Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87

[Footnote 8-61: Memo, D/P&A for CofS, 26 Feb 47, sub:
Army Talks on "Utilization of Negro Manpower,"
WDGPA 291.2 (7 Jan 47).]

Even before publication the pamphlet provoked considerable discussion
and soul-searching in the Army staff. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt.
Gen. Thomas T. Handy, questioned some of the Information and Education
Division's claims for black combatants. In the end the matter had to
be taken to General Eisenhower for resolution. He ordered publication,
reminding local commanders that if necessary they should add further
instructions of their own, "in keeping with the local situation" to
insure acceptance of the Army's policy. The pamphlet was not to be
considered an end in itself, he added, but only one element in a
"progressive process toward maximum utilization of manpower in the
Army."[8-62]

[Footnote 8-62: WD Cir 76, 22 Mar 47; see also Ltrs,
Col David Lane (author of _Army Talk 170_) to
Martin Blumenson, 29 Dec 66, and to author, 15 Mar
71, CMH files.]

_Segregation in Theory and Practice_

Efforts to carry out the policy set forth in Circular 124 reached a
high-water mark in mid-1948. By then black troops, for so long limited
to a few job categories, could be found in a majority of military
occupational fields. The officer corps was open to all without the
restrictions of a racial quota, and while a quota for enlisted men
still existed all racial distinctions in standards of enlistment were
gone. The Army was replacing white officers in black units with
Negroes as fast as qualified black replacements became available. And
more were qualifying every day. By 30 June 1948 the Army had almost
1,000 black commissioned officers, 5 warrant officers, and 67 nurses
serving with over 65,000 enlisted men and women.[8-63]

[Footnote 8-63: STM-30, Strength of the Army, 1 Jul
48. For an optimistic report on the execution of
Circular 124, see _Annual Report of the Secretary
of the Army, 1948_ (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1949), pp. 7-8, 83, 94.]

But here, in the eyes of the Army's critics, was the rub: after three
years of racial reform segregation not only remained but had been
perfected. No longer would the Army be plagued with the vast all-black
divisions that had segregated thousands of Negroes in an admittedly
inefficient and often embarrassing manner. Instead, Negroes would
be segregated in more easily managed hundreds. By limiting (p. 227)
integration to the battalion level (the lowest self-sustaining unit in
the Army system), the Army could guarantee the separation of the races
in eating, sleeping, and general social matters and still hope to
escape some of the obvious discrimination of separate units by making
the black battalions organic elements of larger white units. The
Army's scheme did not work. Schooling and specialty occupations aside,
segregation quite obviously remained the essential fact of military
life and social intercourse for the majority of black soldiers, and
all the evidence of reasonable and genuine reform that came about
under the Gillem Board policy went aglimmering. The Army was in for
some rough years with its critics.

But why were the Army's senior officers, experienced leaders at the
pinnacle of their careers and dedicated to the well-being of the
institution they served, so reluctant to part with segregation? Why
did they cling to an institution abandoned by the Navy and the Air
Force,[8-64] the target of the civil rights movement and its allies in
Congress, and by any reasonable judgment so costly in terms of
efficient organization? The answers lie in the reasoned defense of
their position developed by these men during the long controversy over
the use of black troops and so often presented in public statements
and documents.[8-65] Arguments for continued segregation fell into four
general categories.

[Footnote 8-64: The Air Force became a separate
service on 18 September 1947.]

[Footnote 8-65: Unless otherwise noted, the following
paragraphs are based on Nichols' interviews in 1953
with Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Lee and with
Lt. Col. Steve Davis (a black officer assigned to
the P&A Division during the Gillem Board period);
author's interview with General Wade H. Haislip, 18
Mar 71, and with General J. Lawton Collins, 27 Apr
71; all in CMH files; and U.S. Congress, Senate,
Hearings Before the U.S. Senate Committee on _Armed
Services, Universal Military Training_, 80th Cong.,
2d sess., 1948, pp. 995-96. See also Morris
Janowitz, _The Professional Soldier: A Social and
Political Portrait_ (New York: Free Press, 1960),
pp. 87ff.]

