Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 41

[Footnote 11-60: Memo, Edwards for SecAF, 29 Apr 48, sub: Conference With Group of Prominent Negroes, Negro Affairs 1948, SecAF files.]

If the logic of the black leaders impressed General Edwards, the demands themselves had little effect on policy. It remained for James C. Evans, now the adviser to Secretary of Defense Forrestal, to translate these questions and demands into recommendations for specific action. Taking advantage of a long acquaintance with the Secretary of the Air Force, Evans discussed the department's race problem with him in May 1948. Symington was sympathetic. "Put it on paper," he told Evans.[11-61]

[Footnote 11-61: Interv, author with Evans, 7 Apr 70; Note, Evans to Col Marr, 8 Jun 50, SD 291.2.]

Couching his recommendations in terms of the Gillem Board policy, Evans faithfully summarized for the secretary the demands of black leaders. Specifically, he asked that Colonel Davis, the commander of Lockbourne Air Force Base, be sent for advanced military schooling without delay. Diversification of career was long overdue for Davis, the ranking black officer in the Air Force, as it was for others who were considered indispensable because of the small number of qualified black leaders. For Davis, most of all, the situation was unfair since he had always been in command of practically all rated black officers.

Nor was it good for his subordinates. The Air Force should not hesitate to a.s.sign a white replacement for Davis. In effect, Evans was telling Symington that the black community would understand the necessity for such a move.

Besides, under the program Evans was recommending, the all-black wing would soon cease to exist. He wanted the Air Force to "deemphasize"

Lockbourne as the black air base and scatter the black units concentrated there. He wanted to see Negroes dispersed throughout the Air Force, either individually or in small units contemplated by the Gillem Board, but he wanted men a.s.signed on the basis of technical specialty and proficiency rather than race. It was unrealistic, he declared, to a.s.sume all black officers could be most effectively utilized as pilots and all enlisted men as Squadron F laborers.

Limiting training and job opportunity because of race reduced fighting potential in a way that never could be justified. The Air Force should open to its Negroes a wide variety of training, experience, and opportunity to acquire versatility and proficiency.[11-62]

[Footnote 11-62: Memo, Evans for SecAF, 7 Jun 48, sub: Negro Air Units, D54-1-12. SecDef files.]

If followed, this program would fundamentally alter Air Force (p. 287) racial practices. General Edwards recommended that the reply to Evans should state that certain policy changes would be forthcoming, although they would have to await the outcome of a departmental reevaluation currently under way. The suggestions had been solicited by Symington, and Edwards was anxious for Evans to understand the delay was not a device to defer action.[11-63]

[Footnote 11-63: DCofS/P Summary Sheet for CofS, 15 Jul 48, sub: Negro Air Units, Negro Affairs 1948, SecAF files.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL EDWARDS.]

Edwards was in a position to make such a.s.surances. He was an influential member of the Air staff with considerable experience in the field of race relations. As a member of the Army staff during World War II he had worked closely with the old McCloy committee on black troops and had strongly advocated wartime experiments with the integration of small-scale units.[11-64] His background, along with his observations as chief personnel officer in the new Air Force, had taught him to avoid abstract appeals to justice and to make suggestions in terms of military efficiency. Concern with efficiency led him, soon after the Air Force became a separate service, to order Lt. Col. Jack F. Marr, a member of his staff, to study the Air Force's racial policy and practices. Testifying to Edwards's pragmatic approach, Marr later said of his own introduction to the subject: "There was no sociology involved. It was merely a routine staff action along with a bunch of other staff actions that were taking place."[11-65]

[Footnote 11-64: During World War II, Edwards served as the Army's a.s.sistant Chief of Staff, G-3. For a discussion of his opposition at that time to the concentration of large groups of men in categories IV and V, see Edwin W. Kenworthy, "The Case Against Army Segregation," _The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ 275 (May 1951):29. See also Lee's _Employment of Negro Troops_, p. 159. Edward's part in the integration program is based on USAF Oral History Program, Interviews with Zuckert, General William F. McKee, Davis, Senator Stuart Symington, and Marr. See also Interv, author with Lt Gen Idwal H. Edwards, Nov 73, CMH files.]

