Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 11-66: A group created to review policy and
make recommendations to the Chief of Staff when
called upon, the Air Board consisted at this time
of the Assistant Chiefs of the Air Staff, the Air
Inspector, the Air Comptroller, the Director of
Information, the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff
for Research and Development, and other officials
when appropriate.]

[Footnote 11-67: Memo, Maj Leon Bell for Zuckert, 27
Oct 48, SecAF files. Nugent later succeeded Edwards
as the chief Air Force personnel officer.]

[Footnote 11-68: This attitude is strongly displayed
in the USAF Oral History Program, Interviews with
Lt Gen Richard E. Nugent, 8 Jun 73, and Marr, 1 Oct
73.]

[Footnote 11-69: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 11-70: Colonel Marr recalled a different
chronology for the Air Force integration plan.
According to Marr, his proposals were forwarded by
Edwards to Symington who in turn discussed them at
a meeting of the Secretary of Defense's Personnel
Policy Board sometime before June 1948. The board
rejected the plan at the behest of Secretary of the
Army Royall, but later in the year outside pressure
caused it to be reconsidered. Nothing is available
in the files to corroborate Marr's recollections,
nor do the other participants remember that Royall
was ever involved in the Air Force's internal
affairs. The records do not show when the Air Force
study of race policy, which originated in the Air
Board in May 1948, evolved into the plan for
integration that Marr wrote and the Chief of Staff
signed in December 1948, but it seems unlikely that
the plan would have been ready before June. See
Ltrs, Marr to author, 19 Jun 70, and 28 Jul 70, CMH
files; see also USAF Oral Hist Interv with Marr.]

[Illustration: COLONEL MARR.]

As it evolved during the months of deliberation,[11-71] the Air Force
study of black manpower weighed Air Force practices against the Gillem
Board Report and found them "considerably divergent" from the policy
as outlined. It isolated several reasons for this divergence. Black
airmen on the whole, as measured by classification tests, were
unsuitable and inadequate for operating all-black air units organized
and trained for modern combat. To achieve a balance of skills and
training in black units was a "never ending problem for which there
appears to be no solution under either the current Air Force policies
or the policies recommended by the Gillem Board." In short, practices
with respect to Negroes were "wasteful, deleterious to military
effectiveness and lacking in wartime application."

[Footnote 11-71: The Air Force integration plan
underwent considerable revision and modification
before its submission to the Secretary of Defense
in January 1949. The quotations in the next
paragraphs are taken from the version approved by
the Chief of Staff on 29 December 1948.]

Edwards and his staff saw several advantages in complete (p. 289)
integration. Wherever qualified black airmen had been permitted to
compete with whites on their individual qualifications and abilities,
the Negroes "achieved a certain amount of acceptance and recognition."
Students in some schools lived and learned side by side as a matter of
practical necessity. "This degree of integration and acceptance on a
competitive basis has been eminently successful and has to a
remarkable degree solved the 'Negro problem' for the training schools
involved." At some bases qualified black airmen were administratively
assigned to black units but actually performed duties in white units.
Some commanders had requested that these men be permanently
transferred and assigned to the white units because the men deserved
higher grades but could not receive them in black units and because it
was poor management to have individuals performing duties for one
military organization and living under the administrative jurisdiction
of another.

In the end consideration of full integration was dropped in favor of a
program based on the Navy's postwar integration of its general
service. Edwards and his personnel staff dismissed the Navy's problems
with stewards and its difficulty in enlisting skilled Negroes as
temporary embarrassments with little practical consequence. This
problem apparently allowed an economic and efficient use of Negroes
and also "relieved the Navy of the necessity for repeated efforts to
justify an untenable position." They saw several practical advantages
in a similar policy for the Air Force. It would allow the elimination
of the 10 percent quota. The inactivation of some black units--"and
the pronounced relief of the problems involved in maintaining those
units under present conditions"--could be accomplished without
injustice to Negroes and with benefit to the Air Force. Nor would the
integration of qualified Negroes in technical and combat units
appreciably alter current practices; according to contemporary
estimates such skilled men would never total more that 1 percent of
the service's manpower.

The logic of social justice might have led to total integration, but
it would not have solved the Air Force's pressing problem of too many
unskilled blacks. It was consideration of military efficiency,
therefore, that led these personnel experts to propose a system of
limited integration along the lines of the Navy's postwar policy. Such
a system, they concluded, would release the Air Force from its quota
obligation--and hence its continuing surplus of unskilled men--and
free it to assign its relatively small group of skilled black recruits
where they were needed and might advance.

