Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

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

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[Footnote 2-105: ETO I&E Div Rpt E-118 Research Br,
The Utilization of Negro Infantry Platoons in White
Companies, Jun 45; ASF I&E Div Rpt B-157, Opinions
About Negro Infantry Platoons in White Companies of
Seven Divisions, 3 Jul 45. For a general critique
of black performance in World War II, see Chapter 5
below.]

General Brehon B. Somervell, commanding general of the Army Service
Forces, questioned the advisability of releasing the report. An
experiment involving 1,000 volunteers--his figure was inaccurate,
actually 2,500 were involved--was hardly, he believed, a conclusive
test. Furthermore, organizations such as the NAACP might be encouraged
to exert pressure for similar experiments among troops in training in
the United States and even in the midst of active operations in the
Pacific theater--pressure, he believed, that might hamper training and
operations. What mainly concerned Somervell were the political
implications. Many members of Congress, newspaper editors, and others
who had given strong support to the War Department were, he contended,
"vigorously opposed" to integration under any conditions. A strong
adverse reaction from this influential segment of the nation's (p. 055)
opinion-makers might alienate public support for a postwar program of
universal military training.[2-106]

[Footnote 2-106: Memo, CG, ASF, to ASW, 11 Jul 45,
ASW 291.2 NT.]

General Omar N. Bradley, the senior American field commander in
Europe, took a different tack. Writing for the theater headquarters
and drawing upon such sources of information as the personal
observations of some officers, General Bradley disparaged the
significance of the experiment. Most of the black platoons, he
observed, had participated mainly in mopping-up operations or combat
against a disorganized enemy. Nor could the soldiers involved in the
experiment be considered typical, in Bradley's opinion. They were
volunteers of above average intelligence according to their
commanders.[2-107] Finally, Bradley contended that, while no racial
trouble emerged during combat, the mutual friendship fostered by
fighting a common enemy was threatened when the two races were closely
associated in rest and recreational areas. Nevertheless, he agreed
that the performance of the platoons was satisfactory enough to
warrant continuing the experiment but recommended the use of draftees
with average qualifications. At the same time, he drew away from
further integration by suggesting that the experiment be expanded to
include employment of entire black rifle companies in white regiments
to avoid some of the social difficulties encountered in rest
areas.[2-108]

[Footnote 2-107: The percentage of high school
graduates and men scoring in AGCT categories I, II,
and III among the black infantry volunteers was
somewhat higher than that of all Negroes in the
European theater. As against 22 percent high school
graduates and 29 percent in the first three test
score categories for the volunteers, the
percentages for all Negroes in the theater were 18
and 17 percent. At the same time the averages for
black volunteers were considerably below those for
white riflemen, of whom 41 percent were high school
graduates and 71 percent in the higher test
categories--figures that tend to refute the
general's argument. See ASF I&E Div Rpt B-157, 3
Jul 45.]

[Footnote 2-108: Msg, Hq ComZ, ETO, Paris, France
(signed Bradley), to WD 3 Jul 45. For similar
reports from the field see, for example, Ltr, Brig
Gen R. B. Lovett, ETO AG, to TAG, 7 Sep 45, sub:
The Utilization of Negro Platoons in White
Companies; Ltr, Hq USFET to TAG, 24 Oct 45, same
sub. Both in AG 291.2 (1945).]

General Marshall, the Chief of Staff, agreed with both Somervell and
Bradley. Although he thought that the possibility of integrating black
units into white units should be "followed up," he believed that the
survey should not be made public because "the conditions under which
the [black] platoons were organized and employed were most
unusual."[2-109] Too many of the circumstances of the experiment were
special--the voluntary recruitment of men for frontline duty, the
relatively high number of noncommissioned officers among the
volunteers, and the fact that the volunteers were slightly older and
scored higher in achievement tests than the average black soldier.
Moreover, throughout the experiment some degree of segregation, with
all its attendant psychological and morale problems, had been
maintained.

[Footnote 2-109: Memo, CofS for ASW, 25 Aug 45, WDCSA
291.2 Negroes (25 Aug 45).]

