Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 14-139: _Freedom to Serve: Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services; A
Report by the President's Committee_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1950).]

[Footnote 14-140: Ltr, President to Fahy, 6 Jul 50,
Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

_An Assessment_

Thus ended a most active period in the history of armed forces
integration, a period of executive orders, presidential conferences,
and national hearings, of administrative infighting broadcast to the
public in national headlines. The Fahy Committee was the focus of this
bureaucratic and journalistic excitement. Charged with examining the
policies of the services in light of the President's order, the
committee could have glanced briefly at current racial practices and
automatically ratified Secretary Johnson's general policy statement.
Indeed, this was precisely what Walter White and other civil rights
leaders expected. But the committee was made of sterner stuff. With
dedication and with considerable political acumen, it correctly
assessed the position of black servicemen and subjected the racial
policies of the services to a rigorous and detailed examination, the
first to be made by an agency outside the Department of Defense. As a
result of this scrutiny, the committee clearly and finally
demonstrated that segregation was an inefficient way to use military
manpower; once and for all it demolished the arguments that the
services habitually used against any demand for serious change. Most
important is the fact that the committee kept alive the spirit of
reform the Truman order had created. The committee's definition of
equal treatment and opportunity became the standard by which future
action on racial issues in the armed forces would be measured.

Throughout its long existence, the Fahy Committee was chiefly
concerned with the position of the Negro in the Army. After protracted
argument it won from the Army an agreement to abolish the racial quota
and to open all specialties in all Army units and all Army schools and
courses to qualified Negroes. Finally, it won the Army's promise to
cease restricting black servicemen to black units and overhead
installations alone and to assign them instead on the basis of
individual ability and the Army's need.

As for the other services, the committee secured from the Navy a
pledge to give petty officer status to chief stewards and stewards of
the first, second, and third class, and its influence was discernible
in the Navy's decision to allow stewards to transfer to the general
service. The committee also made, and the Navy accepted, several
practical suggestions that might lead to an increase in the number (p. 376)
of black officers and enlisted men. The committee approved the Air
Force integration program and publicized the success of this major
reform as it was carried out during 1949; for the benefit of the
reluctant Army, the committee could point to the demonstrated ability
of black servicemen and the widespread acceptance of integration among
the rank and file of the Air Force. In regard to the Marine Corps,
however, the committee was forced to acknowledge that the corps had
not yet "fully carried out Navy policy."[14-141]

[Footnote 14-141: _Freedom to Serve_, p. 27.]

The Fahy Committee won from the services a commitment to equal
treatment and opportunity and a practical program to achieve that end.
Yet even with this victory and the strong support of many senior
military officials, the possibility that determined foes of
integration might erect roadblocks or that simple bureaucratic inertia
would delay progress could not be discounted. There was, for example,
nothing in the postwar practices of the Marine Corps, even the
temporary integration of its few black recruits during basic training,
that hinted at any long-range intention of adopting the Navy's
integration program. And the fate of one of the committee's major
recommendations, that all the services adopt equal enlistment
standards, had yet to be decided. The acceptance of this
recommendation hinged on the results of a Defense Department study to
determine the jobs in each service that could be filled by men in the
lowest mental classification category acceptable to all three
services. Although the Navy and the Air Force had agreed to reexamine
the matter, they had consistently opposed the application of
enlistment parity in the past, and the Secretary of Defense's
Personnel Policy Board had indorsed their position. Secretary
Forrestal, himself, had rejected the concept, and there was nothing in
the record to suggest that his successor would do otherwise. Yet the
parity of enlistment standards was a vital part of the committee's
argument for the abolition of the Army's racial quota. If enlistment
standards were not equalized, especially in a period when the Army was
turning to Selective Service for much of its manpower, the number of
men in the Army's categories IV and V was bound to increase, and that
increase would provide strong justification for reviving the racial
quota. The Army staff was aware, if the public was not, that a
resurrected quota was possible, for the President had given the
Secretary of the Army authority to take such action if there was "a
disproportionate balance of racial strengths."[14-142]

[Footnote 14-142: Ltr, SA to President, 1 Mar 50, Fahy
Papers, Truman Library.]

