Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 55

[Footnote 14-128: Ltr, Niles to President, 7 Feb 50, Secretary's File (PSF), Truman Library.]

[Footnote 14-129: D/PA Summary Sheet for SA, 28 Feb 50, sub: Fahy Committee Proposal re: Numerical Enlistment Quota, CSGPA 291.2 (2 Nov 49).]

Secretary Gray, aware that the Army's arguments would not move the committee, was sure that the President did not want to see a spectacular and precipitous rise in the Army's black strength. He decided on a personal appeal to the Commander in Chief.[14-130] The Army would drop the racial quota, he told Truman on 1 March, with (p. 374) one proviso: "If, as a result of a fair trial of this new system, there ensues a disproportionate balance of racial strengths in the Army, it is my understanding that I have your authority to return to a system which will, in effect, control enlistments by race."[14-131]

The President agreed.

[Footnote 14-130: Interv, Nichols with Gray.]

[Footnote 14-131: Ltr, SA to President, 1 Mar 50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

At the President's request, Gray outlined a program for open recruitment, fixing April as the date when all vacancies would be open to all qualified individuals. Gray wanted to handle the changes in routine fashion. With the committee's concurrence, he planned no public announcement. From his vacation quarters in Key West, Truman added a final encouraging word: "I am sure that everything will work out as it should."[14-132] The order opening recruiting to all races went out on 27 March 1950.[14-133]

[Footnote 14-132: Memo, President for SA, 27 Mar 50, FC file; Memo, SA for President, 24 Mar 50, sub: Discontinuance of Racial Enlistment Quotas, copy in CSGPA 291.2.]

[Footnote 14-133: Msg, TAG to Chief, AFF, et al., Fort Monroe, Va., WCL 44600, 27 Mar 50, copy in FC file.]

Despite the President's optimism, the Fahy Committee was beginning to have doubts about just how everything would work out. Specifically, some members were wondering how they could be sure the Army would comply with the newly approved policies. Such concern was reasonable, despite the Army's solemn commitments, when one considers the committee's lengthening experience with the Defense Department's bureaucracy and its familiarity with the liabilities of the Gillem Board policy. The committee decided, therefore, to include in its final report to the President a request for the retention of a watchdog group to review service practices. In this its views clashed directly with those of Secretary Johnson, who wanted the President to abolish the committee and make him solely responsible for the equal treatment and opportunity program.[14-134]

[Footnote 14-134: Memo, Clark Clifford for President (ca. Mar 50), Nash Collection, Truman Library.]

Niles, anxious to settle the issue, tried to reconcile the differences[14-135] and successfully persuaded the committee to omit a reference in its final report to a successor group to review the services' progress. Such a move, he told Kenworthy, would imply that, unless policed, the services would not carry out their programs.

Public discussion about how long the committee was to remain in effect would also tend to tie the President's hands. Niles suggested instead that the committee members discuss the matter with the President when they met with him to submit their final report and perhaps suggest that a watchdog group be appointed or their committee be retained on a standby basis for a later review of service actions.[14-136] Before the committee met with the President on 22 May, Niles recommended to Truman that he make no commitment on a watchdog group.[14-137]

Privately, Niles agreed with Clark Clifford that the committee should be retained for an indefinite period, but on an advisory rather than an operating basis so that, in Clifford's words, "it will be in a position to see that there is not a gap between policy and an (p. 375) administration of policy in the Defense Establishment."[14-138]

[Footnote 14-135: Interv, author with Kenworthy.]

[Footnote 14-136: Memo, Kenworthy for Fahy, 28 Apr 50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

[Footnote 14-137: Ltr, Niles to President, 22 May 50, Nash Collection, Truman Library.]

[Footnote 14-138: Memo, Clifford for President, Nash Collection, Truman Library.]

The President proceeded along these lines. Several months after the committee presented its final report, _Freedom to Serve_,[14-139] in a public ceremony, Truman relieved the group of its a.s.signment.

Commenting that the services should have the opportunity to work out in detail the new policies and procedures initiated by the committee, he told Fahy on 6 July 1950 that he would leave his order in effect, noting that "at some later date, it may prove desirable to examine the effectuation of your Committee's recommendations, which can be done under Executive Order 9981."[14-140]

[Footnote 14-139: _Freedom to Serve: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services; A Report by the President's Committee_ (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1950).]

[Footnote 14-140: Ltr, President to Fahy, 6 Jul 50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

_An a.s.sessment_

Thus ended a most active period in the history of armed forces integration, a period of executive orders, presidential conferences, and national hearings, of administrative infighting broadcast to the public in national headlines. The Fahy Committee was the focus of this bureaucratic and journalistic excitement. Charged with examining the policies of the services in light of the President's order, the committee could have glanced briefly at current racial practices and automatically ratified Secretary Johnson's general policy statement.

