Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 24

[Footnote 6-45: As reported in Ltr, Granger to author, 25 Jun 69, CMH files.]

The editors had every reason to be wary: integration was seriously circ.u.mscribed in the new directive, which actually offered few guarantees of immediate change. Applying only to enlisted men in the sh.o.r.e establishment and on ships, the directive ignored the Navy's all-white officer corps and its nonwhite servants branch of stewards.

Aimed at abolishing discrimination in the service, it failed to guarantee either through enlistment, a.s.signment guidelines, or specific racial quotas a fair proportion of black sailors in the postwar Navy. Finally, the order failed to create administrative machinery to carry out the new policy. In a very real sense the new policy mirrored tradition. It was naval tradition to have black sailors in the integrated ranks and a separate Messman's Branch. The return to this tradition embodied in the order complemented Forrestal's philosophy of change as an outgrowth of self-realized reform. At the same time naval tradition did not include the concept of high-ranking black officers, white servants, and Negroes in specialized a.s.signments. Here Forrestal's hope of self-reform did not materialize, and equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Navy remained an elusive goal.

But Forrestal and his military subordinates made enough of a start to draw the fire of white segregationists. The secretary answered charges and demands in a straightforward manner. When, for example, a congressman complained that "white boys are being forced to sleep with these negroes," Forrestal explained that men were quartered and messed aboard ship according to their place in the ship's organization without regard to race. The Navy made no attempt to prescribe the nature or extent of their social relationships, which were beyond the scope of its authority. Although Forrestal expressed himself as understanding the strong feelings of some Americans on this matter, he made it clear that the Navy had finally decided segregation was the surest way to emphasize and perpetuate the gap between the races and had therefore adopted a policy of integration.[6-46]

[Footnote 6-46: Ltr, Congressman Stephen Pace of Georgia to Forrestal, 22 Jun 46; Ltr, Forrestal to Pace, 14 Aug 46, both in 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav.]

What Forrestal said was true, but the translation of the Navy's postwar racial policy into the widespread practice of equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes was still before him and his officers. (p. 170) To achieve it they would have to fight the racism common in many segments of American society as well as bureaucratic inertia. If put into practice the new policy might promote the efficient use of naval manpower and give the Navy at least a brief respite from the criticism of civil rights advocates, but because of Forrestal's failure to give clear-cut direction--a characteristic of his approach to racial reform--the Navy might well find itself proudly trumpeting a new policy while continuing its old racial practices.

_The Marine Corps_

As part of the naval establishment, the Marine Corps fell under the strictures of Secretary Forrestal's announced policy of racial nondiscrimination.[6-47] At the same time the Marine Corps was administratively independent of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Naval Personnel, and Circular Letter 48-46, which desegregated the Navy's general service, did not apply to the corps.

In the development of manpower policy the corps was responsible to the Navy, in organization it closely resembled the Army, but in size and tradition it was unique. Each of these factors contributed to the development of the corps' racial policy and helped explain its postwar racial practices.

[Footnote 6-47: The latest p.r.o.nouncement of that policy was ALNAV 423-45.]

Because of the similarities in organization and mission between the Army and the Marine Corps, the commandant leaned toward the Army's solution for racial problems. The Army staff had contended that racially separate service was not discriminatory so long as it was equal, and through its Gillem Board policy it accepted the responsibility of guaranteeing that Negroes would be represented in equitable numbers and their treatment and opportunity would be similar to that given whites. Since the majority of marines served in the ground units of the Fleet Marine Force, organized like the Army in regiments, battalions, and squadrons with tables of organization and equipment, the formation of racially separate units presented no great problem.

Although the Marine Corps was similar to the Army in organization, it was very different in size and tradition. With a postwar force of little more than 100,000 men, the corps was hardly able to guarantee its segregated Negroes equal treatment and opportunity in terms of specialized training and variety of a.s.signment. Again in contrast to the Army and Navy with their long tradition of Negroes in service, the Marine Corps, with a few unauthorized exceptions, had been an exclusively white organization since 1798. This habit of racial exclusion was strengthened by those feelings of intimacy and fraternity natural to any small bureaucracy. In effect the marines formed a small club in which practically everybody knew everybody else and was reluctant to admit strangers.[6-48] Racial exclusion often warred with the corps' clear duty to provide the fair and equal service for all Americans authorized by the Secretary of the Navy. At one point the commandant, General Alexander Vandegrift, even had (p. 171) to remind his local commanders that black marines would in fact be included in the postwar corps.[6-49]

[Footnote 6-48: See USMC Oral History Interviews, Lt Gen James L. Underhill, 25 Mar 68, and Lt Gen Ray A. Robinson, 18 Mar 68, both in Hist Div, HQMC.]

