Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 4-56: A unique vessel, the _Sea Cloud_ was
on loan to the government for the duration of the
war by its owner, the former Ambassador to Russia,
Joseph Davies. Davies charged a nominal sum and
extracted the promise that the vessel would be
restored to its prewar condition as one of the
world's most famous private yachts.]

[Footnote 4-57: Interv, author with Skinner.]

It was a chance well taken. Before decommissioning in November 1944,
the _Sea Cloud_ served on ocean weather stations off the coasts of
Greenland, Newfoundland, and France. It received no special treatment
and was subject to the same tactical, operating, and engineering
requirements as any other unit in the Navy's Atlantic Fleet. It passed
two Atlantic Fleet inspections with no deficiencies and was officially
credited with helping to sink a German submarine in June 1944. The
_Sea Cloud_ boasted a completely integrated operation, its 4 black
officers and some 50 black petty officers and seamen serving
throughout the ship's 173-man complement.[4-58] No problems of a racial
nature arose on the ship, although its captain reported that his crew
experienced some hostility in the various departments of the Boston
Navy Yard from time to time. Skinner was determined to provide truly
integrated conditions. He personally introduced his black officers (p. 120)
into the local white officers' club, and he saw to it that when his
men were temporarily detached for shore patrol duty they would go in
integrated teams. Again, all these arrangements were without sign of
racial incident.[4-59]

[Footnote 4-58: Log of the _Sea Cloud_ (IX 99),
Aug-Nov 44, NARS, Suitland.]

[Footnote 4-59: Interv, author with Skinner.]

[Illustration: COMMANDER SKINNER AND CREW OF THE USS SEA CLOUD.
_Skinner officiates at awards ceremony._]

It is difficult to assess the reasons for the commandant's decision to
organize an integrated crew. One senior personnel officer later
suggested that the _Sea Cloud_ was merely a public relations device
designed to still the mounting criticism by civil rights spokesmen of
the lack of sea duty for black Coast Guardsmen.[4-60] The public
relations advantage of an integrated ship operating in the war zone
must have been obvious to Admiral Waesche, although the Coast Guard
made no effort to publicize the _Sea Cloud_. In fact, this absence of
special attention had been recommended by Skinner in his original
proposal to the commandant. Such publicity, he felt, would disrupt the
military experiment and make it more difficult to apply generally the
experience gained.

[Footnote 4-60: Interv, author with Rear Adm R. T.
McElligott, 24 Feb 75, CMH files. For an example of
the Coast Guard reaction to civil rights criticism,
see Ltr, USCG Public Relations Officer to Douglas
Hall, Washington _Afro-American_, July 12, 1943, CG
051, Office of the USCG Historian.]

The success of the _Sea Cloud_ experiment did not lead to the
widespread integration implied in Commander Skinner's recommendation.
The only other extensively integrated Coast Guard vessel assigned to a
war zone was the destroyer escort _Hoquim_, operating in 1945 out (p. 121)
of Adak in the Aleutian Islands, convoying shipping along the Aleutian
chain. Again, the commander of the ship was Skinner. Nevertheless the
practical reasons for Skinner's first recommendation must also have
been obvious to the commandant, and the evidence suggests that the
_Sea Cloud_ project was but one of a series of liberalizing moves the
Coast Guard made during the war, not only to still the criticism in
the black community but also to solve the problems created by the
presence of a growing number of black seamen in the general service.
There is also reason to believe that the Coast Guard's limited use of
racially mixed crews influenced the Navy's decision to integrate the
auxiliary fleet in 1945. Senior naval officials studied a report on
the _Sea Cloud_, and one of Secretary Forrestal's assistants consulted
Skinner on his experiences and their relation to greater manpower
efficiency.[4-61]

[Footnote 4-61: Ltr, Skinner to author, 2 Jun 75.]

[Illustration: ENSIGN JENKINS AND LIEUTENANT SAMUELS, _first black
Coast Guard officers, on board the Sea Cloud_.]

