Nowhere was Forrestal's philosophy of government more evident than in his approach to the problem of integration. His office would be concerned with equal opportunity, he promised Walter White soon after his elevation to the new post, but "the job of Secretary of Defense," he warned, "is one which will have to develop in an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary manner." Further dashing hopes of sudden reform, Forrestal added that specific racial problems, as distinct from general policy matters, would remain the province of the individual services.[12-22] He retained this attitude throughout his tenure. He considered the President's instructions to end remaining instances of discrimination in the services "in accord with my own conception of my responsibilities under unification," and he was in wholehearted agreement with a presidential wish that the National Military Establishment work out the answer to its racial problems through administrative action. He wanted to see a "more nearly uniform approach to interracial problems by the three Services," but experience had demonstrated, he believed, that racial problems could not be solved simply by publishing an executive order or passing a law. Racial progress would come from education. Such had been his observation in the wartime Navy, and he was ready to promise that "even greater progress will be made in the future." But, he added, "progress must be made administratively and should not be put into effect by fiat."[12-23]
Executive fiat was just what some of Forrestal's advisers wanted. For example, his executive assistant, John H. Ohly, his civilian aide, James C. Evans,[12-24] and Truman Gibson urged the secretary to consider establishing an interservice committee along the lines of the old McCloy committee to prepare a uniform racial policy that he could apply to all the services. They wanted the committee to examine past and current practices as well as the recent reports of the President's Advisory Commission on Universal Training and the Committee on Civil Rights and to make specific recommendations for carrying out and policing department policy. Truman Gibson went to the heart of the matter: the formulation of such an interservice committee would signal to the black community better than anything else the defense establishment's determination to change the racial situation. More and more, he warned, the discrepancies among the services' racial practices were attracting public attention. Most important to the administration was the fact that these discrepancies were strengthening opposition to universal military training and the draft.[12-25]
A. Philip Randolph.
(Detail from painting by Betsy G. Reyneau.)
Gibson was no doubt referring to A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and organizer of the 1940 March on Washington Movement, who had spoken out against the pending legislation. Randolph was particularly concerned that the bill did not prohibit segregation, and he quoted a member of the Advisory Commission on Universal Training who admitted that the bill ignored the racial issue because "the South might oppose UMT if Negroes were included." Drafting eighteen-year olds into a segregated Army was a threat to black progress, Randolph charged, because enforced segregation made it difficult to break down other forms of discrimination. Convinced that the Pentagon was trying to bypass the segregation issue, Randolph and Grant Reynolds, a black clergyman and New York politician, formed a Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training. They planned to submit a proposal to the President and Congress for drafting a nondiscrimination measure for the armed forces, and they were prepared to back up this demand with a march on Washington—no empty gesture in an election year. Randolph had impressive backing from black leaders, among them Dr. Channing H. Tobias of the Civil Rights Committee, George S. Schuyler, columnist of the Pittsburgh Courier, L. D. Reddick, curator of the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library, and Joe Louis.[12-26]
Black spokesmen were particularly incensed by the attitude of the Secretary of the Army and his staff. Walter White pointed out that these officials continued to justify segregated units on the grounds that segregation was—he quoted them—"in the interest of national defense." White went to special pains to refute the Army's contention that segregation was necessary because the Army had to conform to local laws and customs. "How," he asked Secretary Forrestal,
can the imposition of segregation upon northern states having clear-cut laws and policies in opposition to such practices be justified by the Army?... In view of President Truman's recent report to the Congress and in view of the report of his Committee on Civil Rights condemning segregation in the Armed Forces, I am at a loss to understand the reluctance on the part of the Department of Defense to immediately eliminate all vestiges of discrimination and segregation in the Armed Forces of this country. As the foremost defender of democratic principles in international councils, the United States can ill afford to any longer discriminate against its Negro citizens in its Armed Forces solely because they were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be born Negroes.[12-27]
Forrestal stubbornly resisted the pleas of his advisers and black leaders that he assume a more active role. In the first place he had real doubts concerning his authority to do so. Forrestal was also aware of the consequences an integration campaign would have on Capitol Hill, where he was in the midst of delicate negotiations on defense measures. But most of all the role of crusader did not fit him. "I have gone somewhat slowly," Forrestal had written in late October 1947, "because I believe in the theory of having things to talk about as having been done rather than having to predict them, and ... morale and confidence are easy to destroy but not easy to rebuild. In other words, I want to be sure that any changes we make are changes that accomplish something and not merely for the sake of change."[12-28]
To Forrestal equal opportunity was not a pious platitude, but a practical means of solving the military's racial problems. Equal opportunity was the tactic he had used in the Navy where he had encouraged specialized training for all qualified Negroes. He understood that on shipboard machinists ate and bunked with machinists, firemen with firemen. Inaugurated in the fleet, the practice naturally spread to the shore establishment, and equal opportunity led inevitably to the integration of the general service. Given the opportunity to qualify for all specialties, Negroes—albeit their number was limited to the small group in the general service—quickly gained equal treatment in off-the-job activities. Forrestal intended to apply the same tactic to achieve the same results in the other services.[12-29]