Morris J. MacGregor

“ And to use servicemen to spearhead civil rights reform was a misuse of executive power. With support from the department's lawyers, they questioned the legality of using off-limits sanctions in civil rights cases. They constantly repeated the same refrain: social reform was not a military function. As one manpower spokesman put it to the renowned black civil rights lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, "let the Army tend its own backyard, and let other government agencies work on civil rights." ”

“ Considering the magnitude of the Air Force problem, it was probably just as well that efficiency rather than idealism became the keynote of change. On a percentage basis the Air Force had almost as many Negroes as the Army and, no doubt, a comparable level of prejudice among its commanders and men. At the same time, the Air Force was a new service, its organization still fluid and its policies subject to rapid modification. In such circumstances a straightforward appeal to efficiency had a chance to succeed where an idealistic call for justice and fair play might well have floundered. ”

“ The committee believed that the armed forces, a worldwide symbol of American society, had to be the leader in the quest for racial justice. Social reform, therefore, both within the services and where it affected servicemen in the community beyond, was a legitimate military function. To the extent that these reforms were successful, the armed forces would not only be protecting the civil rights of black servicemen but also providing a standard against which civilian society could measure its conduct and other nations could judge the country's adherence to its basic principles. ”

“ As long as official policy permitted separate draft calls for blacks and whites and the officially held definition of discrimination neatly excluded segregation—and both went unchallenged in the courts—segregation would remain entrenched in the armed forces. Indeed, the rigidly segregated services, their ranks swollen by the draft, were a particular frustration to the civil rights forces because they were introducing some black citizens to racial discrimination more pervasive than any they had ever endured in civilian life. ”

“ Royall readily conceded that it was proper and necessary for Negroes to insist on integration, but, echoing a long-cherished Army belief, he adamantly opposed using the Army to support or oppose any social cause. The Army, he contended, must follow the nation, not lead it, in social matters. The Army must not experiment. When, "without prejudice to the National Defense," the Army could reduce segregation to the platoon level it would do so, but all such steps should be taken one at a time. And 1948, he told the conference of black leaders in April of that year, was not the time. ”

“ A major factor in the eventual integration of the Army—and the single most significant contribution of the Secretary of Defense (p. 619) to that end—was George Marshall's decision to establish a parity of enlistment standards for the services. On the advice of his manpower assistant, Anna Rosenberg, Marshall abolished the special advantage enjoyed by the Navy and Air Force, making all the services share in the recruitment of low-scoring men. The common standard undercut the Army's most persuasive argument for restoring a racial quota and maintaining segregated units. ”

“ Thus very early in World War II, even before the United States was actively engaged, the issues surrounding the use of Negroes in the Army were well defined and the lines sharply drawn. Was segregation, a practice in conflict with the democratic aims of the country, also a wasteful use of manpower? How would modifications of policy come—through external pressure or internal reform? Could traditional organizational and social patterns in the military services be changed during a war without disrupting combat readiness? ”

“ Despite the reluctance of most commanders to invoke sanctions, committee members, assuming that no community would long persist in a social order detrimental to its economic welfare, came to the belief that ultimately only a firm and uncompromising policy of economic sanctions would eliminate off-base discrimination. The committee was obviously aware of the controversial aspects of its recommendation, and it stressed that the department's objective should always be "the preservation of morale, not the punishment of local communities which have a tradition of segregation." ”

“ Prejudice was a condition of American society, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower told a Senate committee in 1948, and the Army "is merely one of the mirrors that holds up to our faces the United States of America." Since society separated the races, it followed that if the Army allowed black and white soldiers to live and socialize together it ran the very real risk of riots and racial disturbances which could disrupt its vital functions. ”

“ Concerned chiefly with military efficiency but also accustomed to racial segregation or exclusion, most military leaders insisted on a rigid appraisal of the performance of segregated units in the war and ignored the effects of segregation on that performance. Civil rights advocates, on the other hand, seeing an opportunity to use the military as a vehicle for the extension of social justice, stressed the baneful effects of segregation on the black serviceman's morale. ”

“ But it was impossible to have a 10 percent proportion of Negroes in every post, in every area, in every overseas theater; it was equally impossible to have 10 percent in every activity, in every arm and service, in every type of task. Yet wherever the Army failed to organize its black strength by quota, it was open to charges of racial discrimination. ”

