Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965

by Morris J. MacGregor

Army Commissions
School	Class of 1964	Class of 1965	Class of 1966	Class of 1967
A&T College, N.C.	24	22	10	17
Central State College, Ohio	29	14	26	25
Florida A&M College	29	15	23	15
Hampton University, Va.	29	34	20	19
Lincoln University, Pa.	19	14	16	19
Morgan State College, Md.	21	27	12	16
Prairie View A&M College, Tex.	20	27	31	38
South Carolina State College	16	23	24	24
Southern University, La.	23	37	19	21
Tuskegee Institute, Ala.	14	14	20	26
Virginia State College	21	14	18	21
West Virginia State College	22	19	15	14
Howard University, Washington, D.C.	19	37	30	23
Total	286	297	264	278
Percentage of total such commissions granted	2.4	2.7	2.5	2.6

Army Commissions
School	Class of 1964	Class of 1965	Class of 1966
A&T College, N.C.	12	10	33
Howard University, Washington, D.C.	24	31	23
Maryland State College	2	4	4
Tennessee A&I University	13	26	32
Tuskegee Institute, Ala.	14	33	41
Total	65	104	133

Source: Office, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Civil Rights).

Chance of promotion for officers and men was one factor in judging equal treatment and opportunity in the services. A statistical comparison of the ranks of enlisted black servicemen between 1964 and 1966 reveals a steady advance (Table 28). With the exception of the Air Force, the percentage of Negroes in the higher enlisted ranks compared favorably with the total black percentage in each service. The advance was less marked for officers, but here too the black share of the O-4 grade (major or lieutenant commander) was comparable with the black percentage of the service's total strength. The services could declare with considerable justification that reform in this area was necessarily a drawn-out affair; promotion to the senior ranks must be won against strong competition.

Table 28—Percentage of Negroes in Certain Military Ranks, 1964-1966

E-6 (Staff Sergeant or Petty Officer, First Class)
	1964	1965	1966
Army	13.9	15.5	18.1
Navy	4.7	5.0	5.6
Marine Corps	5.0	5.3	10.4
Air Force	5.3	5.6	6.6
O-4 (Major or Lieutenant Commander)
Army	3.6	4.5	5.2
Navy	0.3	0.3	0.3
Marine Corps	0.3	0.3	0.2
Air Force	0.8	0.9	1.6

Source: Office, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Civil Rights).

The department's civil rights office forwarded to the services complaints from black servicemen who, despite the highest efficiency ratings and special commendations from commanders, failed to win promotions. "Almost uniformly," the office reported in 1965, "the reply comes back from the service that there had been no bias, no partiality, no prejudice operating in detriment on the complainant's consideration for promotion. They reply the best qualified was promoted, but this was not to say that the complainant did not have a very good record."[22-47] While black officers might well have been subtly discriminated against in matters of promotion, they also, it should be pointed out, shared in the general inflation in efficiency ratings, common in all the services, that resulted in average officers being given "highest efficiency ratings."

In addition to complaining of direct denial of promotion opportunity, so-called "vertical mobility," some black officers alleged that their chances of promotion had been systematically reduced by the services when they failed to provide Negroes with "horizontal mobility," that is, with a wide variety of assignments and all-important command experience which would justify their future advancement. Supporting these claims, the civil rights office reported that only 5 Negroes were enrolled at the senior service schools in 1965, 4 black naval officers with command experience were on active duty, and 26 black Air Force officers had been given tactical command experience since 1950. The severely limited assignment of black Army officers at the major command headquarters, moreover, illustrated the "narrow gauge" assignment of Negroes.[22-48] This picture seemed somewhat at variance with Deputy Assistant Secretary Shulman's assurances to the Kansas Conference on Civil Rights in May 1965 that "we have paid particular attention to the assignment of Negro officers to the senior Service schools, and to those positions of command that are so vital to officer advancement to the highest rank."[22-49]

Since promotion in the military ranks depended to a great extent on a man's skills, training in and assignment to vital job categories were important to enlisted men. Here, too, the statistics revealed that the percentage of Negroes in the technical occupations, which had begun to rise in the years after Korea, had continued to increase but that a large proportion still held unskilled or semiskilled military occupational specialties (Table 29). Eligibility for the various military occupations depended to a great extent on the servicemen's mental aptitude, with men scoring in the higher categories usually winning assignment to technical occupations. When the Army began drafting large numbers of men in the mid-1960's, the number of men in category IV, which included many Negroes, began to go up. Given the fact that many Negroes with the qualifications for technical training were ignoring the services for other vocations while the less qualified were once again swelling the ranks, the Department of Defense could do little to insure a fair representation of Negroes in technical occupations or increase the number of black soldiers in higher grades. The problem tended to feed upon itself. Not only were the statistics the bane of civil rights organizations, but they also influenced talented young blacks to decide against a service career, in effect creating a variation of Gresham's law in the Army wherein men of low mentality were keeping out men of high intelligence. There seemed little to be done, although the department's civil rights office pressed the services to establish remedial training for category IV men so that they might become eligible for more technical assignments.