Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 16-81: Memo, Dir, Plans and Policy, BuPers,
for Capt Brooke Schumm, USN, PPB, 17 Jul 50, sub:
Secretary of Defense Semi-Annual Report, Negro
Enlisted Personnel Data for, Pers 14B; Memo, Head,
Strength and Statistics Br, BuPers, for Head,
Technical Info Br, BuPers, 25 Aug 53, sub:
Information Requested by LCDR D. D. Nelson
Concerning Negro Strength, Pers A14; both in
BuPersRecs.]

Yet these reforms were modest in terms of the pressing need for a
substantive change in the racial composition of the Steward's Branch.
Despite the changes in assignment policy, the Steward's Branch was
still nearly 65 percent black in 1952, and the rest were mostly
Filipino citizens under contract. Secretary of the Navy Kimball's
observation that 133 stewards had transferred out of the branch in a
recent four-month period hardly promised any speedy change in the
current percentages.[16-82] In fact there was evidence even at that
late date that some staff members in the personnel bureau were working
at cross-purposes to the Navy's expressed policy. Worried about the
shortages of volunteers for the Steward's Branch, a group of officials
had met in August 1951 to discuss ways of improving branch morale.
Some suggested publicizing the branch to the black press and schools,
showing that Negroes were in all branches of the Navy including the
Steward's. They also studied a pamphlet called "The Advantages of
Stewards Duty in the Navy" that gave nine reasons why a man should
become a steward.[16-83]

[Footnote 16-82: Kimball was sworn in as Secretary of
the Navy on 31 July 1951. Ltr, SecNav to Granger,
19 Nov 52, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-83: BuPers, Plans and Policy Div, "Review
of Suggestions and Recommendations to Improve
Standards, Morale, and Attitudes Toward Stewards
Branch of U.S. Navy" (ca. 2 Aug 51), BuPersRecs.]

Obviously the Navy had to set a steady course if it intended any
lasting racial reform of the Steward's Branch, but its leaders seemed
ambivalent toward the problem. Despite his earlier efforts to raise
the status of stewards, Kimball, in a variation on an old postwar
argument, tried to show that the exclusiveness of the Steward's (p. 421)
Branch actually worked to the Negro's advantage. As he explained to
Lester Granger in November 1952, any action to effect radical or
wholesale changes in ratings "would not only tend to reduce the
efficiency of the Navy, but also in many instances be to the
disadvantage or detriment of the individuals concerned, particularly
those in the senior Steward ratings."[16-84] Supporting this line of
argument, the Chief of Naval Personnel announced the reenlistment
figures for the Steward's Branch--over 80 percent during the Korean
War period. These figures, Vice Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., added,
proved the branch to be the most popular in the Navy and offered "a
rational measure of the state of the morale and job satisfaction."[16-85]

[Footnote 16-84: Ltr, SecNav for Granger, 19 Nov 52,
SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-85: Ltrs, Chief, NavPers, to James C.
Evans, OSD, 19 Jun 53, and Granger, 28 Jul 53, both
in P 8 (4), BuPersRecs.]

These explanations still figured prominently in the Navy's 1961
defense of its racial statistics. Discussing the matter at a White
House meeting of civil rights leaders, the Chief of Naval Personnel
pointed out that all the black stewards could be replaced with
Filipinos, but the Navy had refrained from such a course for several
reasons. The branch still had the highest reenlistment rate. It
provided jobs for those group IV men the Navy was obliged to accept
but could never use in technical billets. Without the opportunity
provided by the branch, moreover, "many of the rated black stewards
would probably not achieve a petty officer rating at all."[16-86]

[Footnote 16-86: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Pers B, 23
Sep 61, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy
Library. See also Memo, Chief, NavPers, for ASD/M,
29 Mar 61, sub: Stewards in U.S. Navy, Pers 8 (4),
BuPersRecs; Memo, Special Asst to SecDef, Adam
Yarmolinsky, for Frederic Dutton, Special Asst to
President, 31 Oct 61, sub: Yarmolinsky Memo of
October 26, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F.
Kennedy Library.]

