Chapter III

The Negro Positions Defined
As the conflict which was to become World War II approached, Negroes asked with increasing frequency for the opportunity that they believed to be rightfully theirs in the first place: the opportunity to participate in the defense of their country in the same manner and on the same basis and in the same services as other Americans. Not all Negroes were agreed on the details of this participation. Some refused to compromise on anything short of complete integration into the armed forces without segregation of any sort. Others were willing to accept varying measures of segregation in the hope of achieving compensatory advances in the form of additional opportunities for service, promotion, and status within a segregated system. All were agreed that at least some of the restrictions existing in the peacetime Army of 1939 should be relaxed.
 
They had seen how the Navy, in the years between wars, had been able to eliminate almost all Negroes. They believed that the Army had quietly ceased the combat training of the old Negro regiments. They entered the period of expanding national defense with the conviction that, left to its own devices, the Army, citing the Navy as precedent and using World War I as justification, might very well refuse to expand its Negro strength any more than it had to. Knowing little or nothing about existing War Department plans for an emergency, Negroes were resolved to prevent the increase of restrictions and, through the use of every available means, to remove all limitations which operated to prevent the full employment of Negro manpower within the Army.
 
By the late 1930's a steadily rising flow of queries on the subject of Negro employment in the Army came into the War Department from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, newspapers and press associations, National Guard unit officers, groups of World War I veterans, men wishing to enlist, and members of Congress inquiring on behalf of their constituents. Queries and protests about the use of Negro troops were normally answered by the War Department until 1940 in a routine and noncommittal manner, according to "precedent letters" similar to those employed for answering general correspondence on many other subjects. Such letters, usually prepared by staff agencies and approved by the Office of the Secretary of War or by the Office of the Chief of Staff, were deposited with The Adjutant General, who could then use them as a basis for answering similar letters on the same subject. In the area of Negro queries, the answers summarize the Army's position on several basic questions, but usually they did not give detailed or specific answers to direct questions.
 
If the correspondent questioned the
[51]

restrictions placed on Negro enlistments by virtue of the small number of Negro units maintained or by reason of the organization of Army units by race, the reply was likely to read:
 
In time of peace the Army must be so organized as to assure a balanced force, containing, in the proper proportions, elements of all arms and services, and capable of rapid and orderly expansion in time of war without major changes in the basic peacetime organization. Consequently, it is necessary to set up specific units to which colored personnel may be assigned, and these organizations must have a definite and proper place in the balanced force organizations of the Army as a whole. These organizations now include units of the infantry, cavalry, quartermaster corps, and medical corps. They meet our peacetime requirements, and provide the necessary nucleus for wartime expansion.1
 
If the correspondent became insistent and requested further information or presented an argument for a change in policy, his letter was simply acknowledged, or he might be told:
 
Your remarks and the contents of the accompanying paper have been carefully noted. However, under a long established rule the War Department refrains from participation in controversial discussions arising from time to time in connection with articles appearing in the press, or statements made by public speakers or debaters, when the activities of the Army or its personnel are subjected to criticism.2
 
By 1940, correspondence on the policy toward the use of Negro manpower had become so heavy that The Adjutant General provided duplicated form letters for replies. Addresses and, when required, additional pertinent materials might be typed on these.
 
Congressmen, newspapers, organizations, and individuals receiving the War Department's form letter replies often concluded that no actual plans existed for the use of Negro troops other than those dictated by expediency. The precedent letters helped to convince correspondents that there was scant hope of promoting the cause of the Negro by appealing to the War Department directly. The natural alternative was public agitation that would stir the President and Congress into action. Thus a succession of public campaigns on the question of the employment of Negro troops gained in momentum and support as the need for national defense projects became more widely accepted.
 
Beginning Campaigns
 
In 1938, the Pittsburgh Courier, then the largest and one of the most influential Negro papers of national circulation, opened a campaign for the extension of opportunities for Negroes in the military services. The paper published an open letter to President Roosevelt, organized a Committee for Negro Participation in the National Defense, and encouraged its readers to send letters, telegrams, and delegations to congressmen and other national political leaders asking for an opinion on the wisdom of forming an all Negro division in the peacetime Army. Many of these letters, especially those to congressmen, were forwarded to the War Department for information. As the campaign spread to other papers and
[52]

to local organizations, similar letters arrived from other sources.3 This campaign was well organized and well publicized. Quantities of correspondence poured into the War Department. When the department did not commit itself the Negro press, having obtained no positive information, became even more cynical and critical.
 
In the late thirties various other agencies and organizations interested in Negro affairs became aware of the problem of the Negro in the armed forces. A 1939 conference of the National Youth Administration (NYA) on the problems of the Negro and Negro youth, in addition to requesting the further extension of educational and vocational opportunities which had been stressed throughout the thirties, made a number of other recommendations to the War Department: Funds for military training in land grant colleges should be allocated equitably to Negro and white youths. Educational facilities provided by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) should be increased so that Negroes might be trained "to take their places in the leadership of the Camps." Federally supported service schools such as West Point and Annapolis should be maintained without discrimination in the admission of students. Restrictions on enlistments in the armed services should be eliminated. Negroes should be included in the expansion of the air arm. Negro combat units should be used for other than custodial and personal services. And the President should appoint a commission charged with recommending methods of "integration [of Negroes] into all the armed forces without segregation.4
 
Older organizations, such as the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America and the Southern Interracial Commission, joined with newer groups like the Council for Democracy and Fight for Freedom in expressing concern about the Negro in the armed forces. Most of the newer organizations were interested in solidifying public opinion on the side of the Western Powers. They could not proceed with their public appeals in the name of the preservation of democracy, many of these organizations felt, while Negroes constantly reminded them of inequities existing at home. Fight for Freedom, whose board of sponsors included Senator Carter Glass, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, and James H. Hubert, secretary of the New York Urban League, issued a statement reading in part: "During the past war we made brave promises of interracial justice after the war would be over. The promises were forgotten. Today we must prove as we march towards war that we mean to advance freedom for ALL men here in America." The Council for Democracy, whose board included Ernest Angell, Fred Bartlett, Abraham Flexner, Robert Littell, and Leon M. Birkhead, published a pamphlet, The Negro and Defense: A Test of Democracy, which contained similar ideas. The interest of these and other civilian groups was not limited to the War Department but extended to three other federal agencies that had loose ties with the Military Establishment.
[53]

The Civilian Conservation Corps, a depression born agency originally planned as a relief measure for unemployed youths, developed into a major youth training program in the late thirties. It did not provide military training, but its campers were supervised and served by military personnel of the Officers' Reserve Corps. Between April 1933 and June 1940 approximately 300,000 Negro youths went through CCC camps.5 While Negroes were underrepresented in the CCC on the basis of relative needs, after 1936 the 9 to 10 percent of Negroes in the total enrollment of the camps represented approximately their percentage in the single male population in the 15-24-year age group.6
 
In the summer of 1937, the War Department noted that, out of a total of 1,849 CCC companies, 167 were Negro. Two of these, at Gettysburg, Pa., and Elmira, N.Y., were officered in line and staff by Negro Reserve officers. Thirty-three medical officers and eight chaplains in the CCC at that time were Negroes.7 Negro educational advisers were employed in the all Negro camps. In June 1940 approximately 30,000 Negroes were in the 151 all Negro and the 71 mixed camps, most of the latter being in New England and the Middle West.8
 
While the CCC was administered in a manner that carefully avoided giving the impression that these camps had any direct relation to military service, the educational, vocational, health, and groupliving training of the youths concerned, and especially of the Negro youths, was considered by many to be of tremendous value to the nation as a whole. Criticism of the CCC for not giving greater opportunities for the development of Negro administrative leadership began to appear in the prePearl Harbor years. By 1939, as indicated in the recommendation of the NYA conference mentioned above, the relation of these camps to the development of latent leadership qualities was widely recognized.9
 
The National Youth Administration helped train mechanics and technical specialists both for use in defense industries and for possible use in the armed forces. NYA training was superimposed upon courses which had been developed during the Great Depression. There was little complaint about these courses, for they generally provided opportunities for Negro students in most fields of training. The major complaint was that the courses alone were not enough.10
 
The third of the agencies whose activities were looked upon as vital to the interests of Negro participation in national defense was the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA), which in 1939 began to give pilot training to students in cooperation with colleges and a few private airfields. This program was begun as part of an effort to increase the air-mindedness as well as the practical aviation training of American youth.
[54]

Initially, no provision was made for the specific inclusion of Negro trainees. Since no courses were given in cooperation with Negro schools or colleges and few Negroes were enrolled in schools that had courses, there was no significant Negro participation. This situation brought about the first of a series of legislative enactments designed to clarify and increase the military training opportunities for Negroes.
 
The Air Corps and Public Law 18
 
In March 1939, while debating a bill to expand the nation's defense program, the Congress incorporated into the bill an amendment proposed by Senator Harry H. Schwartz of Wyoming. This amendment provided that, from among the civilian aviation schools to which the Secretary of War was authorized to lend equipment for aviation training, one or more should be designated by the Civil Aeronautics Authority for the training of Negro pilots. An earlier amendment had been presented to the Clerk of the Senate by Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire. When the Schwartz amendment was presented from the floor, Senator Bridges offered his own amendment as a substitute. It provided "That the Secretary of War is specifically authorized to establish at appropriate Negro colleges identical equipment, instruction, and facilities for training Negro air pilots, mechanics, and others for service in the United States Regular Army as is now available in the Air Corps Training Center."11 This additional amendment failed to pass, but it is illustrative of the type of legislation which had support in many quarters. By some members of Congress, it was discussed and voted upon as though it would accomplish the same ends as the Schwartz amendment which was adopted. Both amendments were direct outgrowths of a campaign for admission of Negroes to the Air Corps. This campaign was the most widespread, persistent, and widely publicized of all the prewar public pressure campaigns affecting the Negro and the Army.
 
