Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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The situation might have improved had the Gillem Board been able or
willing to spell out intermediate goals. For the ultimate objective of
using black soldiers like white soldiers as individuals was
inconceivable and meaningless or radical and frightening to many in
the Army. Interim goals might have provided impetus for gradual change
and precluded the virtual inertia that gripped the Army staff. But at
best Circular 124 served as a stopgap measure, allowing the Army to
postpone for a few more years any substantial change in race policy.
This postponement cost the service untold time and effort devising and
defending a system increasingly under attack from the black community
and, significantly, from that community's growing allies in the
administration.

CHAPTER 9 (p. 234)

The Postwar Navy

That Army concerns and problems dominated the discussions of race
relations in the armed forces in the postwar years is understandable
since the Army had the largest number of Negroes and the most widely
publicized segregation policy of all the services. At the same time
the Army bore, unfairly, the brunt of public criticism for all the
services' race problems. The Navy, committed to a policy of
integration, but with relatively few Negroes in its integrated general
service or in the ranks of the segregated Marine Corps and the new Air
Force, its racial policy still fluid, merely attracted less attention
and so escaped many of the charges hurled at the Army by civil rights
advocates both in and out of the federal government. But however
different or unformed their racial policies, all the services for the
most part segregated Negroes in practice and all were open to charges
of discrimination.

Although the services developed different racial policies out of their
separate circumstances, all three were reacting to the same set of
social forces and all three suffered from race prejudice. They also
faced in common a growing indifference to military careers on the part
of talented young Negroes who in any case would have to compete with
an aging but persistent group of less talented black professionals for
a limited number of jobs. Of great importance was the fact that the
racial practices of the armed forces were a product of the individual
service's military traditions. Countless incidents support the
contention that service traditions were a transcendent factor in
military decisions. Marx Leva, Forrestal's assistant, told the story
of a Forrestal subordinate who complained that some admirals were
still opposed to naval aviation, to which Forrestal replied that he
knew some admirals who still opposed steam engines.[9-1] Forrestal's
humorous exaggeration underscored the tenacity of traditional
attitudes in the Navy. Although self-interest could never be
discounted as a motive, tradition also figured prominently, for
example, in the controversy between proponents of the battleship and
proponents of the aircraft carrier. Certainly the influence of
tradition could be discerned in the antipathy of Navy officials toward
racial change.[9-2]

[Footnote 9-1: Interv, Lee Nichols with Marx Leva,
1953, in Nichols Collection, CMH.]

[Footnote 9-2: On the survival of traditional
attitudes in the Navy, see Karsten, _Naval
Aristocracy_, ch. v; Waldo H. Heinricks, Jr., "The
Role of the U.S. Navy," in Dorothy Borg and Shumpei
Okamoto, eds., _Pearl Harbor as History_ (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1973); David Rosenberg,
"Arleigh Burke and Officer Development in the
Inter-war Navy," _Pacific Historical Review_ 44
(November 1975).]

The Army also had its problems with tradition. It endured tremendous
inner conflict before it decided to drop the cavalry in favor of
mechanized and armored units. Nor did the resistance to armor die
quickly. Former Chief of Staff Peyton C. March reported that a (p. 235)
previous Chief of Cavalry told him in 1950 that the Army had
betrayed the horse.[9-3] President Roosevelt was also a witness to how
military tradition frustrated attempts to change policy. He picked his
beloved Navy to make the point: "To change anything in the Na-a-vy is
like punching a feather bed. You punch it with your right and you
punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you
find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching."[9-4] Many
senior officers resisted equal treatment and opportunity simply
because of their traditional belief that Negroes needed special
treatment and any basic change in their status was fraught with
danger.[9-5]

[Footnote 9-3: Edward M. Coffman, _The Hilt of the
Sword_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1966), p. 245.]

[Footnote 9-4: Quoted in Marriner S. Eccles,
_Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal
Recollections_, ed. Sidney Hyman (New York: Knopf,
1951), p. 336.]

[Footnote 9-5: The influence of tradition on naval
racial practices was raised during the hearings of
the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment
and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 13 January
1949, pages 105-08, 111-12.]

