While the solution to the problem of too many black enlistees and too many low-scoring men was obvious, it was also replete with difficulty. The difficulty came from the complex way the Army obtained its manpower. It accepted volunteers for enlistment in the Regular Army and qualified veterans for the Organized Reserves; until November 1946 it also drafted men through the Selective Service and accepted volunteers for the draft.[7-27] At the same time, under certain conditions it accepted enlistment in the Regular Army of drafted men who had completed their tours. To curtail enlistment of Negroes and discharge low-scoring professionals, the Army would be obliged to manipulate the complex regulations governing the various forms of enlistment and sidestep the egalitarian provisions of the Selective Service System at a time when the service was trying to attract recruits and avoid charges of racial discrimination. Altogether it was quite a large order, and during the next two years the Army fought the battle of numbers on many fronts.
It first took on the draft. Although to stop inducting Negroes when the administration was trying to persuade Congress to extend the draft act was politically unwise, the Army saw no way to restrict the number of Negroes or eliminate substandard men so long as Selective Service insisted on 10 percent black calls and a minimum classification test score of seventy. In April 1946 the Army issued a call for 126,000 men, boldly specifying that no Negroes would be accepted. Out of the battle of memos with Selective Service that followed, a compromise emerged: a black call of 4 percent of the total in April, a return to the usual 10 percent call for Negroes in May, and another 4 percent call in June.[7-28] No draft calls were issued in July and August, but in September the Army staff tried again, canceling the call for Negroes and rejecting black volunteers for induction.[7-29] Again it encountered resistance from the Selective Service and the black community, and when the Secretary of War was sued for violation of the Selective Service Act the Army issued a 3 percent call for Negroes in October, the last call made under the 1940 draft law. In all, 16,888 Negroes were drafted into the Army in 1946, some 10.5 percent of the total.[7-30]
The Army had more success restricting black enlistments. In April 1946, at the same time it adopted the Gillem Board recommendations, the Army began to deny enlistment or reenlistment in the Regular Army to anyone scoring below seventy on the Army General Classification Test. The only exceptions were men who had been decorated for valor and men with previous service who had scored sixty-five and were recommended for reenlistment by their commanders.[7-31] The Army also stopped enlisting men with active venereal disease, not because the Medical Department was unable to cure them but because by and large their educational levels were low and, according to the classification tests, they had little aptitude for learning. The Army stopped recruiting men for special stations, hoping a denial of the European theater and other attractive assignments would lower the number of unwanted recruits.
Using the new enlistment standards as a base, the Army quickly revised its estimated black strength downward. On 16 April 1946 the Secretary of War rescinded the order requiring major commands to retain a black strength of 15 percent.[7-32] The acting G-3 had already informed the commanding general of the Army Air Forces of the predicted drop in the number of black troops—from 13.3 percent in June 1946 to 10 percent a year later—and agreed the Army Air Forces could reduce its planned intake accordingly.[7-33] Estimating the European theater's capacity to absorb black troops at 21,845 men, approximately 10 percent of the command total, the Army staff agreed to readjust its planned allotment of Negroes to that command downward by some 1,500 spaces.[7-34]
These changes proved ill-advised, for the effort to curb the number of Negroes in the Regular Army was largely unsuccessful. The staff had overlooked the ineffectiveness of the Army's testing measures and the zeal of its recruiters who, pressed to fill their quotas, accepted enlistees without concern for the new standards. By mid-June the effect was readily apparent. The European theater, for example, reported some 19,000 Negroes in excess of billets in black units and some 2,000 men above the theater's current allotment of black troops. Assignment of Negroes to Europe had been stopped, but the number of black regulars waiting for overseas assignment stood at 5,000, a figure expected to double by the end of the summer. Some of this excess could be absorbed in eight newly created black units, but that still left black units worldwide 18 to 40 percent overstrength.[7-35]
Marcus Ray
Notice that Negroes totaled 16 percent of the Regular Army on 1 July 1946 with the personnel staff's projections running to a 24 percent level for the next year precipitated action in the War Department. On 15 July Marcus Ray and Dean Rusk, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of War, met with representatives of the Army staff to discuss black strength. Basing his decision on the consensus of that meeting, the Secretary of War on 17 July suspended enlistment of Negroes in the Regular Army. He excepted two categories of men from this ruling. Men who qualified and had actually served for six months in any of forty-eight unusual military occupational specialties in which there were chronic manpower shortages would be enlisted without promise of specific assignment to branch or station. At the same time, because of manpower shortages, the Army would continue to accept Negroes, already regulars, who wanted to reenlist.[7-36]
While the new enlistment policy would help restore the Gillem Board's quantitative equilibrium to the Army, the secretary's exception allowing reenlistment of regulars would only intensify the qualitative imbalance between black and white soldiers. The nation's biracial educational system had produced an average black soldier who scored well below the average white soldier on all the Army's educational and training tests. The segregation policy had only complicated the problem by denying the talented Negro the full range of Army occupations and hence an equal chance for advancement. With the suspension of first-time enlistments, the qualitative imbalance was sure to grow, for now the highly qualified civilian would be passed over while the less qualified soldier was permitted to reenlist.