Indeed, this was precisely what Walter White and other civil rights leaders expected. But the committee was made of sterner stuff. With dedication and with considerable political ac.u.men, it correctly a.s.sessed the position of black servicemen and subjected the racial policies of the services to a rigorous and detailed examination, the first to be made by an agency outside the Department of Defense. As a result of this scrutiny, the committee clearly and finally demonstrated that segregation was an inefficient way to use military manpower; once and for all it demolished the arguments that the services habitually used against any demand for serious change. Most important is the fact that the committee kept alive the spirit of reform the Truman order had created. The committee's definition of equal treatment and opportunity became the standard by which future action on racial issues in the armed forces would be measured.

Throughout its long existence, the Fahy Committee was chiefly concerned with the position of the Negro in the Army. After protracted argument it won from the Army an agreement to abolish the racial quota and to open all specialties in all Army units and all Army schools and courses to qualified Negroes. Finally, it won the Army's promise to cease restricting black servicemen to black units and overhead installations alone and to a.s.sign them instead on the basis of individual ability and the Army's need.

As for the other services, the committee secured from the Navy a pledge to give petty officer status to chief stewards and stewards of the first, second, and third cla.s.s, and its influence was discernible in the Navy's decision to allow stewards to transfer to the general service. The committee also made, and the Navy accepted, several practical suggestions that might lead to an increase in the number (p. 376) of black officers and enlisted men. The committee approved the Air Force integration program and publicized the success of this major reform as it was carried out during 1949; for the benefit of the reluctant Army, the committee could point to the demonstrated ability of black servicemen and the widespread acceptance of integration among the rank and file of the Air Force. In regard to the Marine Corps, however, the committee was forced to acknowledge that the corps had not yet "fully carried out Navy policy."[14-141]

[Footnote 14-141: _Freedom to Serve_, p. 27.]

The Fahy Committee won from the services a commitment to equal treatment and opportunity and a practical program to achieve that end.

Yet even with this victory and the strong support of many senior military officials, the possibility that determined foes of integration might erect roadblocks or that simple bureaucratic inertia would delay progress could not be discounted. There was, for example, nothing in the postwar practices of the Marine Corps, even the temporary integration of its few black recruits during basic training, that hinted at any long-range intention of adopting the Navy's integration program. And the fate of one of the committee's major recommendations, that all the services adopt equal enlistment standards, had yet to be decided. The acceptance of this recommendation hinged on the results of a Defense Department study to determine the jobs in each service that could be filled by men in the lowest mental cla.s.sification category acceptable to all three services. Although the Navy and the Air Force had agreed to reexamine the matter, they had consistently opposed the application of enlistment parity in the past, and the Secretary of Defense's Personnel Policy Board had indorsed their position. Secretary Forrestal, himself, had rejected the concept, and there was nothing in the record to suggest that his successor would do otherwise. Yet the parity of enlistment standards was a vital part of the committee's argument for the abolition of the Army's racial quota. If enlistment standards were not equalized, especially in a period when the Army was turning to Selective Service for much of its manpower, the number of men in the Army's categories IV and V was bound to increase, and that increase would provide strong justification for reviving the racial quota. The Army staff was aware, if the public was not, that a resurrected quota was possible, for the President had given the Secretary of the Army authority to take such action if there was "a disproportionate balance of racial strengths."[14-142]

[Footnote 14-142: Ltr, SA to President, 1 Mar 50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

The Army's concern with disproportionate balance was always linked to a concern with the influx of men, mostly black, who scored poorly on the cla.s.sification tests. The problem, the Army repeatedly claimed, was not the quant.i.ty of black troops but their quality. Yet at the time the Army agreed to the committee's demand to drop the quota, some 40 percent of all black soldiers scored below eighty. These men could rarely profit from the Army's agreement to integrate all specialist training and a.s.signments. The committee, aware of the problem, had strongly urged the Army to refuse reenlistment, with few exceptions, to anyone scoring below eighty. On 11 May 1950 Fahy reminded Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Jr., that despite the Army's promise to eliminate its low scorers it continued to reenlist men scoring (p. 377) less than seventy.[14-143] But by July even the test score for first-time enlistment into the Army had declined to seventy because men were needed for the Korean War. The law required that whenever Selective Service began drafting men the Army would automatically lower its enlistment standards to seventy. Thus, despite the committee's recommendations, the concentration of low-scoring Negroes in the lower grades continued to increase, creating an even greater pool of men incapable of a.s.signment to the schools and specialties open without regard to race.