The platoon experiment was illuminating in several respects. The fact
that so late in the war thousands of Negroes volunteered to trade the
safety of the rear for duty at the front said something about black
patriotism and perhaps something about the Negro's passion for equality.
It also demonstrated that, when properly trained and motivated and (p. 056)
treated with fairness, blacks, like whites, performed with bravery and
distinction in combat. Finally, the experiment successfully attacked
one of the traditionalists' shibboleths, that close association of the
races in Army units would cause social dissension.

[Illustration: ROAD REPAIRMEN, _Company A, 279th Engineer Battalion,
near Rimberg, Germany, December 1944_.]

It is now apparent that World War II had little immediate effect on
the quest for racial equality in the Army. The Double V campaign
against fascism abroad and racism at home achieved considerably less
than the activists had hoped. Although Negroes shared in the
prosperity brought by war industries and some 800,000 of them served
in uniform, segregation remained the policy of the Army throughout the
war, just as Jim Crow still ruled in large areas of the country.
Probably the campaign's most important achievement was that during the
war the civil rights groups, in organizing for the fight against
discrimination, began to gather strength and develop techniques that
would be useful in the decades to come. The Army's experience with
black units also convinced many that segregation was a questionable
policy when the country needed to mobilize fully.

For its part the Army defended the separation of the races in the name
of military efficiency and claimed that it had achieved a victory over
racial discrimination by providing equal treatment and job opportunity
for black soldiers. But the Army's campaign had also been less than
completely successful. True, the Army had provided specialist training
and opened job opportunities heretofore denied to thousands of
Negroes, and it had a cadre of potential leaders in the hundreds of
experienced black officers. For the times, the Army was a progressive
minority employer. Even so, as an institution it had defended the
separate but equal doctrine and had failed to come to grips with
segregation. Under segregation the Army was compelled to combine large
numbers of undereducated and undertrained black soldiers in units that
were often inefficient and sometimes surplus to its needs. This system
in turn robbed the Army of the full services of the educated and able
black soldier, who had every reason to feel restless and rebellious.

The Army received no end of advice on its manpower policy during the
war. Civil rights spokesmen continually pointed out that segregation
itself was discriminatory, and Judge Hastie in particular hammered on
this proposition before the highest officials of the War (p. 057)
Department. In fact Hastie's recommendations, criticisms, and
arguments crystallized the demands of civil rights leaders. The Army
successfully resisted the proposition when its Advisory Committee on
Negro Troop Policies under John McCloy modified but did not
appreciably alter the segregation policy. It was a predictable course.
The Army's racial policy was more than a century old, and leaders
considered it dangerous if not impossible to revise traditional ways
during a global war involving so many citizens with pronounced and
different views on race.

What both the civil rights activists and the Army's leaders tended to
ignore during the war was that segregation was inefficient. The myriad
problems associated with segregated units, in contrast to the
efficient operation of the integrated officer candidate schools and
the integrated infantry platoons in Europe, were overlooked in the
atmosphere of charges and denials concerning segregation and
discrimination. John McCloy was an exception. He had clearly become
dissatisfied with the inefficiency of the Army's policy, and in the
week following the Japanese surrender he questioned Navy Secretary
James V. Forrestal on the Navy's experiments with integration. "It has
always seemed to me," he concluded, "that we never put enough thought
into the matter of making a real military asset out of the very large
cadre of Negro personnel we received from the country."[2-110] Although
segregation persisted, the fact that it hampered military efficiency
was the hope of those who looked for a change in the Army's policy.

[Footnote 2-110: Ltr, ASW to SecNav, 22 Aug 45, ASW
291.2 NT (Gen).]

CHAPTER 3 (p. 058)

World War II: The Navy

The period between the world wars marked the nadir of the Navy's
relations with black America. Although the exclusion of Negroes that
began with a clause introduced in enlistment regulations in 1922
lasted but a decade, black participation in the Navy remained severely
restricted during the rest of the inter-war period. In June 1940 the
Navy had 4,007 black personnel, 2.3 percent of its nearly 170,000-man
total.[3-1] All were enlisted men, and with the exception of six regular
rated seamen, lone survivors of the exclusion clause, all were
steward's mates, labeled by the black press "seagoing bellhops."

