R.V. Russell - "The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)"

H. Louisa Bedford - "The Village by the River"

Frederick A. Ober - "Amerigo Vespucci"

George Durston - "The Boy Scouts on the Trail"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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




The Air staff explained that the slight surge in black recruits in the
early months of integration was related less to the new policy than to
the abnormal recruiting conditions of the period. In addition to the
backlog of Negroes who for some time had been trying to enlist only to
find the Air Force quota filled, there were many black volunteers who
had turned to the quota-free Air Force when the Army, its quota of
Negroes filled for some time, stopped recruiting Negroes.

With Negroes serving in over 1,500 separate units there was no need to
invoke the 10 percent racial quota in individual units as Vandenberg
had ordered. One notable exception during the first months of the
program was the Air Training Command, where the rapid and unexpected
reassignment of many black airmen caused some bases, James Connally in
Texas, for example, to acquire a great many Negroes while others
received few or none. To prevent a recurrence of the Connally
experience and "to effect a smooth operation and proper adjustment of
social importance," the commander of the Air Training Command imposed
an 8 to 10 percent black quota on his units and established a
procedure for staggering the assignment of black airmen in small
groups over a period of thirty to sixty days instead of assigning them
to any particular base in one large increment. These quotas were not
applied to the basic training flights, which were completely
integrated. It was not uncommon to find black enlistees in charge of
racially mixed training flights.[16-29] Of all Air Force
organizations, the Training Command received the greatest number of
black airmen as a result of the screening and reassignment. (_Table 7_)

[Footnote 16-29: ATC, "History of ATC, July-December
1949," I:29-31; New York _Times_, September 18,
1949.]

Table 7--Racial Composition of the Training Command, December 1949 (p. 406)

A. Flight Training
_Percent_
_White_ _Black_ _Black_
Officers 1,345 11 .8
Enlisted 2,063 22 1.0
Total 3,408 33 .9
B. Technical Training
Officers 1,897 37 1.9
Enlisted 25,838 1,819 6.5
Total 27,735 1,856 6.0
C. Indoctrination (Basic) Training
White 7,649
Black 1,007
Total 8,656
Percent black 11.6[a]
D. Officers Candidate Training
(candidates graduating from
28 November through 26
December 1949)
White 225
Black 7
Total 232
Percent black 3.0
E. Course Representation

_Base_ _No. of Courses_[b] _No. of Courses
with Blacks_
Chanute 31 21
Warren 11 10
Keesler 16 7
Lowry 23 13
Scott 6 4
Sheppard 4 1

[Tablenote a: In January 1950, probably as a result
of a decline in backlog and the raising of
enlistment standard to GCT 100, this percentage
dropped to 8.8.]

[Tablenote b: Negroes in 61 percent of the courses
offered as of 26 Dec 1949.]

_Source_: Kenworthy Report.

At the end of the first year under the new program, the Acting Deputy
Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Nugent, informed Zuckert that
integration had progressed "rapidly, smoothly and virtually without
incident."[16-30] In view of this fact and at Nugent's recommendation,
the Air Force canceled the monthly headquarters check on the program.

[Footnote 16-30: Memo, Actg DCSPER for Zuckert, 14 Jul
50, USAF file No. 3370, SecAF files.]

To some extent the Air Force's integration program ran away with
itself. Whatever their personal convictions regarding discrimination,
senior Air Force officials had agreed that integration would be
limited. They were most concerned with managerial problems associated
with continued segregation of the black flying unit and the black
specialists scattered worldwide. Other black units were not considered
an immediate problem. Assistant Secretary Zuckert admitted as much in
March 1949 when he reported that black service units would be retained
since they performed a "necessary Air Force function."[16-31] As
originally conceived, the Air Force plan was frankly imitative of the
Navy's postwar program, stressing merit and ability as the limiting
factors of change. The Air Force promised to discharge all its
substandard men, but those black airmen either ineligible for
discharge or for reassignment to specialist duty would remain in
segregated units.

