Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 14-48: Fahy Cmte Hearings, 28 Apr 49,
morning session.]

One question led to another. If there were no authorizations for black
soldiers in 198 specialties, what were the chances for qualified
Negroes to attend schools that trained men for these specialties? It
turned out that of the 106 school courses available after a man
finished basic training, only twenty-one were open to Negroes. That
is, 81 percent of the courses offered by the Army were closed to
Negroes. The Army denied that discrimination was involved. Since (p. 355)
existing black units could not use the full range of the Army's
military occupational specialties, went the official line of
reasoning, it would be wasteful and inefficient to train men for
nonexistent jobs in those units. It followed that the Organization and
Training Division must exclude many Negroes from being classified in
specialties for which they were qualified and from Army schools that
would train others for such unneeded specialties.

[Illustration: ROY DAVENPORT.]

This reasoning was in the interest of segregation, not efficiency, and
Davenport and others were able to prove to the committee's
satisfaction that the Army's segregation policy could be defended
neither in terms of manpower efficiency nor common fairness. With
Davenport and Fowler's testimony, Charles Fahy later explained, he
began to "see light for a solution."[14-49] He began to see how he would
probably be able to gain the committee's double objective: the
announcement of an integration policy for the Army and the
establishment of a practical program that would immediately begin
moving the Army from segregation to integration.

[Footnote 14-49: Interv, Nichols with Fahy, in Nichols
Collection, CMH.]

In fact, military efficiency was a potent weapon which, if skillfully
handled, might well force the Army into important concessions leading
to integration. Taking its cue from Davenport and Fowler, the
committee would contend that, as the increasing complexity of war had
created a demand for skilled manpower, the country could ill-afford to
use any of its soldiers below their full capacity or fail to train
them adequately. With a logic understandable to President and public
alike, the committee could later state that since maximum military
efficiency demanded that all servicemen be given an equal opportunity
to discover and exploit their talents, an indivisible link existed
between military efficiency and equal opportunity.[14-50] Thus equal
opportunity in the name of military efficiency became one of the
committee's basic premises; until the end of its existence the
committee hammered away at this premise.

[Footnote 14-50: Fahy Cmte, "Second Interim Report to
the President," 27 Jul 49, FC file.]

While the committee's logic was unassailable when applied to the
plight of a relatively small number of talented and qualified black
soldiers, a different solution would have to prevail when the far
larger number of Negroes ineligible for Army schooling either by
talent, inclination, or previous education was considered. Here the
Army's plea for continued segregation in the name of military efficiency
carried some weight. How could it, the Army asked, endanger the
morale and efficiency of its fighting forces by integrating these (p. 356)
men? How could it, with its low enlistment standards, abandon its
racial quota and risk enlarging the already burdensome concentration
of "professional black privates?" The committee admitted the justice
of the Army's claim that the higher enlistment score required by the
Navy and Air Force resulted in the Army's getting more than its share
of men in the low-test categories IV and V. And while Kenworthy
believed that immediate integration was less likely to cause serious
trouble than the Army's announced plan of mixing the races in
progressively smaller units, he too accepted the argument that it
would be dangerous to reassign the Army's group of professional black
privates to white units. Fahy saw the virtue of the Army's position
here; his committee never demanded the immediate, total integration of
the Army.

One solution to the problem, reducing the number of soldiers with low
aptitude by forcing the other services to share equally in the burden
of training and assimilating the less gifted and often black enlistee
and draftee, had recently been rejected by the Navy and Air Force, a
rejection endorsed by Secretary of Defense Forrestal. Even in the
event that the Army could raise its enlistment standards and the other
services be induced to lower theirs, much time would elapse before the
concentration of undereducated Negroes could be broken up. Davenport
was aware of all this when he limited his own recommendations to the
committee to matters concerning the integration of black specialists,
the opening of all Army schools to Negroes, and the establishment of
some system to monitor the Army's implementation of these reforms.[14-51]

[Footnote 14-51: Interv, author with Davenport, 31 Oct
71.]

