- After Pearl Harbor the
provision of Negro officers to fill needed leadership positions in
Negro units received more serious consideration within the War
Department. Throughout most of 1941 the guiding principle in this
effort was the requirement that Negroes be represented in
commissioned ranks in accordance with the policy statement of
October 1940. The officers so provided were to be given training
for a year. They would then return to inactive duty or reserve
status. The declaration of war altered these conditions completely.
Negro units, steadily increasing in number as a result of the
operation of the Selective Service Act, now had to be viewed as a
part of a fighting force in preparation for use in an actual war.
Mounting shortages of white officers in all units increased the real
need for Negroes to fill officer vacancies in Negro units.
-
-
- In early 1942 the War
Department, acting in part upon judge Hastie's recommendations,1
began to take steps to increase the numbers of Negro officers
available for duty with
troops. A complete revision of the policy of assignment
necessarily resulted. For, if Negro officers were to be used in
increasing numbers in existing and planned units, places and methods
for their use had to be found. The policy of assigning Negro
officers to a limited number of units in a few branches and in units
staffed exclusively with Negroes had to be modified.
-
- In late January G-3 called a
conference of representatives of the arms and services to discuss
their Negro officer requirements. Most arms and services had
barely considered the matter, for, under persuasive pressures
emanating from the General Staff, they were only beginning to
visualize the use that they might make of their proportionate quotas
of Negro enlisted men. What use each branch would make of Negro
officers had to be determined before the War Department could embark
on a program to increase the number of Negro officer candidates.
For, under Mobilization Regulations, the number of Negro officer
candidates was governed by the officer requirements of the units to
which Negro officers were to be assigned.2 The War Department's
plan therefore contemplated the prior desig-
- [205]
- nation of units in which
Negro officers could be placed.
-
- Most branches, under the
impetus of designating units for the use of Negro officers, shifted
their focus from officer requirements to a consideration of the
number of Negro officers which they thought they could absorb,
duplicating, to some extent, the procedure which they were following
in the provision of Negro units. The Quartermaster Corps reported
that it had enough truck companies to absorb all Negro lieutenants
made available by its school.3 The Corps of Engineers said that it
could take its share of Negro officers in aviation battalions,
separate battalions, replacement training center battalions, and
divisional combat battalions, provided that the officers were all in
the grade of lieutenant.4 The infantry could use enough to fill the
two infantry regiments and enough in company grades to fill the
infantry companies of the not yet activated 93d Division.
Divisional officers would be promoted to higher grades and
positions as they became "capable through training." The
92d Division would be filled in the same manner. All together,1,098
Negro officers, constituting 4.19 percent of all infantry officers
on duty with troops and 2.58 percent of all infantry officers, could
be used by the infantry in 1942.5
-
- The Field Artillery,
similarly, could use Negro officers to complete the staffs of the
184th Field Artillery, the newly activated 795th Tank Destroyer
Battalion, and the gun batteries of the two divisions planned for
1942.6
The coast artillery was prepared to fill the batteries of two 155-mm
gun regiments with Negro officers, which, with the 369th Infantry, would make a total of
201 officers for 1942.7 The
Medical Department brought out its existing plan, adding that
the 93d Division at Fort Huachuca would have a complete Negro
medical service and that for the post's hospital "The Surgeon
General is willing in the interests of nondiscrimination to
promote colored doctors, dentists, etc. to grades comparable in a
like hospital set up for white patients providing of course that
colored Medical officers are qualified to perform the duties . . . ."
Therefore, no grades for
Negro officers were specified by The Surgeon General, but he did
point out that in regiments with white commanders the regimental
surgeon should be white so that the white officers could have a
physician of their own race. Medical administrative officers could
be assigned to sanitary companies and as mess and supply officers
or detachment commanders at hospitals with Negro services. The
Surgeon General believed that his plan would provide vacancies,
including higher grades for "all competent colored officers
that will be available to the Army." 8
The Air Forces had
already planned to use Negro flying and administrative officers at
Tuskegee and in the service units necessary for the operation of
that base.
-
- Other arms and services had
less well
- [206]
- formulated plans. Some were
willing to activate units specifically for the purpose of absorbing
Negro officers. The Ordnance Department reported that it had but
one Negro officer, a second lieutenant recently graduated from
Aberdeen and, at the time, assigned to Raritan Arsenal. He would be
held at the arsenal until other Negro officers were available,
whereupon all would be assigned to companies. If enough officers
were available, they would be assigned in full complements to
ordnance companies, a group at a time; otherwise they would be
assigned to companies in pairs as available. Initially, three
ammunition companies would be activated for the purpose of
absorbing Negro officers. Additional assignments to ten other
companies would be made as soon as locations were found where
other units with Negro officers were available to provide messing
and housing facilities for the few officers carried by each ordnance
company.9 What the Ordnance Department proposed as a means of
assigning Negro officers to units-simultaneously by groups or
blocks, by providing units for them when none existed, and by
locations considered expedient-contained the basic elements of
later War Department practices.
-
- The Signal Corps was of the
opinion that "relatively few, if any" Negroes could meet
its standards for assignment to tactical Signal Corps units. It
recommended that all tactical units be officered exclusively by
white officers and "that any colored officer who must be
absorbed" be assigned to Corps Area and War Department
overhead, in depots, repair shops, or
administrative offices.10 The Cavalry indicated that it would
have no large use for Negro officers, since they could be used only
at the cavalry replacement training center and in the reconnaissance
troops of the Negro divisions in ranks not above lieutenant.11
The Regular cavalry regiments, like the Regular infantry regiments,
already had all white officers under policies then current.
-
- The Provost Marshal General
decided that in his four types of military police units, uses for
Negro officers would be rare. Since there were to be no Negro armies
or corps, Negro tactical military police units would be limited to
divisions; those divisions which were colored
"throughout" could have Negro military police and Negro
officers. The Provost Marshal would "not object" to Negro
officers in the zone of the interior units set up in the Second and
Ninth Corps Areas. Since no colored prisoner of war escort units had
been organized, the question of officers for them had not arisen,
but if such units were organized the Provost Marshal would recommend
against Negro officers since there were but two officers to a unit.
Officers in these units normally messed with post administrative
officers at prisoner of war camps and there were no Negro
administrative officers in these camps. In corps area service
command units, Negro officers could be employed in military police
detachments, but the decision should be left with detachment
commanders, depending upon local conditions. 12
- [207]
-
- G-3, from the information
that it had gathered, proceeded to determine a procurement basis
and to construct a troop basis for the assignment of Negro officers
for 1942. This document provided for the assignment and grades of
Negro officers in units of the arms and services, in training
units at replacement training centers, and in station hospitals. All
assignments were to be in the grades of first and second lieutenant,
except that possibilities for promotion up to the rank of colonel
were provided in the Coast Artillery, Field Artillery, and Infantry, and in the Medical Department, and that chaplains, to be
Negro in all Negro units, could be promoted to whatever rank
tables of organization authorized. Units in the Negro Officer
Troop Basis would retain white officers until Negro officers became
available.13
-
- To assure an increase in the
number of Negro officer candidates, commanders were directed to
sub-allot proportionate quotas to Negro units and installations
within their commands and to make every effort to secure qualified
Negro candidates.14 There was some expectation that in the process
of expansion the number of Negro officer candidates would grow to
become proportionate to the strength of Negroes in the Army.15
-
- After the beginning of the
Volunteer Officer Candidate (VOC) program, under which potential
officers not yet called by Selective Service could volunteer for
officer training and remain
free to return to their homes if not successful, the War Department
discovered that few Negro applicants were being accepted and
inducted. It reminded corps area commanders of the "acute
shortage of Negro officers, especially in such technical branches
as Field Artillery, Antiaircraft Artillery, Engineers, Chemical
Warfare Service, Signal Corps, and Ordnance Department" and
urged that they exploit the VOC program as a source of suitable
Negro officer material for the branches in which the shortages would
be most acute. Examining boards and draft boards were instructed to
examine carefully the educational and vocational backgrounds of
all Negro applicants so that none with qualifications for officer
training should be overlooked in the VOC program.16 The Air
Forces, which had on file several applications from Negro civilians
who appeared to be highly qualified officer material but who could
not be used by the Air Forces, was requested to forward their names
to the Officers Procurement Section of the Reserve Division for
possible use by other branches.17
-
- The complex and detailed
Negro Officer Troop Basis, listing the permitted grades in every
unit to which Negro officers might be assigned, did not remain
fixed, not even during 1942. Changes were provided for in the
original plan. G-3, in consultation with G-1, G-4, and the chief
of the branch concerned, was authorized to substitute "like
units" for those shown at any time prior to the actual
assignment of Negro
- [208]
- officers.18 After the
reorganization of the War Department in March 1942, the authority to
make changes was decentralized to the major commands, in
consultation with each other where appropriate.19 New units were
added to the list to absorb excess graduates of some schools and to
replace other units which had moved overseas, were alerted, or in
which, for any other reason, a major change of officers was not
considered feasible or desirable. Quartermaster truck companies,
aviation, numbered 821 to 845 inclusive, were added, for example,
because all graduates of the 15 July 1942 class of the Quartermaster
OCS were allotted to the Army Air Forces and to units previously
authorized to be filled; these Air units were needed to absorb the
Negro members of that class.20 Similarly, the Ordnance Department
required additional units for its troop basis to take care of
additional OCS graduates.21 By July 1942, the Antiaircraft
Artillery Command had filled all of its units authorized Negro
officers except the 369th Coast Artillery (AA) . The 369th had
already gone overseas understrength, but it had fifty candidates in
training. These officers were to be used to fill the 369th and then
to fill additional units to be added to the approved list.22 The
Corps of Engineers suggested adding 31 units, all general service
regiments, separate battalions, or aviation engineers. Not all
could be added, for some had been deleted or altered in the full
troop basis, but 18 new units, exclusive of air types, were
authorized Negro officers .23 As a temporary expedient to absorb
excess officers in field artillery, infantry, and cavalry, Army
Ground Forces proposed that air base security battalions be
authorized Negro officers in all grades and positions except
commander and executive.24 When the 795th, the one tank destroyer
battalion with Negro officers, was filled, including overstrength,
AGF nominated four other tank destroyer battalions to receive
Negro lieutenants.25 Sometimes the Negro Officer Troop Basis had to
be altered because of an omission or other error, as when the 245th
Quartermaster Battalion (Service) , a Puerto Rican unit that
already had all-Negro officers, was added to the list in April.26
-
- The list of units to which
Negro officers could be assigned grew and fluctuated as more and
more units and a more liberal supply of officers became available.
