Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 35

There were several reasons for the rapid demobilization of black officers. Some shared the popular desire of reserve officers to return to civilian life. Among them were mature men with substantial academic achievements and valuable technical experience. Many resented in particular their a.s.signment to all-black labor units, and wanted to resume their civilian careers.[9-37] But a number of black officers, along with over 29,000 white reservists, did seek commissions in the Regular Navy.[9-38] Yet not one Negro was granted a regular commission in the first eighteen months after the war. Lester Granger was especially upset by these statistics, and in July 1946 he personally took up the case of two black candidates with Secretary Forrestal.[9-39]

[Footnote 9-37: Nelson "Integration of the Negro," p.

157.]

[Footnote 9-38: ALNAV 252-46, 21 May 46, sub: Transfer to Regular Navy.]

[Footnote 9-39: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 31 Jul 46, 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav. One of these applicants was Nelson, then a lieutenant, who received a promotion upon a.s.signment as commanding officer of a logistic support company in the Marshall Islands. The grade became permanent upon Nelson's a.s.signment to the Public Relations Bureau in Washington in 1946.]

The Bureau of Naval Personnel offered what it considered a reasonable explanation. As a group, black reserve officers were considerably overage for their rank and were thus at a severe disadvantage in the fierce compet.i.tion for regular commissions. The average age of the first cla.s.s of black officers was over thirty-one years. All had been commissioned ensigns on 17 March 1944, and all had received one (p. 246) promotion to lieutenant, junior grade, by the end of the war. When age and rank did coincide, black reservists were considered for transfer.

For example, on 15 March 1947 Ens. John Lee, a former V-12 graduate a.s.signed as gunnery officer aboard a fleet auxiliary craft, received a regular commission, and on 6 January 1948 Lt. (jg.) Edith DeVoe, one of the four black nurses commissioned in March 1945, was transferred into the Regular Navy. The following October Ens. Jessie Brown was commissioned and a.s.signed to duty as the first black Navy pilot.

In a sense, the black officers had the cards stacked against them. As Nelson later explained, the bureau did not extend to its black line officers the same consideration given other reservists. While the first twelve black officers were given unrestricted line officer training, the bureau a.s.signed them to restricted line positions, an added handicap when it came to promotions and retention in the postwar Navy. All were commissioned ensigns, although the bureau usually granted rank according to the candidate's age, a practice followed when it commissioned its first black staff officers, one of whom became a full lieutenant and the rest lieutenants, junior grade. As an overage reservist himself, Nelson remained on active duty after the war through the personal intervention of Secretary Forrestal. His tour in the Navy's public relations office was repeatedly extended until finally on 1 January 1950, thanks to Secretary Sullivan, he received a regular commission.[9-40]

[Footnote 9-40: Nelson, "Integration of the Negro,"

pp. 157-59; Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb 70; Interv, Nichols with Sullivan.]

Prospects for an increase in black officers were dim. With rare exception the Navy's officers came from the academy at Annapolis, the officer candidate program, or the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps (NROTC) program. Ens. Wesley A. Brown would graduate in the academy's cla.s.s of 1949, the sixth Negro to attend and the first to graduate in the academy's 104-year history. Only five other Negroes were enrolled in the academy's student body in 1949, and there was little indication that this number would rapidly increase. For the most part the situation was beyond the control of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. Compet.i.tion was keen for acceptance at Annapolis. The American Civil Liberties Union later a.s.serted that the exclusion of Negroes from many of the private prep schools, which so often produced successful academy applicants, helped explain why there were so few Negroes at the academy.[9-41]

[Footnote 9-41: Ltr. Exec Dir. ACLU, to SecNav, 26 Nov 57, GenRecsNav.]

Nor were many black officers forthcoming from the Navy's two other sources. Officer candidate schools, severely reduced in size after the war and a negligible source of career officers, had no Negroes in attendance from 1946 through 1948. Perhaps most disturbing was the fact that in 1947 just fourteen Negroes were enrolled among more than 5,600 students in the NROTC program, the usual avenue to a Regular Navy commission.[9-42] The Holloway program, the basis for the Navy's reserve officer training system, offered scholarships at fifty-two colleges across the nation, but the number of these scholarships was small, the compet.i.tion intense, and black applicants, often burdened by inferior schooling, did not fare well.