Having gained some experience, the committee was now able to turn the
Army's efficiency argument against the racial quota. It decided that
the quota had helped defeat the Gillem Board's aim of using Negroes on
a broad professional scale. It pointed out that, when forced by
manpower needs and the selective service law to set a lower enlistment
standard, the Army had allowed its black quota to be filled to a great
extent by professional privates and denied to qualified black men, who
could be used on a broad professional scale, the chance to enlist.[14-52]
It was in the name of military efficiency, therefore, that the
committee adopted a corollary to its demand for equal opportunity in
specialist training and assignment: the racial quota must be abandoned
in favor of a quota based on aptitude.

[Footnote 14-52: Fahy Cmte, "Initial Recommendations
by the President's Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services,"
attached to Fahy Cmte, "A Progress Report for the
President", 7 Jun 49, FC file.]

Fahy was not sure, he later admitted, how best to proceed at this
point with the efficiency issue, but his committee obviously had to
come up with some kind of program if only to preserve its
administrative independence in the wake of Secretary Johnson's
directive. As Kenworthy pointed out, short of demanding the
elimination of all segregated units, there was little the committee
could do that went beyond Johnson's statement.[14-53] Fahy, at least, was
not prepared to settle for that. His solution, harmonizing with his
belief in the efficacy of long-range practical change and his estimate
of the committee's strength vis-a-vis the services' strength, was (p. 357)
to prepare a "list of suggestions to guide the Army and Navy in its
[_sic_] determinations."[14-54] The suggestions, often referred to by
the committee as its "Initial Recommendations," would in the fullness
of time, Fahy thought, effect substantial reforms in the way the Negro
was employed by the services.

[Footnote 14-53: Ltr, Kenworthy to Fahy, 5 May 49,
Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

[Footnote 14-54: Fahy Cmte, "A Progress Report for the
President," 7 Jun 49, FC file.]

The committee's recommendations, sent to the Personnel Policy Board in
late May 1949, are easily summarized.[14-55] Questioning why the Navy's
policy, "so progressive on its face," had attracted so few Negroes
into the general service, the committee suggested that Negroes
remembered the Navy's old habit of restricting them to servant duties.
It wanted the Navy to aim a vigorous recruitment program at the black
community in order to counteract this lingering suspicion. At the same
time the committee wanted the Navy to make a greater effort among
black high school students to attract qualified Negroes into the Naval
Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. To reinforce these campaigns
and to remove one more vestige of racial inequality in naval service,
the committee also suggested that the Navy give to chief stewards all
the perquisites of chief petty officers. The lack of this rating, in
particular, had continued to cast doubt on the Navy's professed
policy, the committee charged. "There is no reason, except custom, why
the chief steward should not be a chief petty officer, and that custom
seems hardly worth the suspicion it evokes." Finally, the committee
wanted the Navy to adopt the same entry standards as the Army. It
rejected the Navy's claim that men who scored below ninety were
unusable in the general service and called for an analysis by outside
experts to determine what jobs in the Navy could be performed by men
who scored between seventy and ninety. At the same time the committee
reiterated that it did not intend the Navy or any of the services to
lower the qualifications for their highly skilled positions.

[Footnote 14-55: Min, War Council Mtg, 24 May 49; Fahy
Cmte, "Initial Recommendations by the President's
Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity
in the Armed Services," attached to Fahy Cmte, "A
Progress Report for the President", 7 Jun 49, FC
file. Excerpts from the "Initial Recommendations"
were sent to the services via the Personnel Policy
Board, which explains the document in the SecNav's
files with the penciled notation "Excerpt from Fahy
Recommendation 5/19." See also Ltr, Kenworthy to
Fahy, 16 May 49, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

The committee also suggested to the Air Force that it establish a
common enlistment standard along with the other services. Commenting
that the Air Force had apparently been able to use efficiently
thousands of men with test scores below ninety in the past, the
committee doubted that the contemporary differential in Air Force and
Army standards was justified. With a bow to Secretary Symington's new
and limited integration policy, the committee deferred further
recommendations.