Throughout the war the Coast Guard never exhibited the concern shown
by the other services for the possible disruptive effects if blacks
outranked whites. As the war progressed, more and more blacks advanced
into petty officer ranks; by August 1945 some 965 Negroes, almost a
third of their total number, were petty or warrant officers, many of
them in the general service. Places for these trained specialists in
any kind of segregated general service were extremely limited, and by
the last year of the war many black petty officers could be found
serving in mostly white crews and station complements. For example, a
black pharmacist, second class, and a signalman, third class, served
on the cutter _Spencer_, a black coxswain served on a cutter in the
Greenland patrol, and other black petty officers were assigned to
recruiting stations, to the loran program, and as instructors at the
Manhattan Beach Training Station.[4-62]

[Footnote 4-62: USCG Historical Section, The Coast
Guard at War, 23:53; Intervs, author with Lt Harvey
C. Russell, USCGR, 14 Feb 75, and with Capron, CMH
files.]

The position of instructor at Manhattan Beach became the usual avenue
to a commission for a Negro. Joseph C. Jenkins went from Manhattan
Beach to the officer candidate school at the Coast Guard Academy,
graduating as an ensign in the Coast Guard Reserve in April 1943,
almost a full year before Negroes were commissioned in the Navy.
Clarence Samuels, a warrant officer and instructor at Manhattan (p. 122)
Beach, was commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade) and assigned to
the _Sea Cloud_ in 1943. Harvey C. Russell was a signal instructor at
Manhattan Beach in 1944 when all instructors were declared eligible to
apply for commissions. At first rejected by the officer training
school, Russell was finally admitted at the insistence of his
commanding officer, graduated as an ensign, and was assigned to the
_Sea Cloud_.[4-63]

[Footnote 4-63: "A Black History in WWII," pp. 31-34.
For an account of Samuels' long career in the Coast
Guard, see Joseph Greco and Truman R. Strobridge,
"Black Trailblazer Has Colorful Past," _Fifth
Dimension_ (3d Quarter, 1973); see also Interv,
author with Russell.]

These men commanded integrated enlisted seamen throughout the rest of
the war. Samuels became the first Negro in this century to command a
Coast Guard vessel in wartime, first as captain of Lightship No. 115
and later of the USCGC _Sweetgum_ in the Panama Sea Frontier. Russell
was transferred from the integrated _Hoquim_ to serve as executive
officer on a cutter operating out of the Philippines in the western
Pacific, assuming command of the racially mixed crew shortly after the
war.

At the behest of the White House, the Coast Guard also joined with the
Navy in integrating its Women's Reserve. In the fall of 1944 it
recruited five black women for the SPARS. Only token representation,
but understandable since the SPARS ceased all recruitment except for
replacements on 23 November 1944, just weeks after the decision to
recruit Negroes was announced. Nevertheless the five women trained at
Manhattan Beach and were assigned to various Coast Guard district
offices without regard to race.[4-64]

[Footnote 4-64: USCG Historical Section, The Coast
Guard at War, 25:25. See also Oral History
Interview, Dorothy C. Stratton, 24 Sep 70, Center
of Naval History.]

This very real progress toward equal treatment and opportunity for
Negroes in the Coast Guard must be assessed with the knowledge that
the progress was experienced by only a minuscule group. Negroes never
rose above 2.1 percent of the Coast Guard's wartime population, well
below the figures for the other services. This was because the other
services were forced to obtain draft-age men, including a significant
number of black inductees from Selective Service, whereas the Coast
Guard ceased all inductions in early 1944.

Despite their small numbers, however, the black Coast Guardsmen
enjoyed a variety of assignments. The different reception accorded
this small group of Negroes might, at least to some extent, be
explained by the Coast Guard's tradition of some black participation
for well over a century. To a certain extent this progress could also
be attributed to the ease with which the directors of a small
organization can reorder its policies.[4-65] But above all, the
different reception accorded Negroes in the Coast Guard was a small
organization's practical reaction to a pressing assimilation problem
dictated by the manpower policies common throughout the naval
establishment.