First, segregation was necessary to preserve the internal stability of
the Army. Prejudice was a condition of American society, General of
the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower told a Senate committee in 1948, and the
Army "is merely one of the mirrors that holds up to our faces the
United States of America." Since society separated the races, it
followed that if the Army allowed black and white soldiers to live and
socialize together it ran the very real risk of riots and racial
disturbances which could disrupt its vital functions. Remembering the
contribution of black platoons to the war in Europe, General
Eisenhower, for his part, was willing to accept the risk and integrate
the races by platoons, believing that the social problems "can be
handled," particularly on the large posts. Nevertheless he made no
move toward integrating by platoons while he was Chief of Staff. Later
he explained that

the possibility of applying this lesson [World War II integration
of Negro platoons] to the peacetime Army came up again and again.
Objection involved primarily the social side of the soldier's
life. It was argued that through integration we would get into
all kinds of difficulty in staging soldiers' dances and other
social events. At that time we were primarily occupied in
responding to America's determination "to get the soldiers
home"--so, as I recall, little progress toward integration was
made during that period.[8-66]

[Footnote 8-66: Ltr, DDE to Gen Bruce Clarke
(commander of the 2d Constabulary Brigade when it
was integrated in 1950), 29 May 67, copy in CMH.]

[Illustration: INSPECTION BY THE CHIEF OF STAFF. _General Dwight D.
Eisenhower talks with a soldier of the 25th Combat Team Motor Pool
during a tour of Fort Benning, Georgia, 1947._]

"Liquor and women," Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee pronounced, were the (p. 228)
major ingredients of racial turmoil in the Army. Although General
Lee had been a prime mover in the wartime integration of combat
platoons, he wanted the Army to avoid social integration because of
the disturbances he believed would attend it. As General Omar N.
Bradley saw it, the Army could integrate its training programs but not
the soldier's social life. Hope of progress would be destroyed if
integration was pushed too fast. Bradley summed up his postwar
attitude very simply: "I said let's go easy--as fast as we can."

Second, segregation was an efficient way to isolate the poorly
educated and undertrained black soldier, especially one with a combat
occupational specialty. To integrate Negroes into white combat units,
already dangerously understrength, would threaten the Army's fighting
ability. When he was Chief of Staff, Eisenhower thought many of the
problems associated with black soldiers, problems of morale, health,
and discipline, were problems of education, and that the Negro was
capable of change. "I believe," he said, "that a Negro can improve his
standing and his social standing and his respect for certain of the
standards that we observe, just as well as we can." Lt. Gen. Wade H.
Haislip, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration, concluded that
the Army's racial mission was education. All that Circular 124 meant,
he explained, "was that we had to begin educating the Negro soldiers
so they could be mixed sometime in the future." Bradley observed in
agreement that "as you begin to get better educated Negroes in the
service," there is "more reason to integrate." The Army was pledged to
accept Negroes and to give them a wide choice of assignment, but until
their education and training improved they had to be isolated.

Third, segregation was the only way to provide equal treatment and
opportunity for black troops. Defending this paternalistic argument,
Eisenhower told the Senate:

In general, the Negro is less well educated ... and if you make a
complete amalgamation, what you are going to have is in every
company the Negro is going to be relegated to the minor jobs, and
he is never going to get his promotion to such grades as
technical sergeant, master sergeant, and so on, because the
competition is too tough. If, on the other hand, he is in (p. 229)
smaller units of his own, he can go up to that rate, and I
believe he is entitled to the chance to show his own wares.

