Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 2-12: The Army staff's mobilization
planning for black units in the 1930's generally
relied upon the detailed testimony of the
commanders of black units in World War I. This
testimony, contained in documents submitted to the
War Department and the Army War College, was often
critical of the Army's employment of black troops,
although rarely critical of segregation. The
material is now located in the U.S. Army's Military
History Research Collection, Carlisle Barracks,
Pennsylvania. For discussion of the post-World War
I review of the employment of black troops, see
Lee's _Employment of Negro Troops_, Chapter I, and
Alan M. Osur's _Blacks in the Army Air Forces
During World War II: The Problem of Race Relations_
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977),
Chapter I.]

[Footnote 2-13: Memo, USW for Maj Gen William Bryden
(principal deputy chief of staff), 10 Jan 42, OCS
20602-250.]

These opinions were clearly evident on 8 December 1941, the day the
United States entered World War II, when the Army's leaders met with a
group of black publishers and editors. Although General Marshall
admitted that he was not satisfied with the department's progress in
racial matters and promised further changes, the conference concluded
with a speech by a representative of The Adjutant General who
delivered what many considered the final word on integration during
the war.

The Army is made up of individual citizens of the United States
who have pronounced views with respect to the Negro just as they
have individual ideas with respect to other matters in their
daily walk of life. Military orders, fiat, or dicta, will not
change their viewpoints. The Army then cannot be made the (p. 023)
means of engendering conflict among the mass of people
because of a stand with respect to Negroes which is not
compatible with the position attained by the Negro in civil
life.... The Army is not a sociological laboratory; to be
effective it must be organized and trained according to the
principles which will insure success. Experiments to meet the
wishes and demands of the champions of every race and creed for
the solution of their problems are a danger to efficiency,
discipline and morale and would result in ultimate defeat.[2-14]

[Footnote 2-14: Col Eugene R. Householder, TAGO,
Speech Before Conference of Negro Editors and
Publishers, 8 Dec 41, AG 291.21 (12-1-41) (1).]

The civil rights advocates refused to concede that the discussion was
over. Judge Hastie, along with a sizable segment of the black press,
believed that the beginning of a world war was the time to improve
military effectiveness by increasing black participation in that
war.[2-15] They argued that eliminating segregation was part of the
struggle to preserve democracy, the transcendent issue of the war, and
they viewed the unvarying pattern of separate black units as consonant
with the racial theories of Nazi Germany.[2-16] Their continuing efforts
to eliminate segregation and discrimination eventually brought Hastie
a sharp reminder from John J. McCloy. "Frankly, I do not think that
the basic issues of this war are involved in the question of whether
colored troops serve in segregated units or in mixed units and I doubt
whether you can convince people of the United States that the basic
issues of freedom are involved in such a question." For Negroes, he
warned sternly, the basic issue was that if the United States lost the
war, the lot of the black community would be far worse off, and some
Negroes "do not seem to be vitally concerned about winning the war."
What all Negroes ought to do, he counseled, was to give unstinting
support to the war effort in anticipation of benefits certain to come
after victory.[2-17]

[Footnote 2-15: Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
ch. VI.]

[Footnote 2-16: Noteworthy is the fact that for
several reasons not related to race (for instance,
language and nationality) the German Army also
organized separate units. Its 162d Infantry
Division was composed of troops from Turkestan and
the Caucasus, and its 5th SS Panzer Division had
segregated Scandinavian, Dutch, and Flemish
regiments. Unlike the racially segregated U.S.
Army, Germany's so-called Ost units were only
administratively organized into separate divisions,
and an Ost infantry battalion was often integrated
into a "regular" German infantry regiment as its
fourth infantry battalion. Several allied armies
also had segregated units, composed, for example,
of Senegalese, Gurkhas, Maoris, and Algerians.]

[Footnote 2-17: Memo, ASW for Judge Hastie, 2 Jul 42,
ASW 291.2, NT 1942.]

