Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

M >> Morris J. MacGregor Jr. >> Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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[Footnote 3-15: The FEPC was established 25 June 1941
to carry out Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802
against discrimination in employment in defense
industries and in the federal government.]

[Footnote 3-16: "BuPers Hist," pp. 4-5; Ltr, Mark
Ethridge to Lee Nichols. 14 Jul 53, in Nichols
Collection, CMH.]

But the committee had no jurisdiction over the armed services, and
Secretary Knox continued to assert that with a war to win he could not
risk "crews that are impaired in efficiency because of racial
prejudice." He admitted to his friend, conservationist Gifford
Pinchot, that the problem would have to be faced someday, but not
during a war. Seemingly in response to Walker and Ethridge, he
declared that segregated general service was impossible since enough
men with the skills necessary to operate a war vessel were unavailable
even "if you had the entire Negro population of the United States to
choose from." As for limiting Negroes to steward duties, he explained
that this policy avoided the chance that Negroes might rise to command
whites, "a thing which instantly provokes serious trouble."[3-17] Faced
in wartime with these arguments for efficiency, Assistant Secretary
Bard could only promise Ethridge that black enlistment would be taken
under consideration.

[Footnote 3-17: Ltr, SecNav to Gifford Pinchot, 19
Jan 42, 54-1-15, GenRecsNav.]

At this point the President again stepped in. On 15 January 1942 he
asked his beleaguered secretary to consider the whole problem once
more and suggested a course of action: "I think that with all the Navy
activities, BuNav might invent something that colored enlistees could
do in addition to the rating of messman."[3-18] The secretary passed the
task on to the General Board, asking that it develop a plan for
recruiting 5,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-19]

[Footnote 3-18: Quoted in "BuPers Hist," p. 5.]

[Footnote 3-19: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 16 Jan
42, sub: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race in Other
Than Messman Branch, Recs of Gen Bd,
OpNavArchives.]

When the General Board met on 23 January to consider the secretary's
request, it became apparent that the minority report on the role of
Negroes in the Navy had gained at least one convert among the senior
officers. One board member, the Inspector General of the Navy, Rear
Adm. Charles P. Snyder, repeated the arguments lately advanced by
Addison Walker. He suggested that the board consider employing Negroes
in some areas outside the servant class: in the Musician's Branch, for
example, because "the colored race is very musical and they are versed
in all forms of rhythm," in the Aviation Branch where the Army had
reported some success in employing Negroes, and on auxiliaries and
minor vessels, especially transports. Snyder noted that these schemes
would involve the creation of training schools, rigidly segregated at
first, and that the whole program would be "troublesome and require
tact, patience, and tolerance" on the part of those in charge. But, he
added, "we have so many difficulties to surmount anyhow that one more
possibly wouldn't swell the total very much." Foreseeing that
segregation would become the focal point of black protest, he argued
that the Navy had to begin accepting Negroes somewhere, and it might
as well begin with a segregated general service.

Adamant in its opposition to any change in the Navy's policy, the (p. 064)
Bureau of Navigation ignored Admiral Snyder's suggestions. The spokesman
for the bureau warned that the 5,000 Negroes under consideration were
just an opening wedge. "The sponsors of the program," Capt. Kenneth
Whiting contended, "desire full equality on the part of the Negro and
will not rest content until they obtain it." In the end, he predicted,
Negroes would be on every man-of-war in direct proportion to their
percentage of the population. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Maj.
Gen. Thomas Holcomb, echoed the bureau's sentiments. He viewed the
issue of black enlistments as crucial.

If we are defeated we must not close our eyes to the fact that
once in they [Negroes] will be strengthened in their effort to
force themselves into every activity we have. If they are not
satisfied to be messmen, they will not be satisfied to go into
the construction or labor battalions. Don't forget the colleges
are turning out a large number of well-educated Negroes. I don't
know how long we will be able to keep them out of the V-7 class.
I think not very long.

The commandant called the enlistment of Negroes "absolutely tragic";
Negroes had every opportunity, he added, "to satisfy their aspiration
to serve in the Army," and their desire to enter the naval service was
largely an effort "to break into a club that doesn't want them."