Although limited, the proposed reform was substantial enough to arouse
opposition. General Edwards reported overwhelming opposition to any
form of integration among Air Force officers, and never during the
spring of 1948 did the Chief of Staff seriously consider even partial
integration.[11-72] But if integration, even in a small dose, was
unpalatable, widespread inefficiency was intolerable. And a new (p. 290)
service, still in the process of developing policy, might embrace
the new and the practical, especially if pressure were exerted from
above. Assistant Secretary Zuckert intimated as much when he finally
replied to James Evans, "You have my personal assurance that our
present position is not in the interest of maintaining the status quo,
but it is in anticipation of a more progressive and more satisfactory
action in the relatively near future."[11-73]

[Footnote 11-72: Memo, Edwards for SecAF, 29 Apr 48,
sub: Conference With Group of Prominent Negroes,
Negro Affairs 1948, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 11-73: Memo, Zuckert to Evans, 22 Jul 48,
sub: Negro Air Units, SecAF files.]

CHAPTER 12 (p. 291)

The President Intervenes

On 26 July 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981,
calling on the armed forces to provide equal treatment and opportunity
for black servicemen. This act has variously been described as an
example of presidential initiative, the capstone of the Truman civil
rights program, and the climax of the struggle for racial equality in
the armed forces. But in some ways the order was simply a practical
response to a presidential dilemma.

The President's order was related to the advent of the cold war.
Developments in the Middle East and Europe testified to the ambitions
of the Soviet Union, and many Americans feared the spread of communism
throughout the world, a threat more ominous with the erosion of
American military strength since World War II. In March 1947 Truman
enunciated a new foreign policy calling for the containment of Soviet
expansion and pledging economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey.
A year later he asked Congress to adopt the Marshall Plan for economic
aid to Europe, authorize military training, and enact a new selective
service law to maintain the armed forces at expanded levels. That same
month his principal military advisers met at Key West, Florida, to
discuss new military roles and missions for the armed forces, grapple
with paralyzing divisions among the services, and re-form the military
establishment into a genuinely unified whole.[12-1] As if to underscore
the urgency of these measures, the Soviet Union began in April 1948 to
harass Allied troops in Berlin, an action that would develop into a
full-scale blockade by June.

[Footnote 12-1: On the development of cold war roles
and missions for the services, see Timothy W.
Stanley, _American Defense and National Security_
(Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1956), Chapter
VIII.]

Integration of the armed forces hardly loomed large on the
international scene, but if the problem of race appeared insignificant
to military planners, the sheer number of Negroes in the armed forces
gave them new prominence in national defense. Because of postwar
racial quotas, particularly in the Army and Air Force, black
servicemen now constituted a significant segment of the service
population, and consequently their abilities and well-being had a
direct bearing on the nation's cold war defenses. The black community
represented 10 percent of the country's manpower, and this also
influenced defense planning. Black threats to boycott the segregated
armed forces could not be ignored, and civil rights demands had to be
considered in developing laws relating to selective service and
universal training. Nor could the administration overlook the fact
that the United States had become a leading protagonist in a cold war
in which the sympathies of the undeveloped and mostly colored world
would soon assume a special importance. Inasmuch as integration of
the services had become an almost universal demand of the black (p. 292)
community, integration became, willy-nilly, an important defense
issue.

A second stimulus to improvement of the black serviceman's position
was the Truman administration's strong civil rights program, which
gave executive sanction to a national movement started some years
before. The civil rights movement was the product of many factors,
including the federal government's increased sense of responsibility
for the welfare of all its citizens, a sense that had grown out of the
New Deal and a world war which expanded horizons and increased
economic power for much of the black population. The Supreme Court had
recently accelerated this movement by broadening its interpretation of
the Fourteenth Amendment. In the black community itself greater
participation in elections and new techniques in community action were
eroding discriminatory traditions and practices in many communities.

The civil rights movement had in fact progressed by 1948 to a stage at
which it was politically attractive for a Democratic president to
assume a vigorous civil rights stance. The urban black vote had become
a major goal of Truman's election campaign, and he was being pressed
repeatedly by his advisers to demonstrate his support for black
interests. A presidential order on armed forces integration logically
followed because the services, conspicuous practitioners of
segregation and patently susceptible to unilateral action on the part
of the Chief Executive, were obvious and necessary targets in the
black voters' campaign for civil rights.

