Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965

by Morris J. MacGregor

The status of black servicemen in the integration era has attracted considerable attention among oral history enthusiasts. The author has taken advantage of this special source, but oral testimony concerning integration must be treated cautiously. In addition to the usual dangers of fallible memory that haunt all oral history interviews, the subjects of some of these interviews, it should be emphasized, were separated from the events they were recalling by a civil rights revolution that has changed fundamentally the attitudes of many people, both black and white. In some instances it is readily apparent that the recollections of persons being interviewed have been colored by the changes of the 1950's and 1960's, and while their recitation of specific events can be checked against the records, their estimates of attitudes and influences, not so easily verified, should be used cautiously. Much of this danger can be avoided by a skillful interviewer with special knowledge of integration. Because of the care that went into the interviews conducted in the U.S. Air Force Oral History Program, which are on file at the Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center, they are particularly dependable. This is especially true of those used in this study, for they were conducted by Lt. Col. Alan Gropman and Maj. Alan Osur, both serious students of the subject. Particular note should be made of the especially valuable interviews with former Secretary of the Air Force Eugene M. Zuckert and several of the more prominent black generals.

The extensive Columbia University Oral History Collection has several interviews of special interest, in particular the very revealing interview with the National Urban League's Lester Granger. Read in conjunction with the National Archives' Forrestal Papers, this interview is a major source for the Navy's immediate postwar policy changes. Similarly, the Kennedy Library's oral history program contains several interviews that are helpful in assessing the role of the services in the Kennedy administration's civil rights program. Of particular interest are the interviews with Harris Wofford, Roy Wilkins, and Theodore Hesburgh.

The U.S. Marine Corps Oral History Program, whose interviews are on file in Marine Corps headquarters, and the U.S. Navy Oral History Collection, copies of which can be found in the Navy's Operational Archives Branch, contain several interviews of special interest to researchers in racial history. Mention should be made of the Marine Corps interviews with Generals Ray A. Robinson and Alfred G. Noble and the Navy's interviews with Captains Mildred McAfee Horton and Dorothy Stratton, leaders of the World War II WAVES and SPARS.

Finally, included in the files of the Center of Military History is a collection of notes taken by Lee Nichols, Martin Blumenson, and the author during their interviews with leading figures in the integration story. The Nichols notes, covering the series of interviews conducted by that veteran reporter in 1953-54, include such items as summaries of conversations with Harry S. Truman, Truman K. Gibson, Jr., and Emmett J. Scott.

Printed Materials

Many of the secondary materials found particularly helpful by the author have been cited throughout the volume, but special attention should be drawn to certain key works in several categories. In the area of official works, Ulysses Lee's The Employment of Negro Troops in the United States Army in World War II series (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1966) remains the definitive account of the Negro in the World War II Army. The Bureau of Naval Personnel's "The Negro in the Navy," Bureau of Naval Personnel History of World War II (mimeographed, 1946, of which there is a copy in the bureau's Technical Library in Washington), is a rare item that has assumed even greater significance with the loss of so much of the bureau's records. Presented without attribution, the text paraphrases many important documents accurately. Margaret L. Geis's "Negro Personnel in the European Command, 1 January 1946-30 June 1950," part of the Occupation Forces in Europe series (Historical Division, European Command, 1952), Ronald Sher's "Integration of Negro and White Troops in the U.S. Army, Europe, 1952-1954" (Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Army, Europe, 1956), and Charles G. Cleaver, "Personnel Problems," vol. III, pt. 2, of the "History of the Korean War" (Military History Section, Headquarters, Far East Command, 1952), are important secondary sources for guiding the student through a bewildering mass of materials. Alan M. Osur's Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II: The Problem of Race Relations (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977) and Alan Gropman's The Air Force Integrates, 1945-1964 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978), both published by the Office of Air Force History, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Ralph W. Donnelly's Blacks in the Marine Corps (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975) provided official, comprehensive surveys of their subjects. Finally, there is in the files of the Center of Military History a copy of the transcripts of the National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs (26 April 1948). Second only to the transcripts of the Fahy Committee hearings in comprehensiveness on the subject of postwar racial policies, this document also provides a rare look at the attitudes of the traditional black leadership at a crucial period.

As the footnotes indicate, congressional documents and newspapers were also important resources mined in the preparation of this volume. Of particular interest, the Center of Military History has on file a special guide to some of these sources prepared by Lt. Col. Reinhold S. Schumann (USAR). This guide analyzes the congressional and press reaction to the 1940 and 1948 draft laws and to the Fahy and Gesell Committee reports.

In his Blacks and the Military in American History: A New Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1974), Jack D. Foner provides a fine general survey of the Negro in the armed forces, including an accurate summary of the integration period. Among the many specialized studies on the integration period itself, cited throughout the text, several might provide a helpful entree to a complicated subject. The standard account is Richard M. Dalfiume's Desegregation of the United States Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939-1953 (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1969). Carefully documented and containing a very helpful bibliography, this work tends to emphasize the influence of the civil rights advocates and Harry Truman on the integration process. The reader will also benefit from consulting Lee Nichols's pioneer work, Breakthrough on the Color Front (New York: Random House, 1954). Although lacking documentation, Nichols's journalistic account was devised with the help of many of the participants and is still of considerable value to the student. The reader may also want to consult Richard J. Stillman II's short survey, Integration of the Negro in the U.S. Armed Forces (New York: Praeger, 1968), principally for its statistical information on the post-Korean period.

The role of President Truman and the Fahy Committee in the integration of the armed forces has been treated in detail by Dalfiume and by Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten in Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (Lawrence, Kansas: The University of Kansas Press, 1973). A valuable critical appraisal of the short-range response of the Army to the Fahy Committee's work appeared in Edwin W. Kenworthy's "The Case Against Army Segregation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 275 (May 1951):27-33. In addition, the reader may want to consult William C. Berman's The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970) for a general survey of civil rights in the Truman years.

The expansion of the Defense Department's equal treatment and opportunity policy in the 1960's is explained by Adam Yarmolinsky in The Military Establishment: Its Impacts on American Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). This book is the work of a number of informed specialists sponsored by the 20th Century Fund. A general survey of President Kennedy's civil rights program is presented by Carl M. Brauer in his John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). The McNamara era is treated in Fred Richard Bahr's "The Expanding Role of the Department of Defense as an Instrument of Social Change" (Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, 1970).