Still, tradition could work two ways, and in the case of the Navy, at
least, the postwar decision to liberalize racial practices can be
traced in part to its sense of tradition. When James Forrestal started
to integrate the general service in 1944, his appeals to his senior
military colleagues, the President, and the public were always couched
in terms of military efficiency. But if military efficiency made the
new policy announced in February 1946 inevitable, military tradition
made partial integration acceptable. Black sailors had served in
significant numbers in an integrated general service during the
nation's first century and a half, and those in the World War II
period who spoke of a traditional Navy ban against Negroes were just
as wrong as those who spoke of a traditional ban on liquor. The same
abstemious secretary who completely outlawed alcohol on warships in
1914 initiated the short-lived restrictions on the service of Negroes
in the Navy.[9-6] Both limited integration and liquor were old
traditions in the American Navy, and the influence of military
tradition made integration of the general service relatively simple.

[Footnote 9-6: SecNav (Josephus Daniels) General
Order 90, 1 Jul 14. Alcohol had been outlawed for
enlisted men at sea by Secretary John D. Long more
than a decade earlier. The 1914 prohibition rule
infuriated the officers. One predicted that the
ruling would push officers into "the use of cocaine
and other dangerous drugs." Quoted in Ronald
Spector, _Admiral of the New Empire_ (Baton Rouge:
University of Louisiana Press, 1974), pp. 191-92.]

Forrestal was convinced that in order to succeed racial reform must
first be accepted by the men already in uniform; integration, if
quietly and gradually put into effect, would soon demonstrate its
efficiency and make the change acceptable to all members of the
service. Quiet gradualism became the hallmark of his effort. In August
1945 the Navy had some 165,000 Negroes, almost 5.5 percent of its
total strength. Sixty-four of them, including six women, were
commissioned officers.[9-7] Presumably, these men and women would be the
first to enjoy the fruits of the new integration order. Their number
could also be expected to increase because, as Secretary Forrestal
reported in August 1946, the only quotas on enlistment were those
determined by the needs of the Navy and the limitation of (p. 236)
funds.[9-8] Even as he spoke, at least some black sailors were being
trained in almost all naval ratings and were serving throughout the
fleet, on planes and in submarines, working and living with whites.
The signs pointed to a new day for Negroes in the Navy.

[Footnote 9-7: Unless otherwise noted the statistical
information used in this section was supplied by
the Office, Assistant Chief for Management
Information, BuPers. See also BuPers, "Enlisted
Strength--U.S. Navy," 26 Jul 46, Pers 215-BL, copy
in CMH.]

[Footnote 9-8: Ltr, SecNav to Harvard Chapter, AVC,
26 Aug 46, P16-3 MM GenRecsNav.]

[Illustration: SHORE LEAVE IN KOREA. _Men of the USS Topeka land in
Inch'on, 1948._]

But during the chaotic months of demobilization a different picture
began to emerge. Although Negroes continued to number about 5 percent
of the Navy's enlisted strength, their position altered radically. The
average strength figures for 1946 showed 3,300 Negroes, 16 percent of
the total black strength, serving in the integrated general service
while 17,300, or 84 percent, were classified as stewards. By mid-1948
the outlook was somewhat brighter, but still on the average only 38
percent of the Negroes in the Navy held jobs in the general service
while 62 percent remained in the nonwhite Steward's Branch. At this
time only three black officers remained on active duty. Again, what
Navy officials saw as military efficiency helps explain this postwar
retreat. Because of its rapidly sinking manpower needs, the Navy could
afford to set higher enlistment standards than the Army, and the fewer
available spaces in the general service went overwhelmingly to the
many more eligible whites who applied. Only in the Steward's Branch,
with its separate quotas and lower enlistment standards, did the (p. 237)
Navy find a place for the many black enlistees as well as the
thousands of stewards ready and willing to reenlist for peacetime
service.

