Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 3-45: Ltr, Paul McNutt to SecNav, 17 Feb
43, WMC Gen files, NARS.]

On top of this blow, the Navy came under fire from another quarter.
The President was evidently still thinking about Negroes in the Navy.
He wrote to the secretary on 22 February:

I guess you were dreaming or maybe I was dreaming if Randall
Jacobs is right in regard to what I am supposed to have said
about employment of negroes in the Navy. If I did say that such
employment should be stopped, I must have been talking in my
sleep. Most decidedly we must continue the employment of negroes
in the Navy, and I do not think it the least bit necessary to put
mixed crews on the ships. I can find a thousand ways of employing
them without doing so.

The point or the thing is this. There is going to be a great deal
of feeling if the Government in winning this war does not employ
approximately 10% of negroes--their actual percentage to the
total population. The Army is nearly up to this percentage but
the Navy is so far below it that it will be deeply criticized by
anybody who wants to check into the details.

Perhaps a check by you showing exactly where all white enlisted
men are serving and where all colored enlisted men are serving
will show you the great number of places where colored men could
serve, where they are not serving now--shore duty of all kinds,
together with the handling of many kinds of yard craft.

You know the headache we have had about this and the reluctance
of the Navy to have any negroes. You and I have had to veto that
Navy reluctance and I think we have to do it again.[3-46]

[Footnote 3-46: Memo, President for SecNav, 22 Feb
43, FDR Library.]

In an effort to save the quota concept, the Bureau of Naval (p. 071)
Personnel ground out new figures that would raise the current call of
2,700 Negroes per month to 5,000 in April and 7,350 for each of the
remaining months of 1943. Armed with these figures, Secretary Knox was
able to promise Commissioner McNutt that 10 percent of the men
inducted for the rest of 1943 would be Negroes, although separate
calls had to be continued for the time being to permit adjusting the
flow of Negroes to the expansion of facilities.[3-47] In other words,
the secretary promised to accept 71,900 black draftees in 1943; he did
not promise to increase the black strength of the Navy to 10 percent
of the total.

[Footnote 3-47: Ltr, Knox to McNutt, 26 Feb 43, WMC
Gen files.]

Commissioner McNutt understood the distinction and found the Navy's
offer wanting for two reasons. The proposed schedule was inadequate to
absorb the backlog of black registrants who should have been inducted
into the armed services, and it did not raise the percentage of
Negroes in the Navy to a figure comparable to their strength in the
national population. McNutt wanted the Navy to draft at least 125,000
Negroes before January 1944, and he insisted that the practice of
placing separate calls be terminated "as soon as feasible."[3-48] The
Navy finally struck a compromise with the commission, agreeing that up
to 14,150 Negroes a month would be inducted for the rest of 1943 to
reach the 125,000 figure by January 1944.[3-49] The issue of separate
draft calls for Negroes and whites remained in abeyance while the
services made common cause against the commission by insisting that
the orderly absorption of Negroes demanded a regular program that
could only be met by maintaining the quota system.

[Footnote 3-48: Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Mar 43, WMC
Gen files.]

[Footnote 3-49: Ltr, SecNav to Paul McNutt, 13 Apr
43; Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Apr 43; both in WMC Gen
files.]

Total black enlistments never reached 10 percent of the Navy's wartime
enlisted strength but remained nearer the 5 percent mark. But this
figure masks the Navy's racial picture in the later years of the war
after it became dependent on Selective Service. The Navy drafted
150,955 Negroes during the war, 11.1 percent of all the men it
drafted. In 1943 alone the Navy placed calls with Selective Service
for 116,000 black draftees. Although Selective Service was unable to
fill the monthly request completely, the Navy received 77,854 black
draftees (versus 672,437 whites) that year, a 240 percent rise over
the 1942 black enlistment rate.[3-50]

[Footnote 3-50: Selective Service System, _Special
Groups_, vol. II, pp. 198-201. See also Memos,
Director of Planning and Control, BuPers, for
Chief, BuPers, 25 Feb 43, sub: Increase in Colored
Personnel for the Navy; and 1 Apr 43, sub; Increase
in Negro Personnel in Navy. Both in P-14,
BuPersRecs.]