The Army's concern with disproportionate balance was always linked to
a concern with the influx of men, mostly black, who scored poorly on
the classification tests. The problem, the Army repeatedly claimed,
was not the quantity of black troops but their quality. Yet at the
time the Army agreed to the committee's demand to drop the quota, some
40 percent of all black soldiers scored below eighty. These men could
rarely profit from the Army's agreement to integrate all specialist
training and assignments. The committee, aware of the problem, had
strongly urged the Army to refuse reenlistment, with few exceptions,
to anyone scoring below eighty. On 11 May 1950 Fahy reminded Secretary
of the Army Frank Pace, Jr., that despite the Army's promise to
eliminate its low scorers it continued to reenlist men scoring (p. 377)
less than seventy.[14-143] But by July even the test score for
first-time enlistment into the Army had declined to seventy because
men were needed for the Korean War. The law required that whenever
Selective Service began drafting men the Army would automatically
lower its enlistment standards to seventy. Thus, despite the
committee's recommendations, the concentration of low-scoring Negroes
in the lower grades continued to increase, creating an even greater
pool of men incapable of assignment to the schools and specialties
open without regard to race.

[Footnote 14-143: Memo, Fahy for SA, 11 May 50, Fahy
Papers, Truman Library. Frank Pace, an Arkansas
lawyer and former Assistant Director of the Bureau
of the Budget, succeeded Gordon Gray as Secretary
of the Army on 12 April 1950.]

[Illustration: "NO LONGER A DREAM." _The Pittsburgh Courier's reaction
to the services' agreements with the Fahy Committee, May 20, 1950._]

Even the Army's promise to enlarge gradually the number of specialties
open to Negroes was not carried out expeditiously. By July 1950, the
last month of the Fahy Committee's life, the Army had added only seven
more specialties with openings for Negroes to the list of forty
published seven months before at the time of its agreement with the
committee. In a pessimistic mood, Kenworthy confessed to Judge (p. 378)
Fahy[14-144] that "so long as additions are not progressively made to
the critical list of MOS in which Negroes can serve, and so long as
segregated units continue to be the rule, all MOS and schools can not
be said to be open to Negroes because Negro units do not have calls
for many of the advanced MOS." Kenworthy was also disturbed because
the Army had disbanded the staff agency created to monitor the new
policies and make future recommendations and had transferred both its
two members to other duties. In the light of progress registered in
the half year since the Army had adopted the committee's proposal,
Kenworthy concluded that "the Army intends to do as little as possible
towards implementing the policy which it adopted and published."[14-145]

[Footnote 14-144: President Truman appointed Charles
Fahy to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia on 15 October 1949. Fahy did
not assume his judicial duties, however, until 15
December after concluding his responsibilities as a
member of the American delegation to the United
Nations General Assembly.]

[Footnote 14-145: Memo, Kenworthy for Fahy, 25 Jul 50,
Fahy Papers, Truman Library. In the memorandum the
number of additional specialties is erroneously
given as six; see DCSPER Summary Sheet, 23 Apr 50,
sub: List of Critical Specialties Referred to in SR
600-629-1, G-1 291.2 (25 Oct 49).]

Roy Davenport later suggested that such pessimism was ill-founded.
Other factors were at work within the Army in 1950, particularly after
the outbreak of war in Korea.[14-146] Davenport alluded principally to
the integration of basic training centers and the assignment of
greater numbers of black inductees to combat specialties--developments
that were pushing the Army ahead of the integration timetable
envisioned by committee members and making concern over black
eligibility for an increased number of occupation categories less
important.

[Footnote 14-146: Ltr, Davenport to OSD Historian, 31
Aug 76, copy in CMH. For a discussion of these
war-related factors, see Chapters 14 and 17.]

