Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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The injustice of calling men to fight for freedom while
subjecting them to humiliating discrimination within the fighting
forces is at once apparent. Furthermore, by preventing entire
groups from making their maximum contribution to the national
defense, we weaken our defense to that extent and impose heavier
burdens on the remainder of the population.[12-13]

[Footnote 12-12: Parts of the survey of attitudes of
participants in the World War II integration of
platoons were included in remarks by Congresswoman
Helen G. Douglas, published in the _Congressional
Record_, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1 Feb 1946,
Appendix, pp. 432-443.]

[Footnote 12-13: _To Secure These Rights_, p. 162.]

The committee called for sweeping change in the armed forces,
recommending that Congress enact legislation, followed by appropriate
administrative action, to end all discrimination and segregation in
the services. Concluding that the recent service unification provided
a timely opportunity for revision of existing policies and practices,
the committee proposed a specific ban on discrimination and
segregation in all phases of recruitment, assignment, and training,
including selection for service schools and academies, as well as in
mess halls, quarters, recreational facilities, and post exchanges. It
also wanted commissions and promotions awarded on merit alone and
asked for new laws to protect servicemen from discrimination in
communities adjacent to military bases.[12-14] The committee wanted the
President to look beyond the integration of people working and living
on military bases, and it introduced a concept that would gain
considerable support in a future administration. The armed forces, it
declared, _should_ be used as an instrument of social change. World
War II had demonstrated that the services were a laboratory in which
citizens could be educated on a broad range of social and political
issues, and the administration was neglecting an effective technique
for teaching the public the advantages of providing equal treatment
and opportunity for all citizens.[12-15]

[Footnote 12-14: Ibid., pp. 162-63.]

[Footnote 12-15: Ibid., p. 47.]

President Truman deleted the recommendations on civil rights in the
services when he transmitted the committee's recommendations to
Congress in the form of a special message on 2 February 1948. Arguing
that the services' race practices were matters of executive interest
and pointing to recent progress toward better race relations in the
armed forces, the President told Congress that he had already
instructed the Secretary of Defense to take steps to eliminate
remaining instances of discrimination in the services as rapidly as
possible. He also promised that the personnel policies and practices
of all the services would be made uniform.[12-16]

[Footnote 12-16: Truman, Special Message to the
Congress on Civil Rights, 2 Feb 48, _Public Papers
of the President, 1948_, pp. 121-26.]

To press for civil rights legislation for the armed forces or even to
mention segregation was politically imprudent. Truman had two pieces
of military legislation to get through Congress: a new draft law and a
provision for universal military training. These he considered (p. 297)
too vital to the nation's defense to risk grounding on the shoals of
racial controversy. For the time being at least, integration of the
armed forces would have to be played down, and any civil rights
progress in the Department of Defense would have to depend on the
persuasiveness of James Forrestal.

[Illustration: TRUMAN'S CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGN _as seen by Washington
Star cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, March 14, 1948_.]

_Civil Rights and the Department of Defense_

The basic postwar reorganization of the National Military
Establishment, the National Security Act of 1947, created the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, a separate Department of the Air Force,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. It
also reconstituted the War Department as the Department of the Army
and gave legal recognition as a permanent agency to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. The principle of military unification that underlay the
reorganization plan was muted in the legislation that finally emerged
from Congress. Although the Secretary of Defense was given authority
to establish general policies and to exercise general direction (p. 298)
and control of the services, the services themselves retained a large
measure of autonomy in their internal administration and individual
service secretaries retained cabinet rank. In effect, the act created
a secretary without a department, a reorganization that largely
reflected the viewpoint of the Navy. The Army had fought for a much
greater degree of unification, which would not be achieved until the
passage of the National Security Act amendments of 1949. This
legislation redesignated the unified department the Department of
Defense, strengthened the powers of the Secretary of Defense, and
provided for uniform budgetary procedures. Although the services were
to be "separately administered," their respective secretaries
henceforward headed "military departments" without cabinet status.