Thus very early in World War II, even before the United States was
actively engaged, the issues surrounding the use of Negroes in the
Army were well defined and the lines sharply drawn. Was segregation, a
practice in conflict with the democratic aims of the country, also a
wasteful use of manpower? How would modifications of policy
come--through external pressure or internal reform? Could traditional
organizational and social patterns in the military services be changed
during a war without disrupting combat readiness?

_Segregation and Efficiency_

In the years before World War II, Army planners never had to consider
segregation in terms of manpower efficiency. Conditioned by the
experiences of World War I, when the nation had enjoyed a surplus of
untapped manpower even at the height of the war, and aware of the
overwhelming manpower surplus of the depression years, the staff (p. 024)
formulated its mobilization plans with little regard for the
economical use of the nation's black manpower. Its decision to use
Negroes in proportion to their percentage of the population was the
result of political pressures rather than military necessity. Black
combat units were considered a luxury that existed to indulge black
demands. When the Army began to mobilize in 1940 it proceeded to honor
its pledge, and one year after Pearl Harbor there were 399,454 Negroes
in the Army, 7.4 percent of the total and 7.95 percent of all enlisted
troops.[2-18]

[Footnote 2-18: Strength of the Army, 1 Jan 46,
STM-30, p. 61.]

The effect of segregation on manpower efficiency became apparent only
as the Army tried to translate policy into practice. In the face of
rising black protest and with direct orders from the White House, the
Army had announced that Negroes would be assigned to all arms and
branches in the same ratio as whites. Several forces, however, worked
against this equitable distribution. During the early months of
mobilization the chiefs of those arms and services that had
traditionally been all white accepted less than their share of black
recruits and thus obliged some organizations, the Quartermaster Corps
and the Engineer Corps in particular, to absorb a large percentage of
black inductees. The imbalance worsened in 1941. In December of that
year Negroes accounted for 5 percent of the Infantry and less than 2
percent each of the Air Corps, Medical Corps, and Signal Corps. The
Quartermaster Corps was 15 percent black, the Engineer Corps 25
percent, and unassigned and miscellaneous detachments were 27 percent
black.

The rejection of black units could not always be ascribed to racism
alone. With some justification the arms and services tried to restrict
the number and distribution of Negroes because black units measured
far below their white counterparts in educational achievement and
ability to absorb training, according to the Army General
Classification Test (AGCT). The Army had introduced this test system
in March 1941 as its principal instrument for the measurement of a
soldier's learning ability. Five categories, with the most gifted in
category I, were used in classifying the scores made by the soldiers
taking the test (_Table 1_). The Army planned to take officers and
enlisted specialists from the top three categories and the semiskilled
soldiers and laborers from the two lowest.

Table 1--Classification of All Men Tested From March 1941 Through
December 1942

White Black
AGCT Category Number Percentage Number Percentage

I 273,626 6.6 1,580 0.4
II 1,154,700 28.0 14,891 3.4
III 1,327,164 32.1 54,302 12.3
IV 1,021,818 24.8 152,725 34.7
V 351,951 8.5 216,664 49.2
Total 4,129,259 100.0 440,162 100.0

_Source_: Tab A, Memo, G-3 for CofS, 10 Apr 43, AG 201.2 (19 Mar 43)(1).

Although there was considerable confusion on the subject, basically
the Army's mental tests measured educational achievement rather than
native intelligence, and in 1941 educational achievement in the United
States hinged more on geography and economics than color. Though black
and white recruits of comparable educations made comparable scores,
the majority of Negroes came from areas of the country where inferior
schools combined with economic and cultural poverty to put them at a
significant disadvantage.[2-19] Many whites suffered similar (p. 025)
disadvantages, and in absolute numbers more whites than blacks appeared
in the lower categories. But whereas the Army could distribute the
low-scoring white soldiers throughout the service so that an
individual unit could easily absorb its few illiterate and
semiliterate white men, the Army was obliged to assign an almost equal
number of low-scoring Negroes to the relatively few black units where
they could neither be absorbed nor easily trained. By the same token,
segregation penalized the educated Negro whose talents were likely to
be wasted when he was assigned to service units along with the
unskilled.

