Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 56

The traditionalists in the armed forces also had congressional allies.

In all probability these legislators would accept an integrated Navy because it involved relatively few Negroes; they might even tolerate an integrated Air Force because they lacked a proprietary att.i.tude toward this new service; but they would fight to keep the Army segregated because they considered the Army their own.[15-2]

Congressional segregationists openly opposed changes in the Army's racial policy only when they thought the time was right. They carefully avoided the subject in the months following publication of the (p. 380) executive order, waiting to bargain until their support became crucial to the success of such vital military legislation as the renewal of the Selective Service Act and the establishment of universal military training.

[Footnote 15-2: Interv, Nichols with Gen Wade H.

Haislip, 1953, in Nichols Collection; Telephone Interv, author with Haislip, 18 Mar 71; Interv, author with Martin Blumenson, 8 Jan 68. All in CMH files.]

At most, Congress played only a minor role in the dramatic changes beginning in the armed forces. Champions of civil rights had little effect on service practices, although these congressmen channeled the complaints of black voters and kept the military traditionalists on the defensive. As for the congressional traditionalists, their support may have helped sustain those on the staff who resisted racial change within the Army, thus slowing down that service's integration. But the demands of congressional progressives and obstructionists tended to cancel each other out, and in the wake of the Fahy Committee's disbandment the services themselves reemerged as the preeminent factor in the armed forces racial program.

The services regained control by default. Logically, direction of racial reforms in the services should have fallen to the Secretary of Defense. In the first place, the secretary, other administration officials, and the public alike had begun to use the secretary's office as a clearinghouse for reconciling conflicting demands of the services, as an appellate court reviewing decisions of the service secretaries, and as the natural channel of communication between the services and the White House, Congress, and the public. Many racial problems had become interservice in nature, and only the Office of the Secretary of Defense possessed the administrative machinery to deal with such matters. The Personnel Policy Board or, later, the new Office of the a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Personnel might well have become the watchdog recommended by the Fahy Committee to oversee the services' progress toward integration, but neither did.

Certainly the Secretary of Defense had other matters pressing for his attention. Secretary Johnson had become the central character in the budgetary conflicts of Truman's second term, and both he and General George C. Marshall, who succeeded him as secretary on 20 September 1950, were suddenly thrust into leadership of the Korean War. In administrative matters, at least, Marshall had to concentrate on boosting the morale of a department torn by internecine budgetary arguments. Integration did not appear to have the same importance to national security as these weighty matters. More to the point, Johnson and Marshall were not social reformers. Whatever their personal att.i.tudes, they were content to let the services set the pace of racial reform. With one notable exception neither man initiated any of the historic racial changes that took place in the armed forces during the early 1950's.

For the most part those racial issues that did involve the Secretary of Defense centered on the status of the Negro in the armed forces in general and were extraneous to the issue of integration. One of the most persistent status problems was cla.s.sification by race. First posed during the great World War II draft calls, the question of how to determine a serviceman's race, and indeed the related one of who had the right to make such a determination, remained unanswered five years later. In August 1944 the Selective Service System decided (p. 381) that the definition of a man's race should be left to the man himself.

While this solution no doubt pleased racial progressives and certainly simplified the induction process, not to speak of protecting the War Department from a ticklish court review, it still left the services the difficult and important task of designating racial categories into which men could be a.s.signed. As late as April 1949 the Army and the Air Force listed a number of specific racial categories, one of which had to be chosen by the applicant or recruiter--the regulation left the point unclear--to identify the applicant's race. The regulation listed "white, Negro, Indian (referring to American Indian only), Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, East Indian, etc.," and specifically included mulattoes and "others of negroid race or extraction" in the Negro category, leaving other men of mixed race to be entered under their predominant race.[15-3]

[Footnote 15-3: SR 615-105-1 (AFR 39-9), 15 Apr 49.]