It showed no such reluctance when it came to the Army. It wanted the
Army to abolish racial considerations in the designation of military
occupational specialties, attendance at its schools, and use of its
school graduates in their military specialties. In line with the
establishment of a parity of enlistment standards among the services,
the committee wanted the Army to abandon its racial quotas. The
committee did not insist on an immediate end to segregation in the
Army, believing that no matter how desirable, such a drastic change
could not be accomplished, as Davenport had warned, without very (p. 358)
serious administrative confusion. Besides, there were other pragmatic
reasons for adopting the gradualist approach. For the committee to
demand immediate and complete integration would risk an outcry from
Capitol Hill that might endanger the whole reform program. Gradual
change, on the other hand, would allow time for qualified Negroes to
attend school courses, and the concept that Negroes had a right to
equal educational opportunities was one that was very hard for the
segregationists to attack, given the American belief in education and
the right of every child to its benefits.[14-56] If the Army could be
persuaded to adopt these recommendations, the committee reasoned, the
Army itself would gradually abolish segregation. The committee's
formula for equality of treatment and opportunity in the Army,
therefore, was simple and straightforward, but each of its parts had
to be accepted to achieve the whole.

[Footnote 14-56: Memo, Kenworthy for Chief of Military
History, 13 Oct 76, CMH.]

As it was, the committee's program for gradual change proved to be a
rather large dose for senior service officials. An Army representative
on the Personnel Policy Board staff characterized the committee's work
as "presumptuous," "subjective," and "argumentative." He also charged
the committee with failing to interpret the executive order and thus
leaving unclear whether the President wanted across-the-board
integration, and if so how soon.[14-57] The Personnel Policy Board
ignored these larger questions when it considered the subject on 26
May, focusing its opposition instead on two of the committee's
recommendations. It wanted Secretary Johnson to make "a strong
representation" to Fahy against the suggestion that there be a parity
of scores for enlistment in the services. The board also unanimously
opposed the committee's suggestion that the Army send all qualified
Negroes to specialty schools within eighteen months of enlistment,
arguing that such a policy would be administratively impossible to
enforce and would discriminate against white servicemen.[14-58]

[Footnote 14-57: Col J. F. Cassidy, Comments on
Initial Recommendations of Fahy Committee (ca. 26
May 49) FC file.]

[Footnote 14-58: Min, PPB Mtg, 26 May 49, FC file.]

Chairman Reid temporized somewhat in his recommendations to Secretary
Johnson. He admitted that the whole question of parity of entrance
standards was highly controversial. He recognized the justice in
establishing universal standards for enlistment through selective
service, but at the same time he believed it unfair to ask any service
to accept volunteers of lesser quality than it could obtain through
good enlistment and recruitment methods. He wanted Johnson to
concentrate his attack on the parity question.[14-59]

[Footnote 14-59: Memo, Reid for Under SecDef, 23 May
49, sub: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in
the Armed Services; idem for SecDef, 1 Jun 49, sub:
Fahy Committee Initial Recommendations--Discussion
With Members of the Fahy Committee; both in PPB
files. See also Memo, Ohly for Reid, 26 May 49,
sub: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the
Armed Services, FC file.]

Before Johnson could act on his personnel group's recommendations, the
Army and Navy formally submitted their second replies to his directive
on the executive order. Surprisingly, the services provided a measure
of support for the Fahy Committee. For its part, the Navy was under
particular pressure to develop an acceptable program. It, after all,
had been the first to announce a general integration policy for which
it had, over the years, garnered considerable praise. But now it (p. 359)
was losing this psychological advantage under steady and persistent
criticism from civil rights leaders, the President's committee, and,
finally, the Secretary of Defense himself. Proud of its racial policy
and accustomed to the rapport it had always enjoyed with Forrestal,
the Navy was suddenly confronted with a new Secretary of Defense who
bluntly noted its "lack of any response" to his 6 April directive,
thus putting the Navy in the same league as the Army.

