Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 80

Reporting on promotions, the Defense Department group found that the relatively limited advancement of black officers was caused chiefly by their disadvantage in point of time in service and grade, branch of service, and educational background (_Table 22_). Although the difference in grade distribution among black and white enlisted men was much smaller, it too seemed related to disadvantages in education and service occupation. Again, for Negroes entering the services since 1950, the grade distribution had become similar to that of whites. The Navy's experience ill.u.s.trated this point. In the case of those entering the Navy since the Korean War, the grade distribution of whites and nonwhites within the first three mental categories was nearly identical (_Table 23_). The divergences were much wider among the more senior men in the service groups, but this was probably due at least in part to the concentration of senior black servicemen in relatively overmanned specialties, such as food service, where promotional opportunities were limited. With this exception little evidence exists that whites enjoyed an advantage over blacks in the matter of promotions in the enlisted ranks.

Table 22--Percentage Distribution of Blacks and Whites by Pay Grade, All DOD, 1962

Grade Black White

Officers O-1 to O-2 35.9 34.5 O-3 47.7 30.2 O-4 12.1 18.0 O-5 4.0 12.0 O-6 to O-10 .3 5.3 Total 100.0 100.0

Enlisted Men E-1 to E-3 45.5 46.9 E-4 23.1 19.6 E-5 20.1 16.1 E-6 8.2 10.0 E-7 to E-9 3.0 7.5 Total 100.0 100.0

Table 23--Percentage Distribution of Navy Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups, Pay Grade, and Length of Service, 1962

0-12 Years Over 12 Years Pay Grade White Negro White Negro

AFQT Groups I & II E-1 to E-3 50.0 50.4 0.1 0.5 E-4 22.5 21.8 1.0 5.3 E-5 17.8 18.6 6.6 16.8 E-6 8.3 8.5 30.8 33.9 E-7 to E-9 1.4 .7 61.5 43.6 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

AFQT Group III E-1 to E-3 60.6 60.5 0.5 3.5 E-4 20.7 20.4 4.4 14.7 E-5 13.1 14.2 19.3 28.8 E-6 5.1 4.6 40.1 33.7 E-7 to E-9 .5 .3 35.7 19.3 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

AFQT Group IV E-1 to E-3 77.1 61.2 2.2 12.2 E-4 13.0 23.3 14.9 32.6 E-5 7.9 13.0 34.0 29.9 E-6 1.9 2.4 32.4 19.3 E-7 to E-9 .1 [a] 16.5 6.0 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

[Tablenote a: Less than .05 percent.]

All these figures could be conjured up when the services had to answer complaints of discrimination, but more often than not the services contented themselves with a vague defense of the _status quo_[20-82]

Such answers were clearly unacceptable to civil rights leaders (p. 528) and their allies in the administration, and it is not surprising that the complaints persisted. To the argument that higher enlistment standards were a matter of military economy during a period of partial mobilizations, those concerned about civil rights responded that, since marginal manpower was a necessary ingredient of full mobilization, the services should learn to deal in peacetime with what would be a wartime problem.[20-83] To pleas of helplessness against off-base discrimination, the activists argued that these practices had demonstrably adverse effects on the morale of more than 9 percent of the armed forces and were, therefore, a clear threat to the accomplishment of the services' military mission.[20-84]

[Footnote 20-82: See, for example, the following Memos: Dep Under SA (Manpower) for ASD (M), 30 Mar 62, sub: Servicemen's Complaints of Discrimination in the U.S. Military; AF Dep for Manpower, Pers, and Organization for ASD (M), 29 Mar 62, sub: Alleged Racial Discrimination Within the Air Force; Under SecNav for ASD (M), 16 Mar 62, sub: Discrimination in the U.S. Military Services. All in ASD (M) 291.2 (12 Feb 62).]

[Footnote 20-83: Ginzberg, _The Negro Potential_, p.

90.]

[Footnote 20-84: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, _Civil Rights '63_, pp. 210-11.]

