Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 71

[Footnote 19-2: C. Vann Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim Crow_, p. 170. This account of the civil rights movement largely follows Woodward's famous study, but the following works have also been consulted: Benjamin Muse, _Ten Years of Prelude: The Story of Integration Since the Supreme Court's 1954 Decision_ (New York: Viking Press, 1964); Constance M. Green, _The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); Anthony Lewis and the New York _Times_, _Portrait of a Decade_ (New York: New York _Times_, 1964); Franklin, _From Slavery to Freedom; Freedom to the Free: A Report to the President by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: Government Printing Office, 1963); _Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders_; Interv, Nichols with Clarence Mitch.e.l.l, 1953, in Nichols Collection, CMH.]

[Footnote 19-3: Interv, Nichols with Mitch.e.l.l.]

The difference was understandable. The rapid urbanization of many black Americans, coupled with their experience in World War II, especially in the armed forces and in defense industries, had enhanced their economic and political power and raised their educational opportunities. And what was true for the war generation was even truer for its children. Possessed of a new self-respect, young Negroes began to demonstrate confidence in the future and a determination to reject the humiliation of second-cla.s.s citizens.h.i.+p. Out of this att.i.tude grew a widespread demand among the young for full equality, and when this demand met with opposition, ma.s.sive partic.i.p.ation in civil rights demonstrations became both practical and inevitable. Again historian Woodward's observations are pertinent:

More than a black revolt against whites, it was in part a generational rebellion, an uprising of youth against the older generation, against the parental "uncle Toms" and their inhibitions. It even took the N.A.A.C.P. and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) by surprise. Negroes were in charge of their (p. 475) own movement, and youth was in the vanguard.[19-4]

[Footnote 19-4: Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim Crow_, p. 170.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLARENCE MITCh.e.l.l.]

To a remarkable extent, this youthful vanguard was strongly religious and nonviolent. The influence of the church on the militant phase of the civil rights movement is one of the movement's salient characteristics.

This black awakening paralleled a growing realization among an increasing number of white Americans that the demands of the civil rights leaders were just and that the government should act. World War II had made many thoughtful Americans aware of the contradiction inherent in fighting fascism with segregated troops. In the postwar years, the cold war rivalry for the friends.h.i.+p and allegiance of the world's colored peoples, who were creating a mult.i.tude of new states, added a pragmatic reason for ensuring equal treatment and opportunity for black Americans. A further inducement, and a particularly forceful one, was the size of the northern black vote, which had become the key to victory in several electorally important states and had made the civil rights cause a practical political necessity for both major parties.

The U.S. Supreme Court was the real pacesetter. Significantly broadening its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court reversed a century-old trend and called for federal intervention to protect the civil rights of the black minority in transportation, housing, voting, and the administration of justice. In the _Morgan_ v.

_Virginia_ decision of 1946,[19-5] for example, the Court launched an attack on segregation in interstate travel. In another series of cases it proclaimed the right of Negroes to be tried only in those courts where Negroes could serve on juries and outlawed the all-white primary system, which in some one-party states had effectively barred Negroes from the elective process. The latter decision partly explains the rise in the number of qualified black voters in twelve southern states from 645,000 in 1947 to some 1.2 million by 1952. However, many difficulties remained in the way of full enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The poll tax, literacy tests, and outright intimidation frustrated the registration of Negroes in many areas, and in some rural counties black voter registration actually declined in the early 1960's. But the Court's intervention was crucial because its decisions established the precedent for federal action that would culminate in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

[Footnote 19-5: 328 U.S. 373 (1946).]

These judicial initiatives whittled away at segregation's hold on (p. 476) the Const.i.tution, but it was the Supreme Court's rulings in the field of public education that dealt segregation a mortal blow. Its unanimous decision in the case of _Oliver Brown et al._ v. _Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas_, on 17 May 1954[19-6] not only undermined segregation in the nation's schools, but by an irresistible extension of the logic employed in the case also committed the nation at its highest levels to the principle of racial equality. The Court's conclusion that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" exposed segregation in all public areas to renewed judicial scrutiny. It was, as Professor Woodward described it, the most far-reaching Court decision in a century, and it marked the beginning of the end of Jim Crow's reign in America.[19-7]

[Footnote 19-6: 347 U.S. 483 (1954); see also 349 U.S.

294 (1955).]

[Footnote 19-7: Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim Crow_, p. 147.]

But it was only the beginning, for the Court's order that the transition to racially nondiscriminatory school systems be accomplished "with all deliberate speed"[19-8] encountered ma.s.sive resistance in many places. Despite ceaseless litigation and further affirmations by the Court, and despite enforcement by federal troops in the celebrated cases of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oxford, Mississippi, and by federal marshals in New Orleans, Louisiana,[19-9]

elimination of segregated public schools was painfully slow. As late as 1962, for example, only 7.6 percent of the more than three million Negroes of school age in the southern and border states attended integrated schools.

[Footnote 19-8: 349 U.S. 294 (1955).]

[Footnote 19-9: For an outline of the federal and National Guard intervention in these areas, see Robert W. Coakley, Paul J. Scheips, Vincent H.

Demma, and M. Warner Stark, "Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances Since World War II" (1945 to 1965 with two supplements through 1967), Center of Military History Study 75.]

The executive branch also took up the cause of civil rights, albeit in a more limited way than the courts. The Eisenhower administration, for instance, continued President Truman's efforts to achieve equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. Just before the _Brown_ decision the administration quickly desegregated most dependent schools on military bases. It also desegregated the school system of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and, with a powerful push from the Supreme Court in the case of the _District of Columbia_ v. _John R. Thompson Co._ in 1953,[19-10] abolished segregation in places of public accommodation in the nation's capital. Eisenhower also continued Truman's fight against discrimination in federal employment, including jobs covered by government contracts, by establis.h.i.+ng watchdog committees on government employment policy and government contracts.

[Footnote 19-10: 346 U.S. 100 (1953).]

Independent federal agencies also began to attack racial discrimination. The Interstate Commerce Commission, with strong a.s.sistance from the courts, made a series of rulings that by 1961 had outlawed segregation in much interstate travel. The Federal Housing Authority, following the Supreme Court's abrogation of the state's power to enforce restrictive covenants in the sale of housing, began in the early 1950's to push toward a federal open-occupancy policy in public housing and all housing with federally guaranteed loans. (p. 477) The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an investigatory agency appointed by the President under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, examined complaints of voting discrimination and denials of equal protection under the law. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy dispatched federal officials to investigate and prosecute violations of voting rights in several states.

But civil rights progress was still painfully slow in the 1950's. The fight for civil rights in that decade graphically demonstrated a political fact of life: any profound change in the nation's social system requires the concerted efforts of all three branches of the national government. In this case the Supreme Court had done its part, repeatedly attacking segregation in many spheres of national life. The executive branch, on the other hand, did not press the Court's decisions as thoroughly as some had hoped, although Eisenhower certainly did so forcibly and spectacularly with federal troops at Little Rock in 1957. The dispatch of paratroopers to Little Rock,[19-11] a memorable example of federal intervention and one popularly a.s.sociated with civil rights, had, in fact, little to do with civil rights, but was rather a vivid example of the exercise of executive powers in the face of a threat to federal judicial authority. Where the _Brown_ decision was concerned, Eisenhower's view of judicial powers was narrow and his leaders.h.i.+p ant.i.thetical to the Court's call for "all deliberate speed." He even withheld his support in school desegregation cases. Eisenhower was quite frank about the limitations he perceived in his power and, by inference, his duty to effect civil rights reforms. Such reforms, he believed, were a matter of the heart and, as he explained to Congressman Powell in 1953, could not be achieved by means of laws or directives or the action of any one person, "no matter with how much authority and forthrightness he acts."[19-12]

[Footnote 19-11: For an authoritative account of Little Rock, see Robert W. Coakley's "Operation Arkansas," Center of Military History Study 158M, 1967. See also Paul J. Scheips, "Enforcement of the Federal Judicial Process by Federal Marshals," in _Bayonets in the Streets; The Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances_, ed. Robin Higham (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1969), pp. 39-42.]

[Footnote 19-12: Ltr, Eisenhower to Powell, 6 Jun 53, G 124-A-1, Eisenhower Library. For a later and more comprehensive expression of these sentiments, see "Extemporaneous Remarks by the President at the National Conference on Civil Rights, 9 June 1959,"

_Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D.

Eisenhower, 1959_, pp. 447-50.]

Despite the President's reluctance to lead in civil rights matters, major blame for the lack of substantial progress must be a.s.signed to the third branch of government. The 1957 and 1960 civil rights laws, pallid harbingers of later powerful legislation in this field, demonstrated Congress's lukewarm commitment to civil rights reform that severely limited federal action. The reluctance of Congress to enact the reforms augured in the _Brown_ decision convinced many Negroes that they would have to take further measures to gain their full const.i.tutional rights. They had seen presidents and federal judges embrace principles long argued by civil rights organizations, but to little avail. Seven years after the _Brown_ decision, Negroes were still disfranchised in large areas of the south, still (p. 478) endured segregated public transportation and places of public accommodation, and still encountered discrimination in employment and housing throughout the nation. Nor had favorable court decisions and federal attempts at enforcement reversed the ominous trend in black unemployment rates, which had been rising for a decade. Above all, court decisions could not spare Negroes the sense of humiliation that segregation produced. Segregation implied racial inferiority, a "constant corroding experience," as Clarence Mitch.e.l.l once called it.

It was segregation's seeming imperviousness to governmental action in the 1950's that caused the new generation of civil rights leaders to develop new civil rights techniques.

Their new methods forced the older leaders, temporarily at least, into eclipse. No longer could they convince their juniors of the efficacy of legal action, and the 1950's ended with the younger generation taking to the streets in the first spontaneous battles of their civil rights revolution. Under the direction of the Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Council and its charismatic founder, Martin Luther King, Jr., the strategy of ma.s.sive civil disobedience, broached in 1948 by A. Philip Randolph, became a reality. Other organizations quickly joined the battle, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also organized by Dr. King but soon destined to break away into more radical paths, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an older organization, now expanded and under its new director, James Farmer, rededicated to activism.

Rosa Parks's refusal to move to the rear of the Montgomery bus in 1955 and the ensuing successful black boycott that ended the city's segregated transportation pointed the way to a wave of nonviolent direct action that swept the country in the 1960's. Thousands of young Americans, most notably in the student-led sit-ins enveloping the south in 1960[19-13] and the scores of freedom riders bringing chaos to the transportation system in 1961, carried the civil rights struggle into all corners of the south. "We will wear you down by our capacity to suffer," Dr. King warned the nation's majority, and suffer Negroes did in the brutal resistance that met their demands. But it was not in vain, for police brutality, mob violence, and a.s.sa.s.sinations set off hundreds of demonstrations throughout the country and made civil rights a national political issue.

[Footnote 19-13: For an account of the first major sit-in demonstrations, which occurred at Greensboro, North Carolina, and their influence on civil rights organizations, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, see Miles Wolff, _Lunch at the Five and Ten; The Greensboro Sit-in_ (New York: Stein and Day, 1970). See also Clark, "The Civil Rights Movement," pp. 255-60.]

The stage was set for a climatic scene, and onto that stage walked the familiar figure of A. Philip Randolph, calling for a ma.s.sive march on Was.h.i.+ngton to demand a redress of black grievances. This time, unlike the response to his 1940 appeal, the answer was a promise of support from both races. The churches joined in, many labor leaders, including Walter Reuther, enlisted in the demonstration, and even the President, at first opposed, gave his blessing to the national event. A quarter of a million people, about 20 percent of them white, marched to Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963 to hear King appeal to the (p. 479) the nation's conscience by reciting his dream of a just society. In the words of the Kerner Commission:

It [the march] was more than a summation of the past years of struggle and aspiration. It symbolized certain new directions: a deeper concern for the economic problems of the ma.s.ses, more involvement of white moderates and new demands from the most militant, who implied that only a revolutionary change in American inst.i.tutions would permit Negroes to achieve the dignity of citizens.[19-14]

[Footnote 19-14: _Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders_, p. 109.]

_Limitations on Executive Order 9981_

The decade of national civil rights activity that culminated symbolically at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was closely mirrored in the Department of Defense, where the services' definition of equal treatment and opportunity underwent a marked evolution. Here, a decade that had begun with the department's placing severe limitations on its defense of black servicemen's civil rights ended with the department's joining the vanguard of the civil rights movement.

In the early 1950's the services were constantly referring to the limitations of Executive Order 9981. The Air Force could not intervene in local custom, a.s.sistant Secretary Zuckert told Clarence Mitch.e.l.l in 1951. Social change in local communities must be evolutionary, he continued, either ignoring or contrasting the Air Force's own social experience.[19-15] Defending the practice of maintaining large training camps in localities discriminating against black soldiers, the Army Chief of Staff explained to Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan that while its facilities were open to all soldiers regardless of race, the Army had no control over nearby civilian communities. There was little its commanders could do beyond urging local civic organizations to cooperate.[19-16] The Deputy Chief of Naval Personnel was even more blunt. "The housing situation at Key West is not within the control of the Navy," he told the a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense in 1953. Housing was segregated, he admitted, but it was the Federal Housing Authority, not the Navy, that controlled the location of off-base housing for black sailors.[19-17]

[Footnote 19-15: Memo, Lt Col Leon Bell, a.s.st Exec, Off, a.s.st SecAF, for Col Barnes, Office, SecAF, 9 Jan 51, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 19-16: Ltr, CofSA to Ferguson, 7 May 51; see also Ltr, Under SA Earl D. Johnson to Sen. Robert Taft, 19 Jul 51; both in CS 291.2 (27 Apr 51).]

[Footnote 19-17: Memo, Dep Chief, NavPers for ASD (M&P), 19 Feb 53, sub: Alleged Race Segregation at U.S. Naval Base, Key West, Florida, P 8 (4)/NB Key West, GenRecs Nav.]

These excuses for not dealing with off-base discrimination continued throughout the decade. As late as 1959, discussing a case of racial discrimination near an Army base in Germany, a Defense Department spokesman explained to Congressman James Roosevelt that "since the incident did not take place on one of our military bases, we are not in a position to offer direct relief in the situation...."[19-18] Even James Evans, the racial counselor, came to use this explanation.

"Community mores with respect to race vary," Evans wrote in 1956, and "such matters are largely beyond direct purview of the Department (p. 480) of Defense."[19-19]

[Footnote 19-18: Ltr, ASD (MP&R) Charles C. Finucane to James Roosevelt, 3 Jun 59, ASD (MP&R) files.]

[Footnote 19-19: Evans and Lane, "Integration in the Armed Services," p. 83.]

Understandably, in view of the difficulties they perceived, the services tried to avoid the whole problem. In 1954, for example, a group of forty-eight black soldiers traveling on a bus in Columbia, South Carolina, were arrested and fined when they protested the attempted arrest of one of them for failing to comply with the state's segregated seating law. In the ensuing furor, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson explained to President Eisenhower that soldiers were subject to community law and his department contemplated no investigation or disciplinary action in the case. In view of the civil rights issues involved, Wilson continued,[19-20] the Judge Advocate General of the Army discussed the matter with the Justice Department and referred related correspondence to that department "for whatever disposition it considered appropriate." "This reply," an a.s.sistant noted on Wilson's file copy of the memo for the President, "gets them off our neck, but I don't know about Brownell's [the Attorney General]."[19-21]

[Footnote 19-20: Wilson, former president of General Motors Corporation, became President Eisenhower's first Secretary of Defense on 28 January 1953.]

[Footnote 19-21: Memo, CofS, G-1, for ASA, 6 Jan 54, sub: Ma.s.s Jailing and Fining of Negro Soldiers in Columbia, S.C.; Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), same date and sub; Memo, SecDef for President, 7 Jan 54. All in G-1 291.2 (10 Dec 53).]

But the services never did get "them" off their neck, and to a large extent defense officials could only blame themselves for their troubles. Their att.i.tude toward extending their standards of equal treatment and opportunity to local communities implied a benign neutrality on their part in racial disputes involving servicemen. This att.i.tude was belied by the fact that on numerous and sometimes celebrated occasions the services helped reinforce local segregation laws. In 1956, for example, Secretary of the Air Force Harold E.

Talbott explained that military commanders were expected to foster good relations with local authorities and in many areas were obliged to "require" servicemen to conform to the dictates of local law "regardless of their own convictions or personal beliefs."[19-22]

[Footnote 19-22: SecAF statement, 1 May 56, quoted in Address by James P. Goode, Employment Policy Officer for the Air Force, at a meeting called by the President's Committee on Government Employment Policy, 24 May 56, AF File 202-56, Fair Employment Program.]

This requirement could be rather brutal in practice and placed the services, the nation's leading equal opportunity employer, in questionable company. In 1953 a black pilot stationed at Craig Air Force Base, Alabama, refused to move to the rear of a public bus until the military police ordered him to comply with the state law. The Air Force officially reprimanded and eventually discharged the pilot. The position of the Air Force was made clear in the reprimand:

Your actions in this instance are prejudicial to good order and military discipline and do not conform to the standards of conduct expected of a commissioned officer of the United States Air Force. As a member of the Armed Forces, you are obliged to abide by all munic.i.p.al and state laws, regardless of your personal feelings or Armed Forces policy relative to the issue at hand. Your open violation of the segregation policy established by this Railroad Company and the State of Alabama is (p. 481) indicative of extremely poor judgment on your part and reflects unfavorably on your qualifications as a commissioned officer.[19-23]