[Footnote 3-1: All statistics in this chapter are
taken from the files of the U.S. Navy, Bureau of
Naval Personnel (hereafter cited as BuPers).]

The Steward's Branch, composed entirely of enlisted Negroes and
oriental aliens, mostly Filipinos, was organized outside the Navy's
general service. Its members carried ratings up to chief petty
officer, but wore distinctive uniforms and insignia, and even chief
stewards never exercised authority over men rated in the general naval
service. Stewards manned the officers' mess and maintained the
officers' billets on board ship, and, in some instances, took care of
the quarters of high officials in the shore establishment. Some were
also engaged in mess management, menu planning, and the purchase of
supplies. Despite the fact that their enlistment contracts restricted
their training and duties, stewards, like everyone else aboard ship,
were assigned battle stations, including positions at the guns and on
the bridge. One of these stewards, Dorie (Doris) Miller, became a hero
on the first day of the war when he manned a machine gun on the
burning deck of the USS _Arizona_ and destroyed two enemy planes.[3-2]

[Footnote 3-2: After some delay and considerable
pressure from civil rights sources, the Navy
identified Miller, awarded him the Navy Cross, and
promoted him to mess attendant, first class. Miller
was later lost at sea. See Dennis D. Nelson, _The
Integration of the Negro Into the U.S. Navy_ (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), pp. 23-25.
The Navy further honored Miller in 1973 by naming a
destroyer escort (DE 1091) after him.]

By the end of December 1941 the number of Negroes in the Navy had
increased by slightly more than a thousand men to 5,026, or 2.4
percent of the whole, but they continued to be excluded from all
positions except that of steward.[3-3] It was not surprising that civil
rights organizations and their supporters in Congress demanded a
change in policy.

[Footnote 3-3: There were exceptions to this
generalization. The Navy had 43 black men with
ratings in the general service in December 1941:
the 6 regulars from the 1920's, 23 others returned
from retirement, and 14 members of the Fleet
Reserve. See U.S. Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel,
"The Negro in the Navy in World War II" (1947)
(hereafter "BuPers Hist"), p. 1. This study is part
of the bureau's unpublished multivolume
administrative history of World War II. A copy is
on file in the bureau's Technical Library. The work
is particularly valuable for its references to
documents that no longer exist.]

_Development of a Wartime Policy_ (p. 059)

At first the new secretary, Frank Knox, and the Navy's professional
leaders resisted demands for a change. Together with Secretary of War
Stimson, Knox had joined the cabinet in July 1940 when Roosevelt was
attempting to defuse a foreign policy debate that threatened to
explode during the presidential campaign.[3-4] For a major cabinet
officer, Knox's powers were severely circumscribed. He had little
knowledge of naval affairs, and the President, himself once an
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, often went over his head to deal
directly with the naval bureaus on shipbuilding programs and manpower
problems as well as the disposition of the fleet. But Knox was a
personable man and a forceful speaker, and he was particularly useful
to the President in congressional liaison and public relations.
Roosevelt preferred to work through the secretary in dealing with the
delicate question of black participation in the Navy. Knox himself was
fortunate in his immediate official family. James V. Forrestal became
under secretary in August 1940; during the next year Ralph A. Bard, a
Chicago investment banker, joined the department as assistant
secretary, and Adlai E. Stevenson became special assistant.

[Footnote 3-4: One of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough
Riders, a World War I field artillery officer, and
later publisher of the Chicago _Daily News_, Knox
was an implacable foe of the New Deal but an ardent
internationalist, strongly sympathetic to President
Roosevelt's foreign policy.]

Able as these men were, Frank Knox, like most new secretaries
unfamiliar with the operations and traditions of the vast department,
was from the beginning heavily dependent on his naval advisers. These
were the chiefs of the powerful bureaus and the prominent senior
admirals of the General Board, the Navy's highest advisory body.[3-5]
Generally these men were ardent military traditionalists, and, despite
the progressive attitude of the secretary's highest civilian advisers,
changes in the racial policy of the Navy were to be glacially slow.