[Footnote 6-49: Memo, CO, 26th Marine Depot Co., Fifth Service Depot, Second FMF, Pacific, for CMC, 2 Nov 45, with Inds, sub: Information Concerning Peacetime Colored Marine Corps, Request for; Memos, CMC for CG, FMF (Pacific), et al., 11 Dec 45, sub: Voluntary Enlistments, Negro Marines, in Regular Marine Corps, a.s.signment of Quotas; idem for Cmdr, MCAB, Cherry Point, N.C., et al., 14 Dec 45. Unless otherwise noted, all doc.u.ments cited in this section are located in Hist Div, HQMC.]

One other factor influenced the policy deliberations of the Marine Corps: its experiences with black marines during World War II.

Overshadowing the praise commanders gave the black depot companies were reports of the trials and frustrations suffered by those who trained the large black combat units. Many Negroes trained long and hard for antiaircraft duty, yet a senior group commander found them ill-suited to the work because of "emotional instability and lack of appreciation of materiel." One battery commander cited the "mechanical inept.i.tude" of his men; another fell back on "racial characteristics of the Negro as a whole" to explain his unit's difficulty.[6-50]

Embodying rash generalization and outright prejudice, the reports of these commanders circulated in Marine Corps headquarters, also revealed that a large group of black marines experienced enough problems in combat training to cast serious doubt on the reliability of the defense battalions. This doubt alone could explain the corps'

decision to relegate the units to the backwaters of the war zone.

Seeing only the immediate shortcomings of the large black combat units, most commanders ignored the underlying reasons for the failure.

The controversial commander of the 51st Defense Battalion, Col. Curtis W. LeGette,[6-51] however, gave his explanation to the commandant in some detail. He reported that more than half the men in the 51st as it prepared for overseas deployment--most of them recent draftees--were in the two lowest categories, IV and V, for either general cla.s.sification or mechanical apt.i.tude. That some 212 of the noncommissioned officers of the units were also in categories IV and V was the result of the unit's effort to carry out the commandant's order to replace white noncommissioned officers as quickly as possible. The need to develop black noncommissioned officers was underscored by LeGette, who testified to a growing resentment among his black personnel at the a.s.signment of new white noncoms.

Symptomatic of the unit's basic problems in 1944 was what LeGette called an evolving "occupational neurosis" among white officers forced to serve for lengthy periods with black marines.[6-52]

[Footnote 6-50: AAA Gp, 51st Defense Bn, FMF, Montford Pt., Gp Cmdr's Endors.e.m.e.nt on Annual Record Practice, Year 1943, 20 Dec 43; AAA Gp, 51st Defense Bn, FMF, Montford Pt., Battery Cmdr's Narrative Report of Record Practice, 1943, 21 Dec 43; idem, Battery Cmdr's Narrative Rpt (signed R.

H. Twisdale) (ca. 20 Dec 43).]

[Footnote 6-51: For the extensive charges and countercharges concerning the controversy between Colonel LeGette and his predecessor in the 51st, see files of Hist Div, HQMC.]

[Footnote 6-52: Memo, CO, 51st Defense Bn, FMF, for CMC, 20 Jul 44, sub: Combat Efficiency, Fifty-First Defense Battalion, Serial 1085.]

The marines experienced far fewer racial problems than either the Army or Navy during the war, but the difficulties that occurred were nonetheless important in the development of postwar racial policy. The basic cause of race problems was the rigid concentration of (p. 172) often undertrained and undereducated men, who were subjected to racial slurs and insensitive treatment by some white officials and given little chance to serve in preferred military specialties or to advance in the labor or defense units or steward details to which they were invariably consigned. But this basic cause was ignored by Marine Corps planners when they discussed the postwar use of Negroes. They preferred to draw other lessons from the corps' wartime experience.

The employment of black marines in small, self-contained units performing traditional laboring tasks was justified precisely because the average black draftee was less well-educated and experienced in the use of the modern equipment. Furthermore, the correctness of this procedure seemed to be demonstrated by the fact that the corps had been relatively free of the flare-ups that plagued the other services.

Many officials would no doubt have preferred to eliminate race problems by eliminating Negroes from the corps altogether. Failing this, they were determined that regular black marines continue to serve in those a.s.signments performed by black marines during the war: in service units, stewards billets, and a few antiaircraft artillery units, the postwar successors to defense battalions.[6-53]

[Footnote 6-53: Shaw and Donnelly, _Blacks in the Marine Corps_, pp 47-49; Interv, James Westfall with Col Curtis W. LeGette (USMC, Ret.), 8 Feb 72, copy in CMH.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL THOMAS.]