However well founded these arguments were, they did not satisfy the
Navy's critics, who continued to press for the establishment of one
recruitment standard and the assignment of men on the basis of
interest and training rather than race. Lester Granger, for example,
warned Secretary Kimball of the skepticism that persisted among
sections of the black community: "As long as that branch [the
Steward's Branch] is composed entirely of nonwhite personnel, the Navy
is apt to be held by some to be violating its own stated
policy."[16-87] To Kimball's successor, Robert B. Anderson,[16-88]
Granger was even more blunt. The Steward's Branch, he declared, was "a
constant irritant to the Negro public." He saw some logical reason for
the continued concentration of Negroes in the branch but added "logic
does not necessarily imply wisdom and I sincerely believe that it is
unwise from the standpoint of efficiency and public relations to
continue the Stewards Branch on its present basis."[16-89]

[Footnote 16-87: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 24 Oct 52,
SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-88: Secretary Anderson, appointed by
President Eisenhower, became Secretary of the Navy
on 4 February 1953.]

[Footnote 16-89: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 24 Apr 53,
SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

Granger's suggestion for change was straightforward. He wanted the
Bureau of Naval Personnel to find a way to introduce a sufficiently
large number of whites into the branch to transform its racial
composition. The task promised to be difficult if the charges leveled
in the Detroit _Free Press_ were accurate. In May 1953 the paper (p. 422)
reported incidents of naval recruiting officers who, "by one ruse or
another," were shunting young volunteers, sometimes without their
knowledge, into the Steward's Branch.[16-90]

[Footnote 16-90: Detroit _Free Press_, May 16, 1953.]

Granger's suggestions were taken up by Secretary Anderson, who
announced his intention of integrating the Steward's Branch and
ordered the Chief of Naval Personnel to draw up plans to that
end.[16-91] To devise some practical measures for handling the
problem, the personnel bureau brought back to active duty three
officers who had been important to the development of the Navy's 1946
integration policy. Their study produced three recommendations:
abolish the segregation of the Steward's Branch from the general
service and separate recruitment for its members; consider
consolidating the branch with the predominantly white Commissary
Branch; and change the steward's insignia.[16-92]

[Footnote 16-91: UP News Release, September 21, 1953,
copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 16-92: Ltr, Cmdr Durwood W. Gilmore, USNR et
al., to Chief, NavPers, Vice Adm J. L. Holloway,
Jr., 31 Aug 53, P 8 (4), BuPersRecs.]

The group acknowledged that the Steward's Branch was a "sore spot with
the Negroes, and is our weakest position from the standpoint of Public
Relations," and two of their recommendations were obviously aimed at
immediate improvement of public relations. Combining the messmen and
commissary specialists would of course create an integrated branch,
which Granger estimated would be only 20 percent black, and would
probably provide additional opportunities for promotions, but in the
end it could not mask the fact that a high proportion of black sailors
were employed in food service and valet positions. Nor was it clear
how changing the familiar crescent insignia, symbolic of the steward's
duties, would change the image of a separate group that still
performed the most menial duties. Long-term reform, everyone agreed,
demanded the presence of a significant number of whites in the branch,
and there was strong evidence that the general service contained more
than a few group IV white sailors. The group's proposal to abolish
separate recruiting would probably increase the number of blacks in
the general service and eliminate the possibility that unsuspecting
black recruits would be dragooned into a messman's career; both were
substantial reforms but did not guarantee that whites would be
attracted or assigned to the branch.

Admiral Holloway was concerned about this latter point, which dominated
his discussions with the Secretary of the Navy on 1 September 1953. He
had, he told Anderson, discussed with his recruiting specialists the
possibility of recruiting white sailors for the branch, and while they
all agreed that whites must not be induced to join by "improper
procedures," such as preferential recruitment to escape the draft,
they felt that whites could be attracted to steward duty by skillful
recruiters, especially in areas of the country where industrial
integration had already been accomplished. His bureau was considering
the abolition of separate recruiting, but to make specific recommendations
on matters involving the stewards he had created an ad hoc committee,
under the Deputy Chief of Naval Personnel and composed of (p. 423)
representatives of the other bureaus. When he received this committee's
views, Holloway promised to take "definite administrative action."[16-93]

[Footnote 16-93: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, 1
Sep 53, sub: Mr. Granger's Visit and Related
Matters, Pers, GenRecsNav.]