Fourth, segregation was necessary because segments of American society
with powerful representatives in Congress were violently opposed to
mixing the races. Bradley explained that integration was part of
social evolution, and he was afraid that the Army might move too fast
for certain sections of the country. "I thought in 1948 that they were
ready in the North," he added, "but not in the South." The south
"learned over the years that mixing the races was a vast problem."
Bradley continued, "so any change in the Army would be a big step in
the South." General Haislip reasoned, you "just can't do it all of a
sudden." As for the influence of those opposed to maintaining the
Army's social _status quo_, Haislip, who was the Vice Chief of Staff
during part of the Gillem Board period, recalled that "everybody was
floundering around, trying to find the right thing to do. I didn't
lose any sleep over it [charges of discrimination]." General
Eisenhower, as he did so often during his career, accurately distilled
the thinking of his associates:

I believe that the human race may finally grow up to the point
where it [race relations] will not be a problem. It [the race
problem] will disappear through education, through mutual
respect, and so on. But I do believe that if we attempt merely by
passing a lot of laws to force someone to like someone else, we
are just going to get into trouble. On the other hand, I do not
by any means hold out for this extreme segregation as I said when
I first joined the Army 38 years ago.

These arguments might be specious, as a White House committee would
later demonstrate, but they were not necessarily guileful, for they
were the heartfelt opinions of many of the Army's leaders, opinions
shared by officials of the other services. These men were probably
blind to the racism implicit in their policies, a racism nurtured by
military tradition. Education and environment had fostered in these
career officers a reverence for tradition. Why should the Army, these
traditionalists might ask, abandon its black units, some with
histories stretching back almost a century? Why should the ordered
social life of the Army post, for so long a mirror of the segregated
society of most civilian communities, be so uncomfortably changed? The
fact that integration had never really been tried before made it
fraught with peril, and all the forces of military tradition conspired
to support the old ways.

What had gone unnoticed by Army planners was the subtle change in the
attitude of the white enlisted man toward integration. Opinion surveys
were rare in an institution dedicated to the concept of military
discipline, but nevertheless in the five years following the war
several surveys were made of the racial views of white troops (the
views of black soldiers were ignored, probably on the assumption that
all Negroes favored integration). In 1946, just as the Gillem Board
policy was being enunciated, the Army staff found enlisted men in
substantial agreement on segregation. Although most of those surveyed
supported the expanded use of Negroes in the Army, an overwhelming
majority voted for the principle of having racially separate working
and living arrangements. Yet the pollsters found much less opposition
to integration when they put their questions on a personal basis--"How
do _you_ feel about...?" Only southerners as a group registered a
clear majority for segregated working conditions. The survey also (p. 230)
revealed another encouraging portent: most of the opposition to
integration existed among older and less educated men.[8-67]

[Footnote 8-67: The 1946 survey is contained in
CINFO, "Supplementary Rpt on Attitudes of Whites
Toward Serving With Negro EM," Incl to Memo, Col
Charles S. Johnson, Exec Off, CofS, for DCofS, 24
May 49, sub: Segregation in the Army, CSUSA 291.2
Negroes (24 May 48).]

[Illustration: GENERAL DAVIS.]

Three years later the Secretary of Defense sponsored another survey of
enlisted opinion on segregation. This time less than a third of those
questioned were opposed to integrated working conditions and some 40
percent were not "definitely opposed" to complete integration of both
working and living arrangements. Again men from all areas tended to
endorse integration as their educational level rose; opposition, on
the other hand, centered in 1949 among the chronic complainers and
those who had never worked with Negroes.[8-68]

[Footnote 8-68: Armed Forces I&E Div, OSD, Rpt No.
101, "Morale Attitudes of Enlisted Men, May-June
1949," pt. II, Attitude Toward Integration of Negro
Soldiers in the Army, copy in CMH.]

In discussing prejudice and discrimination it is necessary to compare
the Army with the rest of American society. Examining the question of
race relations in the Army runs the risk of distorting the importance
given the subject by the nation as a whole in the postwar period.
While resistance to segregation was undoubtedly growing in the black
community and among an increasing number of progressives in the white
community, there was as yet no widespread awareness of the problem and
certainly no concerted public effort to end it. This lack of
perception might be particularly justified in the case of Army
officers, for few of them had any experience with black soldiers and
most undoubtedly were not given to wide reading and reflecting on the
subject of race relations. Moreover, the realities of military life
tended to insulate Army officers from the main currents of American
society. Frequently transferred and therefore without roots in the
civilian community, isolated for years at a time in overseas
assignments, their social life often centered in the military
garrison, officers might well have been less aware of racial
discrimination.

