim Crow, not the enemy, "defeated" black combat units, the chairman of the American Veterans Committee called for an immediate end to segregation.[6-33]

[Footnote 6-29: Norfolk _Journal and Guide_, March 9, 1946.]

[Footnote 6-30: Ltr, L. D. Redd.i.c.k, N.Y. Pub. Lib., to SW, 12 Mar 46, SW 291.]

[Footnote 6-31: Ltr, Bernard Jackson, Youth Council, NAACP Boston Br, to ASW, 4 Apr 46, ASW 291.2 (NT).]

[Footnote 6-32: Pittsburgh _Courier_, May 11, 1946.]

[Footnote 6-33: Ltr, Charles G. Bolte, Chmn, Amer Vets Cmte, to SW, 8 Mar 46; see also Ltr, Ralph DeNat, Corr Secy, Amer Vets Cmte, to SW, 28 May 46, both in SW 291.2 (Cmte) (9 Aug 46).]

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

[Footnote 6-34: Ltrs, ASW to Bernard H. Solomon and to Bernard Jackson, 9 Apr 46, both in ASW 291.2.]

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

[Footnote 6-35: Hanson Baldwin, "Wanted: An American Military Policy," _Harper's_ 192 (May 1946):403-13.]

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

Nevertheless the ambiguities in the Gillem Board's recommendations would be useful to those commanders at all levels of the Army who were devoted to the racial _status quo_. Gillem and his colleagues (p. 165) discussed black soldiers in terms of social problems rather than military efficiency. As a result, their recommendations treated the problem from the standpoint of how best Negroes could be employed within the traditional segregated framework even while they spoke of integration as an ultimate goal. They gave their blessing to the continued existence of segregated units and failed to inquire whether segregation might not be a factor in the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of black units and black soldiers. True, they sought to use qualified Negroes in specialist jobs as a solution to better employment of black manpower, but this effort could have little practical effect. Few were qualified--and determination of qualifications was often done by those with little sympathy for the Negro and even less for the educated Negro. Black serviceman holding critical specialties and those a.s.signed to overhead installations would never amount to more than a handful of men whose integration during duty hours only would fall far short even of tokenism.

To point out as the board did that the policy it was recommending no longer required segregation was meaningless. Until the Army ordered integration, segregation, simply by virtue of inertia, would remain.

As McCloy, along with Gibson and others, warned, without a strong, explicit statement of intent by the Army the changes in Army practice suggested by the Gillem Board would be insignificant. The very acceptance of the board's report by officials traditionally opposed to integration should have been fair warning that the report would be difficult to use as a base for a progressive racial policy; in fact it could be used to justify almost any course of action. From the start, the War Department encountered overwhelming difficulties in carrying out the board's recommendations, and five years later the ultimate objective was still out of reach.

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

[Footnote 6-36: Remarks by Gen J. L. Devers, Armored Conference Report, 16 May 46.]

Despite these shortcomings, the work of the Gillem Board was a progressive step in the history of Army race relations. It broke with the a.s.sumption implicit in earlier Army policy that the black soldier was inherently inferior by recommending that Negroes be a.s.signed (p. 166) tasks as varied and skilled as those handled by white soldiers. It also made integration the Army's goal by declaring as official policy the ultimate employment of all manpower without regard to race.

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

_Integration of the General Service_

The Navy's postwar revision of racial policy, like the Army's, was the inevitable result of its World War II experience. Inundated with unskilled and undereducated Negroes in the middle of the war, the Navy had a.s.signed most of these men to segregated labor battalions and was surprised by the racial clashes that followed. As it began to understand the connection between large segregated units and racial tensions, the Navy also came to question the waste of the talented Negro in a system that denied him the job for which he was qualified.

Perhaps more to the point, the Navy's size and mission made immediately necessary what the Army could postpone indefinitely.

Unlike the Army, the Navy seriously modified its racial policy in the last year of the war, breaking up some of the large segregated units and integrating Negroes in the specialist and officer training schools, in the WAVES, and finally in the auxiliary fleet and the recruit training centers.

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

There was no a.s.surance, however, that a move to integration was imminent when Granger returned from his final inspection trip for Secretary Forrestal in October 1945. Both Granger and the secretary's Committee on Negro Personnel had endorsed the department's current practices, and Granger had been generally optimistic over the reforms inst.i.tuted toward the end of the war. Admirals Nimitz and King both endorsed Granger's recommendations, although neither saw the need for further change.[6-37] For his part Secretary Forrestal seemed determined to maintain the momentum of reform. "What steps do we take," he (p. 167) asked the Chief of Naval Personnel, "to correct the various practices ... which are not in accordance with Navy standards?"[6-38]

[Footnote 6-37: Ltr, CINCPAC&POA to SecNav via Ch, NavPers, 30 Oct 45, sub: Negro Naval Personnel--Pacific Ocean Areas, and 2d Ind, CNO, 7 Dec 45, same sub, both in P16-3/MM, OpNavArchives.]

[Footnote 6-38: Memo, J. F. for Adm Jacobs, 23 Aug 45, 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ADMIRAL DENFELD.]