Priorities among authorized units
- [209]
- for the assignment of Negro
officers were worked out in some branches and commands. For
example, Army Ground Forces established the following unit
priorities for the assignment of Negro officers:
-
- Infantry
- 1. 93d Infantry Division
- 2. 92d Infantry Division
- 3. 758th Tank Battalion
- 4. 24th Infantry
- 5. 366th Infantry
- 6. 367th Infantry
- 7- 372d Infantry
-
- Field Artillery
- 1. 184th Field Artillery
- 2. 795th Tank Destroyer
Battalion
- 3. 93d Infantry Division
- 4. 92d Infantry Division
- 5. Field Artillery
Replacement Training Center
-
- Cavalry
- 1. 93d Reconnaissance Troop
- 2. 92d Reconnaissance Troop
- 3. 795th Tank Destroyer
Battalion
- 4. Cavalry Replacement
Training Center
-
- Coast Artillery
- 1. 369th CA (AA)
- 2. 99th and tooth CA (AA) ,
elements at Camp Davis, N.C.
- 3. Tng Bns at Fort Eustis,
Va.
- 4. 99th and tooth CA (AA) ,
elements which have left Camp Davis, N.C.
-
- Within the 93d Division, the
Chief of Infantry had already requested the following priorities:
369th, 368th, and 25th Infantry, with the 369th at the top because
it was the one new regiment in the division, therefore permitting
the least displacement of officers already assigned.27
-
- Nevertheless, the 1942 Negro Officer
Troop Basis was not considered satisfactory. It was too restrictive, and
because of its relative inflexibility it was subject to too frequent amendment.
In year's end conferences the policy of 1942 was revised. The new policy
continued to authorize the assignment of Negro officers to previously
designated units, but it attempted to clarify the methods and conditions
for their assignment. Under the 1942 policy, methods of introducing new
Negro officers into units already activated with white officers were not
clearly defined, nor were sources of requisitions for them or jurisdiction
over assignments always clear. Additional categories of units, covering
practically all types, were agreed upon by the conferees, but the determination
of specific units within those types was to be left to the command having
jurisdiction over the units. The designating authority would then report
the units selected to the War Department. Overhead activities to which
Negro officers could be assigned, while limited to those that had considerable
numbers of Negro troops, were to be specifically listed. Assignments of
Negro officers were to be made "in block" and not by individuals.
Thus all attached officers, such as chaplains and medical officers, were
to be assigned in groups in all authorized grades. When all Negro lieutenants
were authorized a unit, they were to be assigned in company or battalion
groups depending on the size of the unit. Opportunities for the promotion
of Negroes to higher grades than those initially authorized were to be
provided by the accumulation of qualified officers of the arm or service
concerned. When sufficient officers to staff a battalion or smaller unit
became available they would be promoted in a block and assigned to a new
unit in the grades which the unit required. These
- [210]
- officers could be held in
pools while awaiting reassignment.28
-
- This policy, instead of
simplifying the operation of the Negro officer assignment policy
over the existing rules as had been hoped, not only complicated the
paper work involved but also made it more difficult to provide good
leadership for Negro units. Neither of these considerations was
paramount in the formulation of the new policy of assignment in
groups by grades. The major aim was to provide Negro officers to
units while inviting the least possible friction from combining
Negro and white officers in the same units. The published policy
included again a prohibition against the assignment of Negro senior
officers, except chaplains and medical officers, to units having
white officers in a junior grade.29 The new policy intensified the
assignment problem by making it more difficult to place Negro
officers in units. It guaranteed, by its promotion provisions, low
morale for officers once they were assigned. For now individual
assignments, reassignments, and promotions were predicated upon
the availability of enough other officers qualified to fill a
given unit in the grades required and not on the merit of the
officers involved.
-
-
- Soon after the number of Negro
students in officer candidate schools was increased in 1942, it became
apparent that Negroes would
not be able to fill all officer vacancies in Negro units in any event.
The OCS requirement of a 110 score on the Army General Classification
Test removed automatically the great bulk of Negroes from consideration
as potential officer candidates. Formal educational requirements removed
others. In some quarters it was expected that so few Negroes would qualify
as officer candidates that the Army would have no real problem in employing
the small numbers of Negroes who would finally graduate and be commissioned.
-
- Of the Army's 3,500,000 men
in August 1 942, 244,000 or 7 percent were officers, of whom
41,400 or 1.2 percent were OCS graduates. Of the 228,715 Negroes
then in the Army, only 817, or 0.35 percent, were officers, of whom
655 or 0.28 percent were graduates of OCS. "The foregoing
figures," a Ground Forces staff officer asserted, "confirm
our conclusion reached previously, i.e., the colored race cannot
produce enough military leadership to officer the colored units. A
good estimate would be that enough can be produced to meet 10% of
the total requirements for colored units." 30
-
- While the conclusion that
Negroes would be unable, in the time available, to supply officers
for all Negro units was correct, figures alone could not fully
reveal the facts in the case. Negro officer candidates, chosen on
the basis of unit
- [211]
- quotas, were rather more
unevenly distributed as to quality than appeared on the surface.
Numbers and quotas and not potential leadership ability became the
criterion for the acceptance of Negro candidates. Some units,
because of assignment by numerical availability practiced in many
reception centers, were more than able to fill their candidate
quotas with men who not only had the required paper qualifications
but who also possessed outstanding leadership abilities. Other
units were unable to fill quotas with either type of man. Still
others, struggling along with few men of the caliber required for
their noncommissioned officer ranks, were reluctant to encourage
their best men to apply for OCS. In certain cases, the best men
themselves, knowing that a sergeancy carried with it little of the
assignment and adjustment difficulties and risks of a second
lieutenancy-which many soldiers considered the permanent rank of
Negro officers-were reluctant to give up the known certainties and
privileges of their noncommissioned rating for the uncertainties
of the officers' rank.
-
- Many Negroes felt that
antipathy for Negro officers held by Southern civilians, by white
enlisted men, and by white officers, was greater than antipathy for
Negro soldiers in general. Stories, many of them apocryphal but
others with a basis in fact, were legion, especially in connection
with difficulties encountered with military courtesy, with
obtaining transportation facilities while traveling on government
transportation orders, with obtaining assignments to units once on
post, and with housing, messing, and even laundry facilities for
Negro officers. Many of these stories were in bad taste and, like
most jokes, exaggerated for effect, but
they are indicative of the Negro enlisted man's and
officer's-reaction to the status of the Negro officer. These
reactions served to undermine attitudes basic to good discipline.
-
- Despite the fact that the
ACCT requirement alone was sufficient to cut the potential number
of Negro officer candidates far below the proportion that the
number of Negro enlisted men could have been expected to produce
mathematically, by the end of 1942 the number of available Negro
officers was beginning to exceed the number of available
assignments. For, as the over-all supply of officers began to
increase, a concurrent reluctance to assign Negro officers to
units-bolstered by reports of difficulties in units already so
staffed-grew as well.
-
-
- Aside from the limited
number of units authorized them, other barriers to the assignment of
Negro officers developed. Of major importance were those arising
out of the social matrix imposed by American racial attitudes. The
Fourth Service Command, for example, reported that it had positions
for Negro over-age officers, but that suitable housing, messing,
and recreational facilities were not available generally, for, in
fact, "only makeshift arrangements have been made to
accommodate colored chaplains in colored enlisted areas." 31
The Northwest Service Command indicated
- [212]
- that it had potential
vacancies for Negro officers in units along the Alcan Highway, but
observed that it had no separate facilities and that no towns with
Negro populations existed along the highway to provide social
outlets. Each of the Negro battalions had a Negro chaplain, but the
command wanted no additional officers.32 The 733d Military Police
Battalion, in which all white officers were to be replaced by
Negroes, found itself moved from the northern part of the Ninth
Service Command to the Southern Land Frontier Sector. The sector
felt that the Negro officers could hardly be used as provost
marshals in Phoenix or Tucson, or in Nogales, Calexico, and other
border towns where action in cooperation with commanders and
provost marshals of exempted stations, civil authorities, and a
potentially anti-Negro civilian population was necessary. "I am
closely in touch with the sentiment of the people in this
Sector," Brig. Gen. Thoburn K. Brown wrote to Lt. Gen. John L.
DeWitt, "and while they are beginning to be tolerant in their
attitude toward colored troops, it is only because they have the
greatest confidence in the officers commanding these colored troops.