Secretary Johnson's rejection of the Navy's response made a
reexamination of its race program imperative, but it was still
reluctant to follow the Fahy Committee's proposals completely.
Although the personnel bureau had already planned special recruitment
programs, as well as a survey of all jobs in the Navy and the mental
requirements for each, the idea of making chief petty officers out of
chief stewards caused "great anger and resentment in the upper reaches
of BuPers," Capt. Fred Stickney of the bureau admitted to a
representative of the committee. Stickney was confident that the
bureau's opposition to this change could be surmounted, but he was not
so sure that the Navy would surrender on the issue of equality of
enlistment standards. The committee's arguments to the contrary, the
Navy remained convinced that standardizing entrance requirements for
all the services would mean "lowering the calibre of men taken into
the Navy."[14-60]

[Footnote 14-60: Ltr, Kenworthy to Fahy, 24 May 49, FC
file.]

But even here the Navy proved unexpectedly conciliatory. Replying to
the Secretary of Defense a second time on 23 May, Acting Secretary Dan
Kimball committed the Navy to a program that incorporated to a great
extent the recommendations of the Fahy Committee, including raising
the status of chief stewards and integrating recruit training in the
Marine Corps. While he did not agree with the committee's proposal for
equality of enlistment standards, Kimball broke the solid opposition
to the committee's recommendation on this subject by promising to
study the issue to determine where men who scored less than forty-five
(the equivalent of General Classification Test score ninety) could be
used without detriment to the Navy.[14-61]

[Footnote 14-61: Memo, Actg SecNav for SecDef, 23 May
49, sub: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in
the Armed Forces, FC file.]

The question of parity of enlistment standards aside, the Navy's
program generally followed the suggestions of the Fahy Committee, and
Chairman Reid urged Johnson to accept it.[14-62] The secretary's
acceptance was announced on 7 June and was widely reported in the
press.[14-63]

[Footnote 14-62: Draft Memo, Reid for SecNav, 3 Jun
49, and Memo, Reid for SecDef, 1 Jun 49, both in
PPB files; Memo, Kenworthy for Fahy, 30 May 49,
sub: Replies of Army and Navy to Mr. Johnson's May
11 Memo, FC file.]

[Footnote 14-63: NME, Off of Pub Info, Release 78-49A,
7 Jun 49. See Washington _Post_, June 7, 1949, and
New York _Times_, June 8, 1949.]

To some extent the Army had an advantage over the Navy in its dealings
with Johnson and Fahy. It never had an integration policy to defend,
had in fact consistently opposed the imposition of one, and was not,
therefore, under the same psychological pressures to react positively
to the secretary's latest rebuff. Determined to defend its current
interpretation of the Gillem Board policy, the Army resisted the
Personnel Policy Board's use of the Air Force plan, Secretary Johnson's
directive, and the initial recommendations of the Fahy Committee (p. 360)
to pry out of it a new commitment to integrate. In lieu of such a
commitment, Acting Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray[14-64] offered
Secretary Johnson another spirited defense of Circular 124 on 26 May,
promising that the Army's next step would be to integrate black
companies in the white battalions of the combat arms. This step could
not be taken, he added, until the reactions to placing black
battalions in white regiments and black companies in composite
battalions had been observed in detail over a period of time. Gray
remained unmoved by the committee's appeal for the wider use and
broader training of the talented black soldiers in the name of combat
efficiency and continued to defend the _status quo_. He cited with
feeling the case of the average black soldier who because of his
"social environment" had most often missed the opportunity to develop
leadership abilities and who against the direct competition with the
better educated white soldier would find it difficult to "rise above
the level of service tasks." Segregation, Gray claimed, was giving
black soldiers the chance to develop leadership "unhindered and
unfettered by overshadowing competition they are not yet equipped to
meet." He would be remiss in his duties, he warned Johnson, if he
failed to report the concern of many senior officers who believed that
the Army had already gone too far in inserting black units into white
units and that "we are weakening to a dangerous degree the combat
efficiency of our Army."[14-65]

[Footnote 14-64: Following the resignation of
Secretary Royall, President Truman nominated Gordon
Gray as Secretary of the Army. His appointment was
confirmed by the Senate on 13 June 1949. A lawyer,
Gray had been a newspaper publisher in North
Carolina before his appointment as assistant
secretary in 1947.]