[Footnote 2-19: Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
pp. 241-57. For an extended discussion of Army test
scores and their relation to education, see
Department of the Army, _Marginal Man and Military
Service: A Review_ (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1966). This report was prepared for the
Deputy Under Secretary of the Army for Personnel
Management by a working group under the leadership
of Dr. Samuel King, Office of the Chief of Research
and Development.]

Segregation further hindered the efficient use of black manpower by
complicating the training of black soldiers. Although training
facilities were at a premium, the Army was forced to provide its
training and replacement centers with separate housing and other
facilities. With an extremely limited number of Regular Army Negroes
to draw from, the service had to create cadres for the new units and
find officers to lead them. Black recruits destined for most arms and
services were assured neither units, billets, nor training cadres. The
Army's solution to the problem: lower the quotas for black inductees.

The use of quotas to regulate inductees by race was itself a source of
tension between the Army and the Bureau of Selective Service.[2-20]
Selective Service questioned the legality of the whole procedure
whereby white and black selectees were delivered on the basis of
separate calls; in many areas of the country draft boards were under
attack for passing over large numbers of Negroes in order to fill
these racial quotas. With the Navy depending exclusively on
volunteers, Selective Service had by early 1943 a backlog of 300,000
black registrants who, according to their order numbers, should have
been called to service but had been passed over. Selective Service
wanted to eliminate the quota system altogether. At the very least it
demanded that the Army accept more Negroes to adjust the racial
imbalance of the draft rolls. The Army, determined to preserve the
quota system, tried to satisfy the Selective Service's minimum
demands, making room for more black inductees by forcing its arms (p. 026)
and services to create more black units. Again the cost to efficiency
was high.

[Footnote 2-20: For discussion of how Selective
Service channeled manpower into the armed forces,
see Selective Service System, Special Monograph
Number 10, _Special Groups_ (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1953), ch. VIII, and Special
Monograph Number 12, _Quotas, Calls, and
Inductions_ (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1948), chs. IV-VI.]

Under the pressure of providing sufficient units for Negroes, the
organization of units for the sake of guaranteeing vacancies
became a major goal. In some cases, careful examination of the
usefulness of the types of units provided was subordinated to the
need to create units which could receive Negroes. As a result,
several types of units with limited military value were formed in
some branches for the specific purpose of absorbing otherwise
unwanted Negroes. Conversely, certain types of units with
legitimate and important military functions were filled with
Negroes who could not function efficiently in the tasks to which
they were assigned.[2-21]

[Footnote 2-21: Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_, p.
113.]

[Illustration: ENGINEER CONSTRUCTION TROOPS IN LIBERIA, JULY 1942.]

The practice of creating units for the specific purpose of absorbing
Negroes was particularly evident in the Army Air Forces.[2-22] Long
considered the most recalcitrant of branches in accepting Negroes, (p. 027)
the Air Corps had successfully exempted itself from the allotment of
black troops in the 1940 mobilization plans. Black pilots could not be
used, Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps, explained,
"since this would result in having Negro officers serving over white
enlisted men. This would create an impossible social problem."[2-23]
And this situation could not be avoided, since it would take several
years to train black mechanics; meanwhile black pilots would have to
work with white ground crews, often at distant bases outside their
regular chain of command. The Air Corps faced strong opposition (p. 028)
when both the civil rights advocates and the rest of the Army attacked
this exclusion. The civil rights organizations wanted a place for
Negroes in the glamorous Air Corps, but even more to the point the
other arms and services wanted this large branch of the Army to absorb
its fair share of black recruits, thus relieving the rest of a
disproportionate burden.