This confidence, I am sure, would not extend to colored
officers." 33
-
- No additional Negro officers were
sent to this unit. The sixteen Negro officers already assigned were gradually
transferred to military police detachments and to other units.34
Decisions that Negro officers would not be welcome were not in all cases
the product of local commanders' impressions. Representations often came
from communities themselves. The entire Mississippi Congressional delegation,
for example, sent a joint petition to the War Department requesting that
no Negro officers be stationed in Mississippi at all, and Georgia congressmen
objected to stationing regiments with Negro officers at Camp Stewart.35
-
-
- A second barrier to the full
and free employment of Negro officers was a continuing disbelief
in their abilities. This disbelief was typified and re-enforced by
the progressive troubles of certain of the older, all-Negro staffed
units, coupled with the firm conviction that Negro troops preferred
service under white officers, or at least served better under them.36 The attitude itself was responsible, in the long run, for so
limiting opportunities to develop leadership
- [213]
- potentialities that it
tended to become a self-proving proposition.
-
- No matter what other
obstacles confronted the older tactical units in their
development, the most evident thing about them was that they were
all-or nearly all-Negro-staffed. When successive inspection
reports showed rapid fluctuations in the status of the units now a
commendation for one training task done well and a few months later
a condemnation for the same or other tasks done poorly-the Negro
officers were considered incapable of controlling their units to the
point of maintaining them at a high level of efficiency in all
departments at once. So many adverse reports on one unit came into
Washington that staff officers in G-3 and in AGF considered that
it would always be "a source of trouble" so long as it
continued intact in the same location and with the same officers.
"Washout" the headquarters and "Shanghai the
Colonel and the Chaplain to some remote part away from their
political stamping grounds," Army Ground Forces Plans
recommended.37 Of the commander of this unit, Lt. Gen. Ben Lear,
commanding the Second Army, remarked later that "he has
demonstrated his loyalty, a willingness to cooperate and interest
and that he possesses professional training and ability to the
extent reasonably to be expected from a nonprofessional negro
officer of his grade and experience." To this, Lt. Gen. Lesley
J. McNair, commanding Army Ground Forces, commented: "In my
view . . . report[s] on the regiment indicate rather clearly that
the regimental commander is incapable of building a satisfactory
regiment. The fact that he is loyal and willing
does not make him competent." 38
But AGF demurred when
General Lear, arguing that no Negro replacements were available,
sought to remove the Negro commander and executive of another unit
through reclassification proceedings in order to replace them with
white officers. The War Department had established the unit as
all-Negro and desired that opportunities for promotion of Negroes be
kept open. "The problem of finding places to assign Negro
officers of grades higher than lieutenant is becoming increasingly
difficult," AGF said. "It is expected that additional
units will have to be designated to have all Negro officers at an
early date." To clinch the point, AGF offered as a replacement
for the reclassified commander or his executive a Negro officer of
field grade recommended for promotion by the Commanding General,
Third Army.39 No more was heard of this particular reclassification proceeding.
-
- Continued dissatisfaction
with the progress of Negro units later led General Lear, placing the
blame squarely on Negro officers, to request that no further Negro
units be staffed with Negro officers in the grade of major or
higher. "Reluctantly I have come to the conclusion," he
said, "that Negro units'] unsatisfactory progress is largely
due to deficiencies in leadership as demonstrated by many negro
officers....
-
- Their progress has been in
direct proportion to the percentage of white offi-
- [214]
- cers assigned to the units.
Those with all white officers have made reasonable progress; those
with all negro officers are definitely substandard." The
request was approved "in principle" by AGF and by the War
Department.40
-
- A request that came from the
Antiaircraft Command reinforced General Lear's recommendation. The
538th Antiaircraft Artillery (AW) Battalion, formerly the 2d
Battalion of the tooth Coast Artillery (AA), had come under the
jurisdiction of the Antiaircraft Command in a low state of morale,
training, and general efficiency. For six months previously it had
had Negro lieutenants, who were transferred out to fill other units.
Though authorized Negro officers, it had been assigned white
officers temporarily since no Negro officers were available to the
Antiaircraft Command at the time. Now the unit had improved
considerably under its white officers and the command did not wish
to return to Negro officers.41 Ground G-1 again remarked that it
was becoming increasingly difficult to assign Negro officers.42
-
- Developing doubts of their
technical as apart from their administrative and leadership
proficiency played their part in the reluctance to accept Negro
officers in certain units. Sometimes intermediate headquarters
through which assignments had to go interposed objections to the
placement of Negro officers even though they had received the
required training. The chief of the Chemical Warfare Service was
prepared to assign Negro officers to two smoke
generating companies at Fort Brady, Michigan, but the Central
Defense Command objected on the ground that only officers with
excellent meteorological backgrounds and a high degree of
technical training could be used in these units. The Chemical
Warfare Service then asked SOS if the Central Defense Command could
object, since the units were on the War Department's approved
list. G-1, when queried, replied that the Central Defense Command
would have to accept the officers, give them a trial, and, if it
then found them unsatisfactory, use the normal procedures for
removal prescribed in Army Regulations.43 The fear that
requisitions, arriving when no Negro officers were available from
pools, would be filled by substandard officers transferred from
overstrength units also operated to reduce assignment possibilities.44
-
- Technically trained Negro
officers, once initial vacancies were filled, were difficult to
place. After the disbandment of the junior of the two signal
aircraft warning companies activated at Tuskegee in 1942, over two
dozen Negro second lieutenants of the Signal Corps were left without
assignments. Despite attempts to place them in other commands,
suitable position vacancies were never found for all of them.45
"There are only six units to which these officers could be
assigned," AGF informed AAF, "and all of them are now 200 % over-
- [215]
- strength." 46
While a
few were later assigned to signal construction battalions and to
miscellaneous Air Forces units, the others were employed about the
Tuskegee station in various base capacities, ranging from
assistants in base communications through assistants in special
services to officers in charge of specific barracks of the base
unit. A few remained in these and similar jobs until the end of
the war, unable to obtain suitable assignments, unable to put their
training into practice, and hoping that a vacancy would occur in one
of the units which could use them.
-
- Where overhead and staff
positions were involved, new applications for specialists were
added. To the initial request by judge Hastie that consideration
be given to the use of Negro officers in judge Advocate General's
Department functions, the stumbling block was their use in Negro
divisions, which seemed to the judge Advocate General to be a
natural place for the use of officers who were lawyers. But the
Ground Forces had an informal policy that "as long as the
Division Commander is a white officer the heads of general and
special staff sections of his headquarters should be white
officers." AGF, while considering the advisability of using
Negroes as assistant division judge advocates on a special allotment
basis, advised that Negro officers for the judge advocates on a
special allotment be employed elsewhere than in divisions.47 After
numerous protests on the lack of Negro officers in
the Judge Advocate General's Department, G-1, late in the war,
directed the judge Advocate General to arrange to use Negro lawyers
as officers. The Judge Advocate General's Office determined that
six officers would be the most that it could place. The Military
Personnel Division, Army Service Forces, then directed the judge
Advocate General to procure four officers for assignment to the
Third, Fourth, Eighth, and Ninth Service Commands, since they had
the largest numbers of Negro troops. But the service commands
contended that these assignments would be "impracticable."
Two officers were thereupon assigned to posts, one at Camp Claiborne
and one at Fort Huachuca. The Army Air Forces was already using
one Negro officer as post judge advocate at Tuskegee. The other two
field assignments were never made, though a third officer was used
when one of the first two was assigned overseas.48
-
-
- The policy of block
assignments made the assignment of Negro officers no easier. It
had been designed to facilitate assignment and to minimize friction
between white and Negro officers which was expected to arise if
Negro junior officers were sent individually to units which still
had white officers in the same or lower grades. As practiced, it
produced more serious leadership crises than the inadequate
assignment system that it supplemented. The simultaneous removal
of all white lieutenants from a unit and the substitution of Ne-
- [216]
- gro officers, most of whom
were getting their first experience in command and some of whom
might have been waiting for weeks in a pool while the group was
being built to a large enough size for block assignment, not only
suddenly destroyed on a unit-wide basis the leadership relations
between officers and men, but often interrupted training, setting
the unit back by several weeks in extreme cases; destroyed
whatever esprit had been built up among the officers and men of the
unit; and forced each element of the organization to alter its
entire mode of operation.49 The resulting letdown in operating
efficiency, discipline, and morale was often attributed to
deficiencies in the new Negro officers when the method of
substituting new and in these cases quite different-officers for
the old, familiar troop leaders, schooled in their knowledge of the
men of the unit, and the peculiarities of life for the unit under
its particular headquarters and on its particular post, was as
often at fault.
-
- To lessen the effect of mass
transfers of white officers out and Negro officers into a unit,
commanders of armies, corps, and other field units having assignment
jurisdiction over units were authorized, in 1943, to direct
attachment rather than relief of white officers for a period of from
three to six months. The retained white officers were to train the
new Negro personnel and help make the transition from one group
of officers to the other a smoother and more gradual process.50 In
units, the greatest care and watchfulness had to be
maintained lest the Negro officers become mere assistants to the
older white officers, learning little and dissipating what sense of
responsibility and initiative as well as military knowledge and
self-respect they had brought with them upon assignment to the
units. The units, in the meantime, had an excess of officers engaged
in duplicate duties. The division of control often affected these
units adversely from top to bottom.