[Footnote 4-65: For discussion of this point, see
Testimony of Coast Guard Representatives Before the
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services, 18 Mar 49, pp.
25-26.]

CHAPTER 5 (p. 123)

A Postwar Search

The nation's military leaders and the leaders of the civil rights
movement were in rare accord at the end of World War II. They agreed
that despite considerable wartime improvement the racial policies of
the services had proved inadequate for the development of the full
military potential of the country's largest minority as well as the
efficient operation and management of the nation's armed forces.
Dissatisfaction with the current policy of the armed forces was a
spearpoint of the increasingly militant and powerful civil rights
movement, and this dissatisfaction was echoed to a great extent by the
services themselves. Intimate association with minority problems had
convinced the Army's Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies and
the Navy's Special Programs Unit that new policies had to be devised
and new directions sought. Confronted with the incessant demands of
the civil rights advocates and presented by their own staffs with
evidence of trouble, civilian leaders of the services agreed to review
the status of the Negro. As the postwar era opened, both the Army and
the Navy were beginning the interminable investigations that augured a
change in policy.

Unfortunately, the services and the civil rights leaders had somewhat
different ends in mind. Concerned chiefly with military efficiency but
also accustomed to racial segregation or exclusion, most military
leaders insisted on a rigid appraisal of the performance of segregated
units in the war and ignored the effects of segregation on that
performance. Civil rights advocates, on the other hand, seeing an
opportunity to use the military as a vehicle for the extension of
social justice, stressed the baneful effects of segregation on the
black serviceman's morale. They were inclined to ignore the
performance of the large segregated units and took issue with the
premise that desegregation of the armed forces in advance of the rest
of American society would threaten the efficient execution of the
services' military mission. Neither group seemed able to appreciate
the other's real concerns, and their contradictory conclusions
promised a renewal of the discord in their wartime relationship.

_Black Demands_

World War II marked the beginning of an important step in the
evolution of the civil rights movement. Until then the struggle for
racial equality had been sustained chiefly by the "talented tenth,"
the educated, middle-class black citizens who formed an economic and
political alliance with white supporters. Together they fought to (p. 124)
improve the racial situation with some success in the courts, but with
little progress in the executive branch and still less in the
legislative. The efforts of men like W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White,
and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Lester Granger of the National
Urban League were in the mainstream of the American reform movement,
which stressed an orderly petitioning of government for a redress of
grievances.

But there was another facet to the American reform tradition, one that
stressed mass action and civil disobedience, and the period between
the March on Washington Movement in 1940 and the threat of a black
boycott of the draft in 1948 witnessed the beginnings of a shift in
the civil rights movement to this kind of reform tactic. The
articulate leaders of the prewar struggle were still active, and in
fact would make their greatest contribution in the fight that led to
the Supreme Court's pronouncement on school segregation in 1954. But
their quiet methods were already being challenged by A. Philip
Randolph and others who launched a sustained demand for equal
treatment and opportunity in the armed forces during the early postwar
period. Randolph and leaders of his persuasion relied not so much on
legal eloquence in their representations to the federal government as
on an understanding of bloc voting in key districts and the implicit
threat of civil disobedience. The civil rights campaign, at least in
the effort to end segregation in the armed forces, had the appearance
of a mass movement a full decade before a weary Rosa Parks boarded a
Montgomery bus and set off the all-embracing crusade of Martin Luther
King, Jr.

The growing political power of the Negro and the threat of mass action
in the 1940's were important reasons for the breakthrough on the color
front that began in the armed forces in the postwar period. For
despite the measure of good will and political acumen that
characterized his social programs, Harry S. Truman might never have
made the effort to achieve racial equality in the services without the
constant pressure of civil rights activists.

