Army Specialists Report for Airborne Training,
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 1948.
Here was a chance to create some black units, and Paul jumped at it. During the activation and reorganization of the units for the general reserve he persuaded the Organization and Training Division to convert nineteen white units to black: seven combat (including infantry and field artillery battalions), five combat support, and seven service units for a total of 8,000 spaces. Nine of the units were attached to general reserve divisions, including the 2d Armored, 2d Infantry, and 82d Airborne Division. The rest, nondivisional elements, were assigned to the various continental armies.[7-96]
With the spaces in hand, the Personnel and Administration Division launched a special drive in late December 1947 to secure 6,318 Negroes, 565 men per week, above the normal recruiting quotas. It called on the commanding generals of the continental armies to enlist men for three years' service in the Regular Army from among those who had previous military service, had completed high school, or had won the Bronze Star, Commendation Ribbon, or a decoration for valor, and who could make a "reasonable" score on the classification test. After basic training at Fort Dix and Fort Knox, the men would be eligible for specialized schooling and direct assignment to the newly converted units.[7-97]
The conversion of units did not expand to any great extent the range of military specialties open to Negroes because they were already serving in similarly organized units. But it did increase the number of skilled occupation slots available to them. To force a further increase in the number of school-trained Negroes, Paul asked The Adjutant General to determine how many spaces for school-trained specialists existed in the units converted from white to black and how many spaces for school-trained specialists were unfilled in black units worldwide. He wanted to increase the quotas for each school-trained specialty to insure filling all these positions.[7-98] He also arranged to increase black quotas in certain Military Police, Signal, and Medical Corps courses, and he insisted that a directive be sent to all major continental commands making mandatory the use of Negroes trained under the increased school quotas.[7-99] Moving further along these lines, Paul suggested The Adjutant General assign a black officer to study measures that might broaden the use of Negroes in the Army, increase school quotas for them, select black students properly, and assign trained black soldiers to suitable specialties.[7-100]
The Adjutant General assigned Maj. James D. Fowler, a black graduate of West Point, class of 1941, to perform all these tasks. Fowler surveyed the nineteen newly converted units and recommended that 1,134 men, approximately 20 percent of those enlisted for the special expansion of the general reserve, be trained in thirty-seven courses of instruction—an increase of 103 black spaces in these courses. Examining worldwide Army strength to determine deficiencies in school-trained specialties in black units, he recommended a total increase of 172 spaces in another thirty-seven courses. Studying the organizational tables of more than two hundred military bases, Fowler recommended that black school quotas for another eleven military occupational specialties, for which there were currently no black quotas, be set at thirty-nine spaces.
On the basis of these recommendations, the Army increased the number of courses with quotas for Negroes from 30 to 62; black quotas were increased in 14 courses; 16 others remained unchanged or their black quotas were slightly decreased. New courses were opened to Negroes in the Adjutant General's School, the airborne section of the Infantry School, and the Artillery, Armored, Engineer, Medical, Military Police, Ordnance, Quartermaster, Signal, and Transportation schools. Courses with increased quotas were in Transportation, Quartermaster, Ordnance, and Engineer schools.[7-101] The number of black soldiers in courses open to recruits quickly grew from 5 to 13.7 percent of total enrollment, and the number of courses open to Negroes rose from 30 to 48 percent of all the entry courses in the Army school system.
The Quota System: An Assessment
The conversion of nineteen units from white to black in December 1947, the procurement of 6,000 Negroes to man these units, and the increases in black quotas for the Army schools to train specialists for these and other black units worldwide marked the high point of the Army's attempt to broaden the employment of Negroes under the terms of the Gillem Board policy. As Paul well knew, the training of black troops was linked to their placement and until the great expansion of the Army in 1950 for the Korean War no other units were converted from white to black. The increase in black combat units and the spread in the range of military occupations for black troops, therefore, were never achieved as planned. The interval between wars ended just as it began with the majority of white soldiers serving in combat or administrative units and the majority of black soldiers continuing to work in service or combat support units.[7-102]
The Personnel and Organization Division made no further requests for increased school quotas for Negroes, and even those increases already approved were short-lived. As soon as the needs of the converted units were met, the school quotas for Negroes were reduced to a level sufficient to fill the replacement needs of the black units. By March 1949, spaces for black students in the replacement stream courses had declined from the 237 recommended by Major Fowler to eighty-two; the number of replacement stream courses open to Negroes fell from 48 percent of all courses offered to 19.8 percent. Fowler had expected to follow up his study of school quotas in the Military Police, Signal Corps, and Medical Corps with surveys of other schools figuring in the Career Guidance Program, but since no additional overhead positions were ever converted from white to black, no further need existed for school quota studies. The three-point study suggested by Paul to find ways to increase school quotas for Negroes was never made.