“ If segregation weakened the Army's organization for global war, it had even more serious effects on every tenth soldier, for as it deepened the Negro's sense of inferiority it devastated his morale. It was a major cause of the poor performance and the disciplinary problems that plagued so many black units. And it made black soldiers blame their personal difficulties and misfortunes, many the common lot of any soldier, on racial discrimination. ”

“ It was not until January 1944 that an officer who had compiled an enviable record in training Seabee units described how his organization had come to see the light:
We in the Seabees no longer follow the precept that southern officers exclusively should be selected for colored battalions. A man may be from the north, south, east or west. If his attitude is to do the best possible job he knows how, regardless of what the color of his personnel is, that is the man we want as an officer for our colored Seabees. ”

“ Since the strength and composition of the Army was fixed by the defense budget and military planning, the majority of new black soldiers produced by the quota could be organized into units only at the expense of white units already in existence. In light of past performance of black units and in the interests of efficiency and economy, particularly at a time of reduced operating funds and a growing cold war, how could the Army justify converting efficient white units into less capable black units? ”

“ The Navy's postwar revision of racial policy, like the Army's, was the inevitable result of its World War II experience. Inundated with unskilled and undereducated Negroes in the middle of the war, the Navy had assigned most of these men to segregated labor battalions and was surprised by the racial clashes that followed. As it began to understand the connection between large segregated units and racial tensions, the Navy also came to question the waste of the talented Negro in a system that denied him the job for which he was qualified. ”

“ The use of qualified Negroes in overhead units was the first break with the traditional policy of segregation, for though black enlisted men would continue to eat and sleep in segregated messes and barracks, they would work alongside white soldiers and perform the same kind of duty in the same unit.
"The proportion of Negro to white manpower as exists in the civil population be the accepted ratio for creating a troop basis in the postwar Army." ”

“ Segregation was at the heart of the race problem. Justified as a means of preventing racial trouble, segregation only intensified it by concentrating the less able and poorly motivated. Segregation increased the problems of all commanders concerned and undermined the prestige of black officers. It exacerbated the feelings of the nation's largest minority toward the Army and multiplied demands for change. In the end Circular 124 was abandoned because the Army found it impossible to fight another war under a policy of racial quotas and units. ”

“ But if he failed to appreciate the scope of black demands, Truman nevertheless demonstrated as early as 1940 an acute awareness of the connection between civil rights for blacks and civil liberties for all Americans:
In giving Negroes the rights which are theirs we are only acting in accord with our own ideals of a true democracy. ”

“ Taking its cue from Davenport and Fowler, the committee would contend that, as the increasing complexity of war had created a demand for skilled manpower, the country could ill-afford to use any of its soldiers below their full capacity or fail to train them adequately. With a logic understandable to President and public alike, the committee could later state that since maximum military efficiency demanded that all servicemen be given an equal opportunity to discover and exploit their talents, an indivisible link existed between military efficiency and equal opportunity. ”

“ 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 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-class citizenship. ”

“ Yet because the segregation policy demanded that there be enough qualified men to form and sustain a whole black battalion, the abilities of these high-scoring individuals were wasted. On the other hand, many billets in antiaircraft artillery or other types of combat battalions could be filled by men with low test scores, but less gifted black marines were excluded because they had to be assigned to one of the few black units. Segregation, in short, was doubly inefficient, it kept both able and inferior Negroes out of combat units that were perpetually short of men. ”

“ As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet and an eloquent proponent of the theory that integration was a practical means of avoiding trouble, explained to the captain of an attack cargo ship who had just received a group of black crewmen and was segregating their sleeping quarters: "If you put all the Negroes together they'll have a chance to share grievances and to plot among themselves, and this will damage discipline and morale. If they are distributed among other members of the crew, there will be less chance of trouble. ”

“ Again to a black soldier complaining of being denied service near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a White House assistant, himself a Negro, replied that "outside of an Army post, there is little that the Federal Government can do, except to appeal to the decency of the citizens to treat men in uniform with courtesy and respect." He then suggested a course of action for black soldiers:
The President's heart bleeds when any Americans are victims of injustice, and he is doing everything he possibly can to rectify this situation in our country. ”