The regulation was obviously subject to controversy, and in the wake of the President's equality order it is not surprising that some group--a group of Spanish-speaking Americans from southern California, as it turned out--would raise the issue. Specifically, they objected to a practice of Army and Air Force recruiters, who often scratched out "white" and inserted "Mexican" in the applications of Spanish-speaking volunteers. These young men wanted to be integrated into every phase of community life, Congressman Chet Holifield told the Secretary of Defense, and he pa.s.sed on a warning from his California const.i.tuents that "any attempt to forestall this ambition by treating them as a group apart is extremely repellent to them and gives rise to demoralization and hostility."[15-4] If the Department of Defense considered racial information essential, Holifield continued, why not make the determination in a less objectionable manner? He suggested a series of questions concerning the birthplace of the applicant's parents and the language spoken in his home as innocuous possibilities.

[Footnote 15-4: Ltr, Holifield to SecDef, 10 Aug 49, SD 291.2 Negroes.]

Secretary Johnson sent the congressman's complaint to the Personnel Policy Board, which, ignoring the larger considerations posed by Holifield, concentrated on simplifying the department's racial categories to five--Caucasian, Negroid, Mongolian, Indian (American), and Malayan--and making their use uniform throughout the services. The board also adopted the use of inoffensive questions to help determine the applicant's proper race category. Obviously, the board could not abandon racial designations because the Army's quota system, still in effect, depended on this information. Less clear, however, was why the board failed to consider the problem of who should make the racial determination. At any rate, its new list of racial categories, approved by the secretary and published on 11 October, immediately drew complaints from members of the department.[15-5]

[Footnote 15-5: Memo, Dep Dir, Personnel Policy Bd Staff, for Chmn, PPB, 13 Sep 49, sub: Project Summary--Change of Nomenclature on Enlistment Forms as Pertains to "Race" Entries (M-63); Memo, Chmn, PPB, for SA et al., 11 Oct 49, sub: Policy Regarding Race Entries on Enlistment Contracts and Shipping Articles; both in PPB 291.2.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAVY CORPSMAN IN KOREA _attends wounded from the 1st Marine Division, 1950_.]

The secretary's racial adviser, James C. Evans, saw no need for (p. 382) racial designations on departmental forms, but knowing their removal was unlikely in the near future, he concentrated on trying to change the newly revised categories. He explained to the board, obviously unschooled in the nuance of racial slurs, that the word "Negroid" was offensive to many Negroes. Besides, the board's categories made no sense since Indian (American) and Malayan were not comparable to the other three entries listed. Why not, he suggested, settle for the old black, white, yellow, red, and brown designations?[15-6]

[Footnote 15-6: Memo, Evans for Chmn, PPB, 25 Nov 49, sub: Racial Designation and Terminology, SD 291.2; Interv, author with Evans, 22 Jul 71, CMH files.]

The Navy, too, objected to the board's categories. After consulting a Smithsonian ethnologist, the Under Secretary of the Navy suggested that the board create a sixth category, Polynesian, for use in shipping articles and in forms for reporting casualties. The Army, also troubled by the categories, requested they be defined. The categories were meant to provide a uniform basis for cla.s.sifying military personnel, The Adjutant General pointed out, but given the variety and complexity of Army forms--he had discovered that the Army was using seven separate forms with racial entries, each with a different procedure for deciding race--uniformity was practically (p. 383) impossible without a careful delineation of each category.[15-7]

[Footnote 15-7: Memo, Head, Strength and Statistics Br, BuPers, for Head, Policy Control Br, BuPers, 27 Oct 49, sub: Policy Regarding Race Entries, Pers 25-EL, BuPersRecs; Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 25 Nov 49, sub: Policy Regarding "Race"

Entries on Enlistment Contracts and Shipping Articles, GenRecsNav; DF, D/P&A to TAG, 18 Oct 49, same sub, with CMT 2, TAG to D/P&A, 2 Nov 49, copy in AG 291.2 (11 Oct 49).]

Its ruling under attack from the services, the board made a hasty appeal to authority. Its chief of staff, Vice Adm. John L.