Although it wrestled for several months with the problem of
distributing the increased number of black draftees, the Bureau of
Naval Personnel could invent nothing new. The Navy, Knox told
President Roosevelt, would continue to segregate Negroes and restrict
their service to certain occupations. Its increased black strength
would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black Seabee battalions, in
which Negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for
harbor craft and local defense forces; and in billets for cooks and
port hands. The rest would be sent to shore stations for guard (p. 072)
and miscellaneous duties in concentrations up to about 50 percent of
the total station strength. The President approved the Navy's
proposals, and the distribution of Negroes followed these lines.[3-51]

[Footnote 3-51: Memos, SecNav for President, 25 Feb
and 14 Apr 43, quoted in "BuPers Hist," pp. 13-14;
Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, 24 Feb 43,
sub: Employment of Colored Personnel in the Navy,
Pers 10, GenRecsNav. For Roosevelt's approval see
"BuPers Hist," p. 14.]

To smooth the racial adjustments implicit in these plans, the Bureau
of Naval Personnel developed two operating rules: Negroes would be
assigned only where need existed, and, whenever possible, those from
northern communities would not be used in the south. These rules
caused some peculiar adjustments in administration. Negroes were not
assigned to naval districts for distribution according to the
discretion of the commander, as were white recruits. Rather, after
conferring with local commanders, the bureau decided on the number of
Negroes to be included in station complements and the types of jobs
they would fill. It then assigned the men to duty accordingly, and the
districts were instructed not to change the orders without consulting
the bureau. Subsequently the bureau reinforced this rule by enjoining
the commanders to use Negroes in the ratings for which they had been
trained and by sending bureau representatives to the various commands
to check on compliance.

Some planners feared that the concentration of Negroes at shore
stations might prove detrimental to efficiency and morale. Proposals
were circulated in the Bureau of Naval Personnel for the inclusion of
Negroes in small numbers in the crews of large combat ships--for
example, they might be used as firemen and ordinary seamen on the new
aircraft carriers--but Admiral Jacobs rejected the recommendations.[3-52]
The Navy was not yet ready to try integration, it seemed, even though
racial disturbances were becoming a distinct possibility in 1943. For
as Negroes became a larger part of the Navy, they also became a
greater source of tension. The reasons for the tension were readily
apparent. Negroes were restricted for the most part to shore duty,
concentrated in large groups and assigned to jobs with little prestige
and few chances of promotion. They were excluded from the WAVES (Women
Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Nurse Corps, and the
commissioned ranks. And they were rigidly segregated.

[Footnote 3-52: "BuPersHist," p. 41.]

Although the Navy boasted that Negroes served in every rating and at
every task, in fact almost all were used in a limited range of
occupations. Denied general service assignments on warships, trained
Negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the
harbor defense, district, and small craft service. Although assigning
Negroes to these duties met the President's request for variety of
opportunity, the small craft could employ only 7,700 men at most, a
minuscule part of the Navy's black strength.

Most Negroes performed humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black
sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs
remained in the Negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship
in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more (p. 073)
stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early
months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for
that separate duty. Often recruiters took in many as stewards who were
equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men
were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local
naval stations the result was often dismaying. The Navy thus received
poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a
segregated servants' branch. In an effort to standardize the training
of messmen, the Bureau of Naval Personnel established a stewards
school in the spring of 1943 at Norfolk and later one at Bainbridge,
Maryland. The change in training did little to improve the standards
of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among
many stewards.

[Illustration: LABORERS AT NAVAL AMMUNITION DEPOT. _Sailors passing
5-inch canisters, St. Julien's Creek, Virginia._]

Another 12,000 Negroes served as artisans and laborers at overseas
bases. Over 7,000 of these were Seabees, who, with the exception of
two regular construction battalions that served with distinction in
the Pacific, were relegated to "special" battalions stevedoring cargo
and supplies. The rest were laborers in base companies assigned to the
South Pacific area. These units were commanded by white officers, and
almost all the petty officers were white.

Approximately half the Negroes in the Navy were detailed to shore
billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers
at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section (p. 074)
bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes
commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]

[Footnote 3-53: Naval districts organized section
bases during the war with responsibility, among
other things, for guarding beaches, harbors, and
installations and maintaining equipment.]