[Footnote 9-42: "BuPers Narrative," 1:295.]

Statistics pointed at least to the possibility that racial (p. 247) discrimination existed in the NROTC system. Unlike the Army and Air Force programs, reserve officer training in the Navy depended to a great extent on state selection committees dominated by civilians.

These committees exercised considerable leeway in selecting candidates to fill their state's annual NROTC quota, and their decisions were final. Not one Negro served on any of the state committees. In fact, fourteen of the fifty-two colleges selected for reserve officer training barred Negroes from admission by law and others--the exact number is difficult to ascertain--by policy. One black newspaper charged that only thirteen of the partic.i.p.ating inst.i.tutions admitted Negroes.[9-43] In all, only six black candidates survived this process to win commissions in 1948.

[Footnote 9-43: Norfolk _Journal and Guide_, August 20, 1949.]

Lester Granger blamed the lack of black candidates on the fact that so few Negroes attended the schools; undoubtedly, more Negroes would have been enrolled in reserve officer training had the program been established at one of the predominantly black colleges. But black inst.i.tutions were excluded from the wartime V-12 program, and when the program was extended to include fifty-two colleges in November 1945 the Navy again rejected the applications of black schools, justifying the exclusion, as it did for many white schools, on grounds of inadequacies in enrollment, academic credentials, and physical facilities.[9-44] Some black spokesmen called the decision discriminatory. President Mordecai Johnson of Howard University ruefully wondered how the Navy's unprejudiced and nondiscriminatory selection of fifty-two colleges managed to exclude so neatly all black inst.i.tutions.[9-45]

[Footnote 9-44: Ltr, SecNav to William T. Farley, Chmn, Civilian Components Policy Bd, DOD, 4 Mar 50, Q4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 9-45: Statement of Dr. Mordecai Johnson at National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 Apr 48, morning session, p. 42.]

Others disagreed. From the first the Special Programs Unit had rejected the clamor for forming V-12 units in predominantly black colleges, arguing that in the long run this could be considered enforced segregation and hardly contribute to racial harmony. Although candidates were supposed to attend the NROTC school of their choice, black candidates were restricted to inst.i.tutions that would accept them. If a black school was added to the program, all black candidates would very likely gravitate toward it. Several black spokesmen, including Nelson, took this att.i.tude and urged instead a campaign to increase the number of Negroes at the various integrated schools in the NROTC system.[9-46] Whatever the best solution, a significant and speedy increase in the number of black officers was unlikely.

[Footnote 9-46: Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb 70; see also "BuPersHist," p. 84.]

Of lesser moment because of the small size of the WAVES and the Nurse Corps, the role of black women in the postwar Navy nevertheless concerned several civil rights leaders. Roy Wilkins, for one, concluded that the Navy's new policy which "hasn't worked out on the officer level ... hadn't worked on the women's level" either.[9-47] The Navy's statistics seemed to proved his contention. The service had (p. 248) 68 black enlisted women and 6 officers (including 4 nurses) on V-J day; a year later the number had been reduced to 5 black WAVES and 1 nurse. The Navy sought to defend these statistics against charges of discrimination. A spokesman explained that the paucity of black WAVES resulted from the fact that Negroes were barred from the WAVES until December 1944, just months before the Navy stopped recruiting all WAVES. Black WAVES who had remained in the postwar Navy had been integrated and were being employed without discrimination.[9-48]

[Footnote 9-47: Statement of Roy Wilkins at National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 Apr 48, morning session p. 44.]

[Footnote 9-48: Testimony of Stickney at National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 Apr 48, morning session, p. 43.]