Integration of black servicemen and general political and economic gains of the black population had combined in the last decade to create a ground swell for reform that resulted in ever more frequent and pressing attacks on the community policies of the Department (p. 529) of Defense. Some members of the administration rode with the reform movement. Although he was speaking particularly of increased black enrollment at the military academies, Special White House a.s.sistant Wofford betrayed the reformer's att.i.tude toward the whole problem of equal opportunity when he told James Evans "I am sure that much work has been done, but there is, of course, still a long way to go."[20-85] But by 1962 the services had just about exhausted the traditional reform methods available to them. To go further, as Wofford and the civil rights advocates demanded, meant a fundamental change in the department's commitment to equal treatment and opportunity. The decision to make such a change was clearly up to Secretary McNamara and the Kennedy administration.

[Footnote 20-85: Memo, Wofford for Evans, 2 Feb 62, Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

CHAPTER 21 (p. 530)

Equal Treatment and Opportunity Redefined

By 1962 the civil rights leaders and their allies in the Kennedy administration were pressing the Secretary of Defense to end segregation in the reserve components and in housing, schools, and public accommodations in communities adjacent to military installations. Such an extension of policy, certainly the most important to be contemplated since President Truman's executive order in 1948, would involve the Department of Defense in the fight for servicemen's civil rights, thrusting it into the forefront of the civil rights movement.

Given the forces at work in the department, it was by no means certain in 1962 that the fight against discrimination would be extended beyond those vestiges that continued to exist in the military community itself. In Robert McNamara the department had an energetic secretary, committed to the principle of equal treatment and opportunity, and, since his days with the Ford Motor Company in Michigan, a member of the NAACP. But, as his directives indicated, McNamara had much to learn in the field of race relations. As he later recalled: "Adam [Yarmolinsky] was more sensitive to the subject [race relations] in those days than I was. I was concerned. I recognized what Harry Truman had done, his leadership in the field, and I wanted to continue his work. But I didn't know enough."[21-1]

[Footnote 21-1: Interv, author with McNamara, telecon of 11 May 72, CMH files.]

_The Secretary Makes a Decision_

Some of McNamara's closest advisers and some civil rights advocates in the Kennedy administration, increasingly critical of current practices, were anxious to instruct the secretary in the need for a new racial outlook. But their efforts were counterbalanced by the influence of defenders of the _status quo_, primarily the manpower bureaucrats in the secretary's office and their colleagues in the services. These men opposed substantive change not because they objected to the reformers' goals but because they doubted the wisdom and propriety of interfering in what they regarded as essentially a domestic political issue.

Superficially, the department's racial policy appears to have been shaped by a conflict between traditionalists and progressives, but it would be a mistake to apply these labels mechanically to the men involved. There were among them several shades of opinion, and (p. 531) they were affected as well by complex political and social pressures.

Many of those involved in the debate shared a similar goal. A continuum existed, one defense official later suggested, that ranged from a few people who wanted for a number of reasons to do nothing--who even wanted to tolerate the continued segregation of National Guard units called to active duty in 1961--to men of considerable impatience who thought the off-limits sanction was a neglected and obvious weapon which ought to be invoked at once.[21-2]

Nevertheless, these various views tended to coalesce into a series of mutually exclusive arguments that can be a.n.a.lyzed.[21-3]

[Footnote 21-2: Ltr, Alfred B. Fitt to author, 22 May 72, CMH files.]

[Footnote 21-3: The following summary of opinions is based upon (1) Intervs: author with McNamara, 11 May 72, Gerhard A. Gesell, 13 May 72, Robert E.

Jordan III, 7 Jun 72, James C. Evans, 4 and 22 Mar 72; O'Brien with Gilpatric, 5 May 70; USAF with Zuckert, Apr 73; (2) Ltrs: Fitt and Yarmolinsky to author, 22 May 72 and 30 May 72, respectively; Rudolph Winnacker, OSD Historian, to James C.