Finally, the integration order resulted in part from the move toward
service unification and the emergence of James V. Forrestal as
Secretary of Defense. Despite misgivings over centralized control of
the nation's defense establishment and overconcentration of power in
the hands of a Secretary of Defense, Forrestal soon discovered that
certain problems rising out of common service experiences naturally
converged on the office of the secretary. Both by philosophy and
temperament he was disposed to avoid a clash with the services over
integration. He remained sensitive to their interests and rights, and
he frankly doubted the efficacy of social change through executive
fiat. Yet Forrestal was not impervious to the aspirations of the civil
rights activists; guided by a humane interest in racial equality, he
made integration a departmental goal. His technique for achieving
integration, however, proved inadequate in the face of strong service
opposition, and finally the President, acting on the basis of these
seemingly unrelated motives, had to issue the executive order to
strengthen the defense secretary's hand.

_The Truman Administration and Civil Rights_

Executive and legislative interest in the civil rights of black
Americans reached a level in 1948 unmatched since Reconstruction. The
President himself was the catalyst. By creating a presidential
committee on civil rights and developing a legislative program based
on its findings, Truman brought the black minority into the political
arena and committed the federal government to a program of social
legislation that it has continued to support ever since. Little in (p. 293)
the President's background suggested he would sponsor basic social
changes. He was a son of the middle border, from a family firmly
dedicated to the Confederate cause. His appreciation of black
aspirations was hardly sophisticated, as he revealed to a black
audience in 1940: "I wish to make it clear that I am not appealing for
social equality of the Negro. The Negro himself knows better than
that, and the highest types of Negro leaders say quite frankly they
prefer the society of their own people. Negroes want justice, not
social relations."[12-2]

[Footnote 12-2: Jonathan Daniels, _The Man of
Independence_ (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950), p.
338. The quotation is from a speech before the
National Colored Democratic Convention, Chicago,
reprinted in the _Congressional Record_, 76th
Cong., 3d sess., vol. 86, 5 Aug 1940, Appendix, pp.
5367-69.]

Nor did his attitude change drastically in later years. In 1961, seven
years after the Supreme Court's vital school integration decision,
Truman was calling the Freedom Riders "meddlesome intruders who should
stay at home and attend to their own business." His suggestion to
proprietors of lunch counters undergoing sit-ins was to kick out
unwelcome customers.[12-3] But if he failed to appreciate the scope of
black demands, Truman nevertheless demonstrated as early as 1940 an
acute awareness of the connection between civil rights for blacks and
civil liberties for all Americans:

In giving Negroes the rights which are theirs we are only acting
in accord with our own ideals of a true democracy. If any class
or race can be permanently set apart from, or pushed down below
the rest in political and civil rights, so may any other class or
race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more powerful
associates, and we may say farewell to the principles on which we
count our safety.[12-4]

[Footnote 12-3: Quoted in James Peck, _Freedom Ride_
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), pp. 154-55.]

[Footnote 12-4: Quoted in Daniels, _Man of
Independence_, pp. 339-40.]

He would repeat these sentiments to other gatherings, including the
assembled delegates of the NAACP's 1946 convention.[12-5] The President's
civil rights program would be based, then, on a practical concern for
the rights of the majority. Neither his social philosophy nor his
political use of black demands should detract from his achievements in
the field of civil rights.

[Footnote 12-5: Msg, HST to NAACP Convention, 29 Jun
47, _Public Papers of the President, 1947_
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), pp.
311-13.]

It was probably just as well that Truman adopted a pragmatic approach
to civil rights, for there was little social legislation a reform
president could hope to get through the postwar Congresses. Dominated
by a conservative coalition that included the Dixiecrats, a group of
sometimes racially reactionary southerners, Congress showed little
interest in civil rights. The creation of a permanent Fair Employment
Practices Commission, the one piece of legislation directly affecting
Negroes and the only current test of congressional intent in civil
rights, was floundering on Capitol Hill. Truman conspicuously
supported the fair employment measure, but did little else
specifically in the first year after the war to advance civil rights.
Instead he seemed content to carry on with the New Deal approach to
the problem: improve the social condition of all Americans and the
condition of the minorities will also improve. In this vein his first
domestic program concentrated on national projects for housing,
health, and veterans' benefits.

The conversion of Harry Truman into a forceful civil rights (p. 294)
advocate seems to have come about, at least partially, from his
exposure to what he later called the "anti-minority" incidents visited
on black servicemen and civilians in 1946.[12-6] Although the lynchings,
property destruction, and assaults never matched the racial violence
that followed World War I, they were enough to convince many civil
rights leaders that the pattern of racial strife was being repeated.
Some of these men, along with a group of labor executives and
clergymen, formed a National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence
to warn the American public against the dangers of racial intolerance.
A delegation from this committee, with Walter White as spokesman, met
with the President on 19 September 1946 to demand government action.
White described the scene:

The President sat quietly, elbows resting on the arms of his
chair and his fingers interlocked against his stomach as he
listened with a grim face to the story of the lynchings.... When
I finished, the President exclaimed in his flat, midwestern
accent, "My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We've
got to do something!"[12-7]

[Footnote 12-6: Harry S. Truman, _Memoirs_ (New York:
Doubleday, 1958), II:180-81; White, _A Man Called
White_, pp. 330-31. Truman's concept of civil
rights is analyzed in considerable detail in Donald
R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, _Quest and
Response: Minority Rights and the Truman
Administration_ (Lawrence, Kansas: University of
Kansas Press, 1973), Chapter III.]