But criticism persisted. In February 1948 the Navy could count six black WAVES out of a total enlisted force of 1,700, and during hearings on a bill to regularize the women's services several congressmen joined with a representative of the NAACP to press for a specific anti-discrimination amendment. The amendment was defeated, but not before Congressman Adam Clayton Powell charged that the status of black women in the Navy proved discrimination and demonstrated that the administration was practicing "not merely discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crowism, but total exclusion."[9-49] The same critics also demanded a similar amendment to the companion legislation on the WAC's, but it, too, was defeated.

[Footnote 9-49: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee No. 3, Organization and Mobilization, _Hearings on S. 1641, To Establish the Women's Army Corps in the Regular Army, To Authorize the Enlistment and Appointment of Women in the Regular Navy and Marine Corps and the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve and for Other Purposes_, 80th Cong., 2d sess., 18 Feb 48, pp.

5603-08, 5657, 5698, 5734-36. The Powell quotation is on page 5734.]

Black nurses presented a different problem. Two of the wartime nurses had resigned to marry and the third was on inactive status attending college. The Navy, Secretary Forrestal claimed in July 1947, was finding it difficult to replace them or add to their number. Observing that black leaders had shown considerable interest in the Navy's nursing program, Forrestal noted that a similar interest had not been forthcoming from black women themselves. During the Navy's 1946 recruitment drive to attract 1,000 new nurses, only one Negro applied, and she was disqualified on physical grounds.[9-50]

[Footnote 9-50: Ltr, SecNav to Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith (Maine), 24 Jul 47, OG/P14-2, GenRecsNav.]

_Public Image and the Problem of Numbers_

Individual black nurses no doubt had cogent reasons for failing to apply for Navy commissions, but the fact that only one applied called attention to a phenomenon that first appeared about 1946. Black Americans were beginning to ignore the Navy. Attempts by black reserve officers to procure NROTC applicants in black high schools and colleges proved largely unproductive. Nelson spoke before 8,500 potential candidates in 1948, and a special recruiting team reached an equal number the following year, but the combined effort brought fewer than ninety black applicants to take the compet.i.tive examination.[9-51]

Recruiters had similar problems in the enlistment of Negroes (p. 249) for general service. Viewed from a different perspective, even the complaints and demands of black citizens, at flood tide during the war, now merely trickled into the secretary's office, reflecting, it could be argued, a growing indifference. That such unwillingness to enlist, as Lester Granger put it, should occur on the heels of a widely publicized promise of racial equality in the service was ironic. The Navy was beginning to welcome the Negro, but the Negro no longer seemed interested in joining.[9-52]

[Footnote 9-51: Memo, Dir, Pol Div, BuPers, for Capt William C. Chapman, Office of Information, Navy Dept, 21 Sep 65; Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Chief, Bur of Public Relations, 16 Dec 48. QR4; both in BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 9-52: See Testimony of Lester Granger and a.s.sistant Secretary Brown at National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 Apr 48, morning session, pp. 45-46; and Memo, Nelson for Marx Leva, 24 May 48, copy in Nelson Archives.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAVAL UNIT Pa.s.sES IN REVIEW, _Naval Advanced Base, Bremerhaven, Germany, 1949_.]

Several reasons were suggested for this att.i.tude. a.s.sistant Secretary Brown placed the blame, at least in part, on the gap between policy and practice. Because of delay in abolishing old discriminatory practices, he pointed out to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, "the Navy's good public relations are endangered."[9-53] The personnel bureau promptly investigated, found justification for complaints (p. 250) of discrimination, and took corrective action.[9-54] Yet, as Nelson pointed out, such corrections, often in the form of "clarifying directives," were usually directed to specific commanders and tied to specific incidents and were ignored by other commanders as inapplicable to their own racial experiences.[9-55] Despite the existence of the racially separate Steward's Branch, the Navy's policy seemed so una.s.sailable to the Chief of Naval Personnel that when his views on a congressional measure to abolish segregation in the services were solicited he reported without reservation that his bureau interposed no objection.[9-56]