Negroes had been attempting to gain entrance to the Air Corps since World War I. In 1917, when they tried to enlist in the Air Service of the Signal Corps, they received the answer that no colored aero squadrons were being formed "at the present time." Applications for that branch therefore could not be received; but, if, "later on," it was decided to form colored squadrons, recruiting officers would be notified to that effect. 12 Requests for service as air observers also were made during World War I. A plan was broached in the Office of the Director of Military Aeronautics for the use of Negroes for fatigue and police duty at airfields to relieve regular men, but this was not looked upon with favor.13 A few Negroes were in construction companies of the Air Service, but none engaged in any form of flying or of aircraft maintenance.14
 
Early postwar requests for the establishment of Negro air units of the Or
[55]

ganized Reserves were considered "impossible" to grant on the ground that no Negro officers had previously held commissions in the Air Service and that, since no Negro air units existed, there was no justification for the appointment of Negroes as flying cadets. 15 In 1931, when existing Negro ground units were reduced to provide for the fifth increment of the Air Corps expansion, critics pointed out that the only way to prevent the reduction from working an injustice would be to open the Air Corps to Negroes so that they might at least retain the overall strength originally allotted to them.16 To suggestions in this vein the War Department replied that from the beginning, the Air Corps "gathered in men of technical and mechanical experience and ability. As a rule, the colored man has not been attracted to this field in the same way or to the same extent as the white man. Particularly is this so of aerial engineering." So many applications from college trained men were being received, the War Department added, that "many white applicants are being denied places."17 To this the secretary of the NAACP answered:
 
It is obvious that colored men cannot be attracted to the field of aviation "in the same way or to the same extent as the white man" when the door to that field is slammed in the colored man's face . . . . There are thousands of excellent colored mechanics in the country and if the War Department did not prejudice the case by definitely excluding them, we feel sure that there would be no difficulty in finding and developing men with all the qualifications required of pilots, mechanics, and all the other functions included in the air service.18
 
Eight years later Senator Schwartz summed up the point of view of those who felt that legislation was the only guarantee of full Negro participation in the military defense of the nation when he remarked:
 
Somebody may say, "There is no provision in the bill now which would prevent a Negro receiving such training," but, Mr. President, I can only judge the future by the past. I believe the situation is such that unless we give this specific and affirmative recognition, possibly our qualified Negro citizens will not have an opportunity to become air pilots.19
 
This argument for the inclusion of specific references to Negroes in national defense bills was to arise frequently in succeeding months. It was to culminate in the provisions concerning race written into the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.
 
The Schwartz amendment was enacted as a part of Public Law 18, effective 3 April 1939.20 Its subsequent
[56]

history illustrates some of the many difficulties involved in legislation of this type. It also illustrates the influence which such legislation had on Army planning.
 
When it became clear that the bill, including the Schwartz amendment, was likely to be approved by both Houses and signed by the President, there was some inclination within the Air Corps to believe that the amendment might make it necessary for the Air Corps to train Negro pilots and to form at least one Negro air unit. At the request of Brig. Gen. Barton K. Yount, chief of the Training Group of the Office of the Air Corps, the Air Plans Section prepared a plan for the training of Negro pilots and a Negro unit based on the assumption that it "will" be necessary for the Air Corps to proceed with such training. "However, further study of the act by several different individuals on the General Staff and in the C. A. A. has developed the belief that such steps will not be necessary," the chief of the Plans Section reported .21
 
As interpreted by the Air Plans Section, the bill merely authorized the Secretary of War to lend equipment to accredited civilian aviation schools at which personnel of the Military Establishment were pursuing a course under competent War Department orders. One or more of these schools would be designated by the CAA for the training of any Negro pilot. The CAA would name one of the schools which the Air Corps was to use for primary training. This school would offer Air Corps training, and also civilian training. "The letter of the law would certainly be fulfilled, and it is believed that the spirit would also be fulfilled 100%. There is absolutely nothing that directs us to enlist negro flying cadets. The original intent was to use the C.A.A. and the matter crept into this bill thru misunderstanding. By being left in, it assures the Negro of training at a school of such high standards that `personnel of the Military Establishment are pursuing a course' there." 22
 
General Yount agreed that all that was necessary under the law was for the Air Corps to request the CAA to designate "one of our approved schools (Chicago, for example) where negroes may be trained under Civil Aeronautics Authority regulations and by the Civil Aeronautics Authority." Still, he felt, the War Department, under its interpretation of the law, might rule that Negro pilots must be enlisted as flying cadets and that they must be trained in the same manner as white pilots under the expansion program. In that case, CAA would probably have to designate one of "our approved schools" for Negro training. After completing training at a civilian school, Negro cadets could be sent to Randolph Field and later to Kelly Field. "It is possible that this would
[57]

create a difficult situation although it could be taken care of," General Yount thought.23
 
But, once begun, the process of training would not end here. The Air Corps' Reserve Division had already pointed out that, if a Negro flying cadet successfully completed training at the Air Corps Training Center, he "must reasonably be considered as being qualified" for a Reserve commission. While commissioning such a trainee was not mandatory under the law, "it would, at the same time, prove difficult, if not impossible," to refuse such a commission.24 Once a Negro cadet was commissioned, General Yount felt, a demand, "backed by politics," would be made for the continuation of his training.25
 
Continued training would be possible by assignment of Negro reservists to white units. In Yount's view this would be "ruinous to morale." One or more Negro Reserve or Regular Army units in which Negro Reserve officers could continue their training might be established. Neither funds nor estimates existed for either type of unit. Either type, because of the time needed to train enlisted men, would have to have white senior officers, noncommissioned officers, and mechanical personnel. "This is not considered practicable," General Yount concluded. Reserve units, moreover, could be expected to multiply as Negroes in different parts of the country requested them. Therefore, General Yount recommended, the Air Corps should confine its action to a request for authorization to plan training in "one of our approved schools and under the jurisdiction of the Civil Aeronautics Authority." 26 His recommendation was approved by General Arnold, who then requested War Department approval.27
 
The Judge Advocate General, when asked for his opinion, more than agreed with the Air Corps. He further construed the act to contain a directive to the CAA only, with absolutely "no duty . . . imposed by such language on the War Department." The War Department nevertheless decided that, "in the present instance and notwithstanding such interpretation," it would be advisable to cooperate with the CAA in carrying out "what appears to be" the intent of Congress. The Air Corps was therefore directed to confer with the CAA to obtain its designation of an accredited civilian flying school and to agree upon the aircraft and equipment required.28
 
The Air Corps proceeded to follow the line of action approved by the War Department. General Yount conferred informally with Robert Hinckley, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, who agreed to designate a school and train a number of Negro pilots under the CAA program. "Inasmuch as this may be discussed in the press and may cause some political repercussions . . . ," the Chief of the Air Corps wrote, "it is recommended that the entire subject be discussed with the Secretary of War in order that he may be thoroughly informed as to the War Department pro-
[58]

cedure in this case, i.e., `The Civil Aeronautics Authority will train the negro pilots in accordance with the provisions of H.R. 3791.' " 29
 
Despite the cautious analysis of and approach to Public Law 18, the decision as reached was to cause continued misunderstanding and dissatisfaction. Negroes and many of the congressmen supporting the amendment had considered that it ended once and for all the discussion of whether or not the Air Corps would train Negro pilots.30 The Air Corps, seeking to explain its interpretation of the law, had prepared a letter to Senator Morris Sheppard, chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. But before it was sent the Office of the Chief of Staff informed the Air Corps not only that "for the time being" the War Department would take no action in connection with the training of Negro pilots but also that "no more publicity will be given this matter than is absolutely essential." 31 In light of these directions, the prepared letter was not sent.32
 
Informing the Senate committee was nevertheless necessary, General Arnold thought. Senator Schwartz had visited him and General Yount with urgent demands that training for Negro pilots be initiated. Representatives of Negro organizations had "called and expressed an opinion that they will continue to agitate in Congress for the passage of additional legislation if something definite is not done for pilot training for their race in the very near future." Informing Senator Sheppard of the proposed plan "may do much to allay this agitation," General Arnold felt.33 On 25 May he took the matter up personally.34 As a result, a suggested letter went to Secretary Woodring for his signature. But this letter was lost or mislaid and a substitute was not sent forward until 10 June.35 The letter was dispatched to Senator Sheppard on 12 June, too late to accomplish its original purpose, for in the meantime the hearings on H.R. 6791, the Supplemental Military Appropriation Bill for 1940 providing funds for the Air Corps expansion program, had produced testimony that further convinced congressmen and the public that the Air Corps, under Public Law 18, was going to train Negro pilots.
 
