The perennial problem of an all-black Steward's Branch persisted into the 1960's. Stewards served a necessary though unglamorous function in the Marine Corps, and education standards for such duty were considerably lower than those for the rest of the service. Everyone understood this, and beyond the stigma many young people felt was attached to such duties, many Negroes particularly resented the fact that while the branch was officially open to all, somehow none of the less gifted whites ever joined. Stewards were acquired either by recruiting new marines with stewards-duty-only contracts or by accepting volunteers from the general service. The evidence suggests that there was truth in the commonly held assumption among stewards that when a need for more stewards arose, "volunteers" were secured by tampering with the classification test scores of men in the general service.[18-26]
The commandant seemed less concerned with methods than results when stewards were needed. In June 1950 he had reaffirmed the policy of allowing stewards to reenlist for general duty, but when he learned that some stewards had made the jump to general duty without being qualified, he announced that men who had signed contracts for stewards duty only were not acceptable for general duty unless they scored at least in the 31st percentile of the qualifying tests. To make the change to general duty even less attractive, he ruled that if a steward reenlisted for general duty he would have to revert to the rank of private, first class.[18-27] Such measures did nothing to improve the morale of black stewards, many of whom, according to civil rights critics, felt confined forever to performing menial tasks, nor did it prevent constant shortages in the Steward's Branch and problems arising from the lack of men with training in modern mess management.
The corps tried to attack these problems in the mid-1950's. At the behest of the Secretary of the Navy it eliminated the stewards-duty-only contract in 1954; henceforth all marines were enlisted for general duty, and only after recruit training could volunteers sign up for stewards duty. Acceptance of men scoring below ninety in the classification tests would be limited to 40 percent of those volunteering each month for stewards duty.[18-28] The corps also instituted special training in modern mess management for stewards. In 1953 the Quartermaster General had created an inspection and demonstration team composed of senior stewards to instruct members of the branch in the latest techniques of cooking and baking, supervision, and management.[18-29] In August 1954 the commandant established an advanced twelve-week course for stewards based on the Navy's successful system.
Marines From Camp Lejeune on the USS Valley Forge
for training exercises, 1958.
These measures, however, did nothing to cure the chronic shortage of men and the attendant problems of increased work load and low morale that continued to plague the Steward's Branch throughout the 1950's. Consequently, the corps still found it difficult to attract enough black volunteers to the branch. In 1959, for example, the branch was still 8 percent short of its 826-man goal.[18-30] The obvious solution, to use white volunteers for messman duty, would be a radical departure from tradition. True, before World War II white marines had been used in the Marine Corps for duties now performed by black stewards, but they had never been members of a branch organized exclusively for that purpose. In 1956 tradition was broken when white volunteers were quietly signed up for the branch. By March 1961 the branch had eighty white men, 10 percent of its total. Reviewing the situation later that year, the commandant decided to increase the number of white stewards by setting a racial quota on steward assignment. Henceforth, he ordered, half the volunteers accepted for stewards duty would be white.[18-31]
Colonel Petersen
(1968 photograph).