Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965

by Morris J. MacGregor

The National Guard Bureau supported voluntary integration, and its chiefs tried in 1962 and 1963 to prod state adjutants general into taking action on their own account. Citing the success some states, notably Texas, enjoyed in continuing the integration their units first experienced during federalized service in the Berlin call-up, Maj. Gen. D. W. McGowan warned other state organizations that outright defiance of federal authorities could not be maintained indefinitely and would eventually lead to integration enforced by Washington.[23-48] Replies from the state adjutants varied, but in some cases it became clear that the combination of persuasion and quiet pressure might bring change. The Louisiana adjutant general, for example, reported that considering the feelings in his state's legislature any move toward integration would require "a selling job." At the same time, he carefully admitted, "some of these days, the thing [integration] is probably inevitable."[23-49] The administration, however, continued to take the view that integration of the National Guard was a special problem because the leverage available to implement it was in no way comparable to the federal government's control over the active forces or the organized reserves.

Progress toward total integration continued through 1963 and 1964, although slowly.[23-50] Near the end of 1964, the National Guard Bureau announced that every state National Guard was integrated, though only in token numbers in some cases.[23-51] Even this slight victory could not be claimed by the Department of Defense or its National Guard Bureau, but was the result of the pressure exerted on states by the Gesell Committee.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 altered the Defense Department's attitude toward the National Guard. Title VI of the act undercut all arguments against federal supremacy over the guard, for it no longer mattered who had technical responsibility for units in peacetime. In practical terms, the power to integrate clearly rested now with the federal government, which in a complete reversal of its earlier policy showed a disposition to use it. On 15 February 1965 Deputy Secretary of Defense Vance ordered the Army and Air Force to amend National Guard regulations to eliminate any trace of racial discrimination and "to ensure that the policy of equal opportunity and treatment is clearly stated."[23-52] Vance's order produced a speedy change in the states, so much so that later in 1965 the Department of Defense was finally able to oppose New York Congressman Abraham J. Multer's biannual bill to withhold federal aid from segregated guard units on the grounds that there were no longer any such units.[23-53]

Lack of equal opportunity in the National Guard might have been resented by civil rights groups, but black servicemen themselves suffered more generally and more deeply from discrimination visited on their children. Alfred Fitt summarized these feelings in 1964:

The imposition of unconstitutionally segregated schooling on their children is particularly galling for the Negro servicemen. As comparative transients—and as military men accustomed to avoiding controversy with civilian authorities—they cannot effectively sue for the constitutional rights of their sons and daughters. Yet they see their children, fresh from the integrated environment which is the rule on military installations, condemned to schools which are frequently two, even three grades behind the integrated schools these same children had attended on-base or at their fathers' previous duty stations.[23-54]

There was much to be said for the Defense Department's theory that an appeal for voluntary compliance would produce much integration in off-base schools attended by military dependents. That these children were the offspring of men serving in defense of their country was likely to have considerable impact in the south, especially, with its strong military traditions. That the children had in most cases already attended integrated schools, competing and learning with children of another race, was likely to make their integration more acceptable to educators.

Beyond these special reasons, the services could expect help from new legislation and new administration rulings. The Civil Rights Act of 1960, for example, had authorized the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to provide integrated education for military dependents in areas where public schools were discontinued. In March 1962 Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Abraham Ribicoff announced that racially segregated schools were no longer "suitable" institutions under the terms of Public Laws 815 and 879 and that beginning in September 1963 his department would "exercise sound discretion, take appropriate steps" to provide integrated education for military dependents. If the children were withdrawn from local school systems to achieve this, he warned, so too the federal aid.[23-55] Lending credence to Ribicoff's warning, his department undertook a survey in the fall of 1962 of selected military installations to determine the educational status of military dependents.[23-56] On 17 September 1962 Attorney General Kennedy filed suit in Richmond to bar the use of federal funds in the segregated schools of Prince George County, Virginia, the location of Fort Lee.[23-57] Finally, in January 1963, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare announced that unless state officials relented it would start a crash program of construction and operation of integrated schools for military dependents in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina.[23-58]

Some local commanders took immediate advantage of these emotional appeals and administration pressures. The commandant of the Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, for example, won an agreement from Stafford County, Virginia, authorities that the county would open its high school and two elementary schools to Marine Corps dependents without regard to race. The commandant also announced that schools in Albany, Georgia, had agreed to take military dependents on an integrated basis.[23-59] The Air Force announced that schools near Eglin, Whiting, and MacDill Air Force Bases in Florida as well as those near six bases in Texas, including Sheppard and Connally, would integrate. The Under Secretary of the Navy reported similar successes in school districts in Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. And the commander of Fort Belvoir started discussions with the Fairfax County, Virginia, school board looking toward the speedy desegregation of schools near the fort.

Lest any commander hesitate, the Department of Defense issued a new policy in regard to the education of military dependents. On 15 July 1963 Assistant Secretary Paul directed all local commanders in areas where public education was still segregated—large parts of some fifteen states—to counsel parents on the procedures available for the transfer of their children to integrated schools, on how to appeal assignment to segregated schools, and on legal action as an alternative to accepting local school board decisions to bar their children.[23-60] In December 1963 Fitt drew up contingency plans for the education of dependent children in the event of local school closings.[23-61] In April of 1964 Fitt reminded the services that Defense Department policy called for the placement of military dependents in integrated schools and that commanders were expected to make "appropriate efforts" on behalf of the children to eliminate any deviation from that policy.[23-62] In effect, base commanders were being given a specific role in the fight to secure for black and white dependents equal access to public schools.

The action taken by base commanders under this responsibility might alter patterns of segregated education in some areas, but in the long run any attempt to integrate schools through a program of voluntary compliance appeared futile. At the end of the 1964 school year more than 76,300 military dependents, including 6,177 black children, at forty-nine installations attended segregated schools. Another 14,390 children on these same bases attended integrated schools, usually grade school, on the military base itself.[23-63] Because of the restrictions against base closings and off-limits sanctions, there was little hope that base commanders could produce any substantial improvement in this record. Fitt admitted that the Department of Defense could not compel the integration of a school district. He recognized that it was impossible to establish an accredited twelve-grade system at the forty-nine installations, yet at the same time he considered it "incompatible with military requirements" to assign black servicemen with children to areas where only integrated schools were available. Even the threat to deny impacted-area aid was limited because in many communities the services' contracts with local school districts to educate dependent children was contingent on continuous federal aid. If the aid was stopped the schools would be closed, leaving service children with no schools to attend.[23-64]