The development of a postwar racial policy to carry out the Navy Department's nondiscrimination order in the Marine Corps fell to the Division of Plans and Policies and its director, Brig. Gen. Gerald C.

Thomas. It was a complicated task, and General Thomas and his staff after some delay established a series of guidelines intended to steer a middle path between exclusion and integration that would be nondiscriminatory. In addition to serving in the Steward's Branch, which contained 10 percent of all blacks in the corps, Negroes would serve in segregated units in every branch of the corps, and their strength would total some 2,800 men. This quota would not be like that established in the Army, which was pegged to the number of black soldiers during the war and which ultimately was based on national population ratios. The Marine Corps ratio of blacks to whites would be closer to 1 in 30 and would merely represent the estimated number of billets that might be filled by Negroes in self-sustaining segregated units.

The directorate also established a table of distribution plan that for the first time provided for black regular marines in aviation units and several other Marine Corps activities. Aviation units alone (p. 173) accounted for 25 percent of the marines in the postwar corps, General Thomas contended, and must absorb their proportionate share of black strength. Further, the Navy's policy of nondiscrimination demanded that all types of a.s.signments be opened to black marines. Segregation "best suits the needs of the Marine Corps," General Thomas concluded.

Ignoring the possibility of black officers and women marines, he thought that the opening of all specialties and types of duty to the enlisted ranks would find the Marine Corps "paralleling Navy policy."[6-54] Clearly, the Division of Plans and Policies wanted the corps to adopt a formula roughly a.n.a.logous to the Gillem Board's separate but equal system without that body's provisions for a fixed quota, black officers, or some integrated service.

[Footnote 6-54: Memo, Dir, Div of Plans and Policies, for CMC, 8 Apr 46, sub: Negro Personnel in the Post-War Marine Corps. This memo was not submitted for signature and was superseded by a memo of 13 May 46.]

But even this concession to nondiscrimination was never approved, for the Plans and Policies Division ran afoul of a basic fact of segregation: the postwar strength of many elements of the Marine Corps was too small to support separate racial units. The Director of Aviation, for example, argued that because of the size and nature of his operation, segregated service was impossible. A substantial number of his enlisted men also did double duty by serving in air stations where Negroes could not be segregated, he explained. Only completely separate aviation units, police and maintenance, and construction units would be available for Negroes, a state of affairs "which would be open to adverse criticism." He recommended instead that Negroes in aviation be used only as stewards.[6-55] He failed to explain how this solution would escape adverse criticism.

[Footnote 6-55: Memos, Dir, Aviation, for CMC, 26 Apr 46, sub: Negro Personnel in the Post-War Marine Corps, and 31 May 46, sub: Enlistment of Negroes "For Duty in Aviation Units Only."]

General Thomas rejected these proposals, repeating that Secretary Forrestal's nondiscrimination policy demanded that a separate but equal system be extended throughout the Marine Corps. He also borrowed one of the Gillem Board's arguments: Negroes must be trained in the postwar military establishment in every occupation to serve as a cadre for future general mobilizations.[6-56] Thomas did not mention the fact that although large branches such as Fleet Marine Force aviation could maintain separate but equal living facilities for its black marines, even they would have to provide partially integrated training and working conditions. And the smaller organizations in the corps would be forced to integrate fully if forced to accept black marines. In short, if the corps wanted segregation it must pay the price of continued discrimination against black marines in terms of numbers enlisted and occupations a.s.signed.

[Footnote 6-56: Div of Plans and Policies (signed G.

C. Thomas), Consideration of Non-Concurrence, 2 May 46, attached to Memo, Dir, Aviation, for CMC, 26 Apr 46.]

The choice was left to Commandant Vandegrift. One solution to the "Negro question," General Thomas told him, was complete integration and the abolition of racial quotas, but Thomas did not press this solution. Instead, he reviewed for Vandegrift the racial policies of the other services, pointing out that these policies had more often been devised to "appease the Negro press and other 'interested' (p. 174) agencies than to satisfy their own needs." Until the matter was settled on a "higher level," Thomas concluded, the services were not required to go further than had been their custom, and until Vandegrift decided on segregation or integration, setting quotas for the different branches in the corps was inappropriate. Thomas himself recommended that segregated units be adopted and that a quota be devised only after each branch of the corps reported how many Negroes it could use in segregated units.[6-57] Vandegrift approved Thomas's recommendation for segregated black units, and the Marine Corps lost the chance, temporarily, to adopt a policy in line with either the Navy's limited and integrated system or the Army's separate but equal system.