Senator Schwartz, on 26 May, had told the committee of his conviction that
[59]

the appropriation bill required an amendment providing a specific amount for training Negro pilots. Both General Yount and General Arnold had told the Senator that they were encountering difficulties in carrying out the provisions of the existing act. "Of course," the Senator said, "you understand the same as I do, whether we want to admit it or not, that back under this is a feeling in the Army and in the Navy that bringing these Negro pilots and giving them this opportunity will result in some embarrassment one way or another on account of social or economic conditions." ' He indicated that General Arnold had told him that the Air Corps, "without trouble," could give Negro pilots training for ninety days at a civilian school, ninety days at Randolph Field, and ninety days at Kelly Field, with the Randolph Field phase probably added to a civilian school. The Kelly Field phase, where "they are flying in squadrons," would be more difficult, but the War Department could handle this. "I hope the committee will amend the bill because I do think the War Department needs a little urging," Senator Schwartz continued.36 Similar proposals for specific sums to be earmarked for the training of Negro pilots were made by Negro witnesses.37
 
Representative D. Lane Powers of New Jersey sought to determine the need for legislation earmarking special funds for this purpose. On 5 June he asked Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring if, under Public Law 18, one or more schools would be designated for Negro pilot training. Secretary Woodring, who had not yet received the draft letter to Senator Sheppard, replied that the matter was being considered. "We are trying to work this out in fairness to those colored people who are rightfully entitled to this training. We are going to try to work this out honestly in the interests of every citizen of the United States," the Secretary said.38 "You are definitely going to train some Negro pilots, are you not?" Powers asked. Woodring replied, "We are planning to do so." 39
 
To further questions the Secretary continued to answer in the affirmative. Though he did not say specifically that the War Department itself was going to train or use Negro pilots, the impression was left that the Secretary had committed the Army to a program of training and using Negro pilots, trained in the primary phase at a civilian school, from which they would go into military training. This impression had been heightened by the general understanding that, although CAA was to train primarily civilian pilots, these men would constitute a military reservoir from which the Travelling Flying Cadet Board could pick the best for further training.40
 
When the appropriations bill came to the floor of the House, Representative Louis Ludlow of Indiana proposed a new amendment providing that one million dollars of the eight million planned for expanding the training of military pilots be set aside for training Negro pilots. This would be "sheer justice," Ludlow said, for, if war comes,
[60]

Negroes will be conscripted on a widespread scale, and it is just as certain as anything in the future can be that a considerable proportion of Negroes with aviation training will be sent into air combat detachments. It would be positively cruel and inhumane to assign Negroes to the combat air service without giving them the means to protect themselves. The protection to which they are entitled is a thorough course in combat air training, the same course that is given to white air pilots . . . . Now is the time to begin that training.41
 
The Ludlow amendment passed the House but it did not remain in the bill.
 
Nothing in the meantime happened in the training of Negro military pilots. In the fall of 1939 the CAA did establish, under its own authority, Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) units at several Negro colleges, including Tuskegee, Howard, Hampton, West Virginia State, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical, and Delaware State. A few Negroes also enrolled in CPT courses at other colleges and universities in the North. During the first year of the CPT program, 100 Negro college students were given training; of these 91 qualified for civil licenses a record as good as that of white students, a national magazine remarked.42 The CAA also announced the designation of the North Suburban Flying School at Glenview, Ill., as the school required by Public Law 18, but no Negroes were sent to this school, though new barracks had been built there and white flying cadet classes were being sent there. To the continuing requests for information on training Negroes for duties with the Air Corps, the War Department had a standard answer- a variation on what had become a familiar theme to the more persistent inquirers:
 
It has long been a policy of the War Department not to mix colored and white enlisted men in the same tactical organization and, since no provision has been made for any colored Air Corps units in the Army, colored persons are not eligible for enlistment in the Air Corps.43
 
The general public impression that there was a connection between the CAA program and the opening of the Air Corps to Negro flying cadets and enlisted men meanwhile continued. The actual participation of Negroes in the CPT program did not allay agitation for full participation in Air Corps training; rather, it increased the range of such agitation. The refusal of cadet boards to consider the applications of Negroes who were successful participants in the college program gave further leverage to the campaign.
 
Nor was the legal interpretation of Public Law 18 clearly understood. In January 1940, during the debate on the supplemental appropriations bill,44 Senator Bridges sought to discover the status of flying training for Negroes. Reading from a letter in which the War Department returned a Negro's application for flying cadet training because "there are no units composed of colored men,"
[61]

Senator Bridges declared, referring to Public Law 18: 
 
I find that that provision of the law was not carried out .... I think that is a rather serious thing. I am in sympathy with these appropriations and the general purpose of this bill for the national defense; but I should like to have it a matter of official record that the law was passed. It was passed, I assume, by Congress in good faith to provide training for the colored men of this country who desire to participate and secure training as aviators in the United States Army; and apparently the law today has been ignored.
 
Turning to Senator Elbert Thomas, Senator Bridges asked ". . . has the Senator any suggestion as to just how Congress should go about seeing that the law is carried out?"
 
Similar questions about Public Law 18 arose from time to time in committees and on the floors of both Houses. Most of the answers given left the impression that the CAA program was initiating training which would be continued by the Army once enough pilots and mechanics had obtained rudimentary training. In March the Chief of the Air Corps, Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, informed the House committee on appropriations that he felt that the Chicago school would take care of the matter of training Negro pilots.45 The Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, on at least two occasions left a similar impression with committee members. On one of these, after explaining that "there is no such thing as colored aviation at the present time" but that the CAA was the proper place to begin it, the general was asked by Representative Ludlow, "So you expect to give reasonable consideration to the Negro in that respect?" Marshall replied, "We are doing that right now." 46 It was implied by the White House and so interpreted to the Negro public that the War Department would accelerate and expand CAA training and that, when enough specialists and pilots were available, Air Corps units composed of Negroes would be organized.47 Delays at Glenview were explained by the difficulty of obtaining the twenty qualified students needed to begin instruction.48 
 
The completion of CPT courses by the first Negroes naturally raised the question of what the next step in their
training and use would be. The Air Corps and the Army were developing their own internal approach to the question. Despite the general statements of the impossibility of forming Negro air units, within the General Staff there was strong minority opinion that all branches, including the Air and Signal Corps, should be required to absorb their proportionate share of Negro enlisted men in time of war. The question was: how could this be done in the Air Corps while maintaining racial separation?
 
In the Air Corps, traditional officer enlisted men relationships had been up
[62]

set by the appearance of the pilot-officer who had to work with enlisted men who might not be under his command at all. A pilot's plane might be serviced by enlisted men who were members of a base squadron on an airfield several hundred miles from his home station. He might have to work with men of a strange weather unit or operations section. Visions of wholesale breaches of the codes of interracial etiquette arose whenever it was considered that a Negro pilot might be forced to land at a strange airfield for an overnight stay.
 
As great a quandary was created by the question of making use of existing facilities to train Negro pilots and enlisted men for whom neither units nor a body of experience capable of forming initial units and ground crews was available. Recognition of the cost and unwieldiness of duplicating training facilities in a service in which complete separation of the races was unlikely led to the suggestion that the Air Corps might make a departure from Army practices and train Negro and white airmen together. "The training of white and negro pilots in the same unit is out of the question," G-3 answered. "The idea of mixed units does not prevail among the educated negroes, who were members of a committee which met with C. A. A. and Army members to make arrangements for the course of instruction at the Chicago School of Aeronautics, as they favor the idea of colored units." 49 On the other hand, in face of the Air Corps' opposition, the provision of separate units for Negroes seemed unlikely. "There are no type units, combat or service, for which it is recommended that negro personnel be used . . . ," the Air Corps had informed G-3.50 Arguments against training Negro pilots included the scarcity of experienced Negroes in commercial aviation, the "lack of interest" of Negroes in aviation as evidenced by the number of private licenses which they had allowed to lapse, the absence of Negro units in the air forces of other countries, and the time ("several years"), which would be' needed to train enlisted men to become competent mechanics for use in ground crews of separate Negro units. Another potent argument was based on the fact that Negro pilots would make necessary a large increase in the number of Negro officers. Extracts from the testimony of World War I were cited to demonstrate that their superiors, their subordinates, and Negro officers themselves lacked confidence in their abilities. It was concluded that "the hazards of flying either in peace or war are such that the lack of confidence in any pilot of a combat unit not only creates timidity in the other pilots of the formation, but creates a mental hazard which in reality becomes a material hazard. Thus any such unit whether it is composed of white or negro pilots is useless as a combat unit either in peace or war." 51
 
This reasoning was not known to the Negro public in detail. Negroes summed up the Air Corps' position by simply asserting that the Air Corps had no intention of admitting that Negroes could fly and that it had less intention of being found in error by giving them the chance to prove that they could. Lack of op
[63]

portunities for Negroes to find employment in defense industries, especially in aircraft factories, was tied in with the protests. The Crisis used as the cover of its July 1940 issue a photograph of planes on an assembly line across which was printed: FOR WHITES ONLY. The caption read: "Warplanes Negro Americans may not build them, repair them, or fly them, but they must help pay for them." Varying the same theme, the magazine's December 1940 cover showed a training ship over a beautifully laid out field. This time the caption read: "FOR WHITES ONLY- a U.S. Army Air Corps training plane over the `West Point of the Air' Randolph Field, Texas. Negroes are not being accepted and trained by the Army Air Corps at any field in the Nation, despite all the talk of national unity and of the urgency of every group serving in national defense." On the same cover the magazine headlined two protest articles, "When Do We Fly?" by James L. H. Peck and "Jim Crow in the Army Camps," by "A Negro Soldier." 52
 
Negro critics did not know that out of Public Law 18 had come, in 1939, a plan for the training of a Negro air unit. The plan forecast that, since there was no reservoir of Negro pilots and mechanics, it would take "several years" before a Negro unit could be realized. Holding that "the training of pilots should present no special problem," the authors of the plan explained:
 
It is believed that it would be fairly easy to obtain a small number of qualified candidates for as many classes as desired. It might be necessary and desirable to establish a special section or class at the Training Center for those who survived the primary course. Specially qualified graduates could be sent to the Technical School for courses in engineering, armament, photography, and communications, if desired. The training of negro pilots should be so timed that a negro unit would be available for their active duty. Likewise, the training of negro enlisted men should present no great problem as separate classes could be held at the Technical Schools. The greatest difficulty would probably be in getting the quality of enlisted men necessary for this technical training. A high school education would be desirable.53
 