[Footnote 3-54: See CNO ALNAV, 7 Aug 44, quoted in
Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 46.]

[Illustration: SEABEES IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC _righting an undermined
water tank_.]

While some billets existed in practically every important rating for
graduates of the segregated specialty schools, these jobs were so few
that black specialists were often assigned instead to unskilled
laboring jobs.[3-55] Some of these men were among the best educated
Negroes in the Navy, natural leaders capable of articulating their
dissatisfaction. They resented being barred from the fighting, and
their resentment, spreading through the thousands of Negroes in the
shore establishment, was a prime cause of racial tension.

[Footnote 3-55: Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for Cmdts,
AlNav Districts et al., 26 Sep 44, sub: Enlisted
Personnel--Utilization of in Field for which
Specifically Trained, Pers 16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

No black women had been admitted to the Navy. Race was not mentioned
in the legislation establishing the WAVES in 1942, but neither was
exclusion on account of color expressly forbidden. The WAVES and the
Women's Reserve of both the Coast Guard (SPARS) and the Marine Corps
therefore celebrated their second birthday exclusively white. The Navy
Nurse Corps was also totally white. In answer to protests passed to
the service through Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy admitted in November
1943 that it had a shortage of 500 nurses, but since another (p. 075)
500 white nurses were under indoctrination and training, the Bureau of
Medicine and Surgery explained, "the question relative to the
necessity for accepting colored personnel in this category is not
apparent."[3-56]

[Footnote 3-56: Ltr, Eleanor Roosevelt to SecNav, 20
Nov 43; Ltr, SecNav to Mrs. Roosevelt, 27 Nov 43;
both in BUMED-S-EC, GenRecsNav. Well known for her
interest in the cause of racial justice, the
President's wife received many complaints during
the war concerning discrimination in the armed
forces. Mrs. Roosevelt often passed such protests
along to the service secretaries for action.
Although there is no doubt where Mrs. Roosevelt's
sympathies lay in these matters, her influence was
slight on the policies and practices of the Army or
Navy. Her influence on the President's thinking is,
of course, another matter. See White, _A Man Called
White_, pp. 168-69, 190.]

Another major cause of unrest among black seamen was the matter of
rank and promotion. With the exception of the Coast Guard, the naval
establishment had no black officers in 1943, and none were
contemplated. Nor was there much opportunity for advancement in the
ranks. Barred from service in the fleet, the nonrated seamen faced
strong competition for the limited number of petty officer positions
in the shore establishment. In consequence, morale throughout the
ranks deteriorated.

The constant black complaint, and the root of the Navy's racial
problem, was segregation. It was especially hard on young black
recruits who had never experienced legal segregation in civilian life
and on the "talented tenth," the educated Negroes, who were quickly
frustrated by a policy that decided opportunity and assignment on the
basis of color. They particularly resented segregation in housing,
messing, and recreation. Here segregation off the job, officially
sanctioned, made manifest by signs distinguishing facilities for white
and black, and enforced by military as well as civilian police, was a
daily reminder for the Negro of the Navy's discrimination.

Such discrimination created tension in the ranks that periodically
released itself in racial disorder. The first sign of serious unrest
occurred in June 1943 when over half the 640 Negroes of the Naval
Ammunition Depot at St. Julien's Creek, Virginia, rioted against
alleged discrimination in segregated seating for a radio show. In
July, 744 Negroes of the 80th Construction Battalion staged a protest
over segregation on a transport in the Caribbean. Yet, naval
investigators cited leadership problems as a major factor in these and
subsequent incidents, and at least one commanding officer was relieved
as a consequence.[3-57]

[Footnote 3-57: For a discussion of these racial
disturbances, see "BuPers Hist," pp. 75-80.]