The board heard similar sentiments from representatives of the Bureau
of Aeronautics, the Bureau of Yards and Docks, and, with reservations,
from the Coast Guard. Confronted with such united opposition from the
powerful bureaus, the General Board capitulated. On 3 February it
reported to the secretary that it was unable to submit a plan and
strongly recommended that the current policy be allowed to stand. The
board stated that "if, in the opinion of higher authority, political
pressure is such as to require the enlistment of these people for
general service, let it be for that." If restriction of Negroes to the
Messman's Branch was discrimination, the board added, "it was but part
and parcel of a similar discrimination throughout the United
States."[3-20]

[Footnote 3-20: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race
(201), 23 Jan 42, Hearings Before the General Board
of the Navy, 1942; Memo, Chmn, Gen Bd, for SecNav,
3 Feb 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race in
Other Than Messman Branch. Both in Recs of Gen Bd,
OpNavArchives.]

Secretary Knox was certainly not one to dispute the board's findings,
but it was a different story in the White House. President Roosevelt
refused to accept the argument that the only choice lay between
exclusion in the Messman's Branch and total integration in the general
service. His desire to avoid the race issue was understandable; the
war was in its darkest days, and whatever his aspirations for American
society, the President was convinced that, while some change was
necessary, "to go the whole way at one fell swoop would seriously
impair the general average efficiency of the Navy."[3-21] He wanted the
board to study the question further, noting that there were some
additional tasks and some special assignments that could be worked (p. 065)
out for the Negro that "would not inject into the whole personnel of
the Navy the race question."[3-22]

[Footnote 3-21: Quoted in "BuPers Hist," p. 6.]

[Footnote 3-22: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 14 Feb
42, Recs of Gen Bd, OpNavArchives. The quotation is
from the Knox Memo and is not necessarily in the
exact words of the President.]

[Illustration: MESSMEN VOLUNTEER AS GUNNERS, _Pacific task force, July
1942_.]

The Navy got the message. Armed with these instructions from the White
House, the General Board called on the bureaus and other agencies to
furnish lists of stations or assignments where Negroes could be used
in other than the Messman's Branch, adding that it was "unnecessary
and inadvisable" to emphasize further the undesirability of recruiting
Negroes. Freely interpreting the President's directive, the board
decided that its proposals had to provide for segregation in order to
prevent the injection of the race issue into the Navy. It rejected the
idea of enlisting Negroes in such selected ratings as musician and
carpenter's mate or designating a branch for Negroes (the possibility
of an all-black aviation department for a carrier was discussed).
Basing its decision on the plans quickly submitted by the bureaus, the
General Board recommended a course that it felt offered "least
disadvantages and the least difficulty of accomplishment as a war
measure": the formation of black units in the shore establishment, black
crews for naval district local defense craft and selected Coast (p. 066)
Guard cutters, black regiments in the Seabees, and composite
battalions in the Marine Corps. The board asked that the Navy
Department be granted wide latitude in deciding the number of Negroes
to be accepted as well as their rate of enlistment and the method of
recruiting, training, and assignment.[3-23] The President agreed to
the plan, but balked at the board's last request. "I think this is a
matter," he told Secretary Knox, "to be determined by you and
me."[3-24]

[Footnote 3-23: Memos, Chmn, Gen Bd, for Chief,
BuNav, Cmdt, CG, and Cmdt, MC, 18 Feb 42, sub:
Enlistment of Men of Colored Race in Other Than
Messman Branch. For examples of responses, see Ltr,
Cmdt, to Chmn, Gen Bd, 24 Feb 42, same sub; Memo,
Chief, BuNav, for Chmn, Gen Bd, 7 Mar 42, same sub;
Memo, CNO for Chief, BuNav, 25 Feb 42, same sub,
with 1st Ind by CINCUSFLT, 28 Feb 42, same sub. The
final enlistment plan is found in Memo, Chmn, Gen
Bd, for SecNav, 20 Mar 42, same sub (G. B. No 421).
All in Recs of Gen Bd, OpNavArchives. It was
transmitted to the President in Ltr, SecNav to
President, 27 Mar 42, P14-4/MM, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-24: Memo, President for Secy of Navy, 31
Mar 42, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park,
New York.]