McCrea,[15-8] recommended that the Army and Navy consult Funk and Wagnalls _Standard Dictionary_ for specific definitions of the five racial categories. That source, the admiral explained to the Under Secretary of the Navy, listed Polynesian in the Malayan category, and if the Navy decided to add race to its shipping articles, the five categories should be sufficient. The board, he added, had not meant to encourage additional use of racial information. The Navy had always used the old color categories on its shipping articles forms, the ones, incidentally, favored by Evans, and McCrea thought they generally corresponded to the categories developed by the board.[15-9]

The admiral also suggested that the Army use the color system to help clarify the board's categories. He offered some generalizations on specific Army questions: "a) Puerto Ricans are officially Caucasian, unless of Indian or Negro birth; b) Filipinos are Malayan; c) Hawaiians are Malayan; d) Latin Americans are Caucasian or Indian; and e) Indian-Negro and White-Negro mixtures should be cla.s.sified in accordance with the laws of the states of their birth."[15-10] The lessons on definition of race so painfully learned during World War II were ignored. Henceforth race was to be determined by a dictionary, a color scheme, and the legal vagaries found in the race laws of the several states.

[Footnote 15-8: Admiral McCrea succeeded General Lanham as director of the board's staff in 1949.]

[Footnote 15-9: Memo, Dir, PPB Staff, for Under SecNav, 7 Dec 49, sub: Policy Regarding "Race"

Entries on Enlistment Contracts and Shipping Articles, PPB 291.2.]

[Footnote 15-10: Idem for Administrative a.s.st to SA, 8 Dec 49, sub: Policy Regarding "Race" Entries on Enlistment Contracts and Shipping Articles, OSA 291.2.]

The board's rulings, unscientific and open to all sorts of legal complications, could only be stopgap measures, and when on 4 January 1950 the Army again requested clarification of the racial categories, the board quickly responded. Although it continued to defend the use of racial categories, it tried to soften the ruling by stating that an applicant's declaration of race should be accepted, subject to "sufficient justification" from the applicant when his declaration created "reason to doubt." It was 5 April before the board's new chairman, J. Thomas Schneider,[15-11] issued a revised directive to this effect.[15-12]

[Footnote 15-11: Schneider succeeded Thomas Reid as chairman on 2 February 1950.]

[Footnote 15-12: Memo, Chmn, PPB, for SA et al., 5 Apr 50, sub: Policy Regarding "Race" on Enlistment Contracts and Shipping Articles, PPB 291.2.]

The board's decision to accept an applicant's declaration was simply a return to the reasonable and practical method the Selective Service had been using for some time. But adopting the vague qualification "sufficient justification" invited further complaints. When the services finally translated the board's directive into a new regulation, the role of the applicant in deciding his racial ident.i.ty was practically abolished. In the Army and the Air Force, for (p. 384) example, recruiters had to submit all unresolved ident.i.ty cases to the highest local commander, whose decision, supposedly based on available doc.u.mentary evidence and answers to the questions first suggested by Congressman Holifield, was final. Further, the Army and the Air Force decided that "no enlistment would be accomplished" until racial ident.i.ty was decided to the satisfaction of both the applicant and the service.[15-13] The Navy adopted a similar procedure when it placed the board's directive in effect.[15-14] The new regulation promised little comfort for young Americans of racially mixed parentage and even less for the services. Contrary to the intent of the Personnel Policy Board, its directive once again placed the burden of deciding an applicant's race, with the concomitant complaints and potential civil suits, back on the services.

[Footnote 15-13: SR 615-105-1 (AFR 39-9), 6 Sep 50.]

[Footnote 15-14: BuPers Cir Ltr 84-50, 1 Jun 50.]

