Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 64

[Footnote 17-2: Memo, SA for Lt Gen Stephen J.

Chamberlin, 30 Nov 49, sub: Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army, CSGPA 291.2. See also Dir, P&A, Summary Sheet to CofS, 2 Nov 49, sub: Board to Study the Utilization of Negro Manpower in Peacetime Army, CSGPA 291.2, and TAG to Chamberlin, 18 Nov 49, same sub, AG 334 (17 Nov 49). In addition to Chamberlin, the board included Maj.

Gen. Withers A. Buress, commanding general of the Infantry Center; Maj. Gen. John M. Divine, commanding general of 9th Infantry Division, Fort Dix; and Col. M. VanVoorst, Personnel and Administration Division, as recorder without vote.]

The conclusions and recommendations of the Chamberlin Board represent perhaps the most careful and certainly the last apologia for a segregated Army.[17-3] The Army's postwar racial policy and related directives, the board a.s.sured Secretary Gray, were sound, were proving effective, and should be continued in force. It saw only one objection to segregated units: black units had an unduly high proportion of men with low cla.s.sification test scores, a situation, it believed, that could be altered by raising the entrance level and improving training and leadership. At any rate, the board declared, this disadvantage was a minor one compared to the advantages of an organization that did not force Negroes into compet.i.tion they were unprepared to face, did not provoke the resentment of white soldiers with the consequent risk of lowered combat effectiveness, and avoided placing black officers and noncommissioned officers in command of white troops, "a position which only the exceptional Negro could successfully fill."

[Footnote 17-3: Memo, Gen Chamberlin et al. for SA, 9 Feb 50, sub: Report of Board of Officers on Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Army, AG 291.2 (6 Dec 49). A copy of the report and many of the related and supporting doc.u.ments are in CMH.]

A decision on these matters, the board stated, had to be based on combat effectiveness, not the use of black manpower, and what const.i.tuted maximum effectiveness was best left to the judgment of war-tested combat leaders. These men, "almost without exception,"

vigorously opposed integration. Ignoring the Army's continuing (p. 430) negotiations with the Fahy Committee on the matter, the board called for retaining the 10 percent quota. To remove the quota without imposing a higher entrance standard, it argued, would result in an influx of Negroes "with a corresponding deterioration of combat efficiency." In short, ignoring the political and budgetary realities of the day, the board called on Secretary Gray to repudiate the findings of the Fahy Committee and the stipulations of Executive Order 9981 and to maintain a rigidly segregated service with a carefully regulated percentage of black members.

While Gray and Collins let the recommendations of the Chamberlin Board go unanswered, they did very little to change the Army's racial practices in the year following their agreements with the Fahy Committee. The periodic increase in the number of critical specialties for which Negroes were to be trained and freely a.s.signed did not materialize. The number of trained black specialists increased, and some were a.s.signed to white units, but this practice, while substantially different from the Gillem Board's idea of limiting such integration to overhead s.p.a.ces, nevertheless produced similar results.

Black specialists continued to be a.s.signed to segregated units in the majority of cases, and in the minds of most commanders such a.s.signment automatically limited black soldiers to certain jobs and schools no matter what their qualifications. Kenworthy's blunt conclusion in May 1951 was that the Army had not carried out the policy it had agreed to.[17-4] Certainly the Army staff had failed to develop a successful mechanism for gauging its commanders' compliance with its new policy.

Despite the generally progressive sentiments of General Collins and Secretary Gray's agreement with the Fahy Committee, much of the Army clung to old sentiments and practices for the same old reasons.

[Footnote 17-4: Kenworthy, "The Case Against Army Segregation," p. 32.]

The catalyst for the sudden shift away from these sentiments and practices was the Korean War. Ranking among the nation's major conflicts, the war caused the Army to double in size in five months.

By June 1951 it numbered 1.6 million, with 230,000 men serving in Korea in the Eighth Army. This vast expansion of manpower and combat commitment severely tested the Army's racial policy and immediately affected the racial balance of the quota-free Army. When the quota was lifted in April 1950, Negroes accounted for 10.2 percent of the total enlisted strength; by August this figure reached 11.4 percent. On 1 January 1951, Negroes comprised 11.7 percent of the Army, and in December 1952 the ratio was 13.2 percent. The cause of this striking rise in black strength was the large number of Negroes among wartime enlistments. The percentage of Negroes among those enlisting in the Army for the first time jumped from 8.2 in March 1950 to 25.2 in August, averaging 18 percent of all first-term enlistments during the first nine months of the war. Black reenlistment increased from 8.5 to 12.9 percent of the total reenlistment during the same period, and the percentage of black draftees in the total number of draftees supplied by Selective Service averaged 13 percent.[17-5]