Perhaps because of the insulation imposed on officers by their duties,
the Army's leaders were achieving reforms far beyond those accepted
elsewhere in American society. Few national organizations and
industries could match the Army in 1948 for the number of Negroes
employed, the breadth of responsibility given them, and the variety
of their training and occupations. Looked at in this light, the (p. 231)
Army of 1948 and the men who led it could with considerable
justification be classed as a progressive force in the fight for
racial justice.

_Segregation: An Assessment_

The gap between the Army's stated goal of integration and its
continuing practices had grown so noticeable in 1948, a presidential
election year, that most civil rights spokesmen and their allies in
the press had become disillusioned with Army reforms. Benjamin O.
Davis, still the Army's senior black officer and still after eight
years a brigadier general, called the Army staff's attention to the
shift in attitude. Most had greeted publication of Circular 124 as
"the dawn of a new day for the colored soldier"--General Davis's
words--and looked forward to the gradual eradication of segregation.
But Army practices in subsequent months had brought disappointment, he
warned the under secretary, and the black press had become "restless
and impatient." He wanted the Army staff to give "definite expression
of the desire of the Department of National Defense for the
elimination of all forms of discrimination-segregation from the Armed
Services."[8-69] The suggestion was disapproved. General Paul explained
that the Army could not make such a policy statement since Circular
124 permitted segregated units and a quota that by its nature
discriminated at least in terms of numbers of Negroes assigned.[8-70]

[Footnote 8-69: Memo, Brig Gen B. O. Davis, Sp Asst
to SA, for Under SA, 7 Jan 48, sub: Negro
Utilization in the Postwar Army, WDGPA 291-2;
ibid., 24 Nov 47; both in SA files. The quotations
are from the latter document.]

[Footnote 8-70: Memo, D/P&A for Under SA, 29 Apr 48,
sub: Negro Utilization in the Postwar Army, WDGPA
291.2.]

In February 1948 the Chief of Information tried to counter criticism
by asking personnel and administrative officials to collect favorable
opinions from prominent civilians, "particularly Negroes and
sociologists." But this antidote to public criticism failed because,
as the deputy personnel director had to admit, "the Division does not
have knowledge of any expressed favorable opinion either of
individuals or organizations, reference our Negro policy."[8-71]

[Footnote 8-71: DF's, CINFO to D/P&A, 9 Feb 48, and
Dep D/P&A to CINFO, 12 Feb 48; both in WDGPA 291.2
(9 Feb 48).]

A constant concern because it marred the Army's public image,
segregation also had a profound effect on the performance and
well-being of the black soldier. This effect was difficult to measure
but nevertheless real and has been the subject of considerable study
by social scientists.[8-72] Their opinions are obviously open to debate,
and in fact most of them were not fully formulated during the period
under discussion. Yet their conclusions, based on modern sociological
techniques, clearly reveal the pain and turmoil suffered by black
soldiers because of racial separation. Rarely did the Army staff
bother to delve into these matters in the years before Korea, (p. 232)
although the facts on which the scientists based their conclusions
were collected by the War Department itself. This indifference is the
more curious because the Army had always been aware of what the War
Department Policies and Programs Review Board called in 1947 "that
intangible aspect of military life called prestige and spirit."[8-73]

[Footnote 8-72: For a detailed discussion of this
point, see Mandelbaum, _Soldier Groups and Negro
Soldiers_; Stouffer et al., _The American Soldier:
Adjustment During Army Life_, ch. XII; Eli
Ginzberg, _The Negro Potential_ (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1956); Ginzberg et al., _The
Ineffective Soldier_, vol. III, _Patterns of
Performance_ (New York: Columbia University Press,
1959); _To Secure These Rights: The Report of the
President's Committee on Civil Rights_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1947); Dollard and
Young, "In the Armed Forces."]

