Rosenberg and her departmental colleagues were less forthcoming in some other areas of civil rights. Reflecting a desire to placate segregationist forces in Congress, they did little, for example, to promote federal protection of servicemen in cases of racial violence outside the military reservation. The NAACP had been urging the passage of such legislation for many years, and in March 1951 Clarence Mitchell called Rosenberg's attention to the mistreatment of black servicemen and their families suffered at the hands of policemen and civilians in communities surrounding some military bases.[15-56] At times, Walter White charged, these humiliations and abuses by civilians were condoned by military police. He warned that such treatment "can only succeed in adversely affecting the morale of Negro troops ... and hamper efforts to secure fullhearted support of the American Negro for the Government's military and foreign policy program."[15-57]
The civil rights leaders had at least some congressional support for their demand. Congressman Abraham J. Multer of New York called on the Armed Services Committee to include in the 1950 extension of the Selective Service Act an amendment making attacks on uniformed men and women and discrimination against them by public officials and in public places of recreation and interstate travel federal offenses.[15-58] Focusing on a different aspect of the problem, Senator Humphrey introduced an amendment to the Senate version of the bill to protect servicemen detained by public authority against civil violence or punishment by extra legal forces. Both amendments were tabled before final vote on the bill.[15-59]
The matter came up again in the next Congress when Senator Herbert H. Lehman of New York offered a similar amendment to the universal military training bill.[15-60] Commenting for his department, Secretary Marshall admitted that defense officials had been supporting such legislation since 1943 when Stimson asked for help in protecting servicemen in the civilian community. But Marshall was against linking the measure to the training bill, which, he explained to Congressman Franck R. Havenner of California, was of such fundamental importance that its passage should not be endangered by consideration of extraneous issues. He wanted the problem of federal protection considered as a separate piece of legislation.[15-61]
But evidently not just yet, for when the NAACP's Mitchell, referring to Marshall's letter to Congressman Havenner, asked Rosenberg to press for separate legislation, he was told that since final congressional action was still pending on the universal military training and reserve programs it was not an auspicious moment for action on a federal protection bill.[15-62] The department's reluctance to act in the matter obviously involved more than concern with the fate of universal military training. Summing up department policy on 1 June, the day after the training bill passed the House, Rosenberg explained that the Department of Defense would not itself propose any legislation to extend to servicemen the protection afforded "civilian employees" of the federal government but would support such a proposal if it came from "any other source."[15-63] This limitation was further defined by Rosenberg's colleagues in the Defense Department. On 19 June the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legal and Legislative Affairs, Daniel K. Edwards, rejected Mitchell's request for help in preparing the language of a bill to protect black servicemen. Mitchell had explained that discussions with congressional leaders convinced the NAACP that chances for such legislation were favorable, but the Defense Department's Assistant General Counsel declared the department did not ordinarily act "as a drafting service for outside agencies."[15-64] In fact, effective legislation to protect servicemen off military bases was more than a decade away.
Despite her concern over possible congressional opposition, Rosenberg achieved one important reform during her first year in office. For years the Army's demand for a parity of enlistment standards had been opposed by the Navy and the Air Force and had once been rejected by Secretary Forrestal. Now Rosenberg was able to convince Marshall and the armed services committees that in times of manpower shortages the services suffered a serious imbalance when each failed to get its fair share of recruits from the various so-called mental categories.[15-65] Her assistant, Ralph P. Sollat, prepared a program for her incorporating Roy K. Davenport's specific suggestions. The program would allow volunteer enlistments to continue but would require all the services to give a uniform entrance test to both volunteers and draftees. (Actually, rather than develop a completely new entrance test, the other services eventually adopted the Army's, which was renamed the Armed Forces Qualification Test.) Sollat also devised an arrangement whereby each service had to recruit men in each of the four mental categories in accordance with an established quota. Manpower experts agreed that this program offered the best chance to distribute manpower equally among the services. Approved by Secretary Marshall on 10 April 1951 under the title Qualitative Distribution of Military Manpower Program, it quickly changed the intellectual composition of the services by obliging the Navy and Air Force to share responsibility with the Army for the training and employment of less gifted inductees. For the remainder of the Korean War, for example, each of the services, not just the Army, had to take 24 percent of its new recruits from category IV, the low-scoring group. This figure was later reduced to 18 percent and finally in 1958 to 12 percent.[15-66]
The Navy and the Air Force had always insisted their high minimum entrance requirements were designed to maintain the good quality of their recruits and had nothing to do with race. Roy Davenport believed otherwise and read into their standards an intent to exclude all but a few Negroes. Rosenberg saw in the new qualitative distribution program not only the chance to upgrade the Army but also a way of "making sure that the other Services had their proper share of Negroes."[15-67] Because so many Negroes scored below average in achievement tests and therefore made up a large percentage of the men in category IV, the new program served Rosenberg's double purpose. Even after discounting the influence of other factors, statistics suggest that the imposition of the qualitative distribution program operated just as Rosenberg and the Fahy Committee before her had predicted. (Table 3)
Table 3—Percentage of Black Enlisted Men and Women
| Service | 1 July 1949 | 1 July 1954 | 1 July 1956 |
| Army | 12.4 | 13.7 | 12.8 |
| Navy | 4.7 | 3.6 | 6.3 |
| Air Force | 5.1 | 8.6 | 10.4 |
| Marine Corps | 2.1 | 6.5 | 6.5 |
Source: Memo for Rcd, ASD/M, 12 Sep 56, sub: Integration Percentages, ASD(M) 291.2.
The program had yet another consequence: it destroyed the Army's best argument for the reimposition of the racial quota. Upset over the steadily rising number of black enlistments in the early months of the Korean War, the Army's G-1 had pressed Secretary Pace in October 1950, and again five months later with G-3 concurrence, to reinstate a ceiling on black enlistments. Assistant Secretary Earl D. Johnson returned the request "without action," noting that the new qualitative distribution program would produce a "more equitable" solution.[15-68] The President's agreement with Secretary Gray about reimposing a quota notwithstanding, it was highly unlikely that the Army could have done so without returning to the White House for permission, and when in May 1951 the Army staff renewed its demand, Pace considered asking the White House for a quota on Negroes in category IV. After consulting with Rosenberg on the long-term effects of qualitative distribution of manpower, however, Pace agreed to drop the matter.[15-69]