In response the Bureau of Naval Personnel circulated the Granger reports throughout the Navy and ordered steps to correct practices identified by Granger as "not in accordance with Navy standards."[6-39]

But it was soon apparent that the bureau would be selective in adopting Granger's suggestions. In November, for example, the Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, arguing that officers "could handle black personnel without any special indoctrination,"

urged the secretary to reject Granger's recommendation that an office be established in headquarters to deal exclusively with racial problems. At the same time some of the bureau's recruiting officials were informing Negroes that their reenlistment in the Regular Navy was to be limited to the Steward's Branch.[6-40] With the help of Admiral Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations, Forrestal quickly put an end to this recruiting practice, but he paid no further attention to racial matters except to demand in mid-December a progress report on racial reforms in the Pacific area.[6-41] Nor did he seem disturbed when the Pacific commander reported a large number of all-black units, some with segregated recreational facilities, operating in the Pacific area as part of the permanent postwar naval organization.[6-42]

[Footnote 6-39: Memo, a.s.st Ch, NavPers, for SecNav, 10 Sep 45, sub: Ur Memo of August 23, 1945, Relative to Lester B. Granger ... 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 6-40: 1st Ind, Chief, NavPers, to Ltr, CINCPAC&POA to SecNav, 30 Oct 45, sub: Negro Personnel--Pacific Ocean Areas (ca. 15 Nov 45), P16-3MM, OpNavArchives; Memo, M. F. Correa (Admin a.s.st to SecNav) for Capt Robert N. McFarlane, 30 Nov 45, 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 6-41: Forrestal's request for a progress report was circulated in CNO Dispatch 142105Z Dec 45 to CINCPAC&POA, quoted in Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 58.]

[Footnote 6-42: Memo, CINCPAC&POA for CNO, 5 Jan 46, sub: Negro Naval Personnel--Pacific Ocean Areas, P10/P11, OpNavArchives.]

In the end the decision to integrate the general service came not from the secretary but from that bastion of military tradition, the Bureau of Naval Personnel. Despite the general reluctance of the bureau to liberalize the Navy's racial policy, there had been all along some manpower experts who wanted to increase the number of specialties open to black sailors. Capt. Hunter Wood, Jr., for example, suggested in January 1946 that the bureau make plans for an expansion in a.s.signments for Negroes. Wood's proposal fell on the sympathetic ears of Admiral Denfeld, who considered the Granger recommendations (p. 168) practical for the postwar Navy. Denfeld, of course, was well aware that these recommendations had been endorsed by Admirals King and Nimitz as well as Forrestal, and he himself had gone on record as believing that Negroes in the peacetime Navy should lose none of the opportunities opened to them during the war.[6-43]

[Footnote 6-43: Admiral Denfeld's statement to the black press representatives in this regard is referred to in Memo, Capt H. Wood, Jr., for Chief, NavPers, 2 Jan 46, P16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

Denfeld had had considerable experience with the Navy's evolving racial policy in his wartime a.s.signment as a.s.sistant chief of personnel where his princ.i.p.al concern had been the efficient distribution and a.s.signment of men. He particularly objected to the fact that current regulations complicated what should have been the routine transfer of sailors. Simple control procedures for the segregation of Negroes in general service had been effective when Negroes were restricted to particular sh.o.r.e stations and duties, he told Admiral Nimitz on 4 January 1946, but now that Negroes were frequently being transferred from sh.o.r.e to sea and from ship to ship the restriction of Negroes to auxiliary ships was becoming extremely difficult to manage and was also "noticeably contrary to the non-differentiation policy enunciated by the Secretary of the Navy."

The only way to execute that policy effectively and maintain efficiency, he concluded, was to integrate the general service completely. Denfeld pointed out that the admission of Negroes to the auxiliary fleet had caused little friction in the Navy and pa.s.sed almost unnoticed by the press. Secretary Forrestal had promised to extend the use of Negroes throughout the entire fleet if the preliminary program proved practical, and the time had come to fulfill that promise. He would start with "the removal of restrictions governing the type of duty to which general service Negroes can be a.s.signed," but would limit the number of Negroes on any ship or at any sh.o.r.e station to a percentage no greater than that of general service Negroes throughout the Navy.[6-44]

[Footnote 6-44: Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to CNO, 4 Jan 46, sub: a.s.signment of Negro Personnel, P16-3MM, BuPersRecs.]

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

The publication of Circular Letter 48-46 was an important step in the Navy's racial history. In less than one generation, in fewer years actually than the average sailor's service life, the Navy had made a complete about-face. In a sense the new policy was a service (p. 169) reform rather than a social revolution; after a 23-year hiatus integration had once again become the Navy's standard racial policy.

Since headlines are more often reserved for revolutions than reformations, the new policy attracted little attention. The metropolitan press gave minimum coverage to the event and never bothered to follow later developments. For the most part the black press treated the Navy's announcement with skepticism. On behalf of Secretary Forrestal, Lester Granger invited twenty-three leading black editors and publishers to inspect ships in the fleet as well as sh.o.r.e activities to see for themselves the changes being made. Not one accepted. As one veteran put it, the editors shrank from praising the Navy's policy change for fear of being proved hasty. They preferred to remain on safe ground, "givin' 'em h.e.l.l."[6-45]