The first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, was a man of
exceptional administrative talents, yet even before taking office he
expressed strong reservations on the wisdom of a unified military
department. As early as 30 July 1945, at breakfast with President
Truman during the Potsdam Conference, Forrestal questioned whether any
one man "was good enough to run the combined Army, Navy, and Air
Departments." What kind of men could the president get in peacetime,
he asked, to be under secretaries of War, Navy, and Air if they were
subordinate to a single defense secretary?[12-17] Speaking to Lester
Granger that same year on the power of the Secretary of the Navy to
order the Marine Corps to accept Negroes, Forrestal expressed
uncertainty about a cabinet officer's place in the scheme of things.
"Some people think the Secretary is god-almighty, but he's just a
god-damn civilian."[12-18] Even after his appointment as defense
secretary doubts lingered: "My chief misgivings about unification
derived from my fear that there would be a tendency toward
overconcentration and reliance on one man or one-group direction. In
other words, too much central control."[12-19]

[Footnote 12-17: Quoted in Walter Millis, ed., _The
Forrestal Diaries_ (New York: Viking Press, 1951),
p. 88.]

[Footnote 12-18: Quoted by Granger in the interview he
gave Nichols in 1954.]

[Footnote 12-19: Quoted in Millis, _Forrestal
Diaries_, p. 301.]

Forrestal's philosophy of management reinforced the limitations placed
on the Secretary of Defense by the National Security Act. He sought a
middle way in which the efficiency of a unified system could be
obtained without sacrificing what he considered to be the real
advantages of service autonomy. Thus, he supported a 1945 report of
the defense study group under Ferdinand Eberstadt that argued for a
"coordinated" rather than a "unitary" defense establishment.[12-20]
Practical experience modified his fears somewhat, and by October 1948,
convinced he needed greater power to control the defense
establishment, Forrestal urged that the language of the National
Security Act, which limited the Secretary of Defense to "general"
authority only over the military departments, be amended to eliminate
the word _general_. Yet he always retained his basic distrust of (p. 299)
dictation, preferring to understand and adjust rather than to conclude
and order.[12-21]

[Footnote 12-20: Ibid., pp. 117, 147. Timothy Stanley
describes the Eberstadt report as the Navy's
"constructive alternative" to unification. See
Stanley's _American Defense and National Security_,
p. 75; see also Hewes, _From Root to McNamara_, pp.
276-77. For a detailed analysis of defense
unification, see Lawrence Legere, Jr., "Unification
of the Armed Forces," Chapter VI, in CMH.]

[Footnote 12-21: Millis, _Forrestal Diaries_, pp. 301,
497.]

Nowhere was Forrestal's philosophy of government more evident than in
his approach to the problem of integration. His office would be
concerned with equal opportunity, he promised Walter White soon after
his elevation to the new post, but "the job of Secretary of Defense,"
he warned, "is one which will have to develop in an evolutionary
rather than a revolutionary manner." Further dashing hopes of sudden
reform, Forrestal added that specific racial problems, as distinct
from general policy matters, would remain the province of the
individual services.[12-22] He retained this attitude throughout his
tenure. He considered the President's instructions to end remaining
instances of discrimination in the services "in accord with my own
conception of my responsibilities under unification," and he was in
wholehearted agreement with a presidential wish that the National
Military Establishment work out the answer to its racial problems
through administrative action. He wanted to see a "more nearly uniform
approach to interracial problems by the three Services," but
experience had demonstrated, he believed, that racial problems could
not be solved simply by publishing an executive order or passing a
law. Racial progress would come from education. Such had been his
observation in the wartime Navy, and he was ready to promise that
"even greater progress will be made in the future." But, he added,
"progress must be made administratively and should not be put into
effect by fiat."[12-23]

[Footnote 12-22: Ltr, Forrestal to White, 21 Oct 47,
Day file, Forrestal Papers, Princeton University
Library.]

[Footnote 12-23: Remarks by James Forrestal at Dinner
Meeting of the National Urban League, 12 Feb 48,
copy in Misc file, Forrestal Papers; see also Ltr,
Forrestal to John N. Brown, 27 Oct 47, Day file,
ibid.]