[Illustration: INTEGRATED STEWARDS CLASS GRADUATES, GREAT LAKES, 1953.]

The three recommendations of the reservist experts did not survive
intact the ad hoc committee's scrutiny. At the committee's suggestion,
Holloway rejected the proposed merger of the commissary and steward
functions on the grounds that such a move was unnecessary in an era of
high reenlistment. He also decided that stewards would retain their
branch insignia. He did approve, however, in a decision announced on
28 February 1954, putting an end to the separate recruitment of
stewards with the exception of the contract enlistment of Filipino
citizens. As Anderson assured Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New
York, only after recruit training and "with full knowledge of the
opportunities in various categories of administrative specialties"
would an enlistee be allowed to volunteer for messman's duty.[16-94]

[Footnote 16-94: Ltr, SecNav to Congressman Adam C.
Powell, 19 Mar 54, SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

Admiral Holloway promised a further search for ways to eliminate
"points of friction" regarding the stewards, and naval officials
discussed the problem with civil rights leaders and Defense Department
officials on several occasions in the next years.[16-95] The (p. 424)
Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Adam Yarmolinsky,
reported in 1961 that the Bureau of Naval Personnel "was not sanguine"
about recruiting substantial numbers of white seamen for the Steward's
Branch.[16-96] In answer, the Chief of Naval Personnel could only
point out that no matter what their qualifications or ambitions all
men assigned to the Steward's Branch were volunteers. As one
commentator observed, white sailors were very rarely attracted to the
messmen's field because of its reputation as a black specialty.[16-97]

[Footnote 16-95: See, for example, ASD/M, Thursday
Reports, 7 Jan 54 and 12 Apr 56, copies in Dep ASD
(Civil Rights) files; see also Memo, Chief,
NavPers, for Special Asst to SecDef, 29 Mar 61,
sub: Stewards in U.S. Navy, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 16-96: Memo, Adam Yarmolinsky for Fred
Dutton, 31 Oct 61, sub: Yarmolinsky Memo of October
26, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy
Library.]

[Footnote 16-97: Greenberg, _Race Relations and
American Law_, p. 359.]

Nevertheless, by 1961 a definite pattern of change had emerged in the
Steward's Branch. The end of separate recruitment drastically cut the
number of Negroes entering the rating, while the renewed emphasis on
transferring eligible chief stewards to other specialties somewhat
reduced the number of Negroes already in the branch. Between 1956 and
1961, some 600 men out of the 1,800 tested transferred to other rating
groups or fields. The substantial drop in black strength resulting
from these changes combined with a corresponding rise in the number of
contract messmen from the western Pacific region reduced for the first
time in some thirty years Negroes in the Steward's Branch to a
minority. Even for those remaining in the branch, life changed
considerably. Separate berthing for stewards, always justified on the
grounds of different duties and hours, was discontinued, and the
amount of time spent by stewards at sea, with the varied military work
that sea duty involved, was increased.[16-98]

[Footnote 16-98: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for Special
Asst to SecDef, 29 Mar 61, sub: Stewards in U.S.
Navy, Pers 8 (4), GenRecsNav.]

If these changes caused by the increased enlistment of stewards from
the western Pacific relieved the Steward's Branch of its reputation as
the black man's navy, they also perpetuated the notion that servants'
duties were for persons of dark complexion. The debate over a
segregated branch that had engaged the civil rights leaders and the
Navy since 1932 was over, but it had left a residue of ill will; some
were bitter at what they considered the listless pace of reform, a
pace which left the impression that the service had been forced to
change against its will. To some extent the Navy in the 1950's failed
to capitalize on its early achievements because it had for so long
missed the point of the integrationists' arguments about the stewards.
In the fifties the Navy expended considerable time and energy
advertising for black officer candidates and recruits whom they
guaranteed a genuinely equal chance to participate in all specialties,
but these efforts were to some extent dismissed by critics as not
germane. In 1950, for example, only 114 Negroes served in the
glamorous submarine assignments and even fewer in the naval air
service.[16-99] Yet this obvious underrepresentation caused no great
outcry from the black community. What did cause bitterness and (p. 425)
protest in an era of aroused racial pride was the fact that servants'
duties fell almost exclusively on nonwhite Americans. That these
duties were popular--the 80 percent reenlistment rate in the Steward's
Branch continued throughout the decade and the transfer rate into the
branch almost equaled the transfer out--was disregarded by many of the
more articulate spokesmen, who considered the branch an insult to the
black public. As Congressman Powell informed the Navy in 1953, "no one
is interested in today's world in fighting communism with a frying pan
or shoe polish."[16-100] Although statistics showed nearly half the
black sailors employed in other than menial tasks, Powell voiced the
mood of a large segment of the black community.