[Footnote 9-53: Memo, a.s.st SecNav for Air for Dep CNO, 3 Feb 48, sub: Racial Discrimination, P1-4 (8), GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 9-54: See Memo, Chief, NavPers, for CO, USS _Grand Canyon_ (AD 28), 17 Dec 48, sub: Navy Department's Non Discrimination Policy--Alleged Violation of, P14; Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to Cmdt, Twelfth Nav Dist, 27 Feb 46, sub: Officer Screening Procedure and Indoctrination Course in the Supervision of Negro Personnel--Establishment of, Pers 4221; both in BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 9-55: Memo, Nelson for Chief, NavPers, 29 Nov 48, sub: Complaint of Navy Enlisted Man Made to Pittsburgh Courier..., PR221, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 9-56: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for JAG, 11 Feb 47, sub: HR 279: To Prohibit Race Segregation in the Armed Forces of the United States, GenRecsNav.]

The Navy's major racial problem by 1948 was the shockingly small number of Negroes in the service. In November 1948, a presidential election month, Negroes accounted for 4.3 percent of the navy's strength. Not only were there few Negroes in the Navy, but there were especially too few in the general service and practically no black officers, a series of statistics that made the predominately black and separate stewards more conspicuous. The Navy rejected an obvious solution, lowering recruitment standards, contending that it could not run its ships and aircraft with men who scored below ninety in the general cla.s.sification test.[9-57] The alternative was to recruit among the increasing numbers of educated Negroes, as the personnel bureau had been trying to do. But here, as Nelson and others could report, the Navy faced severe compet.i.tion from other employers, and here the Navy's public image had its strongest effect.

[Footnote 9-57: For discussion of the problem of comparative enlistment standards, see Chapter 12.]

Lt. Comdr. Edward Hope, a black reserve officer a.s.signed to officer procurement, concluded that the black community, especially veterans, distrusted all the services. Consequently, Negroes tended to disregard announced plans and policies applicable to all citizens unless they were specially labeled "for colored." Negroes tried to avoid the humiliation of applying for certain rights or benefits only to be arbitrarily rejected.[9-58] Compounding the suspicion and fear of humiliation, Hope reported, was a genuine lack of information on Navy policy that seriously limited the number of black applicants.

[Footnote 9-58: Ltr, Lt Cmdr, E. S. Hope to SecDef, 17 May 48, with attached rpt, D54-1-10, GenRecsNav.]

The cause of confusion among black students over Navy policy was easy to pinpoint, for memories of the frustrations and insults suffered by black seamen during the war were still fresh. Negroes remembered the labor battalions bossed by whites--much like the old plantation system, Lester Granger observed. Unlike the Army, the Navy had offered few black enlisted men the chance of serving in vital jobs under black commanders. This slight, according to Granger, robbed the black sailor of pride in service, a pride that could hardly be restored by the postwar image of the black sailor not as a fighting man but as a servant or laborer. Always a loyal member of the Navy team, (p. 252) Granger was anxious to improve the Navy's public image in the black community, and he and others often advanced plans for doing so.[9-59]

But any discussion of image quickly foundered on one point: the Navy would remain suspect in the eyes of black youth and be condemned by civil rights leaders as long as it retained that symbol of racism, the racially separate Steward's Branch.

[Footnote 9-59: See, for example, Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 10 Jun 47, 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav, and Granger's extensive comments and questions at the National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 Apr 48.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUBMARINER.]

Here the practical need for change ran headlong into strong military tradition. An integrated general service was traditional and therefore acceptable; an integrated servants' branch was not. Faced with the choice of a small number of Negroes in the Navy and the attendant charges of racism or a change in its traditions, the Navy accepted the former. Lack of interest on the part of the black community was not a particularly pressing problem for the Navy in the immediate postwar years. Indeed, it might well have been a source of comfort for the military traditionalists who, armed with an una.s.sailable integration policy, could still enjoy a Navy little changed from its prewar condition. Nevertheless, the lack of black volunteers for general service was soon to be discussed by a presidential commission, and in the next fifteen years would become a pressing problem when the Navy, the first service with a policy of integration, would find itself running behind in the race to attract minority members.

CHAPTER 10 (p. 253)