[Footnote 11-65: Ltr, Marr to author, 19 Jun 70, CMH files.]

A similar concern for efficiency, this time triggered by criticism at the National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs in April 1948 and Evans's discussions with Secretary Symington the following month, led Edwards, after talking it over with a.s.sistant Secretary Zuckert, to raise the subject of the employment of Negroes in the Air Board in May.[11-66] In the wake of the Air Board discussion the Chief of Staff appointed a group under Maj. Gen. Richard E. Nugent, then Director (p. 288) of Civilian Personnel, to reexamine the service's race policy.[11-67]

Nugent was another Air Force official who viewed the employment of Negroes as a problem in military efficiency.[11-68] These three, Edwards, Nugent, and Marr, were the chief figures in the development of the Air Force integration plan, which grew out of the Nugent group's study. Edwards and Nugent supervised its many refinements in the staff while Marr, whom Zuckert later described as the indispensable man, wrote the plan and remained intimately connected with it until the Air Force carried it out.[11-69] Antedating the Truman order to integrate the services, the provisions of this plan eventually became the program under which the Air Force was integrated.[11-70]

[Footnote 11-66: A group created to review policy and make recommendations to the Chief of Staff when called upon, the Air Board consisted at this time of the a.s.sistant Chiefs of the Air Staff, the Air Inspector, the Air Comptroller, the Director of Information, the Deputy a.s.sistant Chief of Staff for Research and Development, and other officials when appropriate.]

[Footnote 11-67: Memo, Maj Leon Bell for Zuckert, 27 Oct 48, SecAF files. Nugent later succeeded Edwards as the chief Air Force personnel officer.]

[Footnote 11-68: This att.i.tude is strongly displayed in the USAF Oral History Program, Interviews with Lt Gen Richard E. Nugent, 8 Jun 73, and Marr, 1 Oct 73.]

[Footnote 11-69: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 11-70: Colonel Marr recalled a different chronology for the Air Force integration plan.

According to Marr, his proposals were forwarded by Edwards to Symington who in turn discussed them at a meeting of the Secretary of Defense's Personnel Policy Board sometime before June 1948. The board rejected the plan at the behest of Secretary of the Army Royall, but later in the year outside pressure caused it to be reconsidered. Nothing is available in the files to corroborate Marr's recollections, nor do the other partic.i.p.ants remember that Royall was ever involved in the Air Force's internal affairs. The records do not show when the Air Force study of race policy, which originated in the Air Board in May 1948, evolved into the plan for integration that Marr wrote and the Chief of Staff signed in December 1948, but it seems unlikely that the plan would have been ready before June. See Ltrs, Marr to author, 19 Jun 70, and 28 Jul 70, CMH files; see also USAF Oral Hist Interv with Marr.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLONEL MARR.]

As it evolved during the months of deliberation,[11-71] the Air Force study of black manpower weighed Air Force practices against the Gillem Board Report and found them "considerably divergent" from the policy as outlined. It isolated several reasons for this divergence. Black airmen on the whole, as measured by cla.s.sification tests, were unsuitable and inadequate for operating all-black air units organized and trained for modern combat. To achieve a balance of skills and training in black units was a "never ending problem for which there appears to be no solution under either the current Air Force policies or the policies recommended by the Gillem Board." In short, practices with respect to Negroes were "wasteful, deleterious to military effectiveness and lacking in wartime application."

[Footnote 11-71: The Air Force integration plan underwent considerable revision and modification before its submission to the Secretary of Defense in January 1949. The quotations in the next paragraphs are taken from the version approved by the Chief of Staff on 29 December 1948.]

Edwards and his staff saw several advantages in complete (p. 289) integration. Wherever qualified black airmen had been permitted to compete with whites on their individual qualifications and abilities, the Negroes "achieved a certain amount of acceptance and recognition."

Students in some schools lived and learned side by side as a matter of practical necessity. "This degree of integration and acceptance on a compet.i.tive basis has been eminently successful and has to a remarkable degree solved the 'Negro problem' for the training schools involved." At some bases qualified black airmen were administratively a.s.signed to black units but actually performed duties in white units.