According to this plan any type of unit could be organized, but from the point of view of complexity in maintenance and operation difficulties a single-engine unit was deemed best. This narrowed the choice to pursuit or observation squadrons. A single pursuit squadron would have to fit into a group, but an observation squadron could be a comparatively independent unit. Therefore the latter was the recommended "initial unit." The process of forming the Negro unit would be gradual, with
[64]

initial key supervisory and technical enlisted personnel white. White officer personnel would be necessary to start with, except for "plain piloting and observing." As Negroes became proficient, they would move into responsible positions. It was nevertheless believed that at least three white officers should be left with the unit permanently. The unit should be Regular Army, for though the initial cost would then be higher, continuing costs would be less. If a Reserve or National Guard organization was formed, "the probability of political demands for additional units would probably run the resulting cost to a much higher figure than shown for a single Regular Army unit." A practical problem was posed by the lack of an allotted unit which could be used. There were but two new observation squadrons planned for the expansion, one for Hawaii and one for Panama. Conversion of an existing unit was considered inadvisable "as the services of the unit would be practically lost during the conversion period." The alternative was to request funds and authorization for an additional unit, which, if an observation squadron, would cost nearly four and a half million dollars. A new station, probably near Chicago, was considered desirable. 54
 
This plan, while not used in 1939, was essentially the same as that which was put into operation in 1941. If the legislation of 1939 provided nothing else, it produced the first few Negro civilian pilot trainees and a plan which the Air Corps could employ later to initiate training of Negroes as military pilots.
 
Subversives and Patriots
 
By 1940 concern arose that, unless some assurances were given Negroes that they would have an opportunity to participate in the defense of the nation, subversive influences would find a fertile field for fifth column activities among a disaffected Negro population. A concrete basis for this apprehension appeared to be demonstrated by the circulation of such articles as "Negro Yanks Ain't Coming Either- Remember 1917" which appeared in a New York communist publication aimed primarily at a Negro audience; 55 by the use of the Negro issue in the isolationist press's attacks on the proposed selective service bill; by open criticism of such Negro leaders as A. Phillip Randolph, Walter White, and their organizations for being too conservative and ineffective; and by the development of exotic Negro cults which held that the bearing of arms was against the tenets of their newfound faiths.56
 
Certain newspapers did not hesitate to use the Negro issue in their campaigns against American entrance into the war. The New York Daily News, for example, carried full-page pictures of the Ku Klux Klan and of Southern sharecroppers. The captions read, "Should We Fight to Save the World . . . While These Things Continue at Home?" and "Negroes have No FREEDOM OF SPEECH, No FREEDOM FROM TERROR In the South." "Tell your president, senators, and congressmen," the paper suggested to its readers, "that you want democracy to work properly at home before you fight
[65]

for it abroad." 57 In similar vein, isolationist magazines carried articles such as "Should Negroes Save Democracy?" 58
 
In April 1940, at its annual meeting in Washington, the National Negro Congress, a loose federation of Negro groups organized in 1936, passed a resolution that if America ever went to war with the Soviet Union they would refuse to fight. "This is treason," Representative Robert G. Allen of Pennsylvania informed the House.59 A. Phillip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and twice president of the congress, refused reelection to a third term and then resigned from the organization, explaining that the congress, having accepted financial support from the Communist Party, had lost its independence and would lose all possibility of mass support from Negroes. "It seems to be beyond the realm of debate," he said, "that the Negro people cannot afford to add to the handicap of being black, the handicap of being 'red.'" 60 After this, Representative Hamilton Fish of New York, a former officer of World War I's Negro 369th Infantry, declared that "99 1/2 percent of American Negroes are loyal American citizens." 61
 
During 1940 and 1941, street corner and park speakers harangued crowds about the necessity of unity among the world's darker peoples, of whom the Japanese, as the most powerful, were the natural leaders. They played upon the latent anti-Semitism of Negro areas to show that Nazi Germany had reason and logic behind its racial policies. The British record of colonialism in Africa and the West Indies came in for its share of opprobrium. The old Universal Negro Improvement Association (remnant of the Garvey Back to Africa Movement of the twenties) , the Ethiopian Pacific Movement, the World Wide Friends of Africa, the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, the Brotherhood of Liberty for the Black People of America, the Development of Our Own, and various cult groups of "Moorish" and "Arabic" Negroes, some dating back thirty years with escapist members who denied their kinship to American Negroes and gave their allegiance to none but the crescent flag of Islam, all came under suspicion as foci of subversive infection. "You have no stake in the war," many of these cults' street speakers confided to their Negro audiences. "You will not be allowed to fight the Germans anyway they're white; if you are sent to fight anyone it will be the Japanese, your colored darker brothers." 62
[66]

Although these organizations had few members, their activities were taken as signs that the traditional loyalty of Negroes might be weakening. Stafford King, Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War for the State of Minnesota, who had previously written to the War Department several times on the problems of CMTC and CAA training for Negroes in his state, now wrote:
 
We are, if we can believe one-tenth of what we hear and read, facing the definite possibility of revolution from within or invasion from without, or both. A united people is the one and only defense against either of these contingencies. No subdivision of government should by arbitrary rule bar a whole class of citizens from volunteer service. There is no physical, moral or patriotic reason why the colored man, after passing the regular tests, should be denied enrollment in the regular army, the National Guard, the ROTC or the CMTC.
I have no hesitance in suggesting to you, Sir, that if and when the colored men are so denied the volunteer service which is given to their white, yellow and brown brothers, they become easy prey to the smooth tongue of him who reminds them of their inequalities and promises that under some new type of government, Communist, Fascist, or Nazi, such inequalities will be erased.63
 
Newspaper columnists and Army officers sounded the same warning. The commanding general of the Fifth Corps Area reported to the War Department that, of several hundreds of Negroes applying to recruiting stations in his area, most had to be turned away. "Their disappointment and dissatisfaction after having met with failure in their efforts to get into the Army, makes them fertile ground for the activities of subversive agents, in the opinion of some of our Recruiting Officers," he wrote.64
 
Replying to such inquiries and comments with what were essentially form letters began to seem inappropriate to Maj. Gen. Emory S. Adams, The Adjutant General. To one of the earlier letters of Stafford King, he prepared a form answer and delivered it to the Secretary of War with a memorandum attached:
 
1. The attached reply to Mr. Stafford King on his letter regarding the status of Negroes in the Regular Army has been prepared in accordance with past policies and precedents, but fails to reach the crux of the situation in my opinion because the policies and precedents are not in accord with the state of affairs in the United States.
2. The colored race is entitled to greater and better representation in our Army for obvious reasons, many of which are set forth in Mr. King's letter, and this whole subject should have careful and immediate study to determine the future policy of the War Department in the premises.
3. It is recommended that this study be initiated without delay.65
 
To this recommendation, G-1 replied that it was collaborating with G-3 on just such a study.66
[67]

The preparation of studies in itself did little to solve the dilemma of the use of Negro troops. Negroes and their partisans, knowing nothing of the contents of these studies or of the importance attached to them, continued to carry their case to the public and the Congress. Comparisons with World War I were used skillfully by Negro spokesmen, with a constant overtone of "We want no repetition of the tragic errors of that war." They made speeches, they wrote articles, they consulted with men in high places, they appeared at Congressional hearings, they utilized the services and sought the aid of the better known members of the boards of their organizations. They hoped that, by working before the declaration of war, before the beginning of large scale expansion of the Army, they might escape the necessity of deciding which was to come first once war was declared: a struggle to obtain additional rights and privileges or a quiescent acceptance, once war began, of a status quo which they were convinced had long since been proved impractical. Their aim was full integration of Negroes into the armed services as Americans and not as a special class of citizens. "We will be American soldiers. We will be American ditch diggers. We will be American laborers. We will be anything that any other American should be in this whole program of national defense. But we won't be black auxiliaries," Dean William H. Hastie of the Howard University Law School declared.67 Under known Army policies, it seemed doubtful to many Negroes that they would be anything other than grudgingly accepted auxiliaries.
 
New Bills and Units
 
In the summer of 1940, two new Congressional bills to increase the size of the Army, incidentally affecting the employment of Negro troops, engaged the attention of the War Department. One would have given the President authority to assign officers and enlisted men during fiscal year 1941 to the various branches of the Army in "such numbers as he considers necessary .... Provided, that no person shall be excluded from any branch of the military establishment on account of race, creed, or color." The G-3 Division felt that passage of legislation containing this provision would "disrupt completely plans for the organization of an effective military force." 68 G-1 predicted that such a provision would make it impossible to limit Negro enlistments to a number proportionate to the Negro population. Conceivably, the bulk of the Regular Army might become Negro. Because of the uncertainty of the number of Negro enlistments, no "balanced force" could be maintained if Negro and white units were to be kept separate. The legislative proposal might force the Army to organize Negro units in every arm and service.69 After getting the General Staff divisions' views, Secretary Woodring summarized the department's objections to the provision, linking them to the Japanese threat and to the possibility
[68]

that passage might endanger the maintenance of segregated units:
 
It is impossible to forecast definitely what its effect might be. Its retention in the bill might result in the enlistment of Negroes or Japanese in numbers out of all proportion to the colored population of the country. Such a result would demoralize and weaken the effect of military units by mixing colored and white soldiers in closely related units, or even in the same units. It might also have a dangerously adverse effect upon discipline should it be necessary to have colored and white troops in the same units or closely related units. I have no objection whatever to negro troops but must not be required to take them in such numbers as to prevent the proper organization of the army. I strongly urge the conferees to strike this provision from the bill.70
 
The joint conferees of the House and Senate substituted a provision which read, as passed: "Provided, That no Negro, because of race, shall be excluded from enlistment in the Army for service with colored military units now organized or to be organized for such service." 71 This substitution left the manner of the enlistment and employment of Negroes exactly where it had been before.
 