[Footnote 6-57: Memo, Dir, Div of Plans and Policies, for CMC, 13 May 46, sub: Negro Personnel in the Post-War Marine Corps.]

General Thomas spent the summer collecting and reviewing the proposals of the corps' various components for the employment of black marines.

On the basis of this review General Vandegrift approved a postwar policy for the employment of Negroes in the Marine Corps on 26 September 1946. The policy called for the enlistment of 2,264 Negroes, 264 as stewards, the rest to serve in separate units, chiefly in ground security forces of the Fleet Marine Force in Guam and Saipan and in Marine Corps activities of the naval sh.o.r.e establishment. No Negroes except stewards would serve in Marine aviation, Marine forces afloat, or, with the exception of service depots, in the Marine logistic establishment.[6-58]

[Footnote 6-58: Idem for CMC, 25 Sep 46, sub: Post-War Negro Personnel Requirements. For examples of the proposals submitted by the various components, see Memo, F. D. Beans, G-3, for G-1, 6 Aug 46, sub: Employment of Colored Personnel in the Fleet Marine Force (Ground) (less Service Ground) and in Training Activities; Memo, Lt Col Schmuck, G-3, for Col Stiles, 10 Jun 46, sub: Utilization of Negro Personnel in Post-War Infantry Units of the Fleet Marine Force; Memo, QMC for CMC, 4 Sep 46, sub: Negro Personnel in the Post-War Marine Corps.]

The policy was in effect by January 1947. In the end the Marine Corps'

white-only tradition had proved strong enough to resist the progressive impulses that were pushing the other services toward some relaxation of their segregation policies. Committed to limiting Negroes to a token representation and employing black marines in rigidly self-contained units, the Marine Corps could not establish a quota for Negroes based on national racial proportions and could offer no promise of equal treatment and opportunity in work a.s.signments and promotions.

Thus all the services emerged from their deliberations with postwar policies that were markedly different in several respects but had in common a degree of segregation. The Army, declaring that military efficiency demanded ultimate integration, temporized, guaranteeing as a first step an intricate system of separate but equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes. The Marine Corps began with the idea that separate but equal service was not discriminatory, but when equal service proved unattainable, black marines were left with separatism alone. The Navy announced the most progressive policy of all, providing for integration of its general service. Yet it failed to break the heavy concentration of Negroes in the Steward's Branch, (p. 175) where no whites served. And unlike the segregated Army, the integrated Navy, its admission standards too high to encourage black enlistments, did not guarantee to take any black officers or specialists.

None of these policies provided for the equal treatment and opportunity guaranteed to every black serviceman under the Const.i.tution, although the racial practices of all the services stood far in advance of those of most inst.i.tutions in the society from which they were derived. The very weaknesses and inadequacies inherent in these policies would in themselves become a major cause of the reforms that were less than a decade away.

CHAPTER 7 (p. 176)

A Problem of Quotas

The War Department encountered overwhelming problems when it tried to put the Gillem Board's recommendations into practice, and in the end only parts of the new policy for the use of black manpower were ever carried out. The policy foundered for a variety of reasons: some implicit in the nature of the policy itself, others the result of manpower exigencies, and still others because of prejudices lingering in the staff, the Army, and the nation at large.

Even before the Army postwar racial policy was published in War Department Circular 124 on 27 April 1946 it met formidable opposition in the staff. Although Secretary Patterson had approved the new course of action, the a.s.sistant Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Paul, sent a copy of what he called the "proposed" policy to the Army Air Forces for further comment.[7-1] The response of the air commander, General Carl Spaatz, revealed that he too considered the policy still open for discussion. He suggested that the Army abandon the quota in favor of admitting men on the basis of intelligence and professional ability and forbid enlistment to anyone scoring below eighty in the entry tests. He wanted the composite organizations of black and white units recommended by the board held to a minimum, and none smaller than an air group--a regimental-size unit. Black combat units should have only black service units in support. In fact, Spaatz believed that most black units should be service units, and he wanted to see Negroes employed in overhead a.s.signments only where and when their specialties were needed. He did not want jobs created especially for them.[7-2]

[Footnote 7-1: DF, ACofS, G-1, to CG, AAF, 15 Mar 46, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Postwar Army, WDGAP 291.2.]

[Footnote 7-2: Memo, CG, AAF, for ACofS, G-1, 3 Apr 46, sub: Utilization of Manpower in the Postwar Army, WDGAP 291.2.]