[Footnote 16-31: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 25 Mar
49, sub: Salient Factors of Air Force Policy
Regarding Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

Yet once begun, the integration process quickly became universal. By
the end of 1950, for example, the Air Force had reduced the number of
black units to nine with 95 percent of its black airmen serving in
integrated units. The number of black officers rose to 411, an (p. 407)
increase of 10 percent over the previous year, and black airmen to
25,523, an increase of 15 percent, although the proportion of blacks
to whites continued to remain between 6 and 7 percent.[16-32] Some
eighteen months later only one segregated unit was left, a 98-man
outfit, itself more than 26 percent white. Negroes were then serving
in 3,466 integrated units.[16-33]

[Footnote 16-32: _Air Force Times_, 10 February 1951.
These figures do not take into account the SCARWAF
(Army personnel) who continued to serve in
segregated units within the Air Force.]

[Footnote 16-33: Memo, DepSecAF for Manpower and
Organizations for ASD/M, 5 Sep 52, SecAF files.]

There were several reasons for the universal application of what was
conceived as a limited program. First, the Air Force was in a sense
the captive of its own publicity. While Secretary Symington had
carefully delineated the limits of his departmental plan for the
Personnel Policy Board in January 1949, he was carried considerably
beyond these limits when he addressed President Truman in the open
forum of the Fahy Committee's first formal meeting:

As long as you mentioned the Air Force, sir, I just want to
report to you that our plan is to completely eliminate
segregation in the Air Force. For example, we have a fine group
of colored boys. Our plan is to take those boys, break up that
fine group, and put them with the other units themselves and go
right down the line all through these subdivisions one hundred
percent.[16-34]

[Footnote 16-34: Transcript of the Meeting of the
President and the Four Service Secretaries With the
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services, 12 Jan 49, FC
file, which reports the President's response as
being "That's all right."]

Later, Symington told the Fahy Committee that while the new program
would probably temporarily reduce Air Force efficiency "we are ready,
willing, and anxious to embark on this idea. We want to eliminate the
fundamental aspect of class in this picture."[16-35] Clearly, the
retention of large black units was incompatible with the elimination
of class distinctions.

[Footnote 16-35: Testimony of the Secretary of the Air
Force Before the Fahy Committee, 28 Mar 49,
afternoon session, p. 33.]

The more favorable the publicity garnered by the plan in succeeding
months, the weaker the distinction became between the limited
integration of black specialists and total integration. Reinforcing
the favorable publicity were the monthly field reports that registered
a steady drop in the number of black units and a corresponding rise in
the number of integrated black airmen. This well-publicized progress
provided another, almost irresistible reason for completing the task.

More to the point, the success of the program provided its own impetus
to total integration. The prediction that a significant number of
black officers and men would be ineligible for reassignment or further
training proved ill-founded. The Air Force, it turned out, had few
untrainable men, and after the screening process and transfer of those
eligible was completed, many black units were so severely reduced in
strength that their inactivation became inevitable. The fear of white
opposition that had inhibited the staff planners and local commanders
also proved groundless. According to a Fahy Committee staff report
in March 1950, integration had been readily accepted at all levels
and the process had been devoid of friction. "The men," E. W. (p. 408)
Kenworthy reported, "apparently were more ready for equality of
treatment and opportunity than the officer corps had realized."[16-36]
At the same time, Kenworthy noted the effect of successful integration
on the local commanders. Freed from the charges of discrimination that
had plagued them at every turn, most of the commanders he interviewed
remarked on the increased military efficiency of their units and the
improved utilization of their manpower that had come with integration.
They liked the idea of a strictly competitive climate of equal
standards rigidly applied, and some expected that the Air Force
example would have an effect, eventually, on civilian attitudes.[16-37]

[Footnote 16-36: Kenworthy Report, as quoted and
commented on in Memo, Worthington Thompson
(Personnel Policy Board staff) for Leva, 9 Mar 50,
sub: Some Highlights of Fahy Committee Report on
Air Force Racial Integration Program, SD 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-37: Ltr, Kenworthy to Zuckert, 5 Jan 50,
SecAF files.]