[Footnote 2-22: The Army's air arm was reorganized
several times. Designated as the Army Air Corps in
1926 (the successor to the historic Army Air
Service), it became the Army Air Forces in the
summer of 1941. This designation lasted until a
separate U.S. Air Force was created in 1947.
Organizationally, the Army was divided in March
1942 into three equal parts: the Army Ground
Forces, the Army Service Forces (originally
Services of Supply), and the Army Air Forces. This
division was administrative. Each soldier continued
to be assigned to a branch of the Army, for
example, Infantry, Artillery, or Air Corps, a title
retained as the name of an Army branch.]

[Footnote 2-23: Memo, CofAC for G-3, 31 May 40, sub:
Employment of Negro Personnel in Air Corps Units,
G-3/6541-Gen-527.]

[Illustration: LABOR BATTALION TROOPS IN THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, MAY
1943. _Stevedores pause for a hot meal at Massacre Bay._]

[Illustration: SERGEANT ADDRESSING THE LINE. _Aviation squadron
standing inspection, 1943._]

When the War Department supported these demands the Army Air Forces
capitulated. Its 1941 mobilization plans provided for the formation of
nine separate black aviation squadrons which would perform the
miscellaneous tasks associated with the upkeep of airfields. During
the next year the Chief of Staff set the allotment of black recruits
for the air arm at a rate that brought over 77,500 Negroes into the
Air Corps by 1943. On 16 January 1941 Under Secretary Patterson
announced the formation of a black pursuit squadron, but the Army Air
Forces, bowing to the opposition typified by General Arnold's comments
of the previous year, trained the black pilots in separate facilities
at Tuskegee, Alabama, where the Army tried to duplicate the expensive
training center established for white officers at Maxwell Field, just
forty miles away.[2-24] Black pilots were at first trained exclusively
for pursuit flying, a very difficult kind of combat for which a Negro
had to qualify both physically and technically or else, in Judge (p. 029)
Hastie's words, "not fly at all."[2-25] The 99th Fighter Squadron was
organized at Tuskegee in 1941 and sent to the Mediterranean theater in
April 1943. By then the all-black 332d Fighter Group with three
additional fighter squadrons had been organized, and in 1944 it too
was deployed to the Mediterranean.

[Footnote 2-24: USAF Oral History Program, Interv
with Maj Gen Noel F Parrish (USAF, Ret.), 30 Mar
73.]

[Footnote 2-25: William H. Hastie, _On Clipped Wings:
The Story of Jim Crow in the Army Air Corps_ (New
York: NAACP, 1943). Based on War Department
documents and statistics, this famous pamphlet was
essentially an attack on the Army Air Corps. For a
more comprehensive account of the Negro and the
Army Air Forces, see Osur, _Blacks in the Army Air
Forces During World War II_.]

[Illustration: PILOTS OF THE 332D FIGHTER GROUP BEING BRIEFED _for
combat mission in Italy_.]

These squadrons could use only a limited number of pilots, far fewer
than those black cadets qualified for such training. All applicants in
excess of requirements were placed on an indefinite waiting list where
many became overage or were requisitioned for other military and
civilian duties. Yet when the Army Air Forces finally decided to
organize a black bomber unit, the 477th Bombardment Group, in late
1943, it encountered a scarcity of black pilots and crewmen. Because
of the lack of technical and educational opportunities for Negroes in
America, fewer blacks than whites were included in the manpower pool,
and Tuskegee, already overburdened with its manifold training
functions and lacking the means to train bomber crews, was unable to
fill the training gap. Sending black cadets to white training schools
was one obvious solution; the Army Air Forces chose instead to
postpone the operational date of the 477th until its pilots could be
trained at Tuskegee. In the end, the 477th was not declared (p. 030)
operational until after the war. Even then some compromise with the
Army Air Forces' segregation principles was necessary, since Tuskegee
could not accommodate B-25 pilot transition and navigator-bombardier
training. In 1944 black officers were therefore temporarily assigned
to formerly all-white schools for such training. Tuskegee's position
as the sole and separate training center for black pilots remained
inviolate until its closing in 1946, however, and its graduates, the
"Tuskegee Airmen," continued to serve as a powerful symbol of armed
forces segregation.[2-26]