[Footnote 3-5: In 1940 the bureaus were answerable
only to the Secretary of the Navy and the
President, but after a reorganization of 1942 they
began to lose some of their independence. In March
1942 President Roosevelt merged the offices of the
Chief of Naval Operations and Commander in Chief,
U.S. Fleet, giving Admiral Ernest J. King, who held
both titles, at least some direction over most of
the bureaus. Eventually the Chief of Naval
Operations would become a figure with powers
comparable to those exercised by the Army's Chief
of Staff. See Julius A. Furer, _Administration of
the Navy Department in World War II_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1959), pp. 113-14. This
shift in power was readily apparent in the case of
the administration of the Navy's racial policy.]

The Bureau of Navigation, which was charged with primary
responsibility for all personnel matters, was opposed to change in the
racial composition of the Navy. Less than two weeks after Knox's
appointment, it prepared for his signature a letter to Lieutenant
Governor Charles Poletti of New York defending the Navy's policy. The
bureau reasoned that since segregation was impractical, exclusion was
necessary. Experience had proved, the bureau claimed, that when given
supervisory responsibility the Negro was unable to maintain discipline
among white subordinates with the result that teamwork, harmony, and
ship's efficiency suffered. The Negro, therefore, had to be segregated
from the white sailor. All-black units were impossible, the bureau
argued, because the service's training and distribution system (p. 060)
demanded that a man in any particular rating be available for any duty
required of that rating in any ship or activity in the Navy. The Navy
had experimented with segregated crews after World War I, manning one
ship with an all-Filipino crew and another with an all-Samoan crew,
but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and reasoned that
ships with black crews would be no more satisfactory.[3-6]

[Footnote 3-6: Ltr, SecNav to Lt. Gov. Charles
Poletti (New York), 24 Jul 40, Nav-620-AT,
GenRecsNav.]

[Illustration: DORIE MILLER.]

During the next weeks Secretary Knox warmed to the subject, speaking
of the difficulty faced by the Navy when men had to live aboard ship
together. He was convinced that "it is no kindness to Negroes to
thrust them upon men of the white race," and he suggested that the
Negro might make his major contribution to the armed forces in the
Army's black regimental organizations.[3-7] Confronted with widespread
criticism of this policy, however, Knox asked the Navy's General Board
in September 1940 to give him "some reasons why colored persons should
not be enlisted for general service."[3-8] He accepted the board's
reasons for continued exclusion of Negroes--generally an extension of
the ones advanced in the Poletti letter--and during the next eighteen
months these reasons, endorsed by the Chief of Naval Operations and
the Bureau of Navigation, were used as the department's standard
answer to questions on race.[3-9] They were used at the White House
conference on 18 June 1941 when, in the presence of black leaders,
Knox told President Roosevelt that the Navy could do nothing about
taking Negroes into the general service "because men live in such
intimacy aboard ship that we simply can't enlist Negroes above the
rank of messman."[3-10]

[Footnote 3-7: Idem to Sen. Arthur Capper (Kansas), 1
Aug 40, QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-8: Memo, Rear Adm W. R. Sexton, Chmn of
Gen Bd, for Capt Morton L. Deyo, 17 Sep 40, Recs of
Gen Bd, OpNavArchives.]

[Footnote 3-9: Idem for SecNav, 17 Sep 40, sub:
Enlistment of Colored Persons in the U.S. Navy,
Recs of Gen Bd, OpNavArchives. 1st Ind to Ltr, Natl
Public Relations Comm of the Universal Negro
Improvement Assn to SecNav, 4 Oct 41; Memo, Chief,
BuNav, for CNO, 24 Oct 41, and 2d Ind to same, CNO
to SecNav (Public Relations). Both in BuPers
QN/P14-4 (411004), GenRecsNav. For examples of the
Navy's response on race, see Ltr, Ens Ross R.
Hirshfield, Off of Pub Relations, to Roberson
County Training School, 25 Oct 41; Ltr, Ens William
Stucky to W. Henry White, 4 Feb 42. Both in
QN/P14-4. BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 3-10: Quoted in White, _A Man Called
White_, p. 191.]