At the time the Army did not see this responsibility as a burden and in its quest for uniformity was willing to a.s.sume an even greater share of the decision-making in a potentially explosive issue. On 7 August the Deputy a.s.sistant Chief of Staff, G-1, asked the Personnel Policy Board to include Army induction centers in the directive meant originally for recruiting centers only.[15-15] In effect the Army was offering to a.s.sume from Selective Service the task of deciding the race of all draftees. The board obtained the necessary agreement from Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, and Selective Service was thus relieved of an onerous task reluctantly acquired in 1944. On 29 August 1950 The Adjutant General ordered induction stations to begin entering the draftee's race in the records.[15-16]

[Footnote 15-15: Memo, Dep a.s.st CS/G-1 for Dep Dir of Staff, Mil Pers, PPB, 7 Aug 50, sub: "Race" Entries on Induction Records, PPB 291.2. The Director, Personnel and Administration, was redesignated the a.s.sistant Chief of Staff, G-1, in the 1950 reorganization of the Army staff; see Hewes, _From Root to McNamara_.]

[Footnote 15-16: Memo, Dir, PPB Staff, for Dep ACS, G-1, 29 Aug 50, sub: "Race" Entries on Induction Records, PPB 291.2 (27 Aug 50); Memo, Chief, Cla.s.s and Standards Br, G-1, for TAG, 6 Sep 50, same sub, G-1 291.2 (11 Oct 49); Ltr, Dir, Selective Service, to Actg Dir of Production Management, Munitions Bd, 27 Nov 50, copy in G-1 291.2; G-1 Memo for Rcd, attached to G-1 DF to TAG, 28 Dec 50, same sub, G-1 291.2 (11 Oct 50).]

The considerable staff activity devoted to definitions of race between 1949 and 1951 added very little to racial harmony or the cause of integration. The simplified racial categories and the regulations determining their application continued to irritate members of America's several minority groups. The ink was hardly dry on the new regulation, for example, before the director of the NAACP's Washington bureau was complaining to Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K.

Finletter that the department's five categories were comparatively meaningless and caused unnecessary humiliation for inductees. He wanted racial entries eliminated.[15-17] Finletter explained that racial designations were not used for a.s.signment or administrative purposes but solely for evaluating the integration program and answering questions from the public. His explanation prompted much discussion within the services and correspondence between them and Clarence Mitch.e.l.l and Walter White of the NAACP. It culminated in a meeting of the service secretaries with the Secretary of Defense (p. 385) on 16 January 1951 at which Finletter reaffirmed his position.[15-18]

[Footnote 15-17: Ltr, Clarence Mitch.e.l.l to SecAF Thomas K. Finletter, 13 Dec 50, SecAF files.

Finletter had become secretary on 24 April 1950.]

[Footnote 15-18: Ltr, SecAF to Mitch.e.l.l, Dir, Washington Bureau, NAACP, 3 Jan 51, and Ltr, Mitch.e.l.l to a.s.st SecAF, 8 Jan 51, both in SecAF files; Memo, Edward T. d.i.c.kinson, a.s.st to Joint Secys, OSD, for SA et al., 17 Jan 51, OSD files.]

There was some justification for the Defense Department's position.

Many of those who found racial designations distasteful also demanded hard statistical proof that members of minority groups were given equal treatment and opportunity,[15-19] and such a.s.surances, of course, demanded racial determinations on the records. Still, not all the reasons for retaining the racial identification entry were so defensible. The Army, for example, had to maintain accurate statistics on the number of Negroes inducted because of its concern with a possible unacceptable rise in their number and the President's promise to reimpose the quota to prevent such an increase. Whatever the reasons, it was obvious that racial statistics had to be kept. It was also obvious that as long as they were kept and continued to matter, the Secretary of Defense would be saddled with the task of deciding in the end which racial tag to attach to each man in the armed forces. It was an unenviable duty, and it could be performed with neither precision nor justice.

[Footnote 15-19: Memo, Dep a.s.st SecAF (Program Management) for SecAF, 18 Jan 51, SecAF files; Memo, Col Robin B. Pape, a.s.st to Dir, PPB Staff, for Chmn, PPB, 4 May 51, sub: Racial Entries on Enlistment Records, PPB 291.2.]