[Footnote 16-99: The Navy commissioned its first black
pilot, Ens. Jesse L. Brown, in 1950. He was killed
in action in Korea.]

[Footnote 16-100: Ltr, Powell to John Floberg, Asst
SecNav for Air, 29 Jun 53, SecNav files,
GenRecsNav.]

[Illustration: WAVE RECRUITS, _Naval Training Center, Bainbridge,
Maryland, 1953_.]

The Fahy Committee had acknowledged that manpower statistics alone
were not a reliable index of equal opportunity. Convinced that Negroes
were getting a full and equal chance to enlist in the general service
and compete for officer commissions, the committee had approved the
Navy's policy, trusting to time and equal opportunity to produce the
desired result. Unfortunately for the Navy, there would be many
critics both in and out of government in the 1960's who disagreed with
the committee's trust in time and good intentions, for equal opportunity
would remain very much a matter of numbers and percentages. In an (p. 426)
era when a premium would be placed on the size of minority membership,
the palm would go to the other services. "The blunt fact is," Granger
reminded the Secretary of the Navy in 1954, "that as a general rule
the most aspiring Negro youth are apt to have the least interest in a
Navy career, chiefly because the Army and Air Force have up to now
captured the spotlight."[16-101] A decade later the statement still
held.

[Footnote 16-101: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 7 Jan 54,
SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Illustration: ADMIRAL GRAVELY (_1973 portrait_).]

It was ironic that black youth remained aloof from the Navy in the
1950's when the way of life for Negroes on shipboard and at naval
bases had definitely taken a turn for the better. The general service
was completely integrated, although the black proportion, 4.9 percent
in 1960, was still far less than might reasonably be expected,
considering the black population.[16-102] Negroes were being trained
in every job classification and attended all the Navy's technical
schools. Although not yet represented in proportionate numbers in the
top grades within every rating, Negroes served in all ratings in every
branch, a fact favorably noticed in the metropolitan press.[16-103]
Black officers, still shockingly out of proportion to black strength,
were not much more so than in the other services and were serving more
often with regular commissions in the line as well as on the staff.
Their lack of representation in the upper ranks demonstrated that the
climb to command was slow and arduous even when the discriminatory
tactics of earlier times had been removed. In 1961 the Navy could
finally announce that a black officer, Lt. Comdr. Samuel L. Gravely,
Jr., had been ordered to command a destroyer escort, the USS
_Falgout_.[16-104]

[Footnote 16-102: Memo, ASD/M for SA et al., 21 Nov
51, sub: Manuscript on the Negro in the Armed
Forces, SecDef 291.2.]

[Footnote 16-103: See New York _Herald Tribune_,
December 2, 1957, and New York Post, March 14,
1957.]

[Footnote 16-104: Gravely would eventually become the
first black admiral in the U.S. Navy.]

But how were these changes being accepted among the rank and file?
Comments from official sources and civil rights groups alike showed
the leaven of racial tolerance at work throughout the service.[16-105]
Reporter Lee Nichols, interviewing members of all the services in (p. 427)
1953,[16-106] found that whites expected blacks to prove themselves in
their assignments while blacks were skeptical that equal opportunities
for assignment were really open to them. Yet the Nichols interviews
reveal a strain of pride and wonderment in the servicemen at the
profound changes they had witnessed.