The White House conference revealed an interesting contrast between
Roosevelt and Knox. Whatever his personal feelings, Roosevelt agreed
with Knox that integration of the Navy was an impractical step in (p. 061)
wartime, but where Knox saw exclusion from general service as the
alternative to integration Roosevelt sought a compromise. He suggested
that the Navy "make a beginning" by putting some "good Negro bands"
aboard battleships. Under such intimate living conditions white and
black would learn to know and respect each other, and "then we can
move on from there."[3-11] In effect the President was trying to lead
the Navy toward a policy similar to that announced by the Army in
1940. While his suggestion about musicians was ignored by Secretary
Knox, the search for a middle way between exclusion and integration
had begun.

[Footnote 3-11: Ibid.]

[Illustration: ADMIRAL KING AND SECRETARY KNOX _on the USS Augusta_.]

The general public knew nothing of this search, and in the heightened
atmosphere of early war days, charged with unending propaganda about
the four freedoms and the forces of democracy against fascism, the
administration's racial attitudes were being questioned daily by civil
rights spokesmen and by some Democratic politicians.[3-12] As protest
against the Navy's racial policy mounted, Secretary Knox turned once
again to his staff for reassurance. In July 1941 he appointed a
committee consisting of Navy and Marine Corps personnel officers and
including Addison Walker, a special assistant to Assistant Secretary
Bard, to conduct a general investigation of that policy. The committee
took six months to complete its study and submitted both a majority
and minority report.

[Footnote 3-12: Memo, W. A. Allen, Office of Public
Relations, for Lt Cmdr Smith, BuPers, 29 Jan 42,
BuPers QN/P-14, BuPersRecs.]

The majority report marshaled a long list of arguments to prove that
exclusion of the Negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of
promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the Navy as a
whole." It concluded that no change in policy was necessary since
"within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain
races, the enlisted personnel of the Naval Establishment is
representative of all the citizens of the United States."[3-13] The
majority invoked past experience, efficiency, and patriotism to
support the _status quo_, but its chorus of reasons for excluding
Negroes sounded incongruous amid the patriotic din and call to colors
that followed Pearl Harbor.

[Footnote 3-13: Ltr, Chief, BuNav, to Chmn, Gen Bd,
22 Jan 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race
in Other Than Messman Branch, Recs of Gen Bd,
OpNavArchives.]

[Illustration: CREW MEMBERS OF USS ARGONAUT _relax and read mail,
Pearl Harbor, 1942_.]

Demonstrating changing social attitudes and also reflecting the (p. 062)
compromise solution suggested by the President in June, Addison
Walker's minority report recommended that a limited number of Negroes
be enlisted for general duty "on some type of patrol or other small
vessel assigned to a particular yard or station." While the
enlistments could frankly be labeled experiments, Walker argued that
such a step would mute black criticism by promoting Negroes out of the
servant class. The program would also provide valuable data in case
the Navy was later directed to accept Negroes through Selective
Service. Reasoning that a man's right to fight for his country was
probably more fundamental than his right to vote, Walker insisted that
the drive for the rights and privileges of black citizens was a social
force that could not be ignored by the Navy. Indeed, he added, "the
reconciliation of social friction within our own country" should be a
special concern of the armed forces in wartime.[3-14]

[Footnote 3-14: Ibid.]

Although the committee's majority won the day, its arguments were
overtaken by events that followed Pearl Harbor. The NAACP, viewing the
Navy's rejection of black volunteers in the midst of the intensive
recruiting campaign, again took the issue to the White House. The
President, in turn, asked the Fair Employment Practices Committee to
consider the case.[3-15] Committee chairman Mark Ethridge conferred with
Assistant Secretary Bard, pointing out that since Negroes had been
eligible for general duty in World War I, the Navy had actually taken
a step backward when it restricted them to the Messman's Branch. The
committee was even willing to pay the price of segregation to insure
the Negro's return to general duty. Ethridge recommended that the Navy
amend its policy and accept Negroes for use at Caribbean stations or
on harbor craft.[3-16] Criticism of Navy policy, hitherto emanating
almost exclusively from the civil rights organizations and a few (p. 063)
congressmen, now broadened to include another government agency. As
President Roosevelt no doubt expected, the Fair Employment Practices
Committee had come out in support of his compromise solution for the
Navy.