_Overseas Restrictions_

Another problem involving the Secretary of Defense concerned restrictions placed on the use of black servicemen in certain foreign areas. The problem was not new. Making a distinction in cases where American troops were stationed in a country at the request of the United States government, the services excluded black troops from a.s.signment in some Allied countries during and immediately after World War II.[15-20] The Army, for example, barred the a.s.signment of black units to China (the Chinese government did not object to a.s.signment of individual black soldiers up to 15 percent of any unit's strength), and the Navy removed black messmen from stations in Iceland.[15-21]

Although these restrictions did not improve the racial image of the services, they were only a minor inconvenience to military officials since Negroes were for the most part segregated and their placement could be controlled easily. The armed forces continued to exclude black servicemen from certain countries into 1949 under what the Personnel Policy Board called "operating agreements (probably not in writing)" with the State Department.[15-22] But the situation changed radically when some of the services started to integrate. Efficient administration then demanded that black servicemen be interchanged (p. 386) freely among the various duty stations. Even in the case of the still segregated Army the exclusion of Negroes from certain commands further complicated the chronic maldistribution of black soldiers throughout the service.

[Footnote 15-20: Memo, Secy, Cmte on Negro Policies, for ASW, 26 Sep 42, sub: Digest of War Department Policy Pertaining to Negro Military Personnel, ASW 291.2 Negro Troops.]

[Footnote 15-21: Msg, CG, China Theater, to War Department, 16 Mar 46, G-1 291.2 (1 Jan-31 Mar 46); Memo Vice CNO for Chief of NavPers, 1 Jul 42, sub: Colored Personnel on Duty in Iceland--Replacement of, P-14, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 15-22: Memo, Thomas R. Reid for Najeeb Halaby, Dir, Office of Foreign Military Affairs, OSD, 7 Jul 49, sub: Foreign a.s.signments of Negro Personnel, PPB 291.2 (7 Jul 49).]

The interservice and departmental aspects of the problem involved Secretary of Defense Johnson. Following promulgation of his directive on racial equality and at the instigation of his Personnel Policy Board and his a.s.sistant, Najeeb Halaby, Johnson asked the Secretary of State for a formal expression of views on the use of black troops in a lengthy list of countries.[15-23] Such an expression was clearly necessary, as Air Force spokesmen pointed out. Informed of the consultations, a.s.sistant Secretary Zuckert asked that an interim policy be formulated, so urgent had the problem become in the Air Force where new racial policies and a.s.signments were under way.[15-24]

[Footnote 15-23: Ltr, SecDef to Secy of State, 14 Sep 49, CD 30-1-4, SecDef files.]

[Footnote 15-24: Memo, a.s.st SecAF for Chmn, PPB, 16 Sep 49, sub: a.s.signment of Negroes to Overseas Areas; Memo, Dir of Staff, PPB, for a.s.st SecAF, 28 Sep 49, same sub; Memo, a.s.st SecAF for Chmn, PPB, 12 Oct 49, same sub. All in SecAF files.]

For his part the Secretary of State had no objection to stationing Negroes in any of the listed countries. In fact, Under Secretary James E. Webb a.s.sured Johnson, the State Department welcomed the new Defense Department policy of equal treatment and opportunity as a step toward the achievement of the nation's foreign policy objectives. At the same time Webb admitted that there were certain countries--he listed specifically Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Newfoundland, Bermuda, and British possessions in the Caribbean--where local att.i.tudes might affect the morale of black troops and their relations with the inhabitants. The State Department, therefore, preferred advance warning when the services planned to a.s.sign Negroes to these countries so that it might consult the host governments and reduce "possible complications" to a minimum.[15-25]

[Footnote 15-25: Ltr, James E. Webb to Louis Johnson, 17 Oct 49; Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 27 Oct 49; both in CD 30-1-4, SecDef files.]