[Footnote 8-73: Final Rpt, WD Policies and Programs
Review Board, 11 Aug 47, CSUSA files.]

Burdened with the task of shoring up its racial policy, the Army staff
failed to concern itself with the effect of segregation. Yet by
ignoring segregation the staff overlooked the primary cause of its
racial problems and condemned the Army to their continuation. It need
not have been, because as originally conceived, the Gillem Board
policy provided, in the words of the Assistant Secretary of War, for
"progressive experimentation" leading to "effective manpower
utilization without regard to race or color."[8-74] This reasonable
approach to a complex social issue was recognized as such by the War
Department and by many black spokesmen. But the Gillem Board's
original goal was soon abandoned, and in the "interest of National
Defense," according to Secretary Royall, integration was postponed for
the indefinite future.[8-75] Extension of individual integration below
the company level was forbidden, and the lessons learned at the
Kitzingen Training Center were never applied elsewhere; in short,
progressive experimentation was abandoned.

[Footnote 8-74: Ltr, Howard C. Petersen, ASW, to
William M. Taylor, 12 May 47, ASW 291.2.]

[Footnote 8-75: Department of National Defense,
"National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs," 26
Apr 48, morning session, p. 24.]

The Gillem Board era began with Secretary Patterson accepting the
theory of racially separate but equal service as an anodyne for
temporary segregation; it ended with Secretary Royall embracing a
permanent separate but equal system as a shield to protect the racial
_status quo_. While Patterson and his assistants accepted restriction
on the number of Negroes and their assignment to segregated jobs and
facilities as a temporary expedient, military subordinates used the
Gillem Board's reforms as a way to make more efficient a segregation
policy that neither they nor, they believed, society in general was
willing to change. Thus, despite some real progress on the periphery
of its racial problem, the Army would have to face the enemy in Korea
with an inefficient organization of its men.

The Army's postwar policy was based on a false premise. The Gillem
Board decided that since Negroes had fought poorly in segregated
divisions in two world wars, they might fight better in smaller
segregated organizations within larger white units. Few officers
really believed this, for it was commonly accepted throughout the Army
that Negroes generally made poor combat soldiers. It followed then
that the size of a unit was immaterial, and indeed, given the manpower
that the Army received from reenlistments and Selective Service, any
black unit, no matter its size, would almost assuredly be an
inefficient, spiritless group of predominately Class IV and V men. For
in addition to its educational limitations, the typical black unit
suffered a further handicap in the vital matter of motivation. The
Gillem Board disregarded this fact, but it was rarely overlooked by
the black soldier: he was called upon to serve as a second-class (p. 233)
soldier to defend what he often regarded as his second-class
citizenship. In place of unsatisfactory black divisions, Circular 124
made the Army substitute three unsatisfactorily mixed divisions whose
black elements were of questionable efficiency and a focus of
complaint among civil rights advocates. Commanders at all levels faced
a dilemma implicit in the existence of white and black armies side by
side. Overwhelmed by regulations and policies that tried to preserve
the fiction of separate but equal opportunity, these officers wasted
their time and energy and, most often in the case of black officers,
lost their self-confidence.

In calling for the integration of small black units rather than
individuals, the Gillem Board obviously had in mind the remarkably
effective black platoons in Europe in the last months of World War II.
But even this type of organization was impossible in the postwar Army
because it demanded a degree of integration that key commanders,
especially the major Army component commanders, were unwilling to
accept.

These real problems were intensified by the normal human failings of
prejudice, vested interest, well-meaning ignorance, conditioned
upbringing, shortsightedness, preoccupation with other matters, and
simple reluctance to change. The old ways were comfortable, and the
new untried, frightening in their implications and demanding special
effort. Nowhere was there enthusiasm for the positive measures needed
to implement the Gillem Board's recommendations leading to
integration. This unwillingness to act positively was particularly
noticeable in the Organization and Training Division, in the Army
Ground Forces, and even to some extent in the Personnel and
Administration Division itself.