Evans, 17 Jul 70; Evans to DASD (CR), 20 Jul 70; ASD (M) to Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr., 15 Mar 61; idem to John Roemer, Vice Chmn, Baltimore CORE, 3 Aug 62; (3) Memos: USAF Dep for Manpower, Pers, and Organization for SecAF, 9 Nov 62, sub: Meeting of President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces; ASD (M) for a.s.st Legal Counsel to President, 7 Nov 61, sub: Racial Discrimination in the Armed Services; Evans to Yarmolinsky, 31 Mar 61. Copies of all in CMH. See also Adam Yarmolinsky, _The Military Establishment: Its Impacts in American Society_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 351.]

One group, from whom Adam Yarmolinsky, McNamara's special a.s.sistant, might be singled out as the most prominent member, developed arguments for a new racial policy that would encourage the services to modify local laws and customs in ways more favorable to black servicemen.

Unlike earlier reformers in the department who acted primarily out of an interest in military efficiency, these men were basically civil libertarians, or "social movers," as Secretary of the Air Force Zuckert called them. They were allied with like-minded new frontiersmen, including the President's special counsel on minority affairs and Attorney General Kennedy, who were convinced that Congress would enact no new civil rights legislation in 1962. The services, this group argued, had through their recent integration found themselves in the vanguard of the national campaign for equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes, and to some it seemed only logical that they be used to retain that lead for the administration.

These men had ample proof, they believed, for the proposition that the services' policies had already influenced reforms elsewhere. They saw a strong connection, for example, between the new Interstate Commerce Commission's order outlawing segregation in interstate travel and the services' efforts to secure equal treatment for troops in transit. In effect, in the name of an administration handicapped by an unwilling legislature, they were asking the services to fly the flag of civil rights.

If their motives differed from those of their predecessors, their rhetoric did not. Yarmolinsky and his colleagues argued that racial discrimination, particularly discrimination in housing and public accommodations, created a serious morale problem among black GIs, a contention strongly supported by the recent Civil Rights Commission findings. While the services had always denied responsibility for combating discrimination outside the military reservation, these (p. 532) officials were confident that the connection between this discrimination and military efficiency could be demonstrated. They were also convinced that segregated housing and the related segregation of places of public accommodation were particularly susceptible to economic pressure from military authorities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ADAM YARMOLINSKY.]

This last argument was certainly not new. For some time civil rights spokesmen had been urging the services to use economic pressure to ease discrimination. Specifically, Congressman Powell, and later a number of civil rights groups, had called on the armed forces to impose off-limits sanctions for all servicemen against businesses that discriminated against black servicemen. Clear historical precedent seemed to exist for the action demanded by the controversial Harlem legislator because from earliest time the services had been declaring establishments and whole geographical areas off limits to their officers and men in order to protect their health and welfare. In view of the services' contention that equal treatment and opportunity were important to the welfare of servicemen, was it not reasonable, the spokesmen could ask, for the armed forces to use this powerful economic weapon against those who discriminated?

Those defense officials calling for further changes also argued that even the limited reforms already introduced by the administration faced slow going in the Department of Defense. This point was of particular concern to Robert Kennedy and his a.s.sistants in the Justice Department who agreed that senior defense officials lacked neither the zeal nor the determination to advance the civil rights of black servicemen but that the uniformed services were not, as Deputy Secretary Gilpatric expressed it, "putting their hearts and souls into really carrying out all of these directives and policies." Reflecting on it later, Gilpatric decided that the problem in the armed forces was one of pace. The services, he believed, were willing enough to carry out the policies, but in their own way and at their own speed, to avoid the appearance of acting as the agent of another federal department.

All these arguments failed to convince a.s.sistant Secretary for Manpower Runge, some officials in the general counsel's office, and princ.i.p.al black adviser on racial affairs James Evans, among others.

This group and their allies in the services could point to a political fact of life: to interfere with local segregation laws and customs, specifically to impose off-limits sanctions against southern businessmen, would pit the administration against powerful congressmen, calling (p. 533) down on it the wrath of the armed services and appropriation committees.

