This imbalance was of particular concern to Marcus Ray who was present when the suspension of black enlistments had been decided upon. Ray had suggested that instead of barring all new enlistees the Army should discharge all Class V soldiers, whites and blacks alike, for the convenience of the government and recruit in their place an equal number of Class I and II candidates. Manpower officials had objected, arguing there was no point in enlisting more Negroes in Class I and II until the 10 percent ratio was again reached. Such a reduction, with current attrition, would take two years. At the same time, the Army manpower shortages made it impractical to discharge 92,000 soldiers, half of whom were white, in Class V. The organization and training representatives, on the other hand, agreed with Ray that it was in the best interest of the Army to discharge these men, pointing out that a recent increase in pay for enlisted men together with the continuing need for recruits with greater aptitude for learning would make the policy palatable to the Congress and the public.[7-37]
The conferees deferred decision on the matter, but during the following months the War Department set out to achieve a qualitative balance between its black and white recruits. On 10 August 1946 the Chief of Staff directed commanders, under the authority of Army Regulation 615-369 which defined ineptness for military service, to eliminate after six months men "incapable of serving in the Army in a desirable manner after reasonable attempts have been made to utilize their capabilities." He went on to explain that this category included those not mentally qualified, generally defined as men scoring below seventy, and those repeatedly guilty of minor offenses.[7-38] The Army reissued the order in 1947, further defining the criteria for discharge to include those who needed continued and special instruction or supervision or who exhibited habitual drunkenness, ineptness, or inability to conform to group living. A further modification in 1949 would deny reenlistment to married men who had failed during their first enlistment to make corporal or single men who did not make private first class.[7-39]
The measures were aimed at eliminating the least qualified men of both races, and in October 1946 General Paul decided the Army could now begin taking black recruits with the qualifications and background that allowed them "to become useful members of the Army."[7-40] To that end The Adjutant General announced on 2 October that as a further exception to the prohibition against black enlistments in the Regular Army all former officers and noncommissioned officers who volunteered would be accepted without limitation.[7-41] On 31 October he announced the establishment of a selective procurement program. With the exception of men who had been in certain specialized occupations for six months, all Negroes enlisting in the Regular Army had to score one hundred on the Army General Classification Test; the minimum score for white enlistees remained seventy.[7-42] At the same time, The Adjutant General rescinded for Negroes the choice-of-assignment provision of Regular Army enlistment contracts.
These measures helped lower the percentage of Negroes in the Army and reduced to some extent the differential in test scores between white and black soldiers. The percentage of Negroes dropped by 30 June 1947 to 7.91 percent of the Army, 8.99 percent of its enlisted strength and 9.4 percent of its Regular Army strength. Black enlisted strength of all the overseas commands stood at 8.75 percent, down from the 10.77 percent of the previous December. Percentages in the individual theaters reflected this trend; the European theater, for example, dropped from 10.33 percent black to 9.96, the Mediterranean theater from 10.05 to 8.03, and Alaska from 26.6 to 14.54.[7-43]
Precise figures on the number of poorly qualified troops eliminated are unknown, but the European command expected to discharge some 12,000 low-scoring and unsuitable men, many of them black, in 1947.[7-44] Several commands reported that the new regulations materially improved the quality of black units by opening vacancies to better qualified men. General Paul could argue with considerable justification that in regulating the quality of its recruits the Army was following the spirit if not the letter of the Gillem Board Report. If the Army could set high enough standards it would get good men, and to this end the General Staff's Personnel and Administration Division asked for the support of commanders.[7-45]
Although these measures were helpful to the Army, they were frankly discriminatory, and they immediately raised a storm of protest. During the summer of 1946, for example, many black soldiers and airmen complained about the Army's rejection of black enlistments for the European theater. The NAACP, which received some of the soldiers' complaints, suggested that the War Department honor its pledges or immediately release all Negroes who were refused their choice of location.[7-46] The Army did just that, offering to discharge honorably those soldiers who, denied their theater of choice, rejected any substitute offered.[7-47]
Later in 1946 a young Negro sued the Secretary of War and a Pittsburgh recruiting officer for refusing to enlist him. To make standards for black applicants substantially higher than those for whites, he alleged, violated the Preamble and Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, while the inducements offered for enlistment, for example the GI Bill of Rights, constituted a valuable property right denied him because of race. The suit asked that all further enlistments in the Army be stopped until Negroes were accepted on equal terms with whites and all special enlistment requirements for Negroes were abolished.[7-48] Commenting on the case, the chief of the War Department's Public Relations Division, Maj. Gen. Floyd L. Parks, defended the Gillem Board's 10 percent quota, but agreed that "we are on weak ground [in] having a different standard for admission between white and colored.... I think the thing to do is to put a ceiling over the number you take in, and then take the best ones."[7-49]
The suit brought to a climax the feeling of indignation against Army policy that had been growing among some civil rights activists. One organization called on the Secretary of War to abandon the Gillem Board policy "and unequivocably and equitably integrate Negroes ... without any discrimination, segregation or quotas in any form, concept or manner."[7-50] Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., of Wisconsin called the decision to suspend black enlistments race discrimination.[7-51] Walter P. Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers and the codirector of his union's Fair Practices Department, branded the establishment of a quota "undemocratic and in violation of principles for which they [Negroes] fought in the war" and demanded that black enlistment be reinstated and the quota abolished.[7-52] Invoking American tradition and the United Nations Charter, John Haynes Holmes, chairman of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, called for the abolition of enlistment quotas. The national commander of the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America announced that his organization unreservedly condemned the quota because it deliberately deprived citizens of their constitutional right to serve their country.[7-53]
The replies of the Secretary of War to all these protests were very much alike. The Army's enlistment practices, he wrote, were based on a belief that black strength in the Army ought to bear a direct relationship to the percentage of Negroes in the population. As for the basic premise of what seemed to him a perfectly logical course of action, Patterson concluded that "acceptance of the Negro-white ratio existing in the civilian population as a basis for the Army's distribution of units and personnel is not considered discriminatory."[7-54] The secretary's responses were interesting, for they demonstrated a significant change in the Army's attitude toward the quota. There is evidence that the quota was devised by the Gillem Board as a temporary expedient to guarantee the substantial participation of Negroes. It was certainly so viewed by civil rights advocates. As late as December 1946 Assistant Secretary Petersen was still echoing this view when he explained that the quota was a temporary ceiling and the Army had no right to use it as a permanent bar to black enlistment.[7-55]
Nevertheless it is also clear that the traditionalists considered the quota a means of permanently limiting black soldiers to a percentage equivalent to Negroes in the population. Assistant Secretary McCloy belonged to neither group. More than a year before in reviewing the Gillem Board's work he had declared: "I do not see any place for a quota in a policy that looks to utilization of Negroes on the basis of ability."