The two-year debate over the admission of Negroes ended just in time,
for the opposition to the Navy's policy was enlisting new allies
daily. The national press made the expected invidious comparisons when
Joe Louis turned over his share of the purse from the Louis-Baer fight
to Navy Relief, and Wendell Willkie in a well-publicized speech at New
York's Freedom House excoriated the Navy's racial practices as a
"mockery" of democracy.[3-25] But these were the last shots fired. On 7
April 1942 Secretary Knox announced the Navy's capitulation. The Navy
would accept 277 black volunteers per week--it was not yet drafting
anyone--for enlistment in all ratings of the general service of the
reserve components of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. Their
actual entry would have to await the construction of suitable, meaning
segregated, facilities, but the Navy's goal for the first year was
14,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-26]

[Footnote 3-25: New York _Times_, January 10 and
March 20, 1942.]

[Footnote 3-26: Office of SecNav, Press Release, 7
Apr 42.]

Members of the black community received the news with mixed emotions.
Some reluctantly accepted the plan as a first step; the NAACP's
_Crisis_ called it "progress toward a more enlightened point of view."
Others, like the National Negro Congress, complimented Knox for his
"bold, patriotic action."[3-27] But almost all were quick to point out
that the black sailor would be segregated, limited to the rank of
petty officer, and, except as a steward, barred from sea duty.[3-28] The
Navy's plan offered all the disadvantages of the Army's system with
none of the corresponding advantages for participation and advancement.
The NAACP hammered away at the segregation angle, informing its public
that the old system, which had fathered inequalities and humiliations
in the Army and in civilian life, was now being followed by the Navy.
A. Philip Randolph complained that the change in Navy policy merely
"accepts and extends and consolidates the policy of Jim-Crowism in the
Navy as well as proclaims it as an accepted, recognized government (p. 067)
ideology that the Negro is inferior to the white man."[3-29] The
editors of the National Urban League's _Opportunity_ concluded that,
"faced with the great opportunity to strengthen the forces of
Democracy, the Navy Department chose to affirm the charge that Japan
is making against America to the brown people ... that the so-called
Four Freedoms enunciated in the great 'Atlantic Charter' were for
white men only."[3-30]

[Footnote 3-27: "The Navy Makes a Gesture," _Crisis_
49 (May 1942):51. The National Negro Congress
quotation reprinted in Dennis D. Nelson's summary
of reactions to the Secretary of the Navy's
announcement. See Nelson, "The Integration of the
Negro in the United States Navy, 1776-1947"
(NAVEXOS-P-526), p. 38. (This earlier and different
version of Nelson's published work, derived from
his master's thesis, was sponsored by the U.S.
Navy.)]

[Footnote 3-28: Although essentially correct, the
critics were technically inaccurate since some
Negroes would be assigned to Coast Guard cutters
which qualified as sea duty.]

[Footnote 3-29: Quoted in Nelson, "The Integration of
the Negro," p. 37.]

[Footnote 3-30: _Opportunity_ (May 1942), p. 82.]

_A Segregated Navy_

With considerable alacrity the Navy set a practical course for the
employment of its black volunteers. On 21 April 1942 Secretary Knox
approved a plan for training Negroes at Camp Barry, an isolated
section of the Great Lakes Training Center. Later renamed Camp Robert
Smalls after a black naval hero of the Civil War, the camp not only
offered the possibility of practically unlimited expansion but, as the
Bureau of Navigation put it, made segregation "less obvious" to
recruits. The secretary also approved the use of facilities at Hampton
Institute, the well-known black school in Virginia, as an advanced
training school for black recruits.[3-31]

[Footnote 3-31: Memo, Chief, BuNav, for SecNav, 17
Apr 42, sub: Training Facilities for Negro
Recruits, Nav-102; Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm
Randall Jacobs, 21 Apr 42, 54-1-22. Both in
GenRecsNav.]