-
- As the numbers of Negro
officers available began to exceed the numbers of vacancies
allotted, and as the numbers of service units authorized Negro
officers increased, the 25 percent overage of officers authorized
the all-Negro units was extended to include all units with any Negro
officers. In Quartermaster truck companies, authorized three
lieutenants, the 25 percent overstrength was construed as
permitting an additional officer.51 In some units, the overages went
far above 25 percent. Even with this provision, sizable numbers of
Negro officers collected in pools. The policy of assigning Negro
officers in groups rather than as individual replacements accounted for the presence of the larger number of unassigned
Negro officers in organized pools, for assignment directly from
schools to units had to be delayed until enough officers were
gathered together to fill an entire unit's allotted grades. Pools
were expected to hold officers and at the same time enable them
- [217]
- to continue their technical
training. Special, separate pools for Negro officers were provided
at Fort Huachuca and sometimes at the service schools. 52
At other
times, Negro officers were simply retained at the schools, awaiting
assignment. To await disposition, they were occasionally
dispatched to a post, such as Tuskegee, where housing existed and
where considerable numbers of other Negro officers were assigned.
The pools, gathering and retaining large numbers of newly
commissioned, inexperienced officers for whom no assignments
existed, became a source not only of low officer morale but also of
many of the leadership difficulties experienced later by and with
Negro junior officers. Often there were more officers gathered at a
given post or center than could be absorbed by available housing or
by available training assignments. "This is a situation which
tends to breed discontent and to induce a state of mind where
minor incidents are exaggerated, and a tendency toward carping
criticism developed among officers who are not sufficiently busy to
occupy their minds," one training center commander observed
of his Negro pool officers.53
-
- As a result of the scarcity of
authorized position vacancies, plus the tendency to assign and retain
white junior officers in Negro units, certain Negro organizations suffered
from an excess of officers while others, at the same time, had a shortage.
As early as August 1942, when many other Negro units were reporting officer
shortages, the 93d Division was being swamped by the daily arrival of
new lieutenants. Housing and messing facilities available to the division
at Fort Huachuca could accommodate 636 officers of all grades, but the
93d had 644 lieutenants alone. "Many lieutenants are sleeping two
and three in a room in some organizations . . . . The problem of training
the increasing number of new arrivals is difficult," the division
reported in a request that no more lieutenants be assigned.54
A year later, when many Negro air base security battalions were disbanded,
their 330 white and 238 Negro officers had to be given new assignments.
The white officers were divided among RTC units and Second Army field
units. The Negro officers, with the exception of 27 men, were divided
equally between the 92d and 93d Divisions, with the result that the 93d
Division again had a large officer surplus.55
-
- Occasionally, schools had no
requisitions at all for Negro graduates and authority to assign
them had to await War Department decisions.56 Negro overage and
limited service officers, for whom few assignment vacancies in
overhead and staff duties existed, contributed numbers of
officers to pools.57 Some of these men were disposed of by
assignments to USO liaison, ROTC, and
- [218]
- special service duties, for
which not all so assigned were fitted either by temperament or
training. "Made jobs," such as assistant directors of
schools, town "liaison" officers, advisers to various
staffs or headquarters, roving inspectors, and "special"
officers of various types, were sometimes devised for over-age and
limited service officers of higher ranks.
-
- The difficulty of assigning
them to T/O jobs was obvious to many Negro officers, for often on
the same posts where certain Negro units had enough officers to fill
nearly every vacancy twice over, there were other units which had
either too few officers or which had white officers only. Nearly
every supernumerary Negro officer knew or thought he knew of a
unit or a job where he could have been used to greater advantage
than in the "extra" position in which he found himself.
The policy of unloading excess officers into particular units
while retaining white officers or allowing T/O vacancies to remain
in other units was a major contributing factor in the low morale of
Negro junior officers.
-
-
- Restrictions on their
activities, even when Negro officers were assigned to positions
where their services were needed, were central factors operating to
reduce their efficiency and usefulness. The grade, assignment, and
promotion policy had been instituted as a means of providing greater
opportunities for Negroes to serve as commissioned officers. But
the policy by which Negro officers could serve in designated units
and grades only, and by which no Negro officer was supposed to
outrank or command any white officer in
the same units limited these same opportunities. Negro officers
considered the entire policy "discriminatory and
unjust," General Davis reported. The policy confirmed "a
different status for colored officers, [who feel] that, since they
are called upon to make the same preparation and sacrifices, the
promotion and assignment policy should be the same for all officers.58 It gave an overt sanction to theories that
no Negro, no matter how competent, could perform assigned duties
better than any white man, no matter how incompetent. It confirmed
in the minds of enlisted men the belief that their Negro
commissioned leaders were not full-fledged officers in the first
place, thus further confounding leadership problems. It created
invidious and ineradicable distinctions between officers in the same
units.
-
- At the outset grade
restrictions, coupled with the large numbers of overstrength and
non-TAO vacancy officers in the same units, effectively blocked
promotions. Later, authority to transfer eligible Negro officers
to other units where they could fill higher grades was granted. This
policy, interpreted as barring promotion unless officers transferred from their units, was "a body blow to their
morale and efficiency, as well as to organizational esprit," a
commanding general of the 93d Division observed. "It also
caused a loss of confidence in leadership which was not confined
to leadership in the 93d Division. They felt that the War Department
had broken faith with them." 59
It gave sanction for the
feeling among Negro
- [219]
- officers that development of
ingenuity and assumption of responsibility in their units were
useless.
-
- The policy, coupled with the
social pressures and sanctions of which it was born, was responsible
for additional practices which damaged officer morale and the
development of good leadership. At Camp Shelby, in 1944, 11 Negro
officers were assigned to overhead duties as personnel consultants, 9
with a special training unit, 1 as an assistant special service
officer, and 1 as commander of the post's Negro casual detachment.
The last two, by approved classification standards, were misassigned
from the beginning. The nine had no direct contact with the white
enlisted cadre which operated the units. All suggestions and
recommendations which they made had to be passed on to the white
cadre by a white officer "who is chief personnel consultant
despite the fact that in one battalion he is unqualified for the
work and in all battalions [he] is junior to the other officers who
are his assistants." 60
The Negro officers, when they should
have been at their primary duties, had two additional duties to
perform: athletic supervision and orientation presentations. No
other officers and no cadre men assisted in those duties. The
further training and efficiency of these officers were limited by
post restrictions. They were not allowed to attend the
post-operated school on courts-martial; their quarters, mess, and
recreational facilities compared unfavorably with those of white
officers of similar rank; their contact with other officers and
consequently the possibility of their learning by example
from other officers was sharply curtailed by the oral appointment of
one of their number an officer junior to all but two of the
group-as "spokesman." The spokesman was responsible for
making all contacts with the headquarters to which these officers
were assigned. One battalion commander, when questioned about the
propriety of ignoring seniority in these cases, replied that
"this was Mississippi and he was not concerned over the
seniority of Negro officers." 61
It would hardly be expected
that these officers could develop into able leaders.
-
-
- A major barrier to the
development of leadership in Negro units lay in the use of white and
Negro officers in the same units under conditions which emphasized
differences in officers' origins rather than similarities in their
goals and responsibilities. These conditions were reinforced and
made official by shifting policies which, having prescribed a
differential for the assignment and promotion of Negro officers,
proceeded to expand the boundaries of the limitations imposed by
providing for the eventual though not guaranteed replacement and
transfer of white officers. Therefore neither white nor Negro
officers were secure with respect to continued duty, responsibility,
or advancement within a given unit. Nor were they secure in their
relations with each other. In these units, the leadership of men
became secondary to the preservation of personal interests and
status.
- [220]
- Mixed staffs had certain
advantages. They provided a leaven of experience and some
instruction, if by no other means than by example, for newly
commissioned officers. They increased the possibility of filling
staffs in many units that otherwise would have limped along with
officer shortages. Through their commanders, they facilitated
co-operation between white and Negro units of similar types which
might not have existed otherwise. In those instances where the
commanders and higher staff members looked upon the leadership of
the unit as a profitable military and not a revolutionary social
venture, they afforded the possibility of sufficient contact
between white and Negro officers to enable both the unit and the
officers to gain benefits from the greater experience, training,
and confident stability of the one group as well as from the greater
knowledge and understanding of racial problems and practices of the
other. The two officer groups in these cases worked together to the
mutual benefit of each other and of the unit.
-
- But mixed staffs could have
equally marked disadvantages. There were times when the functioning
of many mixed staffs appeared to be about to break down completely.
While many commanders, through the force of their own personalities
and their own high standards of leadership, were able to weld
excellent working teams from units with mixed officers, there were
others who found themselves caught up in a maelstrom of personal
animosities born of and fostered by racial taboos and tensions. At
times the split in staff relations, resulting from long standing
social customs reinforced by the physical separation of housing,
messing, and
- club facilities and from
policies that assigned all white officers to headquarters staff
and unit command positions and all Negroes to platoon leader
positions, was almost inevitable. At other times, it was clearly
preventable. But in either event, the difficulties of these units,
rather than the successes of other, and generally smaller, units
came to the attention of higher headquarters and caused grave doubts
about the wisdom of mixed staffs.
-
- The feeling of white
officers that service with Negro troops involved additional and
onerous duties was accentuated in many units with mixed staffs.
Psychological tensions often appeared on both sides. Neither Negro
nor white officers, as a group, either by training or by prior
civilian experiences, had learned to work normally and naturally
together. The conscientious white officer found the necessity of
being constantly on his guard, constantly aware of the new and
restricted world of racial discriminations and sensitivities which
he had unwittingly, and often unwillingly, entered, an additional
burden which he often came to consider hardly worth the bearing.
