Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 49

For purposes of comparison, the following gives the percentage of Negroes in the Navy and the Marine Corps for earlier years.

_Date_ _Navy_ _Marine Corps_

Dec 43 5.0 3.2 Dec 44 5.5 3.6 Dec 45 5.9 5.4 Dec 46 4.7 2.3 Dec 47 5.4 1.6 Feb 48 5.05 1.9

_Source_: Officer in Charge, Pers Acctg & Stat Control, Memo for File, 23 Apr 48, Pers 215 BuPersRecs.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1ST MARINE DIVISION DRILL TEAM ON EXHIBITION _at San Diego's Balboa Stadium, 1949_.]

The corps ignored these questions during the summer of 1949, concentrating instead on the problem of finding racially separate a.s.signments for its 1,000 Negroes in the general service. As the number of marines continued to drop, the Division of Plans and Policies was forced to justify the existence of black units by a series of reorganizations and redistributions. When, for example, the reorganization of the Fleet Marine Force caused the inactivation of two black depot units, the division designated a 108-man truck company as a black unit to take up the slack. At the same time the division found yet another "suitable" occupation for black marines by laying down a policy that all security detachments at inactive naval facilities were to be manned by Negroes. It also decided to a.s.sign small black units to the service battalions of the Marine divisions, maintaining that such a.s.signments would not run counter to the commandant's policy of restricting Negroes to noncombat organizations.[13-76]

[Footnote 13-76: Memo, Dir, Div of Plans and Policies, for CMC, 28 Jul 49, sub: Re-a.s.signment of Negro Marines to Existing units (DP&P Study 88-49), MC files.]

The Marine Corps, in short, had no intention of relaxing its policy of separating the races. The timing of the integration of recruit training and the breakup of some large black units perhaps suggested a general concession to the Truman order, but these administrative changes were actually made in response to the manpower restrictions of the Truman defense budget. In fact, the position of black marines in small black units became even more isolated in the months (p. 338) following the Truman order as the Division of Plans and Policies began devising racially separate a.s.signments. Like the stewards before them, the security guards at closed naval installations and ammunition depots found themselves in a.s.signments increasingly viewed as "colored" jobs. That the number of Negroes in the Marine Corps was so small aided and abetted these arrangements, which promised to continue despite the presidential order until some dramatic need for change arose.

_The Air Force Plans for Limited Integration_

Of all the services, the Air Force was in the best position to respond promptly to President Truman's call for equal treatment and opportunity. For some time a group of Air staff officers had been engaged in devising a new approach to the use of black manpower.

Indeed their study, much of which antedated the Truman order, represented the solution of the Air Force's manpower experts to a pressing problem in military efficiency. More important than the executive order or demands of civil rights advocates, the criticism of segregation by these experts in uniform led the Air Force to accept the need for limited integration.

But there was to be no easy road to integration for the service.

Considerable resistance was yet to be overcome, both in the Air staff and among senior commanders. As Secretary Zuckert later put it, while there was sentiment for integration among a few of the highest officers, "you didn't have to scratch far to run into opposition."[13-77]

The Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Edwards, reported to Secretary Symington that he had found solid opposition to any proposed policy of integration in the service.[13-78] Normally such resistance would have killed the study group's proposals. In the Army, for example, opposition supported by Secretary Royall had blocked change.

In the Air Force, the opposition received no such support. Indeed, Secretary Symington proved to be the catalyst that the Army had lacked. He was the Air Force's margin of difference, transforming the study group's proposal from a staffing paper into a program for substantial change in racial policy.

[Footnote 13-77: Notes on Telecon, author with Zuckert, 28 Apr 70, CMH files.]

[Footnote 13-78: Memo, DCofS/P&A, USAF, for SecAF, 29 Apr 48, sub: Conference With Group of Prominent Negroes, Negro Affairs, 1948, SecAF files.]

In Symington the Air Force had a secretary who was not only a tough-minded businessman demanding efficiency but a progressive politician with a humanitarian interest in providing equal opportunity for Negroes. "With Symington," Eugene Zuckert has pointed out, "it was principle first, efficiency second."[13-79] Symington himself later explained the source of his humanitarian interest. "What determined me many years ago was a quotation from Bernard Shaw in Myrdal's book, _American Dilemma_, which went something like this--'First the American white man makes the negro clean his shoes, then criticizes him for being a bootblack.' All Americans should have their chance.

And both my grandfathers were in the Confederate Army."[13-80] Symington had successfully combined efficiency and humanitarianism before. (p. 339) As president of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company of St.