[Illustration: MUSIC MAKERS _of the U.S. Far East Air Force prepare to
celebrate Christmas, Korea, 1950_.]

For the Air Force, it seemed, the problem of segregation was all over
but for the celebrating. And there was plenty of that, thanks to the
Fahy Committee and the press. In a well-publicized tour of a cross
section of Air Force installations in early 1950, Kenworthy surveyed
the integration program for the committee. His favorable report won
the Air Force laudatory headlines in the national press and formed the
core of the Air Force section of the Fahy Committee's final report,
_Freedom to Serve_.[16-38] For its part, the black press covered the
program in great detail and gave its almost unanimous approval. As
early as July 1949, for example, Dowdal H. Davis, president of the
Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, reported on the highly
encouraging reaction to the breakup of the 332d, and the headlines
reflected this attitude: "The Air Force Leads the Way," the Chicago
_Defender_ headlined; "Salute to the Air Force," the Minneapolis
_Spokesman_ editorialized; and "the swiftest and most amazing upset of
racial policy in the history of the U.S. Military," _Ebony_ concluded.
Pointing to the Air Force program as the best, the Pittsburgh
_Courier_ called the progress toward total integration "better than
most dared hope."[16-39]

[Footnote 16-38: See, for example, the Washington
_Post_, March 27, 1950.]

[Footnote 16-39: Press reaction summarized in Memo,
James C. Evans for PPB, 19 Jan 50, PPB 291.2. See
also, Ltr, Dowdal Davis, Gen Manager of the Kansas
City _Call_, to Evans, 9 Jul 49, SD 291.2; Memo,
Evans for SecAF, 5 Jul 49; and Memo, Zuckert for
SecAF, 2 Aug 49, both in SecAF files; Chicago
_Defender_, June 18, 1949; Minneapolis _Spokesman_,
January 13, 1950; _Ebony_ Magazine, 4 (September
1949):15; Pittsburgh _Courier_, July 25, 1952;
Detroit _Free Press_, May 14, 1953.]

General Vandenberg and his staff were well aware of the rapid and (p. 409)
profound change in the Air Force wrought by the integration order.
From the start his personnel chief carefully monitored the program and
reviewed the reports from the commands, ready to investigate any
racial incidents or differences attributable to the new policy. The
staff had expected a certain amount of testing of the new policy by
both white and black troops, and with few exceptions the incidents
reported turned out to be little more than that. Some arose from
attempts by Negroes to win social acceptance at certain Air Force
installations, but the majority of cases involved attempts by white
airmen to introduce their black comrades into segregated off-base
restaurants and theaters. Two examples might stand for all. The first
involved a transient black corporal who stopped off at the Bolling Air
Force Base, Washington, D.C., to get a haircut in a post exchange
barbershop. He was refused service and in the absence of the post
exchange officer he returned to the shop to trade words and eventually
blows with the barber. The corporal was subsequently court-martialed,
but the sentence was set aside by a superior court.[16-40] Another
case involved a small group of white airmen who ordered refreshments
at a segregated lunch counter in San Antonio, Texas, for themselves
"and a friend who would join them later." The friend, of course, was a
black airman. The Inspector General reported this incident to be just
one of a number of attempts by groups of white and black airmen to
integrate lunch counters and restaurants. In each case the commanders
concerned cautioned their men against such action, and there were few
reoccurrences.[16-41]

[Footnote 16-40: Memo, IG, USAF, for ASecAF, 25 Jul
49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-41: Idem for DCSPER, 7 Sep 49, copy in
SecAF files; see also ACofS, G-2, Fourth Army, Ft.
Sam Houston, Summary of Information, 7 Sep 49, copy
in SA 291.2.]