Extra duties, in addition to more intensive and longer training
schedules, sometimes fell to the lot of white officers assigned to
units with mixed staffs simply because of the presence of Negro
officers. At some posts, white officers only could be assigned to
such duties as officer of the day, town patrol officer, officer of
the guard, post exchange inventory, finance certification officer,
or to other routine, rotating duties. Some headquarters, requesting
labor or other special details from Negro units, stipulated that
the men be in charge of a
- [221]
- white officer. The services
of white officers on these hardly to be sought for but
nevertheless necessary tasks came more frequently, therefore, if
they were assigned to a unit whose Negro officers were exempted from
duties in which they might encounter "delicate situations."
62
Negro officers, by the same token, felt that
they were being ignored or overlooked in the full performance of the
duties of an officer. Often they were certain that preferred duties
were being denied them. At times they attributed to racial
prejudice the distribution of unpleasant duties and extra details within the unit.
-
- One commander, after
pointing out that certain duties could not very well be allotted
Negro officers, protested that "It has been my policy in the
sixteen months I have had this regiment that there shall be no
discrimination based on race, color or creed. All officers of the
regiment use the same messes, sleeping accommodations, and bath
houses . . . . I believe [the] one cause for friction is the mixing
of junior white and colored officers." But sensitive duties
involving the civilian population and other units were not given to
his Negro officers.63 Other units solved this portion of their
problem by requiring both white and Negro officers to perform
the same "unpleasant duties without reference to
color," applying the same standards to both, and by removing
"those who failed to measure up to army standards, regardless
of color." 64
When the responsibilities and duties of officers
were allotted and shared by Negroes and whites as officers rather
than as two varieties of officers, little difficulty arose from this
source of friction and better leadership developed.
-
- Housing and messing problems
plagued many units without regard to the unit commanders' desire in
the matter. In general, the initial Army pattern was to house and
mess Negro and white officers separately, though in later years of
the war in many units and installations this tended to modify itself
to housing and messing by rank, by senior choice, or by priority of
arrival. Requests, such as Fort Bragg's for $14,221.70 in April
1942, to provide an additional barracks for Negro officers to
"afford equal and separate accommodations for white and
colored officers" were not unusual.65 Providing separate
facilities if officers were to be segregated militated against the
assignment of Negro officers to units so located that separate
housing was not available. Complaints that Negro officers arrived
without forewarning at certain posts were often based on the
necessity for providing separate facilities in advance.66 In some
instances, one or two Negro officers occupied an entire standard
barracks in spacious solitude. In others, the
- [222]
- two or three Negro officers
who happened to be assigned permanently to a post's overhead, to a
station complement, to a band, or to a quartermaster service or a
medical sanitary company, were given a small house, usually removed
from the main housing areas of the post, to use as quarters. In
still other cases, Negro officers were housed and messed with Negro
enlisted men.67 Chaplains, often the lone Negro officers in a unit
or on a post, had especial difficulties with billeting and messing.68 Payment of membership fees in clubs and messes was at
times required by posts which did not expect Negro officers to use
these facilities, but practices in various localities varied from
the free use of all facilities through the use of designated or
agreed upon tables and areas to the use of enlisted men's messes and
quarters or none at all. To an early inquiry from judge Hastie on
the Army's position on the use of facilities by Negro officers, G-1 replied:
-
- The Army has always regarded
the officers' quarters and the officers' mess as the home and the
private dining room of the officers who reside and eat there. They
are an entity within a military reservation which has always enjoyed
a minimum of regulation and the largest possible measure of
self-government. The War Department considers this to be a
fundamentally correct conception. Both from the standpoint of
practice of long standing and from the standpoint of propriety, the
War Department should be most reluctant to impose hard and fast
rules for every human relationship
involved in the operation of officers' messes and officers'
quarters. For a variety of reasons, problems arising in the
officers' home cannot be solved by fiat.69
-
- One result was that, in many
units, especially the larger ones, little contact, "even for
discussion of, and conversation pertaining to, professional
subjects" existed among white and Negro officers .70 In other
cases, where rigid lines of demarcation between officers were
maintained, the Negro officers became allied with their enlisted
men against the white officers, a situation leaving white senior
officers with lessened control over their units. At other times
white officers were supported by Negro enlisted men against the
Negro officers, especially in those cases where Negro officers,
assigned in blocks, attempted to assert control in organizations
whose higher ranking noncommissioned officers had formerly had
carte blanche in the operation and regulation of the
"domestic" life of the unit. In neither case could a high
state of discipline or of effective training be achieved.71 As for
leadership: under such circumstances, it could hardly exist at
all.
-
- The separation of officers
by race in the use of facilities remained a stumbling block in the
development of officer esprit and unified leadership, but the War
Department continued its reluctance to invade what it considered
to be the sphere of local and unit com-
- [223]
- manders' responsibility. At Fort
Huachuca, where colored and white officers of the 93d Division were reported
in 1942 to "eat in the same mess, live in the same barracks, serve
in the same companies and apparently are striving to the end of making
an efficient fighting division," the construction of separate clubs
for white and Negro officers was an initial source of friction. General
Davis reported to The Inspector General that while the garrison at Huachuca
may have been large enough to require two clubs, commanders "could
have met the problem without these clubs having been designated as clubs
for either white or colored officers." 72
General Davis recommended, with Maj. Gen. Virgil L. Peterson concurring
and General Marshall approving, that in large camps where the garrison
was predominantly Negro the War Department provide no facilities for the
exclusive use of white or Negro personnel "but that the disposition
and use of these facilities be left to the decision of the local commanders
who are most familiar with the racial problems involved." 73
-
- While this policy decision
removed War Department sanction from the practice of designating
facilities by race in the few instances where large camps had
predominantly Negro troops, it brought no change in general
practices. It merely made it all the more essential that commanders
of Negro units be men of more than ordinary wisdom. Some units were
able to solve the problems of housing, messing, and club facilities
to the complete satisfaction of
their staffs; others were in constant turmoil over one or another
phase of these purely social matters which, though nonmilitary in a
strict sense, affected profoundly the military training and
performance of units. They symbolized the lack of trust, faith, and
belief in the equality of men which existed within many of these
units. There were units which developed their own small messes
into clubs for the use of the officers of the unit only. There were
others in which unskilled leadership practices in the purely
social areas ruined, to a large extent, the efficiency of units
long before they reached a port of embarkation. At least one large
combat unit spent nearly two years in a wrangle over the status of
Negro and white officers culminating in the arrest of over one
hundred and the trial of three Negro officers. Thereby, almost
without reference to other factors, the unit remained uncommitted
to combat at the close of the war. 74
-
- Despite an obvious desire on
the part of higher headquarters not to interfere in these problems,
their effect upon units and upon unit leadership rather than
questions of efficiency in training or leadership ability in the
abstract, were at the core of the difficulties of many Negro units.
The result in some areas was that some commanders recommended that
the Army return to its
- [224]
- policy of using all white or
all Negro officers only in a given unit.75
-
- That this was no solution
was clear to those who had a larger view of the provision of
leadership for Negro troops. In the first place, there were units
with mixed officer staffs which were not subjected to internal
rancor. Most of the tank, tank destroyer, engineer, and smaller
service units had little trouble of this sort. In the second place
there were units with all white and all Negro staffs whose problems
of leadership were as great as or greater than those with mixed
staffs. Moreover, with the bulk of Negro officers newly commissioned and with the general shortage of officers, the use of
mixed staffs was the only logical policy to follow. The success of
one or another practice in the provision of officers depended
primarily upon the officers concerned and, most of all, upon the
commanders under whom they served. Those commanders who themselves
were willing to make an attempt to erase the causes of internal
discord within the units with mixed staffs and who sincerely
believed that those causes could be eliminated achieved greater
success with mixed staffs. Not enough commanders of this sort were
available to guarantee the smooth functioning of most units. Under
the circumstances, it was easy to conclude that the mixed staff
was an undesirable emergency measure which should have been avoided
at all costs.
-
-
- There was one Negro member
of mixed staffs who had traditionally been welcomed as an officer
leader of Negro troops. This was the chaplain. To many commanders,
the presence of chaplains, required by Mobilization Regulations to
be Negro in Negro units, promised an assuaging answer to the more
difficult problems of leadership facing them. When officers and men
became entangled in the many problems of a racial nature which could
affect command in Negro units, the first person to whom the
problem was likely to be given was the chaplain. As guardians of the
spiritual and moral life of the soldier, with a firm and solid
tradition of leadership in Negro community life, chaplains were
expected to possess special techniques for developing positive
relationships between men and command, and for providing the
needed links of understanding upon which sound leadership could be
built. They were expected to provide aid in combating the internal
stresses often present. Often they did, in the realm of religion and
the spirit. But the problems of leadership in Negro units were not
always answerable in these terms.