Executive fiat was just what some of Forrestal's advisers wanted. For
example, his executive assistant, John H. Ohly, his civilian aide,
James C. Evans,[12-24] and Truman Gibson urged the secretary to consider
establishing an interservice committee along the lines of the old
McCloy committee to prepare a uniform racial policy that he could
apply to all the services. They wanted the committee to examine past
and current practices as well as the recent reports of the President's
Advisory Commission on Universal Training and the Committee on Civil
Rights and to make specific recommendations for carrying out and
policing department policy. Truman Gibson went to the heart of the
matter: the formulation of such an interservice committee would signal
to the black community better than anything else the defense
establishment's determination to change the racial situation. More and
more, he warned, the discrepancies among the services' racial
practices were attracting public attention. Most important to the
administration was the fact that these discrepancies were
strengthening opposition to universal military training and the
draft.[12-25]

[Footnote 12-24: In addition to his duties as Civilian
Aide to the Secretary of the Army, Evans was made
aide to the Secretary of Defense on 29 October
1947. (See Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 29 Oct 47,
D70-1-5, files of Historian, OSD.) Evans was
subsequently appointed "civilian assistant" to the
Secretary of Defense by Secretary Louis Johnson on
28 Apr 49. (See NME Press Release, 17-49-A.)]

[Footnote 12-25: Ltr, Gibson to Ohly, 25 Nov 47,
D54-1-3, Sec Def files.]

[Illustration: A. PHILIP RANDOLPH. (_Detail from
painting by Betsy G. Reyneau._)]

Gibson was no doubt referring to A. Philip Randolph, president (p. 300)
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and organizer of the 1940
March on Washington Movement, who had spoken out against the pending
legislation. Randolph was particularly concerned that the bill did not
prohibit segregation, and he quoted a member of the Advisory
Commission on Universal Training who admitted that the bill ignored
the racial issue because "the South might oppose UMT if Negroes were
included." Drafting eighteen-year olds into a segregated Army was a
threat to black progress, Randolph charged, because enforced segregation
made it difficult to break down other forms of discrimination.
Convinced that the Pentagon was trying to bypass the segregation
issue, Randolph and Grant Reynolds, a black clergyman and New York
politician, formed a Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service
and Training. They planned to submit a proposal to the President and
Congress for drafting a nondiscrimination measure for the armed
forces, and they were prepared to back up this demand with a march on
Washington--no empty gesture in an election year. Randolph had
impressive backing from black leaders, among them Dr. Channing H.
Tobias of the Civil Rights Committee, George S. Schuyler, columnist of
the Pittsburgh _Courier_, L. D. Reddick, curator of the Schomburg
Collection of the New York Public Library, and Joe Louis.[12-26]

[Footnote 12-26: New York Times, November 23, 1947;
_Herald Tribune_, November 23, 1947. See also L. D.
Reddick, "The Negro Policy of the American Army
Since World War II," _Journal of Negro History_ 38
(April 1953):194-215.]

Black spokesmen were particularly incensed by the attitude of the
Secretary of the Army and his staff. Walter White pointed out that
these officials continued to justify segregated units on the grounds
that segregation was--he quoted them--"in the interest of national
defense." White went to special pains to refute the Army's contention
that segregation was necessary because the Army had to conform to
local laws and customs. "How," he asked Secretary Forrestal,

can the imposition of segregation upon northern states having
clear-cut laws and policies in opposition to such practices be
justified by the Army?...

In view of President Truman's recent report to the Congress and
in view of the report of his Committee on Civil Rights condemning
segregation in the Armed Forces, I am at a loss to understand the
reluctance on the part of the Department of Defense to
immediately eliminate all vestiges of discrimination and (p. 301)
segregation in the Armed Forces of this country. As the
foremost defender of democratic principles in international
councils, the United States can ill afford to any longer
discriminate against its Negro citizens in its Armed Forces
solely because they were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be
born Negroes.[12-27]

[Footnote 12-27: Ltr, White to Forrestal, 17 Feb 48,
D54-1-3, SecDef files.]