If efficiency explains why the Navy's general service remained
disproportionately white, tradition explains how segregation and
racial exclusion could coexist with integration in an organization
that had so recently announced a progressive racial policy. Along with
its tradition of an integrated general service, the Navy had a
tradition of a white officer corps. It was natural for the Navy to
exclude black officers from the Regular Navy, Secretary John L.
Sullivan said later, just as it was common to place Negroes in mess
jobs.[9-9] A _modus vivendi_ could be seen emerging from the twin
dictates of efficiency and tradition: integrate a few thousand black
sailors throughout the general service in fulfillment of the letter of
the Bureau of Naval Personnel circular; as for the nonwhite Steward's
Branch and the lack of black officers, these conditions were ordinary
and socially comfortable. Since most Navy leaders agreed that the new
policy was fair and practical, no further changes seemed necessary in
the absence of a pressing military need or a demand from the White
House or Congress.

[Footnote 9-9: Interv, Nichols with Secretary John L.
Sullivan, Dec 52, in Nichols Collection, CMH.
Sullivan succeeded James Forrestal as secretary on
18 September 1947.]

To black publicists and other advocates of civil rights, the Navy's
postwar manpower statistics were self-explanatory: the Navy was
discriminating against the Negro. Time and again the Navy responded to
this charge, echoing Secretary Forrestal's contention that the Navy
had no racial quotas and that all restrictions on the employment of
black sailors had been lifted. As if suggesting that all racial
distinctions had been abandoned, personnel officials discontinued
publishing racial statistics and abolished the Special Programs
Unit.[9-10] Cynics might have ascribed other motives for these
decisions, but the civil rights forces apparently never bothered. For
the most part they left the Navy's apologists to struggle with the
increasingly difficult task of explaining why the placement of Negroes
deviated so markedly from assignment for whites.

[Footnote 9-10: The BuPers Progress Report (Pers
215), the major statistical publication of the
department, terminated its statistical breakdown by
race in March 1946. The Navy's racial affairs
office was closed in June 1946. See BuPers,
"Narrative of Bureau of Naval Personnel, 1
September 1945 to 1 October 1946" (hereafter
"BuPers Narrative"), 1:73.]

The Navy's difficulty in this regard stemmed from the fact that the
demobilization program under which it geared down from a 3.4
million-man service to a peacetime force of less than half a million
was quite straightforward and simple. Consequently, the latest state
of the Negro in the Navy was readily apparent to the black serviceman
and to the public. The key to service in the postwar Navy was
acceptance into the Regular Navy. The wartime Navy had been composed
overwhelmingly of reservists and inductees, and shortly after V-J day
the Navy announced plans for the orderly separation of all reservists
by September 1946. In April 1946 it discontinued volunteer enlistment
in the Naval Reserve for immediate active duty, and in May it (p. 238)
issued its last call for draftees through Selective Service.[9-11]

[Footnote 9-11: Ibid., p. 143; Selective Service
System, _Special Groups_ (Monograph 10), 2:200.
Between September 1945 and May 1946 the Navy
drafted 20,062 men, including 3,394 Negroes.]

At the same time the Bureau of Naval Personnel launched a vigorous
program to induce reservists to switch to the Regular Navy. In October
1945 it opened all petty officer ratings in the Regular Navy to such
transfers and offered reservists special inducements for changeover in
the form of ratings, allowance extras, and, temporarily, short-term
enlistments. So successful was the program that by July 1947 the
strength of the Regular Navy had climbed to 488,712, only a few
thousand short of the postwar authorization. The Navy ended its
changeover program in early 1947.[9-12] While it lasted, black
reservists and inductees shared in the program, although the chief of
the personnel recruiting division found it necessary to amplify the
recruiting instructions to make this point clear.[9-13] The Regular Navy
included 7,066 enlisted Negroes on V-J day, 2.1 percent of the total
enlisted strength. This figure nearly tripled in the next year to
20,610, although the percentage of Negroes only doubled.[9-14]

[Footnote 9-12: "BuPers Narrative," 1:141, 192; see
also BuPers Cir Ltr 41-46, 15 Feb 46.]

[Footnote 9-13: See Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to CO, Naval
Barracks, NAD, Seal Beach, Calif., 8 Oct 45, sub:
Eligibility of Negroes for Enlistment in USN, P16
MM, BuPersRecs; Recruiting Dir, BuPers, Directive
to Recruiting Officers, 25 Jan 46, quoted in
Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 58.]

[Footnote 9-14: BuPers, "Enlisted Strength--U.S.
Navy," 26 Jul 46, Pers 215-BL.]