Louis, he had racially integrated a major industry carrying out vital war work in a border state, thereby increasing productivity. When he became secretary, Symington was immediately involved in the Air Force's race problems; he wanted to know, for instance, why only nine black applicants had pa.s.sed the qualifying examination for the current cadet program.[13-81] When President Truman issued his executive order, Symington was ready to move. In his own words, "when Mr. Truman as Commander-in-Chief issued an order to integrate the Air Force, I asked him if he was serious. He said he was. Accordingly we did just that. I turned the actual operations of the job over to my a.s.sistant Secretary Eugene Zuckert.... It all worked out routinely."[13-82]

[Footnote 13-79: Telecon, author with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 13-80: Ltr, Symington to David K. Niles, 28 Jan 50, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 13-81: Memo, SecAF for Zuckert, 5 Jan 48; Penciled Note, signed "Stu," attached to Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 20 Jan 48. All in SecAF files.]

[Footnote 13-82: Ltr, W. Stuart Symington to author, 6 May 70, CMH files.]

To call "routine" the fundamental change that took place in Air Force manpower practices stretches the definition of the word. The integration program required many months of intensive study and planning, and many more months to carry out. Yet if integration under Symington was slow, it was also inevitable. Zuckert reported that Symington gave him about eight reasons for integration, the last "because I said do it."[13-83] Symington's tough att.i.tude, along with the presidential order, considerably eased the burden of those in the Air Force who were expected to abandon a tradition inherited from their Army days. The secretary's diplomatic skill also softened opposition in other quarters. Symington, a master at congressional relations, smoothed the way on Capitol Hill by successfully rea.s.suring some southern leaders, in particular Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia, that integration had to come, but that it would come quietly and in a way least calculated to provoke its congressional opponents.[13-84]

[Footnote 13-83: Telecon, author with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 13-84: Ibid.; see also USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert.]

Symington a.s.signed general responsibility for equal opportunity matters to his a.s.sistant secretary for management, Eugene Zuckert, but the task of formulating the specific plan fell to General Edwards. To avoid conflict with some of his colleagues, Edwards resorted to the unorthodox means of ignoring the usual staff coordination. He sent his proposals directly to the Chief of Staff and then on to the secretary for approval without reference to other staff agencies, one of which, the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff, General Muir S. Fairchild, was the focal point of staff opposition.[13-85]

[Footnote 13-85: For discussion of the close-held nature of the USAF integration plan, see USAF Oral Hist Intervs with Davis and Marr; see also Ltrs, Marr to author, 19 Jun and 28 Jul 70.]

On the basis of evidence submitted by his long-standing study group, General Edwards concluded that current Air Force policy for the use of black manpower was "wasteful, deleterious to military effectiveness and lacking in wartime application." The policy of the Navy was superior, he told the Chief of Staff and the secretary, with respect to military effectiveness, economy, and morale, especially when the needs of full mobilization were considered. The Air Force would (p. 340) profit by adopting a policy similar to that of the Navy, and he proposed a program, to be "vigorously implemented and monitored," that would inactivate the all-black fighter wing and transfer qualified black servicemen from that wing as well as from all the major commands to white units. One exception would be that those black specialists, whose work was essential to the continued operation of their units, would stay in their black units. Some black units would be retained to provide for individuals ineligible for transfer to white units or for discharge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECRETARY SYMINGTON.]

The new program would abolish the 10 percent quota and develop recruiting methods to enable the Air Force to secure only the "best qualified" enlistees of both races. Men chronically ineligible for advancement, both black and white, would be eliminated. If too many Negroes enlisted despite these measures, Edwards explained that an "administratively determined ceiling of Negro intake" could be established, but the Air Force had no intention of establishing a minimum for black enlistees. As the Director of Personnel Planning put it, a racial floor was just as much a quota as a racial ceiling and had the same effect of denying opportunity to some while providing special consideration for others.[13-86]

[Footnote 13-86: Memo, Dir, Personnel Planning USAF, for the Fahy Cmte, 15 Jan 49, sub: Air Force Policies Regarding Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

The manpower experts had decided that the social complications of such a policy would be negligible--"more imaginary than real." Edwards referred to the Navy's experience with limited integration, which, he judged, had relieved rather than multiplied social tensions between the races. Nevertheless he and his staff proposed "as a conservative but progressive step" toward the integration of living quarters that the Air Force arrange for separate sleeping quarters for blacks and whites. The so-called "barracks problem" was the princ.i.p.al point of discussion within the Air staff, Edwards admitted, and "perhaps the most critical point of the entire policy." He predicted that the trend toward more privacy in barracks, especially the separate cubicles provided in construction plans for new barracks, would help solve whatever problems might arise.[13-87]

[Footnote 13-87: Summary Sheet DCS/P, USAF, for CS, USAF, and SecAF, 29 Dec 48, sub: Air Force Policies on Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

While the Chief of Staff, General Vandenberg, initialed the program without comment, a.s.sistant Secretary Zuckert was enthusiastic. As Zuckert explained to Symington, the program was predicated on free compet.i.tion for all Air Force jobs, and he believed that it would also eliminate social discrimination by giving black officers and men (p. 341) all the privileges of Air Force social facilities. Although he admitted that in the matter of living arrangements the plan "only goes part way," he too was confident that time and changes in barracks construction would eliminate any problems.[13-88]

[Footnote 13-88: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 5 Jan 49, SecAF files.]