Forrestal stubbornly resisted the pleas of his advisers and black
leaders that he assume a more active role. In the first place he had
real doubts concerning his authority to do so. Forrestal was also
aware of the consequences an integration campaign would have on
Capitol Hill, where he was in the midst of delicate negotiations on
defense measures. But most of all the role of crusader did not fit
him. "I have gone somewhat slowly," Forrestal had written in late
October 1947, "because I believe in the theory of having things to
talk about as having been done rather than having to predict them, and
... morale and confidence are easy to destroy but not easy to rebuild.
In other words, I want to be sure that any changes we make are changes
that accomplish something and not merely for the sake of change."[12-28]

[Footnote 12-28: Ltr, Forrestal to Rear Adm W. B.
Young, 23 Oct 47, quoted in Millis, _Forrestal
Diaries_, p. 334.]

To Forrestal equal opportunity was not a pious platitude, but a
practical means of solving the military's racial problems. Equal
opportunity was the tactic he had used in the Navy where he had
encouraged specialized training for all qualified Negroes. He
understood that on shipboard machinists ate and bunked with
machinists, firemen with firemen. Inaugurated in the fleet, the
practice naturally spread to the shore establishment, and equal
opportunity led inevitably to the integration of the general service.
Given the opportunity to qualify for all specialties, Negroes--albeit
their number was limited to the small group in the general
service--quickly gained equal treatment in off-the-job activities.
Forrestal intended to apply the same tactic to achieve the same
results in the other services.[12-29]

[Footnote 12-29: Interv, Blumenson with Marx Leva,
Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense
(1947-49) and later Assistant Secretary of Defense
(Legal and Legislative Affairs), 4 May 64, CMH
files.]

As in the past, he turned first to Lester Granger, his old friend from
the National Urban League. Acting on the recommendation of his special
assistant, Marx Leva, Forrestal invited Granger to the Pentagon to
discuss the department's racial problems with a view to holding a
general conference and symposium on the subject. As usual, Granger was
full of ideas, and he and the secretary agreed that Forrestal should
create a "critics group," which would discuss "Army and general
defense policies in the use of Negro personnel."[12-30] Granger suggested
a roster of black and white experts, influential in the black
community and representing most shades of opinion, but he would
exclude those apt to make political capital out of the issues.

[Footnote 12-30: Handwritten Memo, Leva for Forrestal,
attached to Ltr, White to Forrestal, 17 Feb 48;
Ltr, Leva to Granger, 19 Feb 48; Ltr, Granger to
Forrestal, 2 Mar 48. All in D54-1-3, SecDef files.
The quotation is from the 2 March letter.]

The Leva-Granger conference idea fitted neatly into Forrestal's
thinking. It offered the possibility of introducing to the services in
a systematic and documented way the complaints of responsible black
leaders while instructing those leaders in the manpower problems
confronting the postwar armed forces. He hoped the conference (p. 302)
would modify traditionalist attitudes toward integration while curbing
mounting unrest in the black community. Granger and Forrestal agreed
that the conference should be held soon. Although Granger wanted some
"good solid white representation" in the group, Forrestal decided
instead to invite fifteen black leaders to meet on 26 April in the
Pentagon; he alerted the service secretaries, asking them to attend or
to designate an assistant to represent them in each case.[12-31]

[Footnote 12-31: Memo, Marx Leva for SA et al., 13 Apr
48; idem for Forrestal, 24 Apr 48; ltr, SecDef to
All Invited, 10 Apr 48. All in D54-1-3, SecDef
files. Those invited were Truman Gibson; Dr.
Channing Tobias; Dr. Sadie T. M. Alexander; Mary
McLeod Bethune; Dr. John W. Davis of West Virginia
State College; Dr. Benjamin E. Mays of Morehouse
College; Dr. Mordecai Johnson of Howard University;
P. B. Young, Jr., of the Norfolk _Journal and
Guide_; Willard Townsend of the United Transport
Service Employees; Rev. John H. Johnson of New
York; Walter White; Hobson E. Reynolds of the
International Order of Elks; Bishop J. W. Gregg of
Kansas City; Loren Miller of Los Angeles; and
Charles Houston of Washington, D.C. Unable to
attend, White sent his assistant Roy Wilkins,
Townsend sent George L. P. Weaver, and Mrs. Bethune
was replaced by Ira F. Lewis of the Pittsburgh
_Courier_.]