The reasons for the transformation that was beginning in the civil
rights struggle were varied and complex.[5-1] Fundamental was the
growing urbanization of the Negro. By 1940 almost half the black
population lived in cities. As the labor shortage became more acute
during the next five years, movement toward the cities continued, not
only in the south but in the north and west. Attracted by economic
opportunities in Los Angeles war industries, for example, over 1,000
Negroes moved to that city each month during the war. Detroit,
Seattle, and San Francisco, among others, reported similar migrations.
The balance finally shifted during the war, and the 1950 census showed
that 56 percent of the black population resided in metropolitan (p. 125)
areas, 32 percent in cities of the north and west.[5-2]

[Footnote 5-1: This discussion is based in great part
on Arnold M. Rose, "The American Negro Problem in
the Context of Social Change," _Annals of the
Academy of Political Science_ 257 (January
1965):1-17; Rustin, _Strategies for Freedom_, pp.
26-46; Leonard Broom and Norval Glenn,
_Transformation of the Negro American_ (New York:
Harper and Row, 1965); St. Clair Drake and Horace
Cayton, _Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in
a Northern City_ (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970);
John Hope Franklin, _From Slavery to Freedom: A
History of Negro America_, 3d ed. (New York: Knopf,
1967); Woodward's _The Strange Career of Jim Crow_;
Seymour Wolfbein, "Postwar Trends in Negro
Employment," a report by the Occupational Outlook
Division, Bureau of Labor Statistics, in CMH; Oscar
Handlin, "The Goals of Integration," and Kenneth B.
Clark, "The Civil Rights Movement: Momentum and
Organization," both in _Daedalus_ 95 (Winter
1966).]

[Footnote 5-2: For a discussion of this trend, see
Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Social and Economic
Conditions of Negroes in the United States"
(Current Population Reports P23, October 1967); see
also Charles S. Johnson, "The Negro Minority,"
_Annals of the Academy of Political Science_ 223
(September 1942):10-16.]

This mass migration, especially to cities outside the south, was of
profound importance to the future of American race relations. It meant
first that the black masses were separating themselves from the
archaic social patterns that had ruled their lives for generations.
Despite virulent discrimination and prejudice in northern and western
cities, Negroes could vote freely and enjoy some protection of the law
and law-enforcement machinery. They were free of the burden of Jim
Crow. Along with white citizens they were given better schooling, a
major factor in improving status. The mass migration also meant that
this part of America's peasantry was rapidly joining America's
proletariat. The wartime shortage of workers, coupled with the efforts
of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and other government
agencies, opened up thousands of jobs previously denied black
Americans. The number of skilled craftsmen, foremen, and semiskilled
workers among black Americans rose from 500,000 to over 1,000,000
during the war, while the number of Negroes working for the federal
government increased from 60,000 to 200,000.[5-3]

[Footnote 5-3: Selective Service System, _Special
Groups_, vol. I, pp. 177-78; see also Robert C.
Weaver, "Negro Labor Since 1929," _The Journal of
Negro History_ 35 (January 1950):20-38.]

Though much of the increase in black employment was the result of
temporarily expanded wartime industries, black workers gained valuable
training and experience that enabled them to compete more effectively
for postwar jobs. Employment in unionized industries strengthened
their position in the postwar labor movement. The severity of
inevitable postwar cuts in black employment was mitigated by continued
prosperity and the sustained growth of American industry. Postwar
industrial development created thousands of new upper-level jobs,
allowing many black workers to continue their economic advance without
replacing white workers and without the attendant development of
racial tensions.

The armed forces played their part in this change. Along with better
food, pay, and living conditions provided by the services, many
Negroes were given new work experiences. Along with many of their
white fellows, they acquired new skills and a new sophistication that
prepared them for the different life of the postwar industrial world.
Most important, military service in World War II divorced many Negroes
from a society whose traditions had carefully defined their place, and
exposed them for the first time to a community where racial equality,
although imperfectly realized, was an ideal. Out of this experience
many Negroes came to understand that their economic and political
position could be changed. Ironically, the services themselves became
an early target of this rising self-awareness. The integration of the
armed forces, immediate and total, was a popular goal of the newly
franchised voting group, which was turning away from leaders of both
races who preached a philosophy of gradual change.