The commanders' warnings were understandable because, as any official
from Secretary Symington on down would quickly explain, the Air Force
did not regard itself as being in the business of forcing changes in
American society; it was simply trying to make the best use of its
manpower to build military efficiency in keeping with its national
defense mission.[16-42] But in the end the integration order proved
effective on both counts. Racial feelings, racial incidents, charges
of discrimination, and the problems of procurement, training, and
assignment always associated with racially designated units had been
reduced by an appreciable degree or eliminated entirely. The problems
anticipated from the mingling of blacks and whites in social
situations had proved to be largely imaginary. The Air Force adopted a
standard formula for dealing with these problems during the next
decade. Incidents involving black airmen were treated as individual
incidents and dealt with on a personal basis like any ordinary
disciplinary case. Only when there was no alternative was an incident
labeled "racial" and then the commander was expected to deal speedily
and firmly with the troublemakers.[16-43] This sensible procedure
freed the Air Force for a decade from the charges of on-base
discrimination that had plagued it in the past.

[Footnote 16-42: See, for example, Memo, SecAF for
SecDef, 17 Feb 49; Ltr, SecAF to Sen. Burnet R.
Maybank, 21 Jul 49; both in SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-43: Memo, Evans, OSD, for Worthington
Thompson, 18 May 53, sub: Summary of Topics
Reviewed in Thompson's office 15 May 53, SD 291.2.]

[Illustration: MAINTENANCE CREW, _462d Strategic Fighter Squadron,
disassembles aft section of an F-84 Thunderstreak_.]

Without a doubt the new policy improved the Air Force's manpower (p. 410)
efficiency, as the experience of the 3202d Installation Group
illustrates. A segregated unit serving at Eglin Air Force Base,
Florida, the 3202d was composed of an all-black heavy maintenance and
construction squadron, a black maintenance repair and utilities
squadron, and an all-white headquarters and headquarters squadron.
This rigid segregation had caused considerable trouble for the unit's
personnel section, which was forced to assign men on the basis of
color rather than military occupational specialty. For example, a
white airman with MOS 345, a truck driver, although assigned to the
unit, could not be assigned to the heavy maintenance and construction
squadron where his specialty was authorized but had to be assigned to
the white headquarters squadron where his specialty was not
authorized. Clearly operating in an inefficient manner, the unit was
charged with misassignment of personnel by the Air Inspector; in July
1950 it was swiftly and peaceably, if somewhat belatedly, integrated,
and its three squadrons were converted to racially mixed units,
allowing an airman to be assigned according to his training and not
his color.[16-44]

[Footnote 16-44: History Officer, 3202d Installations
Groups, "History of the 3202d Installations Group,
1 July-31 October 1950," Eglin AFB, Fla., pp. 8-9.]

The preoccupation of high officials with the effects of integration on
a soldier's social life seemed at times out of keeping with the issues
of national defense and military efficiency. At one of the Fahy
Committee hearings, for instance, an exasperated Charles Fahy asked
Omar Bradley, "General, are you running an Army or a dance?"[16-45]
Yet social life on military bases at swimming pools, dances, bridge
parties, and service clubs formed so great a part of the fabric of
military life that the Air Force staff could hardly ignore the
possibility of racial troubles in the countless social exchanges that
characterized the day-to-day life in any large American institution.
The social situation had been seriously considered before the new
racial policy was approved. At that time the staff had predicted that
problems developing out of integration would not prove insurmountable,
and indeed on the basis of a year's experience a member of the Air
staff declared that (p. 411)

at the point where the Negro and the white person are actually in
contact the problem has virtually disappeared. Since all races of
Air Force personnel work together under identical environmental
conditions on the base, it is not unnatural that they participate
together, to the extent that they desire, in certain social
activities which are considered a normal part of service life.
This type of integration has been entirely voluntary, without
incident, and considerably more complete and more rapid than was
anticipated.[16-46]

[Footnote 16-45: This off-the-record comment occurred
during the committee hearings in the Pentagon and
was related to the author by E. W. Kenworthy in
interview on 17 October 1971. See also Memo,
Kenworthy to Brig Gen James L. Collins, Jr., 13 Oct
76, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 16-46: Marr Report.]

[Illustration: JET MECHANICS _work on an F-100 Supersabre, Foster Air
Force Base, Texas_.]