_Progressive Experiments_

Since the inception of black enlistment there had been those in the
Bureau of Naval Personnel who argued for the establishment of a group
to coordinate plans and policies on the training and use of black
sailors. Various proposals were considered, but only in the wake of
the racial disturbances of 1943 did the bureau set up a Special
Programs Unit in its Planning and Control Activity to oversee the
whole black enlistment program. In the end the size of the unit
governed the scope of its program. Originally the unit was to monitor
all transactions involving Negroes in the bureau's operating divisions,
thus relieving the Enlisted Division of the critical task of (p. 076)
distributing billets for Negroes. It was also supposed to advise local
commanders on race problems and interpret departmental policies for
them. When finally established in August 1943, the unit consisted of
only three officers, a size which considerably limited its activities.
Still, the unit worked diligently to improve the lot of the black
sailor, and eventually from this office would emerge the plans that
brought about the integration of the Navy.

[Illustration: COMMANDER SARGENT.]

The Special Programs Unit's patron saint and the guiding spirit of the
Navy's liberalizing race program was Lt. Comdr. Christopher S.
Sargent. He never served in the unit himself, but helped find the two
lieutenant commanders, Donald O. VanNess and Charles E. Dillon, who
worked under Capt. Thomas F. Darden in the Plans and Operations
Section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel and acted as liaison between
the Special Programs Unit and its civilian superiors. A legendary
figure in the bureau, the 31-year-old Sargent arrived as a lieutenant,
junior grade, from Dean Acheson's law firm, but his rank and official
position were no measure of his influence in the Navy Department. By
birth and training he was used to moving in the highest circles of
American society and government, and he had wide-ranging interests and
duties in the Navy. Described by a superior as "a philosopher who
could not tolerate segregation,"[3-58] Sargent waged something of a
moral crusade to integrate the Navy. He was convinced that a social
change impossible in peacetime was practical in war. Not only would
integration build a more efficient Navy, it might also lead the way to
changes in American society that would bridge the gap between the
races.[3-59] In effect, Sargent sought to force the generally
conservative Bureau of Naval Personnel into making rapid and sweeping
changes in the Navy's racial policy.

[Footnote 3-58: Interv, Lee Nichols with Rear Adm. R.
H. Hillenkoetter, 1953, in Nichols Collection,
CMH.]

[Footnote 3-59: Nichols, _Breakthrough on the Color
Front_, pp. 54-59. Nichols supports his
affectionate portrait of Sargent, who died shortly
after the war, with interviews of many wartime
officials who worked in the Bureau of Naval
Personnel with Sargent. See Nichols Collection,
CMH. See also _Christopher Smith Sargent,
1911-1946_, a privately printed memorial prepared
by the Sargent family in 1947, copy in CMH.]

During its first months of existence the Special Programs Unit tried
to quiet racial unrest by a rigorous application of the separate but
equal principle. It began attacking the concentration of Negroes in
large segregated groups in the naval districts by creating more overseas
billets. Toward the end of 1943, Negroes were being assigned in (p. 077)
greater numbers to duty in the Pacific at shore establishments and
aboard small defense, district, and yard craft. The Bureau of Naval
Personnel also created new specialties for Negroes in the general
service. One important addition was the creation of black shore patrol
units for which a school was started at Great Lakes. The Special
Programs Unit established a remedial training center for illiterate
draftees at Camp Robert Smalls, drawing the faculty from black
servicemen who had been educators in civilian life. The twelve-week
course gave the students the equivalent of a fifth grade education in
addition to regular recruit training. Approximately 15,000 Negroes
took this training before the school was consolidated with a similar
organization for whites at Bainbridge, Maryland, in the last months of
the war.[3-60]

[Footnote 3-60: For further discussion, see Nelson,
"Integration of the Negro," pp. 124-46.]

At the other end of the spectrum, the Special Programs Unit worked for
the efficient use of black Class A school graduates by renewing the
attack on improper assignments. The bureau had long held that the
proper assignment of black specialists was of fundamental importance
to morale and efficiency, and in July 1943 it had ordered that all men
must be used in the ratings and for the types of work for which they
had been trained.[3-61] But the unit discovered considerable deviation
from this policy in some districts, especially in the south, where
there was a tendency to regard Negroes as an extra labor source above
the regular military complement. In December 1943 the Special Programs
Unit got the bureau to rule in the name of manpower efficiency that,
with the exception of special units in the supply departments at South
Boston and Norfolk, no black sailor could be assigned to such civilian
jobs as maintenance work and stevedoring in the continental United
States.[3-62]

[Footnote 3-61: BuPers Ltr, Pers 106-MBR, 12 Jul 43.]