The Fahy Committee has been given full credit for proving that
segregation could not be defended on grounds of military efficiency,
thereby laying the foundation for the integration of the Army. But
perhaps in the long run the group's idealism proved to be equally
important. The committee never lost sight of the moral implications of
the services' racial policies. Concern for the rightness and wrongness
of things is readily apparent in all its deliberations, and in the end
the committee would invoke the words of Saint Paul to the Philippians
to remind men who perhaps should have needed no such reminder that
they should heed "whatsoever things are true ... whatsoever things are
just." What was right and just, the committee concluded, would
"strengthen the nation."[14-147]

[Footnote 14-147: _Freedom to Serve_, pp. 66-67.]

The same ethics stood forth in the conclusion of the committee's final
report, raising that practical summary of events to the status of an
eloquent state paper. The committee reminded the President and its
fellow citizens that the status of the individual, "his equal worth in
the sight of God, his equal protection under the law, his equal rights
and obligations of citizenship and his equal opportunity to make just
and constructive use of his endowment--these are the very foundation
of the American system of values."[14-148]

[Footnote 14-148: _Ibid._, p. 67.]

To its lasting honor the Fahy Committee succeeded in spelling out for
the nation's military leaders how these principles, these "high
standards of democracy" as President Truman called them in his order,
must be applied in the services.

CHAPTER 15 (p. 379)

The Role of the Secretary of Defense
1949-1951

Having ordered the integration of the services and supported the Fahy
Committee in the development of acceptable racial programs, President
Truman quickly turned the matter over to his subordinates in the
Department of Defense, severing White House ties with the problem.
Against the recommendations of some of his White House advisers,
Truman adjourned the committee, leaving his executive order in effect.
"The necessary programs having been adopted," he told Fahy, it was
time for the services "to work out in detail the procedures which will
complete the steps so carefully initiated by the committee."[15-1] In
effect, the President was guaranteeing the services the freedom to put
their own houses in order.

[Footnote 15-1: Ltr, Truman to Fahy, 6 Jul 50, FC
file.]

The issue of civil rights, however, was still of vital interest to one
of the President's major constituencies. Black voters, recognized as a
decisive factor in the November 1948 election, pressed their demands
on the victorious President; in particular some of their spokesmen
called on the administration to implement fully the program put forth
by the Fahy Committee. These demands were being echoed in Congress by
a civil rights bloc--for bloc it had now become in the wake of the
election that sent Harry Truman back to the White House. No longer the
concern of a congressman or two, the cause of the black serviceman was
now supported by a group of politicians who, joining with civil rights
leaders, pressed the Department of Defense for rapid changes in its
racial practices.

The traditionalists in the armed forces also had congressional allies.
In all probability these legislators would accept an integrated Navy
because it involved relatively few Negroes; they might even tolerate
an integrated Air Force because they lacked a proprietary attitude
toward this new service; but they would fight to keep the Army
segregated because they considered the Army their own.[15-2]
Congressional segregationists openly opposed changes in the Army's
racial policy only when they thought the time was right. They carefully
avoided the subject in the months following publication of the (p. 380)
executive order, waiting to bargain until their support became crucial
to the success of such vital military legislation as the renewal of
the Selective Service Act and the establishment of universal military
training.

[Footnote 15-2: Interv, Nichols with Gen Wade H.
Haislip, 1953, in Nichols Collection; Telephone
Interv, author with Haislip, 18 Mar 71; Interv,
author with Martin Blumenson, 8 Jan 68. All in CMH
files.]

At most, Congress played only a minor role in the dramatic changes
beginning in the armed forces. Champions of civil rights had little
effect on service practices, although these congressmen channeled the
complaints of black voters and kept the military traditionalists on
the defensive. As for the congressional traditionalists, their support
may have helped sustain those on the staff who resisted racial change
within the Army, thus slowing down that service's integration. But the
demands of congressional progressives and obstructionists tended to
cancel each other out, and in the wake of the Fahy Committee's
disbandment the services themselves reemerged as the preeminent factor
in the armed forces racial program.