But the net effect of the original proposal was to increase the allotment of Negro combat units in the Army for the first time in twenty years and to provide types of units in which Negroes had not previously been employed. For, although the provision, as originally worded, was stricken from the bill, the War Department could not be certain that it would not reappear and become a part of final legislation. In an effort to "forestall the re-inclusion of this provision," the Chief of Staff authorized Maj. Wilton B. Persons, Office of the Secretary of War, to inform "appropriate conferees" that the War Department was making definite plans to organize "a considerable number" of additional Negro units of the ground forces under the provisions of a second bill, authorizing an increase of the Regular Army by another 95,000 men. Major Persons reported that the matter was "handled with satisfactory results." 72
 
The new Negro units added under this compromise were: one 155mm. gun field artillery regiment; two coast artillery antiaircraft gun regiments; one general service engineer regiment; twelve quartermaster truck companies; and one chemical decontamination company. Each of these units, except the second coast artillery regiment and the chemical company, was within the Negro allotment contained in the current Protective Mobilization Plan, although not all of those activated were units designated specifically in the PMP as Negro. The total strength of the new Negro units was to be 4,595 or 8.4 percent of the 55,000 increase authorized for ground troops. The Negro strength of the Army was to be more than doubled by the addition of the new units.
 
Providing this augmentation illustrated some of the difficulties and administrative annoyances inherent in expanding the Army's Negro strength. They foreshadowed many of the later
[69]

problems which the Army was to face. In the first place, since the PMP represented a balanced force, the addition of Negro units could not be accomplished simply by constituting new Negro units to be added to the PMP. Several of the new Negro units had to be provided from among organizations that already existed but that were designated for whites. The 349th Field Artillery (155mm.), for example, was withdrawn from the Organized Reserves, re-allotted to the Regular Army, changed to a motorized regiment, and designated Negro.73 The 502d and 503d Coast Artillery (AA) regiments, white Reserve units, were re-designated 76th Coast Artillery (AA) and 77th Coast Artillery (AA) and made Negro Regular Army units. The 1st Chemical Decontamination Company, which was white in the PMP, was made a Negro unit. Of the new units, only the 41st Engineer Regiment and the 48th Quartermaster Regiment had been Negro all along.74
 
In the augmentation plans and activation orders, companies of the 48th Quartermaster Regiment were designated for activation with Negro personnel, but the 48th, although so indicated in the PMP, was not designated "Negro" in the War Department's orders. The Third Corps Area, to which the unit was allotted, therefore had to ask the War Department whether its intention was to activate the companies of this regiment with Negro enlisted men. The query was natural, since the 47th Quartermaster Regiment, now designated Negro, had been white in the 1939 PMP and since the mid1940 augmentation had originally included eight companies of the 47th which were now deleted. The War Department replied that its intention was to activate the 48th Regiment with Negroes.75
 
The new white units in the expansion of the Army were opened for enlistment on I August, but enlistments in Negro units were delayed until 15 August. Certain of the Negro units could not be housed at their assigned stations until the construction of "Negro housing" was completed. They were to be activated at temporary stations and moved later. Providing cadres for the new types of units was a difficult problem. Time was needed to prepare the Negro cadremen, who had to be obtained from existing units of the traditional branches, for their task of establishing and training units in new branches.
 
The organization of new Negro units in the Regular Army raised questions within the Army. Would these units become permanent parts of the Regular Army? Would the branches have difficulty in inactivating them once the emergency was over? Would their establishment mean that other arms and services besides the Infantry and Cavalry would now have a peacetime "Negro problem?" 76
 
Certain of the arms and services still did not believe that they should be given the task of organizing Negro units at all. Specific objection came from the General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force,
[70]

which asked that the 1st Chemical Decontamination Company be exchanged for a white unit. Such a company in air operations, the GHQ Air Force said, must be broken down into small detachments for use at various bases and distributing points. The detachments must live and mess with other Air Corps units. Since all other units of the GHQ Air Force were white, the decontamination company should also be white.77 The Chief of the Air Corps asked for favorable consideration of the request. G-3 pointed out that the method of utilization described by the GHQ Air Force was but one of many and that during peacetime such a unit need not be used in this manner at all, unless it could be so employed with minimum difficulties. The request was not approved and the unit was activated with Negroes.78
 
Opening enlistments for Negroes in new Regular Army combat units was distinctly news in the civilian press. In Detroit, for example, Army recruiting made an all-time record for the city on 15 August, the day when recruiting of Negroes began. "Those enlisted today included 29 Negroes, the first Negroes to be enlisted for combat units here since 1920," the Detroit News reported. Chicago recruiting offices broke the national record by enrolling over 100 men in a day.79
 
The pattern set in the establishment of these new units was in several ways typical of later Army experience. The re-designation of white units to receive Negroes, the semi confusion of the racial identity of units, delays in assembling units caused by lack of housing and trained cadres, objections to the receipt of Negro units by branches of services, and the readiness of Negroes to enter new units were to be repeated many times during mobilization and during the course of World War II.
 
The legislative compromise out of which the new units came had additional significance. It was the first of a series which, by adding a few units here, and subtracting a few there, caused a relatively haphazard development in the expansion of Negro strength. The expansion was often based more on expediency than on either military necessity or sound planning. Existing plans were often altered by factors, frequently nonmilitary, which interfered with the orderly procedures visualized for the expansion of Negro strength.
 
The Selective Training and Service Act
 
The legislation of 1940 primarily affecting the employment of Negro troops by the Army was the Selective Training and Service Act. When first proposed, this legislation contained a preamble which read in part: "The Congress further declares that in a free society the obligations and privileges of military training and service should be shared generally in accordance with a fair and just system of selective compulsory military training and service." Nevertheless, Negroes and supporters of their efforts to obtain full military training, remembering that Public Law 18 of April 1939 had produced no pilots,
[71]

pressed for additional safeguards.
 
Rayford W. Logan of Howard University, chairman of the civilian Committee on Participation of Negroes in the National Defense Program, testified before the House Committee on Military Affairs that amendments to the Selective Service bill which stated specifically the intent of Congress should be inserted. He asked that a new subsection be added: "No provision of this act shall be construed or administered so as to discriminate against any person on account of race, creed, or color," or, as an alternative, "In the selection and training of men as well as in the interpretation and execution of the provisions of this act there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race, creed or color." 80 Other spokesmen, Charles H. Houston, NAACP civil rights lawyer, and Owen D. Young, representing the American Youth Commission, urged the adoption of amendments similar to those proposed by Logan. Proposals that Negroes be given safeguards leading to fuller service made a favorable impression on the committee, for much of the testimony before it had been from pacifist and other groups opposed to the bill. Representative Paul J. Kilday of Texas asked Professor Logan, "You are not asking for the exemption of your race, but you are asking that they be put into it?" Logan replied, "Yes, and it seems to me extraordinary that they are not." "I think your stand is in marked contrast to some of those who have been here," Kilday commented.
 
Anti-discrimination amendments were introduced in both the House and Senate, despite the fact that the bill, as reported out by the committees, contained sections forbidding discrimination against volunteers and requiring selection "in an impartial manner." Representative Hamilton Fish of New York introduced an amendment in the House which was essentially Logan's alternative amendment. It applied to selectees only. Senator Robert F. Wagner, also of New York, sought to include specific mention of aviation units as well as to make it mandatory that men be selected "without regard to race, creed or color." Both proponents urged that Negroes be guaranteed the right to serve in any branch without restrictions because of color.
 
There was little direct Congressional opposition to the amendments as such, but the debate on the subject of Negroes in the proposed Army training program illustrated not only the effect of political pressures on the Congress but also the political results of public interest in the subject. The debates covered the range of public reaction to the question of legislative guarantees of Negro participation in the preparedness program. Some congressmen asserted that the amendments were not aimed at the prevention of discrimination against Negroes at all but at the breakdown of segregation within the Army. Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana objected that the amendment would lead to racially mixed units and his colleague, Senator John H. Overton, arguing on the distinction between discrimination and segregation, said:
 
I understand from members of the general staff that there is no discrimination whatever against the colored race. They are, however, placed in separate units,
[72]

while the desire on the part of a certain class of our population is that there should be mixed units. If we should undertake to establish mixed units in the Army, it would be subversive to discipline, subversive to morale, and would not be of benefit either to the colored or to the white race .... I think I am justified in making the observation that if they are excluded from the air forces it is because the Army is not ready yet to have separate units. I think that would be the only reason.81
 
Senator Tom Connally of Texas, recalling the Civil War, and the Houston riot of World War I, said of the Wagner proposal
 
I think the Senator from New York does not properly interpret the spirit of the colored race. He may interpret the spirit of one or two of them who are on salaries around here to agitate the colored people; he may speak for one or two colored lobbyists; but he does not speak for the great mass of the American colored people. Most of them are hard working, most of them mean well; most of them want to do right; most of them want to serve their country if their country needs them. A few of them want continually to agitate, disturb, stir up discussion, and raise the devil about what they speak of as their political and social rights.82
 