[Footnote 12-7: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]

But the Truman administration had nearly exhausted the usual remedies
open to it. The Attorney General had investigated the lynchings and
Klan activities and the President had spoken out strongly and
repeatedly against mob violence but without clear and pertinent civil
rights legislation presidential exhortations and investigations
counted for very little. Civil rights leaders like White understood
this, and, given the mood of Congress, they were resigned to the lack
of legislative support. Nevertheless, it was in this context that the
President decided to create a committee to investigate and report on
the status of civil rights in America.

The concept of a federal civil rights group had been circulating in
the executive branch for some time. After the Detroit race riot in
1943, presidential assistant Jonathan Daniels had organized a
committee to deal with racial troubles. Proposals to create a national
organization to reduce racial tensions were advanced later in the war,
principally by Saul K. Padover, a minority specialist in the Interior
Department, and David K. Niles of the White House staff. Little came
of the committee idea, however, because Roosevelt was convinced that
any steps associated with integration would prove divisive and were
unwise during wartime.[12-8] With the war over and a different political
climate prevailing, Niles, now senior White House adviser on minority
affairs, proposed the formation of a committee not only to investigate
racial violence but also to explore the entire subject of civil
rights.

[Footnote 12-8: Intervs, Nichols with Oscar Ewing,
former federal security administrator and senior
presidential adviser, and Jonathan Daniels, 1954,
in Nichols Collection, CMH; see also McCoy and
Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, p. 49.]

Walter White and his friends greeted the idea with some skepticism.
They had come demanding action, but were met instead with another
promise of a committee and the probability of interminable (p. 295)
congressional debate and unproductive hearings.[12-9] But this time,
for several reasons, it would be different. In the first place the
civil rights leaders underestimated the sincerity of Truman's reaction
to the racial violence. He had quickly agreed to create Niles's
committee by executive order to save it from possible pigeonholing at
the hands of a hostile Congress. He had also given the group, called
the President's Committee on Civil Rights, a broad directive "to
determine whether and in what respect current law enforcement measures
and the authority and means possessed by Federal, State, and local
governments may be strengthened and improved to safeguard the civil
rights of the people."[12-10] The civil rights leaders also failed to
gauge the effect Republican victories in the 1946 congressional
elections would have on the administration. Finding it necessary to
court the Negro and other minorities and hoping to confound
congressional opposition, the administration sought a strong civil
rights program to put before the Eightieth Congress. Thus, the
committee's recommendations would get respectful attention in the
White House. Finally, neither the civil rights leaders nor the
President could have foreseen the effectiveness of the committee
members. Serving under Charles E. Wilson, president of the General
Electric Company, the group included among its fifteen members
distinguished church leaders, public service lawyers, the presidents
of Dartmouth College and the University of North Carolina, and
prominent labor executives. The committee had two black members, Sadie
T. M. Alexander, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and Channing H. Tobias,
director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Its members not only prepared a
comprehensive survey of the condition of civil rights in America but
also presented to the President on 29 October 1947 a far-reaching
series of recommendations, in effect a program for corrective action
that would serve as a bench mark for civil rights progress for many
years.[12-11]

[Footnote 12-9: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]

[Footnote 12-10: Executive Order 9808, 5 Dec 46.]

[Footnote 12-11: In addition to Chairman Wilson, the
following people served on the committee: Sadie T.
M. Alexander, James B. Carey, John S. Dickey,
Morris L. Ernst, Roland B. Gittelsohn, Frank P.
Graham, Francis J. Haas, Charles Luckman, Francis
P. Matthews, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Knox
Sherrill, Boris Shishkin, Dorothy Tilly, and
Channing Tobias.]

[Illustration: WALTER WHITE.]

The group recommended the concentration of civil rights work in the
Department of Justice, the establishment of a permanent civil rights
commission, a federal antilynching act, a permanent Fair Employment
Practices Commission, and legislation to correct discrimination in
voting and naturalization laws. It also examined the state of (p. 296)
civil rights in the armed forces and incidentally publicized the
long-ignored survey of black infantry platoons that had fought in
Europe in 1945.[12-12] It concluded: