Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 8

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' s.h.i.+bboleths, that close a.s.sociation of the races in Army units would cause social dissension.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 inst.i.tution 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sociated 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 j.a.panese 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 a.s.set 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 s.h.i.+p, and, in some instances, took care of the quarters of high officials in the sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+p, were a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s. 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 doc.u.ments 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 circ.u.mscribed. He had little knowledge of naval affairs, and the President, himself once an a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy, often went over his head to deal directly with the naval bureaus on s.h.i.+pbuilding 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 a.s.sistant secretary, and Adlai E. Stevenson became special a.s.sistant.

[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 att.i.tude 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 t.i.tles, 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_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: Government Printing Office, 1959), pp. 113-14. This s.h.i.+ft 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p or activity in the Navy. The Navy had experimented with segregated crews after World War I, manning one s.h.i.+p with an all-Filipino crew and another with an all-Samoan crew, but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and reasoned that s.h.i.+ps 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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. s.e.xton, 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 a.s.sn 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 battles.h.i.+ps. 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 att.i.tudes 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 rea.s.surance. In July 1941 he appointed a committee consisting of Navy and Marine Corps personnel officers and including Addison Walker, a special a.s.sistant to a.s.sistant 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CREW MEMBERS OF USS ARGONAUT _relax and read mail, Pearl Harbor, 1942_.]

Demonstrating changing social att.i.tudes 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s. 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 a.s.sistant 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.

[Footnote 3-15: The FEPC was established 25 June 1941 to carry out Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802 against discrimination in employment in defense industries and in the federal government.]

[Footnote 3-16: "BuPers Hist," pp. 4-5; Ltr, Mark Ethridge to Lee Nichols. 14 Jul 53, in Nichols Collection, CMH.]

But the committee had no jurisdiction over the armed services, and Secretary Knox continued to a.s.sert that with a war to win he could not risk "crews that are impaired in efficiency because of racial prejudice." He admitted to his friend, conservationist Gifford Pinchot, that the problem would have to be faced someday, but not during a war. Seemingly in response to Walker and Ethridge, he declared that segregated general service was impossible since enough men with the skills necessary to operate a war vessel were unavailable even "if you had the entire Negro population of the United States to choose from." As for limiting Negroes to steward duties, he explained that this policy avoided the chance that Negroes might rise to command whites, "a thing which instantly provokes serious trouble."[3-17] Faced in wartime with these arguments for efficiency, a.s.sistant Secretary Bard could only promise Ethridge that black enlistment would be taken under consideration.

[Footnote 3-17: Ltr, SecNav to Gifford Pinchot, 19 Jan 42, 54-1-15, GenRecsNav.]

At this point the President again stepped in. On 15 January 1942 he asked his beleaguered secretary to consider the whole problem once more and suggested a course of action: "I think that with all the Navy activities, BuNav might invent something that colored enlistees could do in addition to the rating of messman."[3-18] The secretary pa.s.sed the task on to the General Board, asking that it develop a plan for recruiting 5,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-19]