Black enlistments began on 1 June 1942, and black volunteers started
entering Great Lakes later that month in classes of 277 men. At the
same time the Navy opened enlistments for an unlimited number of black
Seabees and messmen. Lt. Comdr. Daniel Armstrong commanded the recruit
program at Camp Smalls. An Annapolis graduate, son of the founder of
Hampton Institute, Armstrong first came to the attention of Knox in
March 1942 when he submitted a plan for the employment of black
sailors that the secretary considered practical.[3-32] Under Armstrong's
energetic leadership, black recruits received training that was in
some respects superior to that afforded whites. For all his success,
however, Armstrong was strongly criticized, especially by educated
Negroes who resented his theories of education. Imbued with the
paternalistic attitude of Tuskegee and Hampton, Armstrong saw the
Negro as possessing a separate culture more attuned to vocational
training. He believed that Negroes needed special treatment and
discipline in a totally segregated environment free from white
competition. Educated Negroes, on the other hand, saw in this special
treatment another form of discrimination.[3-33]

[Footnote 3-32: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 7 Mar
42, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-33: For a discussion of Armstrong's
philosophy from the viewpoint of an educated black
recruit, see Nelson, "Integration of the Negro,"
pp. 28-34. Sec also Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb
70, CMH files.]

During the first six months of the new segregated training program,
before the great influx of Negroes from the draft, the Navy set the
training period at twelve weeks. Later, when it had reluctantly
abandoned the longer period, the Navy discovered that the regular
eight-week course was sufficient. Approximately 31 percent of those
graduating from the recruit course were qualified for Class A (p. 068)
schools and entered advanced classes to receive training that would
normally lead to petty officer rating for the top graduates and
prepare men for assignment to naval stations and local defense and
district craft. There they would serve in such class "A" specialties
as radioman, signalman, and yeoman and the other occupational
specialties such as machinist, mechanic, carpenter, electrician, cook,
and baker.[3-34] Some of these classes were held at Hampton, but, as the
number of black recruits increased, the majority remained at Camp
Smalls for advanced training.

[Footnote 3-34: With the exception of machinist
school, where blacks were in training twice as long
as whites, specialist training for Negroes and
whites was similar in length. See "BuPers Hist,"
pp. 28-30, 60-61.]

[Illustration: ELECTRICIAN MATES _string power lines in the Central
Pacific_.]

The rest of the recruit graduates, those unqualified for advanced
schooling, were divided. Some went directly to naval stations and
local defense and district craft where they relieved whites as seaman,
second class, and fireman, third class, and as trainees in specialties
that required no advanced schooling; the rest, approximately eighty
men per week, went to naval ammunition depots as unskilled
laborers.[3-35]

[Footnote 3-35: BuPers, "Reports, Schedules, and
Charts Relating to Enlistment, Training, and
Assignment of Negro Personnel," 5 Jun 42, Pers-617,
BuPersRecs.]

The Navy proceeded to assimilate the black volunteers along these
lines, suffering few of the personnel problems that plagued the Army
in the first months of the war. In contrast to the Army's chaotic
situation, caused by the thousands of black recruits streaming in from
Selective Service, the Navy's plans for its volunteers were disrupted
only because qualified Negroes showed little inclination to flock to
the Navy standard, and more than half of those who did were rejected.
The Bureau of Naval Personnel[3-36] reported that during the first three
weeks of recruitment only 1,261 Negroes volunteered for general
service, and 58 percent of these had to be rejected for physical and
other reasons. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Adm. Randall Jacobs,
was surprised at the small number of volunteers, a figure far below
the planners' expectations, and his surprise turned to concern in the
next months as the seventeen-year-old volunteer inductees, the primary
target of the armed forces recruiters, continued to choose the Army
over the Navy at a ratio of 10 to 1.[3-37] The Navy's personnel
officials agreed that they had to attract their proper share of
intelligent and able Negroes but seemed unable to isolate the (p. 069)
cause of the disinterest. Admiral Jacobs blamed it on a lack of
publicity; the bureau's historians, perhaps unaware of the Navy's
nineteenth century experience with black seamen, later attributed it
to Negroes' "relative unfamiliarity with the sea or the large inland
waters and their consequent fear of the water."[3-38]

[Footnote 3-36: In May 1942 the name of the Bureau of
Navigation was changed to the Bureau of Naval
Personnel to reflect more accurately the duties of
the organization.]