To the charge that this threat of congressional retaliation was simply an excuse for inaction, the services could explain that unlike the recent integration of military units, which was largely an executive function with which Congress, or at least some individual congressmen, reluctantly went along, sanctions against local communities would be considered a direct threat by scores of legislators. "Even one obscure congressman thus threatened could light a fire over military sanctions," Evans later remarked, "and there were plenty of folks around who were eager to fan the flames."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES EVANS.]

Even more important, the department's equal opportunity bureaucracy argued, was the need to protect the physical well-being of the individual black soldier. In a decade when civil rights beatings and murders were a common occurrence, these men knew that Evans was right when he said "by the time Washington could enter the case the young man could be injured or dead." Operating under the principle that the safety and welfare of the individual transcended the civil rights of the group, these officials wanted to forbid the men, both the black and the increasing number of white activists, to disobey local segregation laws and customs.

The opponents of intervention pointed out that the services would be ill-advised to push for changes outside the military reservation until the reforms begun under Truman were completely realized inside the reservation. Ignoring the argument that discrimination in the local community had a profound effect on morale, they wanted the services to concentrate instead on the necessary but minor reforms within their jurisdiction. To give the local commander the added responsibility for correcting discrimination in the community, they contended, might very well dilute his efforts to correct conditions within the services. And to use servicemen to spearhead civil rights reform was a misuse of executive power. With support from the department's lawyers, they questioned the legality of using off-limits sanctions in civil rights cases. They constantly repeated the same refrain: social reform was not a military function. As one manpower spokesman put it to the renowned black civil rights lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, "let the Army tend its own backyard, and let other government agencies work on civil rights."[21-4]

[Footnote 21-4: Interv, author with Evans, 4 Mar 72.]

Runge and the rest were professional manpower managers who had a (p. 534) healthy respect for the chance of command error and its effect on race relations nationally. In this they found an ally in Secretary of the Air Force Eugene M. Zuckert, one of the architects of Air Force integration in 1949. American commanders lacked training in the delicate art of community relations, Zuckert later explained, and should even a few of them blunder they could bring on a race crisis of major proportions. He sympathized with the activists' goals and was convinced that the President as Commander in Chief could and should use the armed forces for social ends; but these social objectives had to be balanced against the need to preserve the military forces for their primary mission. Again on the practical level, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric was concerned with the problems of devising general instructions that could be applied in all the diverse situations that might arise at the hundreds of bases and local communities involved.[21-5]

[Footnote 21-5: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert, Apr 73; Interv, O'Brien with Gilpatric, 5 May 70.]

Many of the manpower officials carefully differentiated between equal treatment, which had always been at the heart of the Defense Department's reforms, and civil rights, which they were convinced were a const.i.tutional matter and belonged in the hands of the courts and the Justice Department. The principle of equal treatment and opportunity was beyond criticism. Its application, a lengthy and arduous task that had occupied and still concerned the services'

racial advisers, had brought the Department of Defense to unparalleled heights of racial harmony. Convinced that the current civil rights campaign was not the business of the Defense Department, they questioned the motives of those who were willing to make black GI's the stalking horse for their latest and perhaps transient enthusiasm, in the process inviting congressional criticism of the department's vital racial programs. In short, a.s.sistant Secretary Runge and his colleagues argued that the administration's civil rights campaign should be led by the Justice Department and by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, not the Defense Department, which had other missions to perform.

Such were the rationalizations that had kept the Department of Defense out of the field of community race relations for over a decade, and the opponents of change in a strong position. Their opposition was reasonable, their allies in the services were legion, they were backed by years of tradition, and, most important, they held the jobs where the day-to-day decisions on racial matters were made. To change the _status quo_, to move the department beyond the notion that the guarantee of equal rights stopped at the boundaries of military installations, might seem "desirable and indeed necessary" to Yarmolinsky and his confreres,[21-6] but it would take something more than their eloquent words to bring about change.

[Footnote 21-6: Ltr, Yarmolinsky to author, 30 May 72, CMH files.]