[Footnote 14-143: Memo, Fahy for SA, 11 May 50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library. Frank Pace, an Arkansas lawyer and former a.s.sistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget, succeeded Gordon Gray as Secretary of the Army on 12 April 1950.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "NO LONGER A DREAM." _The Pittsburgh Courier's reaction to the services' agreements with the Fahy Committee, May 20, 1950._]

Even the Army's promise to enlarge gradually the number of specialties open to Negroes was not carried out expeditiously. By July 1950, the last month of the Fahy Committee's life, the Army had added only seven more specialties with openings for Negroes to the list of forty published seven months before at the time of its agreement with the committee. In a pessimistic mood, Kenworthy confessed to Judge (p. 378) Fahy[14-144] that "so long as additions are not progressively made to the critical list of MOS in which Negroes can serve, and so long as segregated units continue to be the rule, all MOS and schools can not be said to be open to Negroes because Negro units do not have calls for many of the advanced MOS." Kenworthy was also disturbed because the Army had disbanded the staff agency created to monitor the new policies and make future recommendations and had transferred both its two members to other duties. In the light of progress registered in the half year since the Army had adopted the committee's proposal, Kenworthy concluded that "the Army intends to do as little as possible towards implementing the policy which it adopted and published."[14-145]

[Footnote 14-144: President Truman appointed Charles Fahy to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on 15 October 1949. Fahy did not a.s.sume his judicial duties, however, until 15 December after concluding his responsibilities as a member of the American delegation to the United Nations General a.s.sembly.]

[Footnote 14-145: Memo, Kenworthy for Fahy, 25 Jul 50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library. In the memorandum the number of additional specialties is erroneously given as six; see DCSPER Summary Sheet, 23 Apr 50, sub: List of Critical Specialties Referred to in SR 600-629-1, G-1 291.2 (25 Oct 49).]

Roy Davenport later suggested that such pessimism was ill-founded.

Other factors were at work within the Army in 1950, particularly after the outbreak of war in Korea.[14-146] Davenport alluded princ.i.p.ally to the integration of basic training centers and the a.s.signment of greater numbers of black inductees to combat specialties--developments that were pushing the Army ahead of the integration timetable envisioned by committee members and making concern over black eligibility for an increased number of occupation categories less important.

[Footnote 14-146: Ltr, Davenport to OSD Historian, 31 Aug 76, copy in CMH. For a discussion of these war-related factors, see Chapters 14 and 17.]

The Fahy Committee has been given full credit for proving that segregation could not be defended on grounds of military efficiency, thereby laying the foundation for the integration of the Army. But perhaps in the long run the group's idealism proved to be equally important. The committee never lost sight of the moral implications of the services' racial policies. Concern for the rightness and wrongness of things is readily apparent in all its deliberations, and in the end the committee would invoke the words of Saint Paul to the Philippians to remind men who perhaps should have needed no such reminder that they should heed "whatsoever things are true ... whatsoever things are just." What was right and just, the committee concluded, would "strengthen the nation."[14-147]

[Footnote 14-147: _Freedom to Serve_, pp. 66-67.]

The same ethics stood forth in the conclusion of the committee's final report, raising that practical summary of events to the status of an eloquent state paper. The committee reminded the President and its fellow citizens that the status of the individual, "his equal worth in the sight of G.o.d, his equal protection under the law, his equal rights and obligations of citizenship and his equal opportunity to make just and constructive use of his endowment--these are the very foundation of the American system of values."[14-148]

[Footnote 14-148: _Ibid._, p. 67.]

To its lasting honor the Fahy Committee succeeded in spelling out for the nation's military leaders how these principles, these "high standards of democracy" as President Truman called them in his order, must be applied in the services.

CHAPTER 15 (p. 379)

The Role of the Secretary of Defense 1949-1951

Having ordered the integration of the services and supported the Fahy Committee in the development of acceptable racial programs, President Truman quickly turned the matter over to his subordinates in the Department of Defense, severing White House ties with the problem.

Against the recommendations of some of his White House advisers, Truman adjourned the committee, leaving his executive order in effect.

"The necessary programs having been adopted," he told Fahy, it was time for the services "to work out in detail the procedures which will complete the steps so carefully initiated by the committee."[15-1] In effect, the President was guaranteeing the services the freedom to put their own houses in order.

[Footnote 15-1: Ltr, Truman to Fahy, 6 Jul 50, FC file.]

The issue of civil rights, however, was still of vital interest to one of the President's major const.i.tuencies. Black voters, recognized as a decisive factor in the November 1948 election, pressed their demands on the victorious President; in particular some of their spokesmen called on the administration to implement fully the program put forth by the Fahy Committee. These demands were being echoed in Congress by a civil rights bloc--for bloc it had now become in the wake of the election that sent Harry Truman back to the White House. No longer the concern of a congressman or two, the cause of the black serviceman was now supported by a group of politicians who, joining with civil rights leaders, pressed the Department of Defense for rapid changes in its racial practices.