[Footnote 17-5: Memo, G-1 for VCofS, sub: Negro Statistics, 16 Jun 50-6 Oct 50, CS 291.2 Negro; idem for G-3, 18 Apr 51, sub: Training s.p.a.ces for Negro Personnel, OPS 291.2; Memo, Chief, Mil Opers Management Branch, G-1, for G-1, 1 Feb 51, sub: Distribution of Negro Manpower in the Army, G-1 291.2, and Memo, Chief, Procurement and Distribution Div, G-1, for G-1, 20 Oct 53, same sub and file.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOVING UP. _25th Division infantrymen head for the front, Korea, July 1950._]

The effect of these increases on a segregated army was tremendous. (p. 431) By April 1951, black units throughout the Army were reporting large overstrengths, some as much as 60 percent over their authorized organization tables. Overstrength was particularly evident in the combat arms because of the steady increase in the number of black soldiers with combat occupational specialties. Largely a.s.signed to service units during World War II--only 22 percent, about half the white percentage, were in combat units--Negroes after the war were a.s.signed in ever-increasing numbers to combat occupational specialties in keeping with the Gillem Board recommendation that they be trained in all branches of the service. By 1950 some 30 percent of all black soldiers were in combat units, and by June 1951 they were being a.s.signed to the combat branches in approximately the same percentage as white soldiers, 41 percent.[17-6]

[Footnote 17-6: STM-30, Strength of the Army, Sep 50, Mar 51, and Jul 51.]

The Chief of Staff's concern with the Army's segregation policy went beyond immediate problems connected with the sudden manpower increases.

Speaking to Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Craig, the Inspector General, in August 1950, Collins declared that the Army's social policy was unrealistic and did not represent the views of younger Americans whose att.i.tudes were much more relaxed than those of the senior officers who (p. 432) established policy. Reporting Collins's comment to the staff, Craig went on to say the situation in Korea confirmed his own observations that mixing whites and blacks "in reasonable proportions" did not cause friction. Continued segregation, on the other hand, would force the Army to reinstate the old division-size black unit, with its ineffectiveness and frustrations, to answer the Negro's demand for equitable promotions and job opportunities. In short, both Collins and Craig agreed that the Army must eventually integrate, and they wanted the use of black servicemen restudied.[17-7]

[Footnote 17-7: IG Summary Sheet for CofS, 7 Dec 50, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Segregation, CS 291.2 (7 Dec 50).]

Their view was at considerable variance with the att.i.tude displayed by most officers on the Army staff and in the major commands in December 1950. His rank notwithstanding, Collins still had to persuade these men of the validity of his views before they would accept the necessity for integration. Moreover, with his concept of orderly and controlled social change threatened by the rapid rise in the number of black soldiers, Collins himself would need to a.s.sess the effects of racial mixing in a fluid manpower situation. These necessities explain the plethora of staff papers, special boards, and field investigations pertaining to the employment of black troops that characterized the next six months, a period during which every effort was made to convince senior officers of the practical necessity for integration.

The Chief of Staff's exchange of views with the Inspector General was not circulated within the staff until December 1950. At that time the personnel chief, Lt. Gen. Edward H. Brooks, recommended reconvening the Chamberlin Board to reexamine the Army's racial policy in light of the Korean experience. Brooks wanted to hold off the review until February 1951 by which time he thought adequate data would be available from the Far East Command. His recommendation was approved, and the matter was returned to the same group which had so firmly rejected integration less than a year before.[17-8]

[Footnote 17-8: G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 18 Dec 50, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Segregation, G-1 291.2.]

Even as the Chamberlin Board was reconvening, another voice was added to those calling for integration. Viewing the critical overstrength in black units, a.s.sistant Secretary Earl D. Johnson recommended distributing excess black soldiers among other units of the Army.[17-9] The response to his proposal was yet another attempt to avoid the dictates of the draft law and black enlistments. Maj. Gen.

Anthony C. McAuliffe, the G-1, advised against integrating the organized white units on the grounds that experience gained thus far on the social impact of integration was inadequate to predict its effect on "overall Army efficiency." Since the Army could not continue a.s.signing more men to the overstrength black units, McAuliffe wanted to organize additional black units to accommodate the excess, and he asked Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, the G-3, to activate the necessary units.[17-10]

[Footnote 17-9: Memo, ASA for SA, 3 Apr 51, sub: Present Overstrength in Segregated Units, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-10: Memo, G-1 for CofS, 26 May 51, sub: Present Overstrength in Segregated Units; DF, G-1 for G-3, 16 Apr 51, sub: Training s.p.a.ces for Negro Personnel; both in G-1 291.2.]