The services regained control by default. Logically, direction of
racial reforms in the services should have fallen to the Secretary of
Defense. In the first place, the secretary, other administration
officials, and the public alike had begun to use the secretary's
office as a clearinghouse for reconciling conflicting demands of the
services, as an appellate court reviewing decisions of the service
secretaries, and as the natural channel of communication between the
services and the White House, Congress, and the public. Many racial
problems had become interservice in nature, and only the Office of the
Secretary of Defense possessed the administrative machinery to deal
with such matters. The Personnel Policy Board or, later, the new
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and
Personnel might well have become the watchdog recommended by the Fahy
Committee to oversee the services' progress toward integration, but
neither did.

Certainly the Secretary of Defense had other matters pressing for his
attention. Secretary Johnson had become the central character in the
budgetary conflicts of Truman's second term, and both he and General
George C. Marshall, who succeeded him as secretary on 20 September
1950, were suddenly thrust into leadership of the Korean War. In
administrative matters, at least, Marshall had to concentrate on
boosting the morale of a department torn by internecine budgetary
arguments. Integration did not appear to have the same importance to
national security as these weighty matters. More to the point, Johnson
and Marshall were not social reformers. Whatever their personal
attitudes, they were content to let the services set the pace of
racial reform. With one notable exception neither man initiated any of
the historic racial changes that took place in the armed forces during
the early 1950's.

For the most part those racial issues that did involve the Secretary
of Defense centered on the status of the Negro in the armed forces in
general and were extraneous to the issue of integration. One of the
most persistent status problems was classification by race. First
posed during the great World War II draft calls, the question of how
to determine a serviceman's race, and indeed the related one of who
had the right to make such a determination, remained unanswered five
years later. In August 1944 the Selective Service System decided (p. 381)
that the definition of a man's race should be left to the man himself.
While this solution no doubt pleased racial progressives and certainly
simplified the induction process, not to speak of protecting the War
Department from a ticklish court review, it still left the services
the difficult and important task of designating racial categories into
which men could be assigned. As late as April 1949 the Army and the
Air Force listed a number of specific racial categories, one of which
had to be chosen by the applicant or recruiter--the regulation left
the point unclear--to identify the applicant's race. The regulation
listed "white, Negro, Indian (referring to American Indian only),
Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, East
Indian, etc.," and specifically included mulattoes and "others of
negroid race or extraction" in the Negro category, leaving other men
of mixed race to be entered under their predominant race.[15-3]

[Footnote 15-3: SR 615-105-1 (AFR 39-9), 15 Apr 49.]

The regulation was obviously subject to controversy, and in the wake
of the President's equality order it is not surprising that some
group--a group of Spanish-speaking Americans from southern California,
as it turned out--would raise the issue. Specifically, they objected
to a practice of Army and Air Force recruiters, who often scratched
out "white" and inserted "Mexican" in the applications of
Spanish-speaking volunteers. These young men wanted to be integrated
into every phase of community life, Congressman Chet Holifield told
the Secretary of Defense, and he passed on a warning from his
California constituents that "any attempt to forestall this ambition
by treating them as a group apart is extremely repellent to them and
gives rise to demoralization and hostility."[15-4] If the Department
of Defense considered racial information essential, Holifield
continued, why not make the determination in a less objectionable
manner? He suggested a series of questions concerning the birthplace
of the applicant's parents and the language spoken in his home as
innocuous possibilities.

[Footnote 15-4: Ltr, Holifield to SecDef, 10 Aug 49,
SD 291.2 Negroes.]

