Gun Crew of Battery B, 598th Field Artillery,
moving into position near the Arno River, Italy, September 1944.
Despite these criticisms, mobilization plans between the wars all assumed that black officers would be trained and commissioned, although, as the 1937 mobilization plan put it, their numbers would be limited to those required to provide officers for organizations authorized to have black officers.[2-86] No detailed plans were drawn up on the nature of this training, but by the eve of World War II a policy had become fixed: Negroes were to be chosen and trained according to the same standards as white officers, preferably in the same schools.[2-87] The War Department ignored the subject of race when it established the officer candidate schools in 1941. "The basic and predominating consideration governing selections to OCS," The Adjutant General announced, would be "outstanding qualities of leadership as demonstrated by actual services in the Army."[2-88] General Davis, who participated in the planning conferences, reasoned that integrated training would be vital for the cooperation that would be necessary in battle. He agreed with the War Department's silence on race, adding, "you can't have Negro, white, or Jewish officers, you've got to have American officers."[2-89]
Tankers of the 761st Medium Tank Battalion
prepare for action in the European theater, August 1944.
The Army's policy failed to consider one practical problem: if race was ignored in War Department directives, would black candidates ever be nominated and selected for officer training? Early enrollment figures suggested they would not. Between July 1941, when the schools opened, and October 1941, only seventeen out of the 1,997 students enrolled in candidate schools were Negroes. Only six more Negroes entered during the next two months.[2-90]
Some civil rights spokesmen argued for the establishment of a quota system, and a few Negroes even asked for a return to segregated schools to insure a more plentiful supply of black officers. Even before the schools opened, Judge Hastie warned Secretary Stimson that any effective integration plan "required a directive to Corps Area Commanders indicating that Negroes are to be selected in numbers exactly or approximately indicated for particular schools."[2-91] But the planners had recommended the integrated schools precisely to avoid a quota system. They were haunted by the Army's 1917 experience, although the chief of the Army staff's Organizations Division did not allude to these misgivings when he answered Judge Hastie. He argued that a quota could not be defended on any grounds "except those of a political nature" and would be "race discrimination against the whites."[2-92]
General Marshall agreed that racial parity could not be achieved at the expense of commissioning unqualified men, but he was equally adamant about providing equal opportunity for all qualified candidates, black and white. He won support for his position from some of the civil rights advocates.[2-93] These arguments may not have swayed Hastie, but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. He concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the Negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates was to be chosen. Hastie's recommendation was ignored, but the widespread refusal of local commanders to approve or transmit applications of Negroes, or even to give them access to appropriate forms, halted when Secretary Stimson and the Army staff made it plain that they expected substantial numbers of Negroes to be sent to the schools.[2-94]