The black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for (p. 126)
equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press
was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the Negro, so was the
civil rights movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh
_Courier_ was but one of many black papers and journals that developed
a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject
of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that
it was "no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major
influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights
during World War II."[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and
always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied
the opposition to segregation during and after the war.

[Footnote 5-4: E. Franklin Frazier, _The Negro in the
United States_ (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p.
513.]

Much of the black unrest and dissatisfaction dramatized by the press
continued to be mobilized through the efforts of such organizations as
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the
National Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality. The NAACP,
for example, revitalized by a new and broadened appeal to the black
masses, had some 1,200 branches in forty-three states by 1946 and
boasted a membership of more than half a million. While the
association continued to fight for minority rights in the courts, to
stimulate black political participation, and to improve the conditions
of Negroes generally, its most popular activity during the 1940's was
its effort to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces. The files
of the services and the White House are replete with NAACP complaints,
requests, demands, and charges that involved the military departments
in innumerable investigations and justifications. If the complaints
effected little immediate change in policy, they at least dramatized
the plight of black servicemen and mobilized demands for reform.[5-5]

[Footnote 5-5: Clark, "The Civil Rights Movement,"
pp. 240-47.]

Not all racial unrest was so constructively channeled during the war.
Riots and mutinies in the armed services were echoed around the
country. In Detroit competition between blacks and whites, many
recently arrived from the south seeking jobs, culminated in June 1943
in the most serious riot of the decade. The President was forced to
declare a state of emergency and dispatch 6,000 troops to patrol the
city. The Detroit riot was only the most noticeable of a number of
racial incidents that inevitably provoked an ugly reaction, and the
postwar period witnessed an increase in antiblack sentiment and
violence in the United States.[5-6] Testifying to the black community's
economic and political progress during the war as well as a
corresponding increase in white awareness of and protest against the
mistreatment of black citizens, this antiblack sentiment was only the
pale ghost of a similar phenomenon after World War I.

[Footnote 5-6: _Report of the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders, 1 March 1968_,
Kerner Report (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1968), pp. 104-05; see also Dalfiume,
_Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces_, pp.
132-34. For a detailed account of the major riot,
see R. Shogan and T. Craig, _The Detroit Race Riot:
A Study in Violence_ (New York: Chilton Books,
1964).]

[Illustration: PRESIDENT TRUMAN ADDRESSING THE NAACP CONVENTION,
_Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., June 1947. Seated at the
President's left are Walter White, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Senator
Wayne Morse; visible in the rear row are Admiral of the Fleet Chester
W. Nimitz, Attorney General Tom C. Clark, and Chief Justice Fred M.
Vinson_.]

Nevertheless, the sentiment was widespread. Traveling cross-country in
a train during Christmastime, 1945, the celebrated American essayist
Bernard De Voto was astonished to hear expressions of antiblack (p. 127)
sentiment. In Wisconsin, "a state where I think I had never before
heard the word 'nigger,' that [dining] car was full of talk about
niggers and what had to be done about them."[5-7] A white veteran bore
out the observation. "Anti-Negro talk ... is cropping up in many
places ... the assumption [being] that there is more prejudice, never
less.... Throughout the war the whites were segregated from the
Negroes (why not say it this way for a change?) so that there were
almost no occasions for white soldiers to get any kind of an
impression of Negroes, favorable or otherwise." There had been some
race prejudice among servicemen, but, the veteran asked, "What has
caused this anti-Negro talk among those who stayed at home?"[5-8]
About the same time, a U.S. senator was complaining to the Secretary
of War that white and black civilians at Kelly Field, Texas, (p. 128)
shared the same cafeterias and other facilities. He hoped the
secretary would look into the matter to prevent disturbances that
might grow out of a policy of this sort.[5-9]