_The Steward's Branch_

The major concern of the civil rights groups was not so much the
number of Negroes in the Regular Navy, although this remained far
below the proportion of Negroes in the civilian population, but that
the majority of Negroes were being accepted for duty in the nonwhite
Steward's Branch. More than 97 percent of all black sailors in the
Regular Navy in December 1945 were in this branch. The ratio improved
somewhat in the next six months when 3,000 black general service
personnel (out of a wartime high of 90,000) transferred into the
Regular Navy while more than 10,000 black reservists and draftees
joined the 7,000 regulars already in the Steward's Branch.[9-15] The
statistical low point in terms of the ratio of Negroes in the postwar
regular general service and the Steward's Branch occurred in fiscal
year 1947 when only 19.21 percent of the Navy's regular black
personnel were assigned outside the Steward's Branch.[9-16] In short,
more than eight out of every ten Negroes in the Navy trained and
worked separately from white sailors, performing menial tasks and led
by noncommissioned officers denied the perquisites of rank.

[Footnote 9-15: Memo, Dir of Planning and Control,
BuPers, for Chief, NavPers (ca. Jan 46), sub: Negro
Personnel, Pers 21B, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 9-16: BuPers, Memo on Discrimination of the
Negro, 24 Jan 59. filed in BuPers Technical
Library.]

The Navy itself had reason to be concerned. The Steward's Branch
created efficiency problems and was a constant source of embarrassment
to the service's public image. Because of its low standards, the
branch attracted thousands of poorly educated and underprivileged
individuals who had a high rate of venereal disease but were (p. 239)
engaged in preparing and serving food. Leaders within the branch
itself, although selected on the basis of recommendations from
superiors, examinations, and seniority, were often poor performers.
Relations between the individual steward and the outfit to which he
was assigned were often marked by personal conflicts and other
difficulties. Consequently, while stewards eagerly joined the branch
in the Regular Navy, the incidence of disciplinary problems among them
was high. The branch naturally earned the opprobrium of civil rights
groups, who were sensitive not only to the discrimination of a
separate branch for minorities but also to the unfavorable image these
men created of Negroes in the service.[9-17]

[Footnote 9-17: Memo, Lt Dennis D. Nelson for Dep
Dir. Pub Relations. 26 Mar 48, sub: Problems of the
Stewards' Branch, PR 221-5393, GenRecsNav. On
mental standards for stewards, sec BuPers Cir Ltr
41-46, 15 Feb 46.]

[Illustration: MESS ATTENDANTS, USS BUSHNELL, 1918.]

[Illustration: MESS ATTENDANTS, USS WISCONSIN, 1953.]

The Navy had a ready defense for its management of the branch. Its
spokesmen frequently explained that it performed an essential
function, especially at sea. Since this function was limited in scope,
they added, the Navy was able to reduce the standards for the branch,
thus opening opportunities for many men otherwise ineligible to join
the service. In order to offer a chance for advancement the Navy
had to create a separate recruiting and training system for (p. 240)
stewards. This separation in turn explained the steward's usual
failure to transfer to branches in the regular command channels. Since
there were no minimum standards for the branch, it followed that most
of its noncommissioned officers remained unqualified to exercise
military command over personnel other than their branch subordinates.
Lack of command responsibility was also present in a number of other
branches not directly concerned with the operation of ships. It was
not the result of race prejudice, therefore, but of standards for
enlistment and types of duties performed. Nor was the steward's
frequent physical separation based on race; berthing was arranged by
department and function aboard large vessels. Separation did not exist
on smaller ships. Messmen were usually berthed with other men of the
supply department, including bakers and storekeepers. Chief stewards,
however, as Under Secretary Kimball later explained, had not been
required to meet the military qualifications for chief petty officer,
and therefore it was "considered improper that they should be accorded
the same messing, berthing, club facilities, and other privileges
reserved for the highest enlisted grade of the Navy."[9-18] Stewards of
the lower ranks received the same chance for advancement as members of
other enlisted branches, but to grant them command responsibility
would necessitate raising qualifications for the whole branch, (p. 241)
thus eliminating many career stewards and extending steward training
to include purely military subjects.[9-19]