Announcement of the conference was upstaged in the press by the
activities of some civil rights militants, including those whom
Granger sought to exclude from the Forrestal conference because he
thought they would make a political issue of the war against
segregation. Forrestal first learned of the militants' plans from
members of the National Negro Publishers Association, a group of
publishers and editors of important black journals who were about to
tour European installations as guests of the Army.[12-32] At Granger's
suggestion Forrestal had met with the publishers and editors to
explain the causes for the delay in desegregating the services.
Instead, he found himself listening to an impassioned demand for
immediate change. Ira F. Lewis, president of the Pittsburgh _Courier_
and spokesman for the group, told the secretary that the black
community did not expect the services to be a laboratory or
clearinghouse for processing the social ills of the nation, but it
wanted to warn the man responsible for military preparedness that the
United States could not afford another war with one-tenth of its
population lacking the spirit to fight. The problem of segregation
could best be solved by the policymakers. "The colored people of the
country have a high regard for you, Mr. Secretary, as a square
shooter," Lewis concluded. And from Forrestal they expected
action.[12-33]

[Footnote 12-32: Representing eight papers, a cross
section of the influential black press, the
journalists included Ira F. Lewis and William G.
Nunn, Pittsburgh _Courier_; Cliff W. Mackay,
_Afro-American_; Louis Martin and Charles Browning,
Chicago _Defender_; Thomas W. Young and Louis R.
Lautier, Norfolk _Journal and Guide_; Carter
Wesley, Houston _Defender_; Frank L. Stanley,
Louisville _Defender_; Dowdal H. Davis, Kansas City
_Call_; Dan Burley, _Amsterdam News_. See Evans,
list of Publishers and Editors of Negro Newspapers,
Pentagon, 18 Mar 48, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 12-33: Sentiments of the meeting were
summarized in Ltr, Ira F. Lewis to Forrestal, 24
Mar 48; see also Ltr, Granger to Forrestal, 2 Mar
48; both in D54-1-4, SecDef files.]

While black newspapermen were pressing the executive branch, Randolph
and his Committee Against Jim Crow were demanding congressional
action. Randolph concentrated on one explosive issue, the Army's
procurement of troops. The first War Department plans for postwar
manpower procurement were predicated on some form of universal
military training, a new concept for the United States. The plans
immediately came under fire from Negroes because the Army, citing the
Gillem Board Report as its authority, had specified that black
recruits be trained in segregated units. The Army had also specified
that the black units form parts of larger, racially mixed units and
would be trained in racially mixed camps.[12-34] The President's (p. 303)
Advisory Commission on Universal Training (the Compton Commission),
appointed to study the Army's program, strongly objected to the
segregation provisions, but to no avail.[12-35] As if to signal its
intentions the Army trained an experimental universal military
training unit in 1947 at Fort Knox that carefully excluded black
volunteers.

[Footnote 12-34: WD Ltr, AGAO-S 353 (28 May 47),
WDGOT-M, 11 Jun 47.]

[Footnote 12-35: _A Program for National Security:
Report of the President's Advisory Commission on
Universal Training, 29 May 1947_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1947), p. 42.]

The showdown between civil rights organizations and the administration
over universal military training never materialized. Faced with
chronic opposition to the program and the exigencies of the cold war,
the administration quietly shelved universal training and concentrated
instead on the reestablishment of the selective service system. When
black attention naturally shifted to the new draft legislation,
Randolph was able to capitalize on the determination of many leaders
in the civil rights movement to defeat any draft law that countenanced
the Army's racial policy. Appearing at the Senate Armed Services
Committee hearings on the draft bill, Randolph raised the specter of
civil disobedience, pledging