Senator W. Warren Barbour of New Jersey, on the other hand, contended that anything less than equitable distribution of Negroes among the arms and services would constitute discrimination. In World War I, he said, many Negroes were
 
... wholly and only in labor battalions. They were given only this sort of work which, while important in itself, was discriminatory. The fact that so much of that really nonmilitary duty was confined to that one race proved that it was discriminatory; and this is not fair, it is not right, it is not American.83
 
Senator Schwartz recalled that, a year before, the Congress had passed a bill (Public Law 1 8) which authorized the Army to train colored pilots. The Army, he continued, had not been able to "work out that provision" because of the social implications involved. He reminded the Senate that recruiting notices reading "white only" had disturbing effects among the Negro population. Negroes with whom he had talked, he pointed out, believed that "a very large number of colored men were not with colored regiments, but they were with a white artillery regiment and with other regiments, taking care of horses polo ponies, probably." Though the War Department had not created "what they call the social situation in the South and in the Army," he continued, "they are trying to meet the situation for they must and will work with it and produce a plan where Negroes, such as pilots, would not have to be working with white pilots." 84
 
When the Selective Service Act was finally passed, it contained two specific provisions against discrimination because of race or color. The first, in section 3 (a), provided: "That within the limits of the quota determined under section 4 (b) for the subdivision in which he resides, any person, regardless of race or color, between the ages of eighteen and thirtysix, shall be afforded an opportunity to volunteer for induction into the land or naval forces of the United States for the training and service prescribed . . . ." The second, in sec-
[73]

tion 4 (a), read: "That in the selection and training of men under this act, and in the interpretation and execution of the provisions of this act, there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race or color." 85 The inclusion of these provisions did not of itself satisfy those opponents of discrimination who visualized a draft Army which, with segregation as a pattern, would spread discriminatory practices over the entire United States.
 
Although the Army had stated several times that, if the Selective Service bill passed and became law, Negroes would be inducted in proportion to their strength in the manpower covered by the law, there was an additional provision in the law which caused Negro leaders some concern. Section 3 continued:
 
Provided further, That no man shall be inducted for training and service under this act unless and until he is acceptable to the land or naval forces for such training and service and his physical and mental fitness for such training and service has been satisfactorily determined: Provided further, That no men shall be inducted for such training and service until adequate provision shall have been made for such shelter, sanitary facilities, water supplies, heating and lighting arrangements, medical care, and hospital accommodations, for such men, as may be determined by the Secretary of War or the Secretary of the Navy, as the case may be, to be essential to public and personal health.
 
The questions raised by this section were: Would Negroes be "acceptable to the land or naval forces?" Would the force of "unless and until" provide a means of limiting service "unless and until" the armed forces had a need for the individual Negro? Could lack of shelter or hospital accommodations for Negroes be made a limiting factor in their induction? 86
 
Announcements and Appointments
 
To obtain answers to these and other questions, leaders of Negro organizations prepared a memorandum setting forth what they considered minimum requests. The text of this memorandum was presented to President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and Assistant Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson at a White House conference on 27 September 1940.87 The portion of the program applying to the armed services read:
The following are important phases of the integration of the Negro into military aspects of the national defense program.
1. The use of presently available Negro reserve officers in training recruits and other forms of active service. At the same time, a policy of training additional Negro officers in all branches of the services should be announced. Present facilities and those to be provided in the future should be made available for such training.
2. Immediate designation of centers where Negroes may be trained for work in all branches of the aviation corps. It is not enough to train pilots alone, but in addition navigators, bombers, gunners,
[74]

radiomen, and mechanics must be trained in order to facilitate full Negro participation in the air service.
3. Existing units of the army and units to be established should be required to accept and select officers and enlisted personnel without regard to race.
4. Specialized personnel such as Negro physicians, dentists, pharmacists and officers of chemical warfare, camouflage service and the like should be integrated into the services.
5. The appointment of Negroes as responsible members in the various national and local agencies engaged in the administration of the Selective Service Training Act of 1940.
6. The development of effective techniques for insuring the extension of the policy of integration in the Navy other than the menial services to which Negroes are now restricted.
7. The adoption of policies and the development of techniques to assure the participation of trained Negro women as Army and Navy nurses as well as in the Red Cross.88
 
The White House had already directed the War Department, on 5 September, to prepare and hold a statement to the effect that "colored men will have equal opportunity with white men in all departments of the Army." 89 General Marshall informed his Personnel Division that, at a cabinet meeting on 13 September, the President had stated that "he had been troubled by representations of the Negroes that their race under the draft was limited to labor battalions." The Army informed the President that it planned to give Negroes "proportionate shares in all branches of the Army, in the proper ratio to their population-approximately 10 percent." The President then suggested that the War Department, "in conjunction with the Navy," publicize this fact. "The Secretary of War wishes an exact statement of the facts in the case, and as to how far we can go in the matter," the Chief of Staff wrote.90
 
On 16 September 1900, the day the Selective Service Act was approved, the War Department issued a press release headed "Expansion of Colored Organizations Planned." When the Selective Service System began to operate, the release reported, 36,000 of the first 400,000 men called would be Negroes. The release listed all Negro units, including the new August units, and mentioned the CAA program, adding that "the creation of additional colored combat organizations is now under consideration." It implied, but did not state, that these would include Air Corps units.
 
On 8 October 1940, Assistant Secretary Patterson, "as the result of a conference in your office on September 27," submitted to President Roosevelt a full statement of policy, already approved informally by the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff. The President penciled his "O.K." and initials on this memorandum, thereby giving his approval to a policy which remained in effect throughout the war. On the morning of 9 October it was released to the press by the White House.91 This first comprehensive statement on the subject read:
 
It is the policy of the War Department that the services of Negroes will be utilized on a fair and equitable basis. In line with
[75]

this policy provision will be made as follows:
1. The strength of the Negro personnel of the Army of the United States will be maintained on the general basis of the proportion of the Negro population of the country.
2. Negro organizations will be established in each major branch of the service, combatant as well as noncombatant.
3. Negro reserve officers eligible for active duty will be assigned to Negro units officered by colored personnel.
4. When officer candidate schools are established, opportunity will be given to Negroes to qualify for reserve commissions.
5. Negroes are being given aviation training as pilots, mechanics and technical specialists. This training will be accelerated.
6. At arsenals and army posts Negro civilians are accorded equal opportunity for employment at work for which they are qualified by ability, education, and experience.
7. The policy of the War Department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organizations. This policy has been proven satisfactory over a long period of years, and to make changes now would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparation for national defense. For similar reasons the department does not contemplate assigning colored reserve officers other than those of the Medical Corps and chaplains to existing Negro combat units of the Regular Army. These regular units are going concerns, accustomed through many years to the present system. Their morale is splendid, their rate of reenlistment is exceptionally high, and their field training is well advanced. It is the opinion of the War Department that no experiments should be tried with the organizational setup of these units at this critical time.92
 
The White House, in releasing the statement, implied that it was the result of the 27 September conference with Negro leaders. The measure of the protests which went up from Negroes was the measure of the distance between the White House announcement and their proposed program. The men who had attended the White House conference were especially annoyed by the implication that they had endorsed the announced policy.93 They were specifically disturbed about points five and seven. The announcement embodied the main points of a policy adopted (although not announced) by the War Department in 1937, in its planning for mobilization; and the final paragraph repeated, in almost identical phrases, the statements made in the many Adjutant General letters which had gone out to individuals all over the country. Nevertheless, this statement, which contained the basic Army policy in force throughout the war, was afterward referred to within the War Department as the Presidential directive on the use of Negro troops and as a Presidential sanction for policies derived therefrom .94
 
Had the policy announcement been made earlier, as had been intended in the 1937 recommendations, reaction to it might have been slight, for the details of the announcement went beyond what the Negro press and public had expected or requested as late as the beginning of 1940. Coming as it did, after the Selec-
[76]

tive Service Act, which had already legalized proportionate representation of Negroes through the operation of a random choice lottery, the question of manner of service was the only one left which was of primary concern. The statement on air training had less than the ring of conviction about it, since no training of the sort was being given by the Army. The reference to Regular Army units, over half of which were less than two months old, helped clinch the belief, held by most Negroes, that there was a wide gap between the words and the intentions of the War Department. "Of all the shabby dealings of America with a tenth of her citizens," The Crisis commented in its issue following the announcement, "none is more shameful or more indefensible than the 
refusal to give Negroes a fair chance in the armed forces." The editorial continued:
 
The citizens' army that is to be trained under the Selective Service Act will find shortly that the Army and the Navy are being run very much like country clubs. Americans discovered that in 1917, but there was a war to be fought at once then and there was not much they could do about it. Now it should be different and the peacetime army and its civilian relatives, given a space to think and act before actual warfare interferes, may force some changes.95
 
Thereafter, and throughout the war, The Crisis, and most of the Negro press, while praising the signs of change within the Army which meant greater opportunities for Negroes, continued to attack the Army's segregation policy, even in connection with such installations as the Tuskegee Army Flying School, which trained the Negro pilots for which the press had worked so long, and in connection with the activation of Negro divisions. A Negro journalist commented shortly after Pearl Harbor that no Negro leader in 1942 could write a "Close Ranks" editorial of the 1918 model if he expected to maintain his influence. "For in the last war," he argued, "in spite of the acknowledged bravery of Negro troops, they suffered all forms of Jim Crow, humiliation, discrimination, and indeed slander- a pattern being followed today." 96 One of the NAACP's most prominent officers, William Pickens, for example, was discharged by the organization as an apologist for segregation after he had commended the Army's work at Tuskegee and at Fort Huachuca.
 
