Several months elapsed between the appointment of the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services and its first meeting, a formal session with the President at the White House on 12 January 1949. Actually, certain advantages accrued from the delay, for postponing the meetings until after the President's reelection enabled the committee to face the services with assurance of continued support from the administration. Renewed presidential backing was probably necessary, considering the services' deliberations on race policy during this half-year hiatus. Their reactions to the order, logical outgrowths of postwar policies and practices, demonstrated how their perceived self-interests might subvert the President's intentions. The events of this six-month period also began to show the relative importance of the order and the parochial interests of the services as factors in the integration of the armed forces.
Public Reaction to Executive Order 9981
Considering the substantial changes it promised, the President's order provoked surprisingly little public opposition. Its publication coincided with the convening of the special session of a Congress smarting under Truman's "do-nothing" label. In this charged political atmosphere, the anti-administration majority in Congress quietly sidestepped the President's 27 July call for civil rights legislation. To do otherwise would only have added to the political profits already garnered by Truman in some important voting areas. For the same reason congressional opponents avoided all mention of Executive Order 9981, although the widely expected defeat of Truman and the consequent end to this executive sally into civil rights might have contributed to the silence. Besides, segregationists could do little in an immediate legislative way to counteract the presidential command. Congress had already passed the Selective Service Act and Defense Appropriations Act, the most suitable vehicles for amendments aimed at modifying the impact of the integration order. National elections and the advent of a new Congress precluded any other significant moves in this direction until later in the next year.
Yet if it was ignored in Congress, the order was nevertheless a clear signal to the friends of integration and brought with it a tremendous surge of hope to the black community. Publishing the order made Harry Truman the "darling of the Negroes," Roy Wilkins said later. Nor did the coincidence of its publication to the election, he added, bother a group that was becoming increasingly pragmatic about the reasons for social reform.[13-1] Both the declaredly Democratic Chicago Defender and Republican-oriented Pittsburgh Courier were aware of the implications of the order. The Defender ran an editorial on 7 August under the heading "Mr. Truman Makes History." The "National Grapevine" column of Charlie Cherokee in the same issue promised its readers a blow-by-blow description of the events surrounding the President's action. An interview in the same issue with Col. Richard L. Jones, black commander of the 178th Regimental Combat Team (Illinois), emphasized the beneficial effects of the proposed integration, and in the next issue, 14 August, the editor broadened the discussion with an editorial entitled "What About Prejudice?"[13-2] The Courier, for its part, questioned the President's sincerity because he had not explicitly called for an end to segregation. At the same time it contrasted the futility of civil disobedience with the efficiency of such an order on the services, and while maintaining its support for the candidacy of Governor Dewey the paper revealed a strong enthusiasm for President Truman's civil rights program.[13-3]
These affirmations of support for Executive Order 9981 in the major black newspapers fitted in neatly with the administration's political strategy. Nor was the Democratic National Committee averse to using the order to win black votes. For example it ran a half-page advertisement in the Defender under the heading "By His Deeds Shall Ye Know Him."[13-4] At the same time, not wishing to antagonize the opponents of integration further, the administration made no special effort to publicize the order in the metropolitan press. Consequently, when the order was mentioned at all, it was usually carried without comment, and the few columnists who treated the subject did so with some caution. Arthur Krock's "Reform Attempts Aid Southern Extremists" in the New York Times, for example, lauded the President's civil rights initiatives but warned that any attempt to force social integration would only strengthen demagogues at the expense of moderate politicians.[13-5]
If the President's wooing of the black voter was good election politics, his executive order was also a successful practical response to the threat of civil disobedience and the failure of the Secretary of Defense to strive actively for racial equality throughout the services. Declaring the President's action a substantial gain, A. Philip Randolph canceled the call for a boycott of the draft, leaving only a small number of diehards to continue the now insignificant effort. The black leaders who had participated in Secretary Forrestal's National Defense Conference gave the President their full support, and Donald S. Dawson, administrative assistant to the President, was able to assure Truman that the black press, now completely behind the committee on equal treatment and opportunity, had abandoned its vigorous campaign against the Army's racial policy.[13-6]
Ironically, the most celebrated pronouncement on segregation at the moment of the Truman order came not from publicists or politicians but from the Army's new Chief of Staff, General Omar N. Bradley.[13-7] Speaking to a group of instructors at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and unaware of the President's order and the presence of the press, Bradley declared that the Army would have to retain segregation as long as it was the national pattern.[13-8] This statement prompted questions at the President's next news conference, letters to the editor, and debate in the press.[13-9] Bradley later explained that he had supported the Army's segregation policy because he was against making the Army an instrument of social change in areas of the country which still rejected integration.[13-10] His comment, as amplified and broadcast by military analyst Hanson W. Baldwin, summarized the Army's position at the time of the Truman order. "It is extremely dangerous nonsense," Baldwin declared, "to try to make the Army other than one thing—a fighting machine." By emphasizing that the Army could not afford to differ greatly in customs, traditions, and prejudices from the general population, Baldwin explained, Bradley was only underscoring a major characteristic of any large organization of conscripts. Most import, Baldwin pointed out, the Chief of Staff considered an inflexible order for the immediate integration of all troops one of the surest ways to break down the morale of the Army and destroy its efficiency.[13-11]
But such arguments were under attack by the very civil rights groups the President was trying to court. "Are we to understand that the President's promise to end discrimination," one critic asked,
was made for some other purpose than to end discrimination in its worst form—segregation? General Bradley's statement, subsequent to the President's orders, would seem to indicate that the President either did not mean what he said or his orders were not being obeyed. We should like to point out that General Bradley's reported observation ... was decidedly wide of the mark. Segregation is the legal pattern of only a few of our most backward states.... In view of the trends in law and social practice, it is high time that the Defense forces were not used as brakes on progress toward genuine democracy.[13-12]
General Bradley apologized to the President for any confusion caused by his statement, and Truman publicly sloughed off the affair, but not before he stated to the press that his order specifically directed the integration of the armed forces.[13-13] It was obvious that the situation had developed into a standoff. Some of the President's most outspoken supporters would not let him forget his integration order, and the Army, as represented by its Chief of Staff, failed to realize that events were rapidly moving beyond the point where segregation could be considered a workable policy for an agency of the United States government.