The chief of the Army Field Forces was even more direct. Integration was untimely, General Mark W. Clark advised, and the Army should instead reimpose the quota and push for speedy implementation of the Secretary of Defense's directive on the qualitative distribution (p. 433) of manpower.[17-11] Clark's plea for a new quota was one of many circulating in the staff since black enlistment percentages started to rise. But time had run out on the quota as a solution to overstrength black units. Although the Army staff continued to discuss the need for the quota, and senior officials considered asking the President for permission to reinst.i.tute it, the Secretary of Defense's acceptance of parity of enlistment standards had robbed the Army of any excuse for special treatment on manpower allotments.[17-12]

[Footnote 17-11: Memo, CG, AFF, for G-1, 8 May 51, sub: Negro Strength in the Army, G-1 291.2.]

[Footnote 17-12: Memo, ASA for SA, 1 Jul 51, and Draft Memo, SA for President (not sent), both in SA 291.2.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEN OF BATTERY A, _159th Field Artillery Battalion, fire 105-mm. howitzer, Korea, August 1950_.]

McAuliffe's recommendation for additional black units ran into serious opposition and was not approved. Taylor's staff, concerned with the practical problems of Army organization, objected to the proposal, citing budget limitations that precluded the creation of additional units and policy restrictions that forbade the creation of new units merely to accommodate black recruits. The operations staff recommended instead that black soldiers in excess of unit strength be shipped directly from training centers to overseas commands as replacements without regard for specific a.s.signment. McAuliffe's personnel staff, in turn, warned that on the basis of a monthly average dispatch of 25,000 replacements to the Far East Command, the portion of Negroes in those shipments would be 15 percent for May 1951, 21 percent for June, 22 percent for July, and 16 percent for August. McAuliffe listed the familiar problems that would accrue to the Far East commanders from this decision, but he was unable to break the impa.s.se in Washington.

Thus the problem of excess black manpower was pa.s.sed on to the overseas commanders for resolution.[17-13]

[Footnote 17-13: CMT 2 (Brig Gen D. A. Ogden, Chief, Orgn & Tng Div, G-3), 3 May 51, CMT 3 (Brig Gen W.

E. Dunkelberg, Chief, Manpower Control Div, G-1), 21 May 51, and CMT 4 (Ogden), 24 May 51, to G-1 Summary Sheet for CofS, 18 Apr 51, sub: Negro Overstrengths, G-1 291.2.]

Commanders in Korea had already begun to apply the only practical remedy. Confronted with battle losses in white units and a growing surplus of black replacements arriving in j.a.pan, the Eighth Army began a.s.signing individual black soldiers just as it had been a.s.signing individual Korean soldiers to understrength units.[17-14] In August 1950, for example, initial replacements for battle casualties in (p. 434) the 9th Infantry of the U.S. 2d Infantry Division included two black officers and eighty-nine black enlisted men. The commander a.s.signed them to units in his severely undermanned all-white 1st and 2d Battalions. In September sixty more soldiers from the regiment's all-black 3d Battalion returned to the regiment for duty. They were first attached but later, with the agreement of the officers and men involved, a.s.signed to units of the 1st and 2d Battalions.

Subsequently, 225 black replacements were routinely a.s.signed wherever needed throughout the regiment.[17-15] By December the 9th Infantry had absorbed Negroes to about their proportion of the national population, 11 percent. Of six black officers among them, one commanded Company C and another was temporarily in command of Company B when that unit fought in November on the Ch'ongch'on River line. S.

L. A. Marshall later described Company B as "possibly the bravest"

unit in that action.[17-16]

[Footnote 17-14: The Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, known as KATUSA, a program for integrating Korean soldiers in American units, was substantially different from the integration of black Americans in terms of official authorization and management; see CMH study by David C. Skaggs, "The Katusa Program," in CMH.]

[Footnote 17-15: Memo, CO, 9th Inf, for TIG, 29 Oct 50, attached to IG Summary Sheet for CofS, 7 Dec 50, sub: Policy Regarding Negro Segregation, CS 291.2 (7 Dec 50); FEC, "G-1 Command Report, 1 January-31 October 1950."]

[Footnote 17-16: S. L. A. Marshall, "Integration,"

Detroit _News_, May 13, 1956.]

The practice of a.s.signing individual blacks throughout white units in Korea accelerated during early 1951 and figured in the manpower rotation program which began in Korea during May. By this time the practice had so spread that 9.4 percent of all Negroes in the theater were serving in some forty-one newly and unofficially integrated units.[17-17] Another 9.3 percent were in integrated but predominantly black units. The other 81 percent continued to serve in segregated units: in March 1951 these numbered 1 black regiment, 10 battalions, 66 separate companies, and 7 separate detachments. Looked at another way, by May 1951 some 61 percent of the Eighth Army's infantry companies were at least partially integrated.