By no means all comments on the announcement of Army policy, by or on behalf of Negroes, were adverse.97 It was often pointed out that, under the new policy, Negroes would have broader opportunities than they had had in the past. Some Negroes wrote to the War Department to say that they thought it a "fine thing" to give the Negro a place in the armed services in proportion to Population. Others, including Negro college officers and presidents, offered their services as advisers to the Secretary of War and in capacities in which they would be able to stress the need of national unity to Negro audiences.98 But
[77]

Photo: GENERAL DAVIS
GENERAL DAVIS
 
the majority of the comments and correspondence criticized one or another of the announced policy decisions.
In the wake of criticisms, other commitments were made. Bishop Richard R. Wright, chairman of the Colored Division of the National Democratic Headquarters, asked Stephen Early, Press Secretary to the President, if anything had been done by the Republicans since the Spanish-American War to make permanent additions of Negro Regulars to the Army and if it was "a fact that under the present administration the Negro has gotten more recognition in the Army than ever before, and what is the record?" G-1 made no attempt to answer the first of these questions, but in response to the second it compiled a list of the new Negro units recently approved and of those planned for the near future.99 On the basis of this information Assistant Secretary Patterson informed the White House that, in addition to the new units already provided, three infantry regiments, one engineer regiment, eight engineer battalions, "and the necessary ordnance and quartermaster troops" would be formed in the spring from Selective Service men.100 "Also from Selective Service personnel, 2,250 men will be trained in Air Corps units," Patterson's memorandum concluded.101 The next day a supplementary memorandum, delivered to the White House by Maj. Walter Bedell Smith, indicated that the 4th Cavalry Brigade was being formed and that it would be one of two, the other brigade to be white, forming the 2d Cavalry Division.102 Thus, in answer to the demands of the 1940 political campaign, the War Department committed itself to action in terms of specific units, filling out the announcement of 9 October that though Negroes would remain in separate units they would be represented in
[78]

all arms and services. These units were all to be provided, but the manner and nature of their provision was yet to be worked out. The question of the manner and nature of their employment was still further in the future.
 
Two more steps were taken within this same preelection week. On 25 October Col. Benjamin O. Davis, senior Negro officer in the Army, was nominated for promotion to brigadier general.103 On the same day Secretary Stimson appointed William Hastie, Dean of the Howard University Law School, as his Civilian Aide on Negro Affairs. 104
 
The first of these appointments received widespread attention in the national press, for this was the first time that a Negro had achieved general officer's rank in the United States Army. The second appointment was widely noted as a sign that the Army intended to expand its Negro strength with a minimum of difficulties. The political significance of the appointments was not overlooked. Some viewed the Davis promotion as a Roosevelt administration attempt to counteract Negro opposition to the October policy announcement. In promoting General Davis, Time commented, the administration was already violating its announced policy, since he would leave his all Negro command, the 369th New York National Guard Regiment, for the new 4th Cavalry Brigade, containing the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, both of which, as Regular
[79]

Army outfits, had all white officers. The white officers could be replaced by Negro Reserve officers, but even then the policy would be violated, since Negro Reserve officers were not to be used in Regular Army units. The easiest way out, the magazine continued, would be to retire General Davis on his sixty-fourth birthday due the next July, for "By then the election will be over." 105 The Negro press, in general, greeted the promotion with approval, though indicating that it alone was not enough.
 
For the Hastie appointment, the Secretary of War had a World War I precedent. In 1917, Newton D. Baker had made Emmett J. Scott, secretary to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee, his Special Assistant with approximately the same purpose in mind the provision of some means of liaison and some source of interpretation between the Negro public and the War Department. Moreover, the appointment of special advisers on questions affecting the Negro public had been an increasing tendency among federal agencies during the preceding eight years.
 
Judge Hastie undertook his duties on 1 November 1940. In his letter of appointment, Secretary Stimson described these duties to be "to assist in the formulation, development and administration of policies looking to the fair and effective utilization of Negroes in all branches of the military service." 106 The Secretary's letter continued:
 
I hope that you will be able to assist us in the development of and improvements in the War Department's plans for the organization of Negro units in each major branch of the service, and for the utilization of Negro reserve officers, candidates for commissions, and aviation cadets. I also hope that you will be of assistance to us in connection with policies involving the employment of Negroes on civilian status at army establishments and by army contractors.
 
It will be part of your duties to investigate complaints concerning the treatment of Negroes in the military service or in civilian employment in the War Department. In this connection, I hope it will be possible for you to spend time visiting camps, posts and stations for the purpose of observing and reporting to me upon matters of Negro participation in the national defense.
 
It is my expectation that you will cooperate with the Negro representatives on the Selective Service Committee and in the Labor Section of the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense, where appropriate.
 
Such recommendations as you may from time to time wish to make should be submitted to me through the Assistant Secretary of War.
 
You may be assured that the officers and establishments of the War Department will cooperate with you in carrying out the tasks which I have outlined. Instructions are being issued that you be consulted on matters affecting Negroes in the army, and that all information necessary to the effective execution of your duties be made available to you.
[80]

Judge Hastie considered these manifold duties to be the "general task of facilitating the equitable integration of the Negro into so much of the National Defense Program as falls within the jurisdiction of the War Department." 107 His office, consisting of himself, one assistant, and a secretary, proceeded to gather information from General Staff divisions and from the chiefs of arms and services in an attempt to determine and appraise the existing plans and developments in the Army's use of Negro troops. Hastie, acting upon the information available to him, initiated recommendations, generally through the Secretary of the General Staff, occasionally through one or another of the assistant chiefs of staff, and at times directly to the Assistant Secretary (later, Under Secretary) of War, Judge Patterson. Most of the policy proposals specifically affecting Negroes were referred to the Civilian Aide for comment, although judge Hastie complained early that too frequently such matters did not come to his attention until the proposals had been completely formulated and presented for final approval. As a result of the publication of a directive concerning the construction of welfare and recreational facilities for Negro troops on which judge Hastie had not been consulted, the chiefs of arms and services and the General Staff divisions were instructed that "Matters of policy which pertain to Negroes, or important questions arising thereunder, will be referred to judge William H. Hastie, civilian aide to the Secretary of War, for comment or concurrence before final action." 108
 
Individual complaints from soldiers and civilian employees of the Army, proposals and complaints from Negro organizations, and problems ranging from the employment of Negro hostesses and librarians in service clubs to the constitution of Negro combat units were referred to the Civilian Aide's office for comment and consultation. Routine requests for information and "daily visits and inquiries by persons seeking employment" consumed a large part of the time of the office and prevented the Civilian Aide from giving his full attention to the larger aspects of his duties.109 Nevertheless, through personal contacts with the chiefs of War Department agencies and through informal inquiries, judge Hastie, in the first few months of mobilization, considered a variety of questions of major importance, including: the proportionate distribution of Negroes in the arms and services; the use and training of Negro officers, chaplains, and nurses; recreational and welfare facilities for Negro troops; the use of Negro civilian personnel in Army installations; Negroes in Civilian Conservation Corps camps; Negroes in National Youth Administration projects on Army posts and stations; and the relations of the War Department with the Negro press.
 
At the outset Hastie was furnished a complete list of existing units and of those planned through June 1941. He
[81]

was assured that Negroes would be excluded from no arm or service, though it was explained that the Armored Force was not an arm but a combination of arms and services. "There are no negro units in the armored corps," G-1 said, "but there are mechanized units in the 9th and 10th Cavalries." 110 Negro aviation units, about which Hastie had inquired specifically, would follow when the National Youth Administration and Civil Aeronautics Authority programs had trained enough civilian pilots and mechanics. "If this program is to be safe," G-1 said, "it must progress carefully, step by step. Plans are now being developed for training of negro military pilots, when this program has progressed sufficiently to provide the requisite ground personnel." Negro officers, dentists, and doctors would be used in the three existing National Guard regiments and in the one new regiment to be formed in February. Nurses would be procured for "hospitals which are used exclusively for negro patients" and qualified pharmacists were free to compete for Reserve commissions. "With representative units in all arms and services the problem of utilization of skilled negroes is in general no different from that of the skilled whites," G-1 noted. "The utilization of the exceptionally skilled white is limited, and it will be the same in the case of the negro." In the classification and reception of Negroes at reception centers or in the admission of men to specialist schools, no discrimination would be permitted. Selection for schools would depend entirely upon the "particular suitability of the selectee for the duties for which he is to be trained." 111
 
The Lines Form
 
General interest in the question of the employment of Negro troops widened during the year 1940. A number of yearend articles on the subject appeared in nationally distributed publications. Walter White, secretary of the NAACP, summed up his views in the opening words of an article:
 
From the manpower angle, the largest defense headache ahead of the United States Government is likely to be the status of that 10 percent of our population which is Negro. The Negro insists upon doing his part, and the Army and Navy want none of him.112
 
To a large extent, despite the War Department's announced expansion of its employment of Negroes, White's brief picture was correct. The use and status of Negro manpower did become one of the major "headaches" of the war. What White did not state was that a profound difference in interpretation of the Negro's "part" existed. There were those who insisted that there was no possible meeting ground between the two opposing points of view.
 