Some commanders had requested that these men be permanently transferred and a.s.signed to the white units because the men deserved higher grades but could not receive them in black units and because it was poor management to have individuals performing duties for one military organization and living under the administrative jurisdiction of another.

In the end consideration of full integration was dropped in favor of a program based on the Navy's postwar integration of its general service. Edwards and his personnel staff dismissed the Navy's problems with stewards and its difficulty in enlisting skilled Negroes as temporary embarra.s.sments with little practical consequence. This problem apparently allowed an economic and efficient use of Negroes and also "relieved the Navy of the necessity for repeated efforts to justify an untenable position." They saw several practical advantages in a similar policy for the Air Force. It would allow the elimination of the 10 percent quota. The inactivation of some black units--"and the p.r.o.nounced relief of the problems involved in maintaining those units under present conditions"--could be accomplished without injustice to Negroes and with benefit to the Air Force. Nor would the integration of qualified Negroes in technical and combat units appreciably alter current practices; according to contemporary estimates such skilled men would never total more that 1 percent of the service's manpower.

The logic of social justice might have led to total integration, but it would not have solved the Air Force's pressing problem of too many unskilled blacks. It was consideration of military efficiency, therefore, that led these personnel experts to propose a system of limited integration along the lines of the Navy's postwar policy. Such a system, they concluded, would release the Air Force from its quota obligation--and hence its continuing surplus of unskilled men--and free it to a.s.sign its relatively small group of skilled black recruits where they were needed and might advance.

Although limited, the proposed reform was substantial enough to arouse opposition. General Edwards reported overwhelming opposition to any form of integration among Air Force officers, and never during the spring of 1948 did the Chief of Staff seriously consider even partial integration.[11-72] But if integration, even in a small dose, was unpalatable, widespread inefficiency was intolerable. And a new (p. 290) service, still in the process of developing policy, might embrace the new and the practical, especially if pressure were exerted from above. a.s.sistant Secretary Zuckert intimated as much when he finally replied to James Evans, "You have my personal a.s.surance that our present position is not in the interest of maintaining the status quo, but it is in antic.i.p.ation of a more progressive and more satisfactory action in the relatively near future."[11-73]

[Footnote 11-72: Memo, Edwards for SecAF, 29 Apr 48, sub: Conference With Group of Prominent Negroes, Negro Affairs 1948, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 11-73: Memo, Zuckert to Evans, 22 Jul 48, sub: Negro Air Units, SecAF files.]

CHAPTER 12 (p. 291)

The President Intervenes

On 26 July 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, calling on the armed forces to provide equal treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. This act has variously been described as an example of presidential initiative, the capstone of the Truman civil rights program, and the climax of the struggle for racial equality in the armed forces. But in some ways the order was simply a practical response to a presidential dilemma.

The President's order was related to the advent of the cold war.

Developments in the Middle East and Europe testified to the ambitions of the Soviet Union, and many Americans feared the spread of communism throughout the world, a threat more ominous with the erosion of American military strength since World War II. In March 1947 Truman enunciated a new foreign policy calling for the containment of Soviet expansion and pledging economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey.

A year later he asked Congress to adopt the Marshall Plan for economic aid to Europe, authorize military training, and enact a new selective service law to maintain the armed forces at expanded levels. That same month his princ.i.p.al military advisers met at Key West, Florida, to discuss new military roles and missions for the armed forces, grapple with paralyzing divisions among the services, and re-form the military establishment into a genuinely unified whole.[12-1] As if to underscore the urgency of these measures, the Soviet Union began in April 1948 to hara.s.s Allied troops in Berlin, an action that would develop into a full-scale blockade by June.

[Footnote 12-1: On the development of cold war roles and missions for the services, see Timothy W.

Stanley, _American Defense and National Security_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: Public Affairs Press, 1956), Chapter VIII.]