Symington was already familiar with most of Edwards's conclusions, for a summary had been sent him by the a.s.sistant Vice Chief of Staff on 22 December "for background."[13-89] When he received Zuckert's comments he acted quickly. The next day he let the Secretary of Defense know what the Air Force was doing. "We propose," he told Forrestal, "to adopt a policy of integration." But he qualified that statement along the lines suggested by the Air staff: "Although there will still be units manned entirely by Negroes, all Negroes will not necessarily be a.s.signed to these units. Qualified Negro personnel will be a.s.signed to any duties in any Air Force activity strictly on the basis of the qualifications of the individual and the needs of the Air Force."[13-90]

Symington tied the new program to military efficiency, explaining to Forrestal that efficient use of black servicemen was one of the essentials of economic and effective air power. In this vein he summarized the program and listed what he considered its advantages for the Air Force.

[Footnote 13-89: Memo, Maj Gen William F. McKee for Symington, 22 Dec 48, sub: Mr. Royall's Negro Experiment, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 13-90: Memo, SecAF for Forrestal, 6 Jan 49, Negro Affairs, 1949, SecAF files.]

The proposal forwarded to the Secretary of Defense in January 1949 committed the Air Force to a limited integration policy frankly imitative of the Navy's. A major improvement over the Air Force's current practices, the plan still fell considerably short of the long-range goals enunciated in the Gillem Board Report, to say nothing of the implications of the President's equal opportunity order.

Although it is impossible to say exactly why Symington decided to settle for less than full integration, there are several explanations worth considering.

In the first place the program sent to Forrestal may well not have reflected the exact views of the Air Force secretary, nor conveyed all that his princ.i.p.al manpower a.s.sistant intended. Actually, the concern expressed by Air Force officials for military efficiency and by civil rights leaders for equal opportunity always centered specifically on the problems of the black tactical air unit and related specialist billets at Lockbourne Air Force Base. In fact, the need to solve the pressing administrative problems of Colonel Davis's command provoked the Air staff study that eventually evolved into the integration program. The program itself focused on this command and provided for the integrated a.s.signment of its members throughout the Air Force.

Other black enlisted men, certainly those serving as laborers in the F Squadrons, scattered worldwide, did not pose a comparable manpower problem. They were ignored on the theory that abolition of the quota, along with the application of more stringent recruitment procedures, would in time rid the services of its unskilled and unneeded men.

It can be argued that the purpose of the limited integration proposal was not so much to devise a new policy as to minimize the impact of change on congressional opponents. Edwards certainly hoped that his plan would placate senior commanders and staff officers who (p. 342) opposed integration or feared the social upheaval they a.s.sumed would follow the abolition of all black units. This explanation would account for the cautious approach to racial mixing in the proposal, the elaborate administrative safeguards against social confrontation, and the promised reduction in the number of black airmen. Some of those pressing for the new program certainly considered the retention of segregated units a stopgap measure designed to prevent a too precipitous reorganization of the service. As Lt. Col. Jack Marr, a member of Edwards's staff and author of the staff's integration study, explained to the Fahy Committee, "we are trying to do our best not to tear the Air Force all apart and try to reorganize it overnight."[13-91]

Marr predicted that as those eligible for rea.s.signment were transferred out of black units, the units themselves, bereft of essential personnel, would become inoperative and disappear one by one.

[Footnote 13-91: Testimony of Lt Col Jack F. Marr Before President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 13 Jan 49, afternoon session, p 46.]

In the end it must be admitted that race relations possess an inner dynamic, and it is impossible to relate the integration of the Air Force to any isolated decision by a secretary or proposal by a group from his military staff. The decision to integrate was the result of several disparate forces--the political interests of the administration, the manpower needs of the Air Force, the aspirations of its black minority, and perhaps more than all the rest, the acceptance by its airmen of a different social system. Together, these factors would make successive steps to full integration impossible to resist. Integration, then, was an evolutionary process, and Symington's acceptance of a limited integration plan was only one step in a continuing process that stretched from the Air staff's study of black manpower in 1948 to the disappearance of the last black unit two years later.

CHAPTER 14 (p. 343)

The Fahy Committee Versus the Department of Defense

Given James Forrestal's sympathy for integration, considerable cooperation could be expected between members of his department and the Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, better known as the Fahy Committee. In the wake of the committee's establishment, Forrestal proposed that the service secretaries a.s.sign an a.s.sistant secretary to coordinate his department's dealings with the group and a ranking black officer from each service be a.s.signed to advise the a.s.sistant secretaries.[14-1] His own office promised to supply the committee with vital doc.u.mentation, and his manpower experts offered to testify. The service secretaries agreed to follow suit.

[Footnote 14-1: Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 21 Oct 48, copy in Fahy Committee file, CMH [hereafter cited as FC file]. The Center of Military History has retained an extensive collection of significant primary materials pertaining to the Fahy Committee and its dealings with the Department of Defense.