Many Negroes saw no way in which
[82]

any denial of the individual's right to serve in any capacity for which he was fitted, without reference to race, could be reconciled with the professed ideals for which the war was being fought. With appeals to democracy and continued obeisance to the ideal of the dignity of the individual highly in evidence as justifications for the struggle in which the world was locked, Negroes continued to point out discrepancies in the active expression of the "democratic faith" so frequently propounded by the heads of the government. "A lilywhite navy cannot fight for a free world. A Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world. Jim crow strategy, no matter on how grand a scale, cannot build a free world," The Crisis said immediately after Pearl Harbor.113
 
The Army, on the other hand, insisted that its job was not to alter American social customs but to create a fighting machine with a maximum economy of time and effort. The War Department made it clear that it saw no point in debating "at every point" policy decisions already made, for though it would answer specific inquiries, it felt that Negroes, and especially the NAACP, were simply trying to keep alive a controversy which served no valid military purpose in time of national crisis.114 The War Department felt, moreover, that it had offered Negroes the opportunity to serve in all capacities and that that itself was a major removal of discriminatory barriers and a major concession. From the Army's viewpoint, the promise of proportional use of Negroes in all types of units provided more opportunities for service than Negroes were able to take advantage of. Separate units continued segregation, but the Army felt that segregation was a practice which it had found in the civilian community and which it had no right to alter until the civilian community itself had changed its own methods or had given the Army, through the Congress, a clear mandate to do so.
 
The Selective Service Act had ordered that inductees be selected and trained without discrimination and, the War Department reiterated, it did not itself discriminate against any of its soldiers. Here was one of the major points of disagreement, for, as shown in the Congressional debates on the inclusion of nondiscriminatory clauses in the Selective Service Act, the distinction between discrimination and segregation in normal usage was not always clear. The meaning of these terms then and later depended in large measure upon the view of the user. Segregation, implying only separation, was often considered nondiscriminatory by those who believed that equal facilities and opportunities could be provided to both races. To others, including most Negroes, the concept of enforced segregation was itself discriminatory. The fact of separation not only prevented freedom of movement and action on the part of the segregated minority (and was therefore considered an abridgment of basic personal liberties) but also produced inequalities of facilities and opportunities for the minority. The minority, being numerically smaller and weaker, had no means of enforcing guarantees of equal facilities and opportunities.
[83]

Moreover, the argument ran, the very act of formal segregation implied inescapable differences among men which made common action impossible and which, by denying the common aims and similar objectives of men was, per se, discriminatory. On the other hand the courts, through World War 11, held that segregation, as such, was not discriminatory where equal facilities were provided. Field commanders therefore saw nothing anomalous in announcing that their racial policy was "segregation without discrimination" or that no discrimination could exist in a command or camp which had Negro enlisted men only.
 
To those for whom the aspirations of Negroes were a cause, no amount of special consideration in the way of separate units of diverse types was compensation for the continuing conviction that the root of all difficulties in the Army's use of Negro manpower lay in the restriction of Negroes to these particular segregated units. The crowning irony to many Negroes was that the Army, while insisting upon separate units, did not go all the way in its segregated pattern and insist that these units be commanded wholly by Negro, and not by white, officers. "We deplore segregation in any form," said Professor Rayford-Logan, representing ten Negro organizations and speaking for seven co-witnesses in 1940, "especially when it is practiced by the Federal Government. But in accepting these separate units which are forced upon us, we do so only because of the hope that these units will be commanded by Negro officers." 115
 
Negroes therefore used their political pressures in two directions: the first toward the elimination of segregation and discrimination in the extension of the use of Negro manpower, and the second in an attempt to exploit to the fullest the possibilities for the use of Negroes within a segregated system.
 
The conflict between the self-defined interests of the Army and of Negroes continued throughout the war. Appeals to political power were made by both sides, but no clear legislative decision was reached. Segregation as a concept remained the root question affecting the cleavage between the Negro public and the Army; it was basic to Negro soldiers' attitudes toward the Army and the war; it was useful for political campaign purposes; and it provided a convenient basket to catch most of the problems arising in the employment of Negro troops. Yet it was seldom mentioned in a direct way by either Negroes or the Army during the war, for it was easier to place greater stress upon the many other facets of difficulty which the employment of Negro troops provided. Negroes emphasized clearly discriminatory practices growing out of segregation, such as the lack of opportunities for advancement, differentials in facilities, and limitations upon employment. The Army emphasized the low classification scores, the lack of vocational skills, and other real or apparent deficiencies of Negroes which, though admittedly they might be the result of deprivations in civilian life, obviously, in the Army's view, prevented Negroes from carrying their full share of the military load. These alone, not to speak of civilian patterns in the sections of the country from which most Negroes
[84]

came, were sufficient argument, from the Army's point of view, to oppose the end of separate units.
 
But there was other support for their maintenance. In an opinion survey conducted in March 1943, the Office of War Information found that nine out of ten whites in five key cities felt that white and Negro troops should be kept separate, while eight out of ten Negroes in the same cities were opposed to segregation.116 It was obvious that both whites and Negroes could not be satisfied on this point if public opinion was to decide the question.
 
It could be expected that the Army would attempt to avoid as much as possible the difficulties arising out of providing units for Negroes. The simplest method would have been to reduce the number of Negroes entering the Army to a minimum, though under the Selective Service Act this could not be done legally. But there might be other ways. There were the protective clauses in Section 3 which provided that no man should be inducted "unless and until he is acceptable to the land or naval forces" and until "adequate provision shall have been made for such shelter, sanitary facilities, water supplies, heating and lighting arrangements, medical care, and hospital accommodations . . . . " There were always actual shortages of housing, equipment, and units for Negroes. Educational and literary qualifications might be placed at a point where large numbers of Negroes could be excluded.
 
But the Negro public and its sympathizers, remembering World War I and now more potent politically than twenty years before, watched carefully for any evidence of failure to adhere fully to the terms of stated policy. Moreover, white citizens in areas with sizable Negro populations did not take kindly to the deferment of large numbers of Negroes while white men were being drafted. A stream of letters continued to come into the White House and the War Department; congressmen were kept busy with inquiries from their constituents; delegations and lobbyists arrived in Washington with great regularity; new and different points of attack were discovered as soon as older ones were cleared up or answered. All of these added up to continuous public pressure, backed by the possibility of further political pressures.
 
For Negroes as a whole, throughout the war, felt that "Our boys in camps [are] being treated so bad"; "They're not being given a fair chance"; and "They're putting up their lives for nothing to fight for." 117 Relatively few felt that their sons' chances were good in any of the armed services; only three out of ten felt that their chances for advancement in the Army included a chance for a commission. Few felt that their troops would actually be used in battle. Nearly all reported less than full confidence in the Army's desire to use Negro manpower to the fullest possible extent.118 In voicing their disapproval of the assignment of the majority of Negro troops to noncombatant duties, most Negroes simply said, "This is supposed
[85]

to be a colored man's country, too," or "We should all fight side by side." A few added "They [the whites] will say we did not fight and were behind the lines, so that they can keep us behind after it's over." 119 Their leaders summed up their position in the slogan that Negroes had to fight for the right to fight. 120
 
Interest in the progress of plans for defense continued high among Negroes. When interest slackened the Negro press awakened it. The biggest single bloc of news to become available in years was that dealing with opportunities for Negroes in defense preparations, civilian as well as military. Despite the expansion of defense industries, as 1900 closed the unemployment rate among Negroes had been cut only slightly over that of the darkest depression years. The possibility of enlistment in the armed forces had so much greater appeal and promise for impoverished but ambitious youth than the CCC or the NYA that papers needed to do little to awaken the interest of their readers.
 
As a source of news about Negro troops, the Negro press was unchallenged, for few general circulation dailies carried the normal press releases about the activities of Negro troops. The importance of these papers in molding attitudes and affecting the morale of the youths who would become the Negro troops of World War II was very great. Long before entering the Army many Negroes had formed definite opinions of their chances in the armed forces from their reading of the Negro press and from the inevitable family and barbershop discussions which followed. Few felt that their chances for advancement or fair treatment were good, but most knew that new opportunities were possible daily. The importance of news of the armed forces to the Negro press, evident though it was in the first months of mobilization when the front pages of Negro papers were filled with news of the armed services, was not fully realized within the War Department until later in the war. Only then was a serious effort made to supply the missing details and add to the variety and veracity of the many armed forces stories carried by the Negro papers, thereby reducing, though not completely removing, the aura of mutual distrust surrounding relations between the Army and the Negro press.
 
At the end of 1940 it was not possible to answer all the questions raised by the newly announced policies on the employment of Negro troops. Some were not yet asked. A certain tally was, however, possible. The Congress had passed a Selective Service Act with nondiscriminatory clauses. The War Department, urged by pressures generated by the political temper of an election year, had announced a basic policy calling for a proportionate use and distribution of Negro troops. The Army had begun the expansion of its Negro units and it had acquired its first Negro general officer. The Secretary of War had acquired an adviser on Negro affairs.
Future actions of the War Department and the Army were critically awaited by the Negro public. Negro selective service men had not yet begun to be called into the new Army. How the new policy on proportionate Negro
[86]

representation in Army strength would work out, how the Army would provide units in all its major branches, was still anyone's guess. Actually, neither Negroes nor the Army had high hopes for the immediate rapid expansion of Negro strength. No one in 1940 foresaw the huge size to which the Army would ultimately grow or, by virtue of the proportionate representation policy, the unprecedented numbers of Negroes which the Army was committed to take and use. Too many details, ranging from such homely matters as providing training facilities for the new draftees to more world-shaking questions of international strategy had yet to be worked out. At the end of the year the major questions affecting the employment of Negro troops were distinctly of the homelier, though by no means unimportant, variety. Upon these homely questions and upon the pressures which they generated, rather than upon the broad outlines of policy as laid down in mobilization plans or as dictated by the changing military situation, depended the decisions around which the employment of Negro manpower in World War II developed.
[87]

Endnotes

Previous Chapter    Next Chapter


page created 15 January 2002


Return to the Table of Contents

Return to CMH Online