Integration of the armed forces hardly loomed large on the international scene, but if the problem of race appeared insignificant to military planners, the sheer number of Negroes in the armed forces gave them new prominence in national defense. Because of postwar racial quotas, particularly in the Army and Air Force, black servicemen now const.i.tuted a significant segment of the service population, and consequently their abilities and well-being had a direct bearing on the nation's cold war defenses. The black community represented 10 percent of the country's manpower, and this also influenced defense planning. Black threats to boycott the segregated armed forces could not be ignored, and civil rights demands had to be considered in developing laws relating to selective service and universal training. Nor could the administration overlook the fact that the United States had become a leading protagonist in a cold war in which the sympathies of the undeveloped and mostly colored world would soon a.s.sume a special importance. Inasmuch as integration of the services had become an almost universal demand of the black (p. 292) community, integration became, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, an important defense issue.

A second stimulus to improvement of the black serviceman's position was the Truman administration's strong civil rights program, which gave executive sanction to a national movement started some years before. The civil rights movement was the product of many factors, including the federal government's increased sense of responsibility for the welfare of all its citizens, a sense that had grown out of the New Deal and a world war which expanded horizons and increased economic power for much of the black population. The Supreme Court had recently accelerated this movement by broadening its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the black community itself greater partic.i.p.ation in elections and new techniques in community action were eroding discriminatory traditions and practices in many communities.

The civil rights movement had in fact progressed by 1948 to a stage at which it was politically attractive for a Democratic president to a.s.sume a vigorous civil rights stance. The urban black vote had become a major goal of Truman's election campaign, and he was being pressed repeatedly by his advisers to demonstrate his support for black interests. A presidential order on armed forces integration logically followed because the services, conspicuous pract.i.tioners of segregation and patently susceptible to unilateral action on the part of the Chief Executive, were obvious and necessary targets in the black voters' campaign for civil rights.

Finally, the integration order resulted in part from the move toward service unification and the emergence of James V. Forrestal as Secretary of Defense. Despite misgivings over centralized control of the nation's defense establishment and overconcentration of power in the hands of a Secretary of Defense, Forrestal soon discovered that certain problems rising out of common service experiences naturally converged on the office of the secretary. Both by philosophy and temperament he was disposed to avoid a clash with the services over integration. He remained sensitive to their interests and rights, and he frankly doubted the efficacy of social change through executive fiat. Yet Forrestal was not impervious to the aspirations of the civil rights activists; guided by a humane interest in racial equality, he made integration a departmental goal. His technique for achieving integration, however, proved inadequate in the face of strong service opposition, and finally the President, acting on the basis of these seemingly unrelated motives, had to issue the executive order to strengthen the defense secretary's hand.

_The Truman Administration and Civil Rights_

Executive and legislative interest in the civil rights of black Americans reached a level in 1948 unmatched since Reconstruction. The President himself was the catalyst. By creating a presidential committee on civil rights and developing a legislative program based on its findings, Truman brought the black minority into the political arena and committed the federal government to a program of social legislation that it has continued to support ever since. Little in (p. 293) the President's background suggested he would sponsor basic social changes. He was a son of the middle border, from a family firmly dedicated to the Confederate cause. His appreciation of black aspirations was hardly sophisticated, as he revealed to a black audience in 1940: "I wish to make it clear that I am not appealing for social equality of the Negro. The Negro himself knows better than that, and the highest types of Negro leaders say quite frankly they prefer the society of their own people. Negroes want justice, not social relations."[12-2]

[Footnote 12-2: Jonathan Daniels, _The Man of Independence_ (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950), p.

338. The quotation is from a speech before the National Colored Democratic Convention, Chicago, reprinted in the _Congressional Record_, 76th Cong., 3d sess., vol. 86, 5 Aug 1940, Appendix, pp.

5367-69.]

Nor did his att.i.tude change drastically in later years. In 1961, seven years after the Supreme Court's vital school integration decision, Truman was calling the Freedom Riders "meddlesome intruders who should stay at home and attend to their own business." His suggestion to proprietors of lunch counters undergoing sit-ins was to kick out unwelcome customers.[12-3] 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. If any cla.s.s or race can be permanently set apart from, or pushed down below the rest in political and civil rights, so may any other cla.s.s or race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more powerful a.s.sociates, and we may say farewell to the principles on which we count our safety.[12-4]