Secretary Johnson sent the congressman's complaint to the Personnel
Policy Board, which, ignoring the larger considerations posed by
Holifield, concentrated on simplifying the department's racial
categories to five--Caucasian, Negroid, Mongolian, Indian (American),
and Malayan--and making their use uniform throughout the services. The
board also adopted the use of inoffensive questions to help determine
the applicant's proper race category. Obviously, the board could not
abandon racial designations because the Army's quota system, still in
effect, depended on this information. Less clear, however, was why the
board failed to consider the problem of who should make the racial
determination. At any rate, its new list of racial categories,
approved by the secretary and published on 11 October, immediately
drew complaints from members of the department.[15-5]

[Footnote 15-5: Memo, Dep Dir, Personnel Policy Bd
Staff, for Chmn, PPB, 13 Sep 49, sub: Project
Summary--Change of Nomenclature on Enlistment Forms
as Pertains to "Race" Entries (M-63); Memo, Chmn,
PPB, for SA et al., 11 Oct 49, sub: Policy
Regarding Race Entries on Enlistment Contracts and
Shipping Articles; both in PPB 291.2.]

[Illustration: NAVY CORPSMAN IN KOREA _attends wounded from the 1st
Marine Division, 1950_.]

The secretary's racial adviser, James C. Evans, saw no need for (p. 382)
racial designations on departmental forms, but knowing their removal
was unlikely in the near future, he concentrated on trying to change
the newly revised categories. He explained to the board, obviously
unschooled in the nuance of racial slurs, that the word "Negroid" was
offensive to many Negroes. Besides, the board's categories made no
sense since Indian (American) and Malayan were not comparable to the
other three entries listed. Why not, he suggested, settle for the old
black, white, yellow, red, and brown designations?[15-6]

[Footnote 15-6: Memo, Evans for Chmn, PPB, 25 Nov 49,
sub: Racial Designation and Terminology, SD 291.2;
Interv, author with Evans, 22 Jul 71, CMH files.]

The Navy, too, objected to the board's categories. After consulting a
Smithsonian ethnologist, the Under Secretary of the Navy suggested
that the board create a sixth category, Polynesian, for use in
shipping articles and in forms for reporting casualties. The Army,
also troubled by the categories, requested they be defined. The
categories were meant to provide a uniform basis for classifying
military personnel, The Adjutant General pointed out, but given the
variety and complexity of Army forms--he had discovered that the Army
was using seven separate forms with racial entries, each with a
different procedure for deciding race--uniformity was practically (p. 383)
impossible without a careful delineation of each category.[15-7]

[Footnote 15-7: Memo, Head, Strength and Statistics
Br, BuPers, for Head, Policy Control Br, BuPers, 27
Oct 49, sub: Policy Regarding Race Entries, Pers
25-EL, BuPersRecs; Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn,
PPB, 25 Nov 49, sub: Policy Regarding "Race"
Entries on Enlistment Contracts and Shipping
Articles, GenRecsNav; DF, D/P&A to TAG, 18 Oct 49,
same sub, with CMT 2, TAG to D/P&A, 2 Nov 49, copy
in AG 291.2 (11 Oct 49).]

Its ruling under attack from the services, the board made a hasty
appeal to authority. Its chief of staff, Vice Adm. John L.
McCrea,[15-8] recommended that the Army and Navy consult Funk and
Wagnalls _Standard Dictionary_ for specific definitions of the five
racial categories. That source, the admiral explained to the Under
Secretary of the Navy, listed Polynesian in the Malayan category, and
if the Navy decided to add race to its shipping articles, the five
categories should be sufficient. The board, he added, had not meant to
encourage additional use of racial information. The Navy had always
used the old color categories on its shipping articles forms, the
ones, incidentally, favored by Evans, and McCrea thought they
generally corresponded to the categories developed by the board.[15-9]
The admiral also suggested that the Army use the color system to help
clarify the board's categories. He offered some generalizations on
specific Army questions: "a) Puerto Ricans are officially Caucasian,
unless of Indian or Negro birth; b) Filipinos are Malayan; c)
Hawaiians are Malayan; d) Latin Americans are Caucasian or Indian; and
e) Indian-Negro and White-Negro mixtures should be classified in
accordance with the laws of the states of their birth."[15-10] The
lessons on definition of race so painfully learned during World War II
were ignored. Henceforth race was to be determined by a dictionary, a
color scheme, and the legal vagaries found in the race laws of the
several states.