The Air staff had imposed only two rules on interracial social
activities: with due regard for sex and rank all Air Force facilities
were available for the unrestricted use of all its members;
troublemakers would get into trouble. Under these inflexible rules,
the Fahy Committee later reported, there was a steady movement in the
direction of shared facilities. "Here again, mutual respect engendered
on the job or in the school seemed to translate itself into friendly
association."[16-47] Whether it liked it or not, the Air Force was in
the business of social change.

[Footnote 16-47: _Freedom to Serve_, p. 41.]

Typical of most unit reports was one from the commander of the 1701st
Air Transport Wing, Great Falls Air Force Base, Montana, who wrote
Secretary Symington that the unit's eighty-three Negroes, serving in
ten different organizations, lived and worked with white airmen "on an
apparently equal and friendly basis."[16-48] The commander had been
unable to persuade local community leaders, however, to promote
equality of treatment outside the base, and beyond its movie theaters
Great Falls had very few places that allowed black airmen. The
commander was touching upon a problem that would eventually trouble
all the services: airmen, he reported to Secretary Symington, although
they have good food and entertainment on the base, sooner or later
want to go to town, sit at a table, and order what they want. The Air
Force was now coming into conflict with local custom which it could
see no way to control. As the _Air Force Times_ put it, "The Air
Force, like the other services, feels circumspect policy in this
regard is the only advisable one on the grounds that off-base
segregation is a matter for civilian rather than military
decision."[16-49]

[Footnote 16-48: Ltr, Col Paul H. Prentiss, Cmdr,
1701st AT Wing, to SecAF, 27 Dec 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-49: _Air Force Times_, 10 February 1951.]

But this problem could not detract from what had been accomplished on
the bases. Judged by the standards it set for itself before the Fahy
Committee, the Air Force had achieved its goals. Further, they (p. 412)
were achieved in the period between 1949 and 1956 when the percentage
of blacks in the service doubled, an increase resulting from the
Defense Department's qualitative distribution of manpower rather than
the removal of the racial quota.[16-50] During these years the number
of black airmen rose from 5.1 to 10.4 percent of the enlisted strength
and the black officers from 0.6 to 1.1 percent. Reviewing the
situation in 1960, _Ebony_ noted that the program begun in 1949 was
working well and that white men were accepting without question
progressive racial practices forbidden in their home communities.
Minor racial flare-ups still occurred, but integration was no longer a
major problem in the Air Force; it was a fact of life.[16-51]

[Footnote 16-50: Memo for Rcd, ADS(M), 12 Sep 56, sub:
Integration Percentages, ADS(M) 291.2. For further
discussion of the qualitative distribution program,
see Navy section, below.]

[Footnote 16-51: "Integration in the Air Force
Abroad," _Ebony_ 15 (March 1960):27.]


_The Navy and Executive Order 9981_

The changing government attitude toward integration in the late 1940's
had less dramatic effect on the Navy than upon the other services
because the Navy was already the conspicuous possessor of a racial
policy guaranteeing equal treatment and opportunity for all its
members. But as the Fahy Committee and many other critics insisted,
the Navy's 1946 equality guarantee was largely theoretical; its major
racial problem was not one of policy but of practice as statistics
demonstrated. It was true, for example, that the Navy had abolished
racial quotas in recruitment, yet the small number of black
sailors--17,000 during 1949, averaging 4.5 percent of the total
strength--made the absence of a quota academic.[16-52] It was true
that Negroes served side by side with white sailors in almost every
occupation and training program in the Navy, but it was also a fact
that 62 percent of all Negroes in the Navy in 1949 were still assigned
to the nonwhite Steward's Branch. This figure shows that as late as
December 1949 fewer than 7,000 black sailors were serving in racially
integrated assignments.[16-53] Again, with only 19 black officers,
including 2 nurses, in a 1949 average officer strength of 45,464, it
meant little to say that the Navy had an integrated officer corps. A
shadow had fallen, then, between the promise of the Navy's policy and
its fulfillment, partly because of indifferent execution.

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