-
- From the earliest period of
mobilization, Negro chaplains "of the right sort" had
been in demand. "A good chaplain who commands the respect and
confidence of the men is invaluable," one commander with
experience with Negro troops reported.76 Said another, in a unit
which had no chaplain, "The services of such an officer have
long been
- [225]
- needed and can accomplish
immeasurable good, if an intelligent, sympathetic and energetic
one can be secured." 77
An inspector supported his
recommendation that there was an "urgent need" for a
Negro chaplain at a special troop headquarters with the statement
that "The morale of the enlisted men in the 40th Signal
Construction Battalion and the 562d Quartermaster Service Battalion, the units with colored personnel at this station, is
very low." 78
-
- The expectation of many
commanders was that Negro chaplains, as . many were, would be a
helpful link between the command and the troops, interpreting each
to the other and smoothing the rougher stretches in the path of
leadership. Often the chaplain was the only Negro officer in the
unit or in the area. At times he was the only person available
with previous experience in interracial matters. Often he was,
like the average chaplain of the peacetime Army, not only a
spiritual adviser but also a guardian of all morale, with
recreation, athletic, and orientation duties to perform.79 Until
late 1941 the chaplain of a Negro regiment was specifically charged
with the instruction of soldiers in "the common English
branches of education." 80
Usually he was expected to, and
often he was directed to, explain to
Negro troops the more difficult problems which arose One officer,
during the course of an investigation, commented: "I don't
know whether the men took this matter up with the Chaplain or not
but if they did I feel rather disappointed because I feel that the
Chaplain could have straightened the matter out." 81
-
- To enlisted men, the
chaplain's relation to leadership was a plain one. Where the
chaplain was held in esteem -and this esteem could arise from many
approaches to the problems facing him -his influence for good was
felt widely. Otherwise, the chaplain had a small congregation, few
consultants, and little influence. No instance of serious friction
or disorder in a unit whose chaplain had both the ear of command and
of enlisted men has been found. Alert and confident chaplains could,
and did, prevent physical disturbances at times. Twice on the
weekend of 12 July 1942, Chaplain Lorenzo Q. Brown, by promising
the full support of the commanding officer, dispersed a potential
mob of over five hundred soldiers bent on "rescuing" men
of their battalion from the hands of civilian police who had,
according to rumor, killed some of them.82 But, in many units,
chaplains were a disappointment to their commanders and, in some
cases, to their enlisted men.
- [226]
- Sometimes, chaplains became
as enmeshed in unit quandaries as other Negro officers and men. As
one chaplain, neither a Negro nor working with Negro troops and
therefore meeting the dilemma faced by many Negro chaplains in a
less extreme form, expressed it: "The army measured a
chaplain's success in terms of the degree to which he expedited army
discipline; but the men judged him on his ability to unbend that
discipline." 83
The Negro chaplain often found that, in the
process of laying the groundwork for better discipline and morale,
he had already alienated either his men or his superiors, with the
result that he could effectively influence neither.
-
- Despite vigorous efforts
pursued throughout the duration of the war, the Army never obtained
a large enough number of Negro chaplains to be able to determine
what their fullest effect might have been had enough been readily
available. In addition to the three Negro chaplains in the Regular
Army in 1940, there were seventeen in the Reserve Corps, of whom
three were on active duty with the Civilian Conservation Corps. 84
The normal distribution of chaplains was one to every 1,200
officers and enlisted men (1944 standard), with chaplains divided
between units and bases or higher headquarters. Chaplains were
authorized, denominationally, from among the major church bodies
in proportion to their representation in the census of religious
bodies.85
Negro denominations were
given their population-based quotas along with all other
denominations that represented considerable portions of the nation's
church membership. Negro ministers of predominantly white
denominations were represented proportionately to their numbers and
availability within their denominations. Many of the Negro units of
battalion size were just under the strength of 900 required for a
unit chaplain and were therefore authorized none. Some services
attempted to acquire special authorizations for chaplains for
such units.86 But the Office of the Chief of Chaplains was making
valiant attempts to supply the ministers needed under current
authorizations. Few chaplains from among those available could be
spared to provide for special requests.
-
- In December 1940 teachers of
religion and directors of religious life in 25 Negro colleges and in
8 Negro and 11 primarily white theological seminaries were
requested to submit the names of promising Negro candidates for the
Army chaplaincy.87 Thereafter, speakers at assemblies of clergymen
continued to emphasize the need for chaplains and to urge
qualified Negro ministers to apply for Army commissions. In the
main, however, even when the constant upward readjustment of the
quotas for chaplains as the size of the Army grew is taken into
account, the supply of available Negro chaplains always fell
considerably short of the goal. There were corresponding shortages
of white chap-
- [227]
- lains in many denominations,
but among Negro chaplains the shortage was general in all
denominations.
-
- For 1943, the existing Negro
units were expected to require 455 chaplains. Of these, 445 were
allotted to the Negro denominations and to the Methodist Church. It
was hoped that Negro ministers of other denominations would
supplement these quotas. With the 1943 estimate before them, the
Negro churches had the following goals in mid January: 88
-
Denomination |
1943 Quota |
On Duty |
Shortage |
National Baptist (U.S.A. 159; America, 18) |
177 |
48 |
129 |
African Methodist Episcopal |
93 |
32 |
61 |
Methodist (Central Jurisdiction) |
69 |
25 |
44 |
African Methodist Episcopal Zion |
55 |
6 |
49 |
Colored Methodist Episcopal |
51 |
5 |
46 |
|
445 |
116 |
329 |
-
- The shortage of chaplains
was seriously felt in some units. None of the divisions could
obtain, initially, their full quotas of chaplains. Training units at
replacement centers were sometimes entirely without them. Units
often lost their chaplains to higher priority units preparing for
shipment overseas. The shortage was such that, sometimes, white
chaplains were assigned to Negro units as a temporary expedient,
though a few were assigned because the Office of the
Chief of Chaplains had not been informed that the unit was Negro.89 On posts with units too small to be authorized Negro
chaplains and on posts where the bulk population of Negroes was
too small to require the services of a station chaplain, Negro
troops were usually ministered to by white chaplains. At times,
white chaplains disappointedly reported that they had had little
success in attracting Negro troops to chapel services. One
chaplain, believing that the fault lay with the available choice of
music in the shortage Army-Navy Hymnal,
suggested that Negro troops be supplied with a special hymnal of
spirituals.90 Sometimes Negro civilian pastors from nearby towns
offered their services, but the practice of using these volunteers
was not favored by most commanders.
-
- One result of the shortage
of chaplains was the acceptance of a number of individuals who had
less than superior qualifications. Of the chaplains sent to the
Chaplain School, few failed to graduate. But those who did fail
were sent to the field anyway; they were already commissioned and
chaplains were scarce. Many of those failing in the school were
Negroes; many, but not all, of the disappointing performances in the
field came from men who had failed their courses at the school for
chaplains.91 A number were marginal
- [228]
- ministers from the
beginning. Some of these helped to undermine the reputation of
Negro chaplains, and, by extension, of Negro officers and
leadership as a whole both among commanders and among enlisted men.
In one army camp in the space of three months one of the two Negro
chaplains misused funds entrusted to his keeping by enlisted men
while on maneuvers; the other became notorious among the troops
after persuading the wife of an enlisted man to remain behind after
the departure of her husband's unit. Bad check charges and marital
difficulties plagued some. Another resigned for the good of the
service as a chronic alcoholic. Cases such as these were not common,
nor were they confined to Negro chaplains. But they occurred
frequently enough among Negro chaplains to lessen the influence of
all Negro chaplains in some areas and to make the jobs of sounder
chaplains more difficult both with soldiers and with their
commanders.
-
- Negro chaplains divided
sharply over the issue of the precedence of their responsibilities
to their men as soldiers and Negroes and to their calling as
ministers and as officers. Their general influence upon enlisted
men, barring unusual circumstances, was unquestioned. As the only
available Negro officers in many commands, demands upon them by
their men and by the Negroes of neighboring units and communities
were often beyond those normally made upon men of their calling.
As chaplains they were the recipients of grievances and complaints
without limit. Many of these were rooted in the beliefs and fears
of soldiers as Negroes. Chaplains skilled in human and interracial
relations were able to deal judiciously with
problems of this sort that came to their attention; many were able
to alter and influence patterns of racially based behavior for the
better. Others were unable to steer a clear path between the
importunings of their men and the official duties which they had
undertaken. Some withdrew from active concern in the problems of men
and commands. Still other chaplains, seeing a sufficiency of
injustices about them, undertook the unflinching defense of all men
in all cases, the guilty with the innocent. One such case, rather
widely circulated among War Department staff agencies as part of an
interview with a provost marshal returning from overseas, was that
of a chaplain in Australia who "worked hard to defend `a pore
colored boy' who had killed two white officers in cold blood." 92
While many had a stabilizing effect on units, others did not.
In many commands, chaplains therefore became suspect as bearers of
discord, contributing to, rather than alleviating, leadership
problems.93
-
- Even when these chaplains
were morally right, their lack of tact in the difficult area in
which they had to operate created additional morale strains within
the units whose men they had hoped to help. By late 1943, a number
of chaplains, sometimes to the accompaniment of considerable
publicity in
- [229]
- the Negro press, had
resigned by request, been reclassified, or tried by courts martial
and dismissed from the service. A few of these sought-and those who
sought it received-a sympathetic reception among the Negro public,
for they were viewed as the vigorous champions of the downtrodden
carrying forward the great traditions of their churches. But they
left in their wake commanders and supervising chaplains who viewed
their successors with suspicion as potential sources of
disruptions; they left behind them enlisted men whose faith in the
Army and their officer leaders was further weakened.
-
- Publicity resulting from the
release of certain of these chaplains, added to general press
comments on racial relations within the Army, further hampered
the recruiting program of the Chief of Chaplains. After a conference
with representatives of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A.,
the largest Negro church body and the church with the fourth
largest chaplains' quota and with the smallest portion of its quota
filled, the Chief of Chaplains decided that, until the urgent need
for Negro chaplains was met, consideration would be given to
applicants with two or more years of college or seminary work and
three years of pastoral experience in lieu of the ordinarily
required bachelor's degree, provided that other requirements were
met.94 This was the only case where different standards were prescribed for Negro
commissioned personnel.