[Footnote 9-18: Ltr, Under SecNav for Congressman
Clyde Doyle of California. 24 Aug 49, MM(1),
GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 9-19: For examples of the Navy's official
explanation of steward duties, see Ltr, Actg SecNav
to Lester Granger, 22 Apr 46, QN/MM(2), and Ltr,
Under SecNav to Congressman Clyde Doyle of
California, 24 Aug 49; both in GenRecsNav. See also
Ltr, Chief, NavPers, to Dr. Carl Yaeger, 16 Oct 47,
P16-1, BuPersRecs, and Testimony of Capt Fred R.
Stickney, BuPers, and Vice Adm William M.
Fechteler, Chief of Naval Personnel, before the
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services (Fahy Cmte), 13
Jan and 28 Mar 49.]

There was truth in these assertions. Stewards had taken advantage of
relaxed regulations, flocking into the Regular Navy during the first
months of the changeover program. Many did so because they had many
years invested in a naval career. Some may have wanted the training
and experience to be gained from messman's service. In fact, some
stewards enjoyed rewarding careers in restaurant, club, and hotel work
after retirement. More surprising, considering the numerous complaints
about the branch from civil rights groups, the Steward's Branch
consistently reported the highest reenlistment rate in the Navy.
Understandably, the Navy constantly reiterated these statistics.
Actually, the stewards themselves were a major stumbling block to
reform of the branch. Few of the senior men aspired to other ratings;
many were reluctant to relinquish what they saw as the advantages of
the messman's life. Whatever its drawbacks, messman's duty proved to
be a popular assignment.[9-20]

[Footnote 9-20: Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb 70.]

The Navy's defense was logical, but not too convincing. Technically
the Steward's Branch was open to all, but in practice it remained
strictly nonwhite. Civil rights activists could point to the fact that
there were six times as many illiterate whites as Negroes in the
wartime Navy, yet none of these whites were ever assigned to the
Steward's Branch and none transferred to that branch of the Regular
Navy after the war.[9-21] Moreover, shortly after the war the Bureau of
Naval Personnel predicted a 7,577-man shortage in the Steward's
Branch, but the Navy made no attempt to fill the places with white
sailors. Instead, it opened the branch to Filipinos and Guamanians,
recruiting 3,500 of the islanders before the program was stopped on 4
July 1946, the date of Philippine independence. Some Navy recruiters
found other ways to fill steward quotas. The Urban League and others
reported cases in which black volunteers were rejected by recruiters
for any assignment but steward duty.[9-22] Nor did civil rights
spokesmen appreciate the distinction in petty officer rank the Navy
made between the steward and other sailors; they continued to
interpret it as part and parcel of the "injustices, lack of respect
and the disregard for the privileges accorded rated men in other
branches of the service."[9-23] They also resented the paternalism
implicit in the secretary's assurances that messman's duty was a haven
for men unable to compete.

[Footnote 9-21: Ltr, Dir, Plans and Oper Div, BuPers,
to Richard Lueking, Berea College, 6 Dec 46, P16.1,
BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 9-22: Department of National Defense,
"National Defense Conference on Racial Affairs," 26
Apr 48, morning session, pp. 46-47.]

[Footnote 9-23: Memo, Lt D. D. Nelson, office of
Public Relations, for Capt E. B. Dexter, Office of
Public Relations, 24 Aug 48, sub: Negro Stewards,
Petty Officer Ratings, Status of, PR 221-14003,
GenRecsNav.]

Some individuals in the department were aware of this resentment in
the black community and pushed for reform in the Steward's Branch. The
Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, John Nicholas Brown, (p. 242)
wanted more publicity given both in and outside the service to the
fact that the branch was not restricted to any one race and,
conversely, that Negroes were welcome in the general service.[9-24] In
view of the strong tradition of racial separateness in the stewards
rating, such publicity might be considered sheer sophistry, but no
more so than the suggestion made by a senior personnel official that
the Commissary Branch and Steward's Branch be combined to achieve a
racially balanced specialty.[9-25] Lester Granger, now outside the
official Navy family but still intimately concerned with the
department's racial affairs, also pleaded for a merger of the
commissary and steward functions. He reasoned that, since members of
the Commissary Branch could advance to true petty officer rating, such
a merger would provide a new avenue of advancement for stewards.