[Footnote 2-26: For a detailed discussion of the
black training program, see Osur, _Blacks in the
Army Air Forces During World War II_, ch. III; Lee,
_Employment of Negro Troops_, pp. 461-66; Charles
E. Francis, _The Tuskegee Airmen: The Story of the
Negro in the U.S. Air Force_ (Boston Bruce
Humphries, 1955).]

Training for black officer candidates other than flyers, like that of
most officer candidates throughout the Army, was integrated. At first
the possibility of integrated training seemed unlikely, for even
though Assistant Secretary of War for Air Robert A. Lovett had assured
Hastie that officer candidate training would be integrated, the
Technical Training Command announced plans in 1942 for a segregated
facility. Although the plans were quickly canceled the command's
announcement was the immediate cause for Hastie's resignation from the
War Department. The Air staff assured the Assistant Secretary of War
in January of 1943 that qualified Negroes were being sent to officer
candidate schools and to training courses "throughout the school
system of the Technical Training Command."[2-27] In fact, Negroes did
attend the Air Forces' officer candidate school at Miami Beach,
although not in great numbers. In spite of their integrated training,
however, most of these black officers were assigned to the
predominantly black units at Tuskegee and Godman fields.

[Footnote 2-27: Memo, CofAS for ASW, 12 Jan 43, ASW
291.2.]

The Army Air Forces found it easier to absorb the thousands of black
enlisted men than to handle the black flying squadrons. For the
enlisted men it created a series of units with vaguely defined duties,
usually common labor jobs operating for the most part under a bulk
allotment system that allowed the Air Forces to absorb great numbers
of new men. Through 1943 hundreds of these aviation training
squadrons, quartermaster truck companies, and engineer aviation and
air base security battalions were added to the Air Forces'
organization tables. Practically every American air base in the world
had its contingent of black troops performing the service duties
connected with air operations.

The Air Corps, like the Armor and the Artillery branches, was able to
form separate squadrons or battalions for black troops, but the
Infantry and Cavalry found it difficult to organize the growing number
of separate black battalions and regiments. The creation of black
divisions was the obvious solution, although this arrangement would
run counter to current practice, which was based in part on the Army's
experience with the 92d Division in World War I. Convinced of the poor
performance of that unit in 1918, the War Department had decided in
the 1920's not to form any more black divisions. The regiment would
serve as the basic black unit, and from time to time these regiments
would be employed as organic elements of divisions whose other
regiments and units would be white. In keeping with this decision, the
black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments were combined in October (p. 031)
1940 with white regiments to form the 2d Cavalry Division.

Before World War II most black leaders had agreed with the Army's
opposition to all-black divisions, but for different reasons. They
considered that such divisions only served to strengthen the
segregation pattern they so opposed. In the early weeks of the war a
conference of black editors, including Walter White, pressed for the
creation of an experimental integrated division of volunteers. White
argued that such a unit would lift black morale, "have a tremendous
psychological effect upon white America," and refute the enemy's
charge that "the United States talks about democracy but practices
racial discrimination and segregation."[2-28] The NAACP organized a
popular movement in support of the idea, which was endorsed by many
important individuals and organizations.[2-29] Yet this experiment was
unacceptable to the Army. Ignoring its experience with all-volunteer
paratroopers and other special units, the War Department declared that
the volunteer system was "an ineffective and dangerous" method of
raising combat units. Admitting that the integrated division might be
an encouraging gesture toward certain minorities, General Marshall
added that "the urgency of the present military situation necessitates
our using tested and proved methods of procedure, and using them with
all haste."[2-30]