-
- One answer to this proposal
was quickly forthcoming. At their convention in Kansas City in
September 1943, the National Baptists, contrary to the expectations of the conferees, were
presented with a resolution
that the convention would "refrain from further endorsement of
members of our Denomination to serve as Chaplains in the United
States Army" so long as bias in the treatment of chaplains
resulting in "the public humiliation of outstanding members of
the Baptist Clergy [through] tacit agreement of the Chief of
Chaplains, the Chaplain's office, and the War Department"
continued 95 While all chaplains were volunteers, no chaplain
could be accepted by the Army without denominational endorsement.
-
- The developing attitude
among Negro clergymen represented by this resolution was
reinforced the next year when the Fraternal Council of Negro
Churches in America issued a manifesto which placed revisions in the
armed forces' racial policy at the top of its list of desired
reforms.96 The inability of a number of Negro ministers to meet even
the lowered standards, plus many clergymen's disbelief that they
could give full service in the armed forces, permitted the shortage
of chaplains to grow larger. In mid-July 1943, just before
standards were lowered, the total number of Negro chaplains on duty
was 246.97 Their number hovered around
- [230]
- this figure for the rest of
the war. On 31 August 1944 there were slightly fewer, 238, while on
31 July 1945 the total number of Negro chaplains on duty was 259.98
Quotas, in the meantime, rose as total Army strength rose. At the
end of the war, the Negro denominations were still far below their
quotas. As of l9 October 1945, when the Chaplain's Corps was at
approximately its conclusion of hostilities strength, the Negro
denominations had the following quotas and chaplains on duty: 99
-
Church |
Quota |
Chaplains on Duty |
National Baptist (U.S.A. and America) |
612 |
79 |
African Methodist Episcopal |
77 |
69 |
African Methodist Episcopal Zion |
62 |
18 |
Colored Methodist Episcopal |
39 |
8 |
|
790 |
174 |
-
- Even if they had all been
able to affect positively the problems of leadership and morale,
Negro chaplains remained to the end of the war too few in number to
exert to the fullest the influence expected of them.
-
-
- Gradually, a general
malaise, destructive to morale and therefore to leadership potentialities, settled
upon a great many officers serving with Negro troops. Many white
officers felt that they were "figuratively sitting on kegs of
powder." Though they would try to carry out the desires of the
War Department they felt that they were "sunk" in their
assignments. Many Negro officers became convinced that they were
the victims of discriminatory practices which prevented the fullest
development of their capabilities. 100
That few white officers
would choose to serve with Negro troops became a generally accepted belief. That few Negro officers were capable and
efficient was as widely believed.101
-
- To help dispel the belief
that service with Negro troops was a blind alley, The Inspector
General recommended in 1943 that rotation of white officers on duty
with Negro troops be considered. 102
Rotation was not to be
mandatory, for though it was obvious that the majority preferred
service with white troops, some officers had stated that they
preferred duty with Negro troops. The commanding general of the 93d Division agreed that such a plan would be helpful in his
division.103 "While assignments in War cannot be based on
individual preferences," Headquarters,
- [231]
- Army Ground Forces, wrote to
its field commanders, "it is believed reasonable that, so far
as practicable, service with colored troops should be rotated."
104
-
- The procedure worked out by
the Ground Forces was that commanders of Negro divisions and
separate units would report to the appropriate higher commander not
to exceed 5 percent of the total number of white officers,
distributed approximately by grades, who had had eighteen months
of continuous service with colored troops, did not desire further
service with them, and had an efficiency rating of very satisfactory
or better. Higher commanders would then reassign these officers to
white units, provided that replacements for them were available.
General officers and regimental commanders were to be rotated by
Headquarters, Army Ground Forces. The rotation policy was to be
published to higher commanders only.105
-
- The belief that rotation of
officers was a solution to the problem of dissatisfaction among
white officers assigned to Negro units persisted throughout the war.
That rotation ran directly counter to the provision that
successful commanders be kept with Negro units; that it would
contribute further to the rapid turnover of officers in Negro units
about which so many inspectors had complained; and that, without a
backlog of excellent leaders to draw on for replacements, rotation
was impractical as a device for guaranteeing effective leadership
did not dim its chimerical appeal. Though it did not work in
practice, as evidenced by the number of negative reports submitted by
commanders, it was nevertheless accepted by officers in high and low
ranks as the next best thing to no service with Negro troops at all.106
-
- No similar hope of relief
was available to those Negro officers who felt that they had
served long enough against odds in specific units. Requests for
transfer sometimes came from Negro officers in batches, but since
there were few opportunities for transfer, most of these could not
be honored. Requests for transfer were often a prelude to
reclassification for both Negro and white officers, especially in
the larger units, for they called attention to the dissatisfaction
and to the resulting unsatisfactory work of officers. Even when
units sought to alleviate pressures on officers in an attempt to
help their adjustment and improve their leadership abilities
reclassification sometimes proved the only possible answer.
-
- One white junior officer,
after progressively demonstrating his inability to adjust to
service with Negro troops, was removed from duty with troops and
given special headquarters duties, but there he spent most of his
time looking up regulations and circulars and writing letters trying
to arrange a transfer. Eventually he informed his regimental
commander that he would have to get away from serving with Negro
troops even if he brought court-martial charges against himself. He
was finally sent before a reclassification board. There he appeared
with affidavits from other officers which declared that most of them
- [232]
- felt the same way that he
did. But who would operate the unit if every officer were
transferred? the board wanted to know. This particular officer, the
board decided had gone so far in placing his personal dislikes
above the demands of duty that he was recommended for discharge
from the service.107
-
- Successive transfers in some
instances caused a discontinuity in command which had its effects
upon unit training and discipline. One company of divisional
special troops had seven commanders and nearly as many first
sergeants in two years, while the division itself had five
divisional staff officers in the same technical service during the
same period. When the latest company commander requested relief
because "an attempt was made on my life by a shot being fired
thru my tent and into my bunk, thru my mosquito bar a bare few
inches from my pillow" with the result that he could
"never again have any faith in the company as a Company
Commander should have because of a constant fear of some unknown
person possibly waiting to try again," the request was
disapproved. "If every time an officer gets in a tough spot and
asks to transfer," the division's chief of staff observed,
"we won't get far. I can understand how he feels, I can
understand that there may be for a time a degree of lack of
interest and lack of confidence on his part. However, if he is any
good, and I know he is, and will apply himself to his task, he will
make good."
-
- Three successive special
staff officers occupying the same position were reclassified in
the same division. The first was recommended for relief "as
being unsuited for duty with a colored unit." His successor
was reclassified a year later upon his determination that he could
no longer handle a situation which showed no sign of improving:
-
- When I first came to this
Division I was not prejudiced against the colored race and had high
hopes of accomplishing a great deal. I have worked hard and
faithfully and felt that I had succeeded to some extent. However, in
the past few months, incidents have occurred which indicate that the
feeling was an illusion. Not only have I been unable to eradicate
race prejudice as a basis for the many difficulties encountered but
I have found it most difficult to work with this command. I have
twice been called disloyal by the Chief of Staff and once by the
Commanding General because I have had the courage to express my
views concerning morale in this Division.
-
- The recent episode with the
--Company, in which a definite planned attempt to discredit the
Battalion Commander and to cause him to be relieved, has destroyed
all hope I ever had to accomplish anything here. I was told that we,
the whites, are all plotting to discredit the negroes, that they do
not trust any white officer. They feel that their Battalion should
have all Negro officers as another white officer would merely be a
repetition of the previous ones. I so lost control of myself that I
told several negro officers in the --- Company that, where I had not
been prejudiced before, I was now definitely prejudiced.
-
- I find that I am definitely
turning into a Psychoneurotic. I have been unable to sleep, complain
of various aches and pains which have no organic basis. This morning
while in conference with the Commanding General . . ., concerning
the --- Battalion situation, I broke down with hysterical weeping
for over an hour. This is an indication of my mental state, which
does
- [233]
- not differ from that of a
number of other officers on the staff. I know that I am not
psychiatric material and a change of environment will clear these
symptoms up. I feel that I have a lot of excellent service left in
my system but if I am forced to remain with this Division I shall
end up a liability to the government. I believe someone else, with a
fresh point of view, could handle the job with greater efficiency.
-
- This officer, according to
his commanding general, had performed in an excellent manner;
therefore, the division recommended his transfer to any except
another Negro unit. But, lacking a proper vacancy for him, higher
headquarters recommended reclassification. By this time, his
successor was already being reclassified because he did not have
"the knack or ability to handle negroes."
-
- Sometimes, desired transfers
and reclassifications were not achieved. Two regimental commanders
in one division in training were listed for relief or transfer,
although one had been previously recommended for promotion to
general officer rank. One was recommended for transfer because of
age and the other because of lack of "the mental and physical
energy" needed to command effectively. At the same time,
special troop commanders and special staff officers were recommended
for removal from the division. But the approach of maneuvers
caused a reconsideration since "any change if made at this
late time would probably be more detrimental than helpful." One
of the two regimental commanders remained with the division until
the end of the war.