[Footnote 17-17: ORO Technical Memorandum T-99, A Preliminary Report on the Utilization of Negro Manpower, 30 Jun 51, p. 34, copy in CMH.]

Though still limited, the conversion to integrated units was permanent. The Korean expedient, adopted out of battlefield necessity, carried out haphazardly, and based on such imponderables as casualties and the draft, pa.s.sed the ultimate test of traditional American pragmatism: it worked. And according to reports from Korea, it worked well. The performance of integrated troops was praiseworthy with no report of racial friction.[17-18] It was a test that could not fail to impress field commanders desperate for manpower.

[Footnote 17-18: Ibid., p. 35. For a popular report on the success of this partial integration, see Harold H. Martin, "How Do Our Negro Troops Measure Up?,"

_Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_ 223 (June 16, 1951):30-31.]

_Training_

Training units in the United States were subject to many of the stresses suffered by the Eighth Army, and without fanfare they too began to integrate. There was little precedent for the change. True, the Army had integrated officer training in World War II and basic training at the Women's Army Corps Training Center at Fort Lee, Virginia, in April 1950. But beyond that only the rare black trainee designated for specialist service was a.s.signed to a white training unit. Until 1950 there was no effort to mix black and white trainees because the Army's manpower experts always predicted a "social (p. 435) problem," a euphemism for the racial conflict they feared would follow integration at large bases in the United States.

Not that demands for integration ever really ceased. Civil rights organizations and progressive lawmakers continued to press the Army, and the Selective Service System itself complained that black draftees were being discriminated against even before induction.[17-19] Because so many protests had focused on the induction process, James Evans, the Civilian Aide to the Secretary of Defense, recommended that the traditional segregation be abandoned, at least during the period between induction and first a.s.signment.[17-20] Congressman Jacob Javits, always a critic of the Army's segregation policy, was particularly disturbed by the segregation of black trainees at Fort Dix, New Jersey. His request that training units be integrated was politely rejected in the fall of 1950 by General Marshall, who implied that the subject was an unnecessary intrusion, an att.i.tude characteristic of the Defense Department's war-distracted feelings toward integration.[17-21]

[Footnote 17-19: Ltr, Lewis B. Hershey to SA, 21 Sep 50, SA 291.2; Memo, Col W. Preston Corderman, Exec, Office of ASA, for CofS, 8 Sep 50, sub: Racial Complaints, CS 291.2. For an example of complaints by a civil rights organization, see Telg, J. L.

LeFore, Mobile, Ala., NAACP, to President, 18 Sep 50, and Ltr, A. Philip Randolph to SecDef, 30 Oct 50, both in SD 291.2 Neg.]

[Footnote 17-20: Memo, Evans for Leva, ASD, 5 Oct 50, sub: Racial Complaint From the Mobile Area, SD 291.2 Neg (18 Sep 50).]

[Footnote 17-21: Ltrs, Javits to SecDef, 6 Sep and 2 Oct 50; Ltrs, SecDef to Javits, 19 Sep and 10 Oct 50. All in SD 291.2 Neg.]

Again, the change in Army policy came not because the staff ordered it, but because local commanders found it necessary. The commanders of the nine training divisions in the continental United States were hard pressed because the number of black and white inductees in any monthly draft call, as well as their designated training centers, depended on Selective Service and was therefore unpredictable. It was impossible for commanders to arrange for the proper number of separate white and black training units and instructors to receive the inductees when no one knew whether a large contingent of black soldiers or a large group of whites would get off the train. A white unit could be undermanned and its instructors idle while a black unit was overcrowded and its instructors overworked. This inefficient use of their valuable training instructors led commanders, first at Fort Ord and then at the other training divisions and replacement centers throughout the United States, to adopt the expedient of mixing black and white inductees in the same units for messing, housing, and training. As the commander of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, put it, sorting out the rapidly arriving inductees was "ridiculous," and he proceeded to a.s.sign new men to units without regard to color. He did, however, divert black inductees from time to time "to hold the Negro population down to a workable basis."[17-22]

[Footnote 17-22: G-1 Summary Sheet for VCofS, 22 Apr 52, sub: Information for the G-1 Information Book, G-1 291.2; Memo, ASA (M&PR) for ASD (M&PR), 22 Aug 52, sub: Progress Report on Elimination of Segregation in the Army, SD 291.2; Memo, VCofS for SA, 18 Jun 51, sub: a.s.similation of Negroes at Ft.

Jackson, S.C., SA 291.2. See also Lt Col William M.

Nichols, "The DOD Program to Ensure Civil Rights Within the Services and Between the Services and the Community," Rpt 116, 1966, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, p. 24.]