[Footnote 14-65: Memo, Actg SA for SecDef, 26 May 49,
sub: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the
Armed Services; see also P&A Summary Sheet, 19 May
49, same sub, FC file.]

The Army's response found the Fahy Committee and the office of the
Secretary of Defense once again in agreement. The committee rejected
Gray's statement, and Kenworthy drew up a point-by-point rebuttal. He
contended that unless the Army took intermediate steps, its first
objective, a specific quota of black units segregated at the battalion
level, would always block the realization of integration, its ultimate
objective.[14-66] The secretary's Personnel Policy Board struck an even
harder blow. Chairman Reid called Gray's statement a rehash of Army
accomplishments "with no indication of significant change or step
forward." It ignored the committee's recommendations. In particular,
and in contrast to the Navy, which had agreed to restudy the
enlistment parity question, the Army had rejected the committee's
request that it reconsider its quota system. Reid's blunt advice to
Johnson: reject the Army's reply and demand a new one by a definite
and early date.[14-67]

[Footnote 14-66: Memo, Kenworthy for Fahy, 30 May 49,
sub: Replies of Army and Navy to Mr. Johnson's May
11 Memo, FC file.]

[Footnote 14-67: Memo, Reid for SecDef, 1 Jun 49, sub:
Army and Navy Replies to Your Memorandum of 6 April
on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the
Army Services; Min, PPB Mtg, 2 Jun 49; both in FC
file.]

Members of the Fahy Committee met with Johnson and Reid on 1 June.
Despite the antagonism that was growing between the Secretary of
Defense and the White House group, the meeting produced several notable
agreements. For his part, Johnson, accepting the recommendations of
Fahy and Reid, agreed to reject the Army's latest response and (p. 361)
order the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff to confer
informally with the committee in an attempt to produce an acceptable
program. At the same time, Johnson made no move to order a common
enlistment standard; he told Fahy that the matter was extremely
controversial and setting such standards would involve rescinding
previous interdepartmental agreements. On the committee's behalf, Fahy
agreed to reword the recommendation on schooling for all qualified
Negroes within eighteen months of enlistment and to discuss further
the parity issue.[14-68]

[Footnote 14-68: Min, PPB Mtg, 2 Jun 49; Ltr, Fahy to
Johnson, 25 Jul 49, FC file.]

[Illustration: PRESS NOTICE. _Rejection of the Army's second proposal
as seen by the Afro-American, June 14, 1949._]

General Lanham endorsed the committee's belief that there was a need
for practical, intermediate steps when he drafted a response to the
Army for Secretary Johnson to sign. "It is my conviction," he wanted
Johnson to say, "that the Department of the Army must meet this issue
[the equal opportunity imposed by Executive Order 9981] squarely and
that its action, no matter how modest or small at its inception, must
be progressive in spirit and carry with it the unmistakable promise of
an ultimate solution in consonance with the Chief Executive's position
and our national policy."[14-69]

[Footnote 14-69: Draft Memo, Lanham for SecDef, 2 Jun
49, FC file.]

But the Army received no such specific instruction. Although Johnson
rejected the Army's second reply and demanded another based on a
careful consideration of the Fahy Committee's recommendations,[14-70]
he deleted Lanham's demand for immediate steps toward providing equal
opportunity. Johnson's rejection of Lanham's proposal--a tacit
rejection of the committee's basic premise as well--did not
necessarily indicate a shift in Johnson's position, but it did
establish a basis for future rivalry between the secretary and the
committee. Until now Johnson and the committee, through the medium of
the Personnel Policy Board, had worked in an informal partnership
whose fruitfulness was readily apparent in the development of
acceptable Navy and Air Force programs and in Johnson's rejection of
the Army's inadequate responses. But this cooperation was to be (p. 362)
short-lived; it would disappear altogether as the Fahy Committee began
to press the Army, while the Secretary of Defense, in reaction, began
to draw closer to the Army's position.[14-71]