-
- In a separate battalion,
reclassification of several officers was recommended. The commander
was "totally out of sympathy with Negro
troops and grossly ignorant of what was required of a Battalion
Commander." The executive officer was considered "a type
who is unfit to command, one whose idea of efficiency is to have an
inspection of polished shoes at midnight and for identification
tags at 3 o'clock in the morning and to give mass company punishment
by requiring soldiers to march from midnight to 8 A.M." A
lieutenant was judged unfit to command troops because of his use of
improper language and because of a "generally abusive
attitude," though, it was added, he appeared to have had
considerable provocation. A fourth officer had kicked and stoned a
soldier who had been "most disobedient and discourteous to
him, which actions however, could not excuse the officer's
action." 108
But in this case, by the time recommendations
had reached headquarters and then been reopened by direction of the
assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff, the unit was overseas. With
the determination that it would be "impracticable" to
return the officers to the states, reprimands only were sent them.109
-
- Reclassification procedures
for Negro officers in the divisions usually began with assignment to
divisional officers' schools. Upon reports of progress in the
schools depended the disposition made of the officer student. These
schools, originally designed to improve leadership and technical
qualifications, soon came to be looked upon as a means of weeding
out unwanted officers, especially since usually only Negro
officers
- [234]
- were assigned to them. Some
were frank in stating their opinions of the schools. Said one
officer: "On being assigned to the Division Officers School I
was called in by the Regimental Commander, who made it clear that
I was being sent to school not because of inefficiency, but
because of my attitude toward the policies of the Regiment as to
Negro officers." Said another: "Completely ignoring my
several ratings of `excellent' and no ratings of unsatisfactory, I
was ordered to the Division school to prove my
efficiency, causing me greater humiliation."
-
- The reclassification of
Negro officers was usually supported by
statements of their lack of ability,
aggressiveness, or interest, supplemented by
statements of their race consciousness and sensitivity. A number of officers
disputed these charges, declaring that they
were being reclassified, subjected to
psychiatric examination, or punished for
showing When men already slated for re-classification replied with
charges of discrimination, their
accusations usually reinforced the original
charges of lack of co-operation and
development of prejudices against superior
white officers. But, at times,
officers who had previously been considered
exemplary leaders surprised commanders
by submitting requests for relief
or resignation phrased in similar terms.
One, from an officer whose commander
disapproved the request "in view of
the excellent record of this officer in
his organization, and the spirit and
thoroughness by which his duties are
performed," began:
-
- By my own admission, I can
no longer willingly and cooperatively
discharge the duties of an officer as I
have done faithfully and cheerfully during more
than two years of service in a commissioned
status. A proper regard for the
opinions of all concerned demands that with
clarity and forthrightness I set forth
the causes which do now propel this course of
action.
- a. I am unable to adjust
myself to the handicap of being a Negro
Officer in the United States Army.
Realizing that minorities are always at odds for
consideration commensurate with the
privileges enjoyed by the greater number, I
have tried earnestly to find this expected lack of equality, and nothing more, in the
relationships and situations around me here. Prolonged
observation reveals that inconsistencies over and above a reasonable
- amount are rampant. Sins of omission, sins
of commission, humiliations, insults-injustices, all, are mounted one upon another until one's zest is chilled and spirit broken..
- b. In my opinion there is mutual
distrust between the two
groups of officers. As a result of this, it is my belief, nowhere is
there wholehearted cooperation or unity of purpose. Prejudice has
bred a counter prejudice so that now neither faction can nor will
see without distortion. In garrison the situation is grave; in the
field where one's life and success of mission are dependent upon
that cooperation and unity, disastrous.
- c. Being exposed to this
atmosphere for so long a time, I have not remained unchanged; to
deny this would be dishonest. For so long have I endured the
frustration and mental torture of being ostracized from,
discriminated against, discredited, that my resentment has become
an insurmountable barrier against my sense of duty. Whereas I was
once fired with ambition and zeal to do a necessary job willingly, I
now find myself with the willingness no longer. Enthusiasm has given
way to apathy; ambition, to a sense of futility . . . . Feeling as I
do, a sense of fairness to myself, to those who command me, and most
important, to those who must serve under me directs that I can but
offer my resignation.
- [235]
- When this officer learned
that his request had aroused indignation at battalion and
regimental headquarters and that reclassification proceedings would
be instituted instead, he tried to withdraw his resignation. The
regimental commander, though admitting that he had previously
thought him an excellent officer, proceeded to certify him a
"failure" because of "1. Prejudice against white
officers" and "2. Inability to adjust himself willingly
and conscientiously cooperate with those in authority."
Supporting statements, including those of the regimental and
battalion commanders, indicated that though he was a willing
officer performing in an excellent manner, it had been noticed
that he had developed "a shiftiness" in his eyes and a
tendency to "wincing" which indicated insolence,
untrustworthiness, deceit, and distrust. Only the company commander
continued to hold that this was an excellent officer, though he
added that since the officer had admitted that he could no longer
discharge his duties well, his services to the company would be
unsatisfactory.
-
-
Most cases of
reclassification were clear-cut. The officers concerned had
deteriorated week by week and most knew that reclassification was
being considered. Headquarters often reported that they were
engaged in weeding out unsatisfactory officers. With white
officers, recommendations might be made for retention in the service
for duty anywhere except with Negro troops, but with Negro officers
the recommendation was usually for separation from the service.
Even then, while papers were forwarded and returned, officers
awaiting reclassification remained in their units where others, to
their own discomfiture and
concern, soon learned of the scheduled event. White officers, in
many instances, could be placed on detached or special duty in
headquarters during this waiting period, with the result that Negro
officers in some units felt that they alone bore the brunt of
reclassifications.
-
- The attempt to improve
leadership by transferring and reclassifying unsatisfactory
officers therefore became enmeshed in the same racial problem that
ensnared officer leaders in other areas, particularly in promotions
and assignments. The commander of a regiment with 150 officers,
one hundred of them Negroes and fifty white, explained:
-
- . . . The officer being
reclassified, either white or colored, thinks he is getting a raw
deal. This sentiment is largely shared by his friends and
acquaintances. When four cases are pending at one time, as there are
at present in this regiment, the reaction in morale amongst officers
of the unit is particularly noticeable. Once the officers being
reclassified depart the atmosphere will gradually clear and
officer morale will get back on even keel .
-
- . . . Where white and
colored officers are mixed, particularly in companies, two
psychological complexes are present, both equally false. Almost
every white officer, no matter how mediocre he is in ability, feels
that he is superior to the colored officer. In this connection it
must be borne in mind that officers of company grade are young, and
have not attained the tolerance and fair judgment towards other
races which may be found in older and more experienced officers. The
colored officer, no matter how capable, is quick to interpret any
criticism, correction or punishment given by white officers as
racial discrimination. The same is true when the colored officer
does not obtain a promotion or assignment he desired. These two
complexes create an abnormal situation peculiar not only to this
regiment but to the
- [236]
- division as a whole. Almost
without exception every assignment or promotion in company grades
and sometimes field grades is believed by one or the other group to
have an ulterior motive connected therewith.
-
- The company commander, in
particular, has a most difficult task to live in harmony with and
maintain unity and efficiency amongst his officers, particularly if
he has the courage to weed out the unfit. In some instances, rather
than rate a junior officer "unsatisfactory" on his 66-i,
commanders have given a "satisfactory" purely to avoid the
charge of discrimination that invariably accompanies such an
action. When questioned, the company commander admits that the
officer has not been performing satisfactorily but he has hopes that
the officer will improve. The undersigned has ordered
reclassification proceedings to be initiated in many cases and has
informed the officer in question that his reclassification was being
directed, -all this to avoid criticism and charges of discrimination
being directed at the battalion or company commander concerned.
-
- Little was, or perhaps
could, be done about these developing strains on leadership until
matters had gone too far for correction by any other means. On the
surface, intra-unit relations often appeared to be smooth, but the
"undercurrent of racial antipathies, mistrusts and
preconceived prejudices" in some units made an unhealthy
situation from the beginning.110 Administrative and troop leadership
talents of both Negro and white officers were often expended in the
defense of real and imagined personal prerogatives which had
little to do with leadership and nothing to do with a concerted
military effort. Despite the efforts of higher commanders, the
- development of leadership
for troops who could use the very best available often bogged down
in areas where it had no business pausing for the briefest halt.
-
-
- Leadership for Negro troops
was thus lost in a welter by the physical necessity of assigning all
white, all Negro, or both white and Negro officers to Negro units
and by the policies governing these assignments. That all officers
for Negro units would have to come into frequent contact with other
officers, Negro and white, from nearby units under the same command
or headquarters and that all officers assigned to Negro units would
have to adjust to service with Negro enlisted men was axiomatic.
But that all officers assigned to Negro units, as a first step in
the development of their leadership potentialities when on duty with
Negro troops, had to be able to accept with equanimity any and all
of the problems and petty frictions which might arise out of these
necessities was barely understood. When it was, obtaining the
required paragons of interracial dexterity was difficult.
-
- Leadership of the type
normally associated with well-functioning units, though it did
exist, was rarer among Negro units than elsewhere in the Army. With
the rapid turnover of officers, the temperamental clashes between
officers and troops, the friction between Negro and white officers,
the frequent regular and special inspections from higher and
adjacent headquarters, the constant striving for results apparently
not to be forthcoming, and the lack of firm, positive leadership
on the points at issue, this could hardly have been otherwise.
- [237]
- Leadership principles in
many units were forgotten while officers pondered their own fates.
Many white officers were filled with a feeling of defeat and
discouragement over their own inglorious assignments to troops in
whom they had no confidence and about whom their white associates,
when they did not completely ignore their existence, were frankly
sceptical. Many Negro officers were filled with resentment toward
the social matrix in which they were caught and which confined them
to subordinate positions where they felt that they were neither
fully officers nor enlisted men but uniformed symbols, doomed to receive at best a grudging
acceptance as officers from their superiors and only a token
recognition as leaders from their subordinates. Neither group, as a
whole, concentrated upon its major problem: the leadership of men.
-
- The provision of leadership
in Negro units became, therefore, as difficult a problem as any that
the War Department faced in the employment of Negro troops. Men
who had in sufficient measure General McNarney's prescribed
"common sense" simply could not be found in quantities
large enough to supply Negro units with the leaders whom they so
desperately needed.
- [238]