[Footnote 16-105: See, for example, Ltr, Exec Secy,
President's Cmte on Equal Treatment and Opportunity
in the Armed Services, to CNO, 21 Jun 49, FC file;
Memo, Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, BuPersRecs; Memo,
ASD/M for SA et al., 21 Nov 51, sub: Manuscript on
the Negro in the Armed Forces, SecDef 291.2; Ltr,
Exec Secy, ACLU, to SecNav, 26 Nov 57, SecNav
files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-106: Nichols's sampling, presented in the
form of approximately a hundred interviews with men
and women from all the services, was completely
unscientific and informal and was undertaken for
the preparation of his book, _Breakthrough on the
Color Front_. Considering their timing, the
interviews supply an interesting sidelight to the
integration period. They are included in the
Nichols Collection, CMH.]

In time integrated service became routine throughout the Navy, and
instances of Negroes in command of integrated units increased. Bigots
of both races inevitably remained, and the black community continued
to resent the separate Steward's Branch, but the sincerity of the
Navy's promise to integrate the service seemed no longer in doubt.

CHAPTER 17 (p. 428)

The Army Integrates

The integration of the United States Army was not accomplished by
executive fiat or at the demand of the electorate. Nor was it the
result of any particular victory of the civil rights advocates over
the racists. It came about primarily because the definition of
military efficiency spelled out by the Fahy Committee and demonstrated
by troops in the heat of battle was finally accepted by Army leaders.
The Army justified its policy changes in the name of efficiency, as
indeed it had always, but this time efficiency led the service
unmistakably toward integration.

_Race and Efficiency: 1950_

The Army's postwar planners based their low estimate of the black
soldier's ability on the collective performance of the segregated
black units in World War II and assumed that social unrest would
result from mixing the races. The Army thus accepted an economically
and administratively inefficient segregated force in peacetime to
preserve what it considered to be a more dependable fighting machine
for war. Insistence on the need for segregation in the name of
military efficiency was also useful in rationalizing the prejudice and
thoughtless adherence to traditional practice which obviously played a
part in the Army's tenacious defense of its policy.

An entirely different conclusion, however, could be drawn from the
same set of propositions. The Fahy Committee, for example, had clearly
demonstrated the inefficiency of segregation, and more to the point,
some senior Army officials, in particular Secretary Gray and Chief of
Staff Collins, had come to question the conventional pattern.
Explaining later why he favored integration ahead of many of his
contemporaries, Collins drew on his World War II experience. The major
black ground units in World War II, and to a lesser degree the 99th
Pursuit Squadron, he declared, "did not work out." Nor, he concluded,
did the smaller independent black units, even those commanded by black
officers, who were burdened with problems of discipline and
inefficiency. On the other hand, the integrated infantry platoons in
Europe, with which Collins had personal experience, worked well. His
observations had convinced him that it was "pointless" to support
segregated black units, and while the matter had "nothing to do with
sociology itself," he reasoned that if integration worked at the
platoon level "why not on down the line?" The best plan, he believed,
was to assign two Negroes to each squad in the Army, always assuming
that the quota limiting the total number of black soldiers would be
preserved.[17-1]

[Footnote 17-1: Interv, author with Collins.]

But the Army had promised the Fahy Committee in April 1950 it (p. 429)
would abolish the quota. If carried out, such an agreement would
complicate an orderly and controlled integration, and Collins's desire
for change was clearly tempered by his concern for order and control.
So long as peacetime manpower levels remained low and inductions
through the draft limited, a program such as the one contemplated by
the Chief of Staff was feasible, but any sudden wartime expansion
would change all that. Fear of such a sudden change combined with the
strong opposition to integration still shared by most Army officials
to keep the staff from any initiative toward integration in the period
immediately after the Fahy Committee adjourned.

Even before Gray and Collins completed their negotiations with the
Fahy Committee, they were treated by the Chamberlin Board to yet
another indication of the scope of Army staff opposition to
integration. Gray had appointed a panel of senior officers under Lt.
Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin on 18 September 1949 in fulfillment of his
promise to review the Army's racial policy periodically "in the light
of changing conditions and experiences of this day and time."[17-2]
After sitting four months and consulting more than sixty major Army
officials and some 280 officers and men, the board produced a
comprehensive summary of the Army's racial status based on test
scores, enlistment rates, school figures, venereal disease rates,
opinion surveys, and the like.