The Air staff had imposed only two rules on interracial social activities: with due regard for sex and rank all Air Force facilities were available for the unrestricted use of all its members; troublemakers would get into trouble. Under these inflexible rules, the Fahy Committee later reported, there was a steady movement in the direction of shared facilities. "Here again, mutual respect engendered on the job or in the school seemed to translate itself into friendly association."[16-47] Whether it liked it or not, the Air Force was in the business of social change.
Typical of most unit reports was one from the commander of the 1701st Air Transport Wing, Great Falls Air Force Base, Montana, who wrote Secretary Symington that the unit's eighty-three Negroes, serving in ten different organizations, lived and worked with white airmen "on an apparently equal and friendly basis."[16-48] The commander had been unable to persuade local community leaders, however, to promote equality of treatment outside the base, and beyond its movie theaters Great Falls had very few places that allowed black airmen. The commander was touching upon a problem that would eventually trouble all the services: airmen, he reported to Secretary Symington, although they have good food and entertainment on the base, sooner or later want to go to town, sit at a table, and order what they want. The Air Force was now coming into conflict with local custom which it could see no way to control. As the Air Force Times put it, "The Air Force, like the other services, feels circumspect policy in this regard is the only advisable one on the grounds that off-base segregation is a matter for civilian rather than military decision."[16-49]
But this problem could not detract from what had been accomplished on the bases. Judged by the standards it set for itself before the Fahy Committee, the Air Force had achieved its goals. Further, they were achieved in the period between 1949 and 1956 when the percentage of blacks in the service doubled, an increase resulting from the Defense Department's qualitative distribution of manpower rather than the removal of the racial quota.[16-50] During these years the number of black airmen rose from 5.1 to 10.4 percent of the enlisted strength and the black officers from 0.6 to 1.1 percent. Reviewing the situation in 1960, Ebony noted that the program begun in 1949 was working well and that white men were accepting without question progressive racial practices forbidden in their home communities. Minor racial flare-ups still occurred, but integration was no longer a major problem in the Air Force; it was a fact of life.[16-51]
The Navy and Executive Order 9981
The changing government attitude toward integration in the late 1940's had less dramatic effect on the Navy than upon the other services because the Navy was already the conspicuous possessor of a racial policy guaranteeing equal treatment and opportunity for all its members. But as the Fahy Committee and many other critics insisted, the Navy's 1946 equality guarantee was largely theoretical; its major racial problem was not one of policy but of practice as statistics demonstrated. It was true, for example, that the Navy had abolished racial quotas in recruitment, yet the small number of black sailors—17,000 during 1949, averaging 4.5 percent of the total strength—made the absence of a quota academic.[16-52] It was true that Negroes served side by side with white sailors in almost every occupation and training program in the Navy, but it was also a fact that 62 percent of all Negroes in the Navy in 1949 were still assigned to the nonwhite Steward's Branch. This figure shows that as late as December 1949 fewer than 7,000 black sailors were serving in racially integrated assignments.[16-53] Again, with only 19 black officers, including 2 nurses, in a 1949 average officer strength of 45,464, it meant little to say that the Navy had an integrated officer corps. A shadow had fallen, then, between the promise of the Navy's policy and its fulfillment, partly because of indifferent execution.
Submitted to and approved by the Secretary of Defense, the new Navy plan announced on 7 June 1949 called for a specific series of measures to bring departmental practices into line with policy.[16-54] Once he had gained Johnson's approval, Secretary of the Navy Matthews did not tarry. On 23 June he issued an explicit statement to all ships and stations, abjuring racial distinctions in the Navy and Marine Corps and ordering that all personnel be enlisted or appointed, trained, advanced or promoted, assigned and administered without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.[16-55] Admirable and comprehensive, Matthew's statement scarcely differed in intent from his predecessor's general declaration of equal treatment and opportunity of 12 December 1945 and the more explicit directive of the Chief of Naval Operations on the same subject on 27 February 1946. Yet despite the close similarity, a reiteration was clearly necessary. As even the most ardent apologist for the navy's postwar racial policy would admit, these groundbreaking statements had not done the job, and, to satisfy the demands of the Fahy Committee and the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Matthews had to convince his subordinates that the demand for equal treatment and opportunity was serious and had to be dealt with immediately. His specific mention of the Marine Corps and the problems of enlistment, assignment, and promotion, subjects ignored in the earlier directives, represented a start toward the reform of his department's racial practices currently out of step with its expressed policy.
Yet a restatement of policy, no matter how specific, was not enough. As Under Secretary Dan A. Kimball admitted, the Navy had the formidable task of convincing its own people of the sincerity of its policy and of erasing the distrust that had developed in the black community "resulting from past discriminating practices."[16-56] Those who were well aware of the Navy's earlier failure to achieve integration by fiat were bound to greet Secretary Matthews's directive with skepticism unless it was accompanied by specific reforms. Matthews, aware of the necessity, immediately inaugurated a campaign to recruit more black sailors, commission more black officers, and remove the stigma attached to service in the Steward's Branch.
It was logical enough to start a reform of the Navy's integration program by attacking the perennial problem of too few Negroes in the general service. In his annual report to the Secretary of Defense, Matthews outlined some of the practical steps the Navy was taking to attract more qualified young blacks. The Bureau of Naval Personnel, he explained, planned to assign black sailors and officers to its recruiting service. As a first step it assigned eight Negroes to Recruitment Procurement School and subsequently to recruit duty in eight major cities with further such assignments planned when current manpower ceilings were lifted.[16-57]
The Bureau of Naval Personnel had also polled black reservists on the possibility of returning to active duty on recruiting assignments, and from this group had chosen five officers for active duty in the New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, and Chicago recruiting offices. At the same time black officers and petty officers were sent to extol the advantages of a naval career before black student bodies and citizen groups.[16-58] Their performances were exceedingly well received. The executive secretary of the Dayton, Ohio, Urban League, for example, thanked Secretary Matthews for the appearances of Lieutenant Nelson before groups of students, reporters, and community leaders in the city. The lieutenant, he added, not only "clearly and effectively interpreted the opportunities open to Negro youth in the United States Navy" but also "greatly accelerated" the community's understanding of the Navy's integration program.[16-59] Nelson, himself, had been a leading advocate of an accelerated public relations program to advertise the opportunities for Negroes in the Navy.[16-60] The personnel bureau had adopted his suggestion that all recruitment literature, including photographs testifying to the fact that Negroes were serving in the general service, be widely distributed in predominantly black institutions. Manpower ceilings, however, had forced the bureau to postpone action on Nelson's suggestion that posters, films, pamphlets, and the like be used.[16-61]
An obvious concomitant to the increase in the number of black sailors was an increase in the number of black officers. The personnel bureau was well aware of this connection; Comdr. Luther C. Heinz, officer in charge of naval reserve officer training, called the shortage of Negroes in his program a particularly important problem. He promised, "in accord with the desires of the President," as he put it, to increase black participation in the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and his superior, the Chief of Naval Personnel, started a program in the bureau for that purpose.[16-62] With the help of the National Urban League, Heinz arranged a series of lectures by black officers at forty-nine black schools and other institutions to interest Negroes in the Navy's reserve officers program. In August 1949, for example, Ens. Wesley Brown, the first Negro to be graduated from Annapolis, addressed gatherings in Chicago on the opportunities for Negroes as naval officers.[16-63]