[Footnote 3-62: "BuPers Hist," p. 53.]

These reforms were welcome, but they ignored the basic dilemma: the
only way to abolish concentrations of shore-based Negroes was to open
up positions for them in the fleet. Though many black sailors were
best suited for unskilled or semiskilled billets, a significant number
had technical skills that could be properly used only if these men
were assigned to the fleet. To relieve the racial tension and to end
the waste of skilled manpower engendered by the misuse of these men,
the Special Programs Unit pressed for a chance to test black
seamanship. Admiral King agreed, and in early 1944 the Bureau of Naval
Personnel assigned 196 black enlisted men and 44 white officers and
petty officers to the USS _Mason_, a newly commissioned destroyer
escort, with the understanding that all enlisted billets would be
filled by Negroes as soon as those qualified to fill them had been
trained. It also assigned 53 black rated seamen and 14 white officers
and noncommissioned officers to a patrol craft, the PC 1264.[3-63] Both
ships eventually replaced their white petty officers and some of their
officers with Negroes. Among the latter was Ens. Samuel Gravely, who
was to become the Navy's first black admiral.

[Footnote 3-63: Memo, Chief, BuPers, for CINCUSFLEET,
1 Dec 43, sub: Negro Personnel, P16/MM, BuPersRecs.
The latter experiment has been chronicled by its
commanding officer, Eric Purdon, in _Black Company:
The Story of Subchaser 1264_ (Washington: Luce,
1972).]

[Illustration: USS MASON. _Sailors look over their new ship._]

Although both ships continued to operate with black crews well (p. 078)
into 1945, the _Mason_ on escort duty in the Atlantic, only four
other segregated patrol craft were added to the fleet during the
war.[3-64] The _Mason_ passed its shakedown cruise test, but the Bureau
of Naval Personnel was not satisfied with the crew. The black petty
officers had proved competent in their ratings and interested in their
work, but bureau observers agreed that the rated men in general were
unable to maintain discipline. The nonrated men tended to lack respect
for the petty officers, who showed some disinclination to put their
men on report. The Special Programs Unit admitted the truth of these
charges but argued that the experiment only proved what the Navy
already knew: black sailors did not respond well when assigned to
all-black organizations under white officers.[3-65] On the other hand,
the experiment demonstrated that the Navy possessed a reservoir of
able seamen who were not being efficiently employed, and--an
unexpected dividend from the presence of white noncommissioned
officers--that integration worked on board ship. The white petty
officers messed, worked, and slept with their men in the close contact
inevitable aboard small ships, with no sign of racial friction.

[Footnote 3-64: Memo, CNO for Cmdt, First and Fifth
Naval Districts, 10 May 44, sub: Assignment of
Negro Personnel, P-16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 3-65: For an assessment of the performance
of the _Mason's_ crew. see "BuPers Hist," pp. 42-43
and 92.]

Opportunity for advancement was as important to morale as (p. 079)
assignment according to training and skill, and the Special Programs
Unit encouraged the promotion of Negroes according to their ability
and in proportion to their number. Although in July 1943 the Bureau of
Naval Personnel had warned commanders that it would continue to order
white enlisted men to sea with the expectation that they would be
replaced in shore jobs by Negroes,[3-66] the Special Programs Unit
discovered that rating and promotion of Negroes was still slow. At the
unit's urging, the bureau advised all naval districts that it expected
Negroes to be rated upward "as rapidly as practicable" and asked them
to report on their rating of Negroes.[3-67] It also authorized stations
to retain white petty officers for up to two weeks to break in their
black replacements, but warned that this privilege must not be abused.
The bureau further directed that all qualified general service
candidates be advanced to ratings for which they were eligible
regardless of whether their units were authorized enough spaces to
take care of them. This last directive did little for black promotions
at first because many local commanders ruled that no Negroes could be
"qualified" since none were allowed to perform sea duties. In January
1944 the bureau had to clarify the order to make sure that Negroes
were given the opportunity to advance.[3-68]