[Footnote 3-37: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for CO, Great
Lakes NTC, 23 Apr 43. P14-1, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 3-38: "BuPers Hist," p. 54.]

The fact was, of course, that Negroes shunned the Navy because of its
recent reputation as the exclusive preserve of white America. Only
when the Navy began assigning black recruiting specialists to the
numerous naval districts and using black chief petty officers,
reservists from World War I general service, at recruiting centers to
explain the new opportunities for Negroes in the Navy was the bureau
able to overcome some of the young men's natural reluctance to
volunteer. By 1 February 1943 the Navy had 26,909 Negroes (still 2
percent of the total enlisted): 6,662 in the general service; 2,020 in
the Seabees; and 19,227, over two-thirds of the total, in the
Steward's Branch.[3-39]

[Footnote 3-39: Ibid., p. 9.]

The smooth and efficient distribution of black recruits was
short-lived. Under pressure from the Army, the War Manpower
Commission, and in particular the White House, the Navy was forced
into a sudden and significant expansion of its black recruit program.
The Army had long objected to the Navy's recruitment method, and as
early as February 1942 Secretary Stimson was calling the volunteer
recruitment system a waste of manpower.[3-40] He was even more direct
when he complained to President Roosevelt that through voluntary
recruiting the Navy had avoided acceptance of any considerable number
of Negroes. Consequently, the Army was now faced with the possibility
of having to accept an even greater proportion of Negroes "with
adverse effect on its combat efficiency." The solution to this
problem, as Stimson saw it, was for the Navy to take its recruits from
Selective Service.[3-41] Stimson failed to win his point. The President
accepted the Navy's argument that segregation would be difficult to
maintain on board ship. "If the Navy living conditions on board ship
were similar to the Army living conditions on land," he wrote Stimson,
"the problem would be easier but the circumstances ... being such as
they are, I feel that it is best to continue the present system at
this time."[3-42]

[Footnote 3-40: Memo, SW for SecNav, 16 Feb 42, sub:
Continuing of Voluntary Recruiting by the Navy,
QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-41: Idem for President, 16 Mar 42, copy
in QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-42: Memo, President for SW, 20 Mar 42,
copy in QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

But the battle over racial quotas was only beginning. The question of
the number of Negroes in the Navy was only part of the much broader
considerations and conflicts over manpower policy that finally led the
President, on 5 December 1942, to direct the discontinuance in all
services of volunteer enlistment of men between the ages of eighteen
and thirty-eight.[3-43] Beginning in February 1943 all men in this age
group would be obtained through Selective Service. The order also
placed Selective Service under the War Manpower Commission.

[Footnote 3-43: Executive Order 9279, 5 Dec 42.]

The Navy issued its first call for inductees from Selective (p. 070)
Service in February 1943, adopting the Army's policy of placing its
requisition on a racial basis and specifying the number of whites and
blacks needed for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The Bureau
of Naval Personnel planned to continue its old monthly quota of about
1,200 Negroes for general service and 1,500 for the Messman's Branch.
Secretary Knox explained to the President that it would be impossible
for the Navy to take more Negroes without resorting to mixed crews in
the fleet, which, Knox reminded Roosevelt, was a policy "contrary to
the President's program." The President agreed with Knox and told him
so to advise Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective
Service.[3-44]

[Footnote 3-44: Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm Randall
Jacobs, 5 Feb 43, 54-1-22, GenRecsNav.]

The problem of drafting men by race was a major concern of the Bureau
of Selective Service and its parent organization, the War Manpower
Commission. At a time when a general shortage of manpower was
developing and industry was beginning to feel the effects of the
draft, Negroes still made up only 6 percent of the armed forces, a
little over half their percentage of the population, and almost all of
these were in the Army. The chairman of the War Manpower Commission,
Paul V. McNutt, explained to Secretary Knox as he had to Secretary
Stimson that the practice of placing separate calls for white and
black registrants could not be justified. Not only were there serious
social and legal implications in the existing draft practices, he
pointed out, but the Selective Service Act itself prohibited racial
discrimination. It was necessary, therefore, to draft men by order
number and not by color.[3-45]