Integration of the Armed Forces | Page 9

treatment and opportunity a generation before the Supreme Court sanctioned such a distinction in Plessy v. Ferguson.[1-6] So important to many in the black community was this guaranteed existence of the four regiments that had served with distinction against the frontier Indians that few complained about segregation. In fact, as historian Jack Foner has pointed out, black leaders sometimes interpreted demands for integration as attempts to eliminate black soldiers altogether.[1-7]
[Footnote 1-6: 163 U.S. 537 (1896). In this 1896 case concerning segregated seating on a Louisiana railroad, the Supreme Court ruled that so long as equality of accommodation existed, segregation could not in itself be considered discriminatory and therefore did not violate the equal rights provision of the Fourteenth Amendment. This "separate but equal" doctrine would prevail in American law for more than half a century.]
[Footnote 1-7: Foner, Blacks and the Military in American History, p. 66.]
The Spanish-American War marked a break with the post-Civil War tradition of limited recruitment. Besides the 3,339 black regulars, approximately 10,000 black volunteers served in the Army during (p.?007) the conflict. World War I was another exception, for Negroes made up nearly 11 percent of the Army's total strength, some 404,000 officers and men.[1-8] The acceptance of Negroes during wartime stemmed from the Army's pressing need for additional manpower. Yet it was no means certain in the early months of World War I that this need for men would prevail over the reluctance of many leaders to arm large groups of Negroes. Still remembered were the 1906 Brownsville affair, in which men of the 25th Infantry had fired on Texan civilians, and the August 1917 riot involving members of the 24th Infantry at Houston, Texas.[1-9] Ironically, those idealistic impulses that had operated in earlier wars were operating again in this most Jim Crow of administrations.[1-10] Woodrow Wilson's promise to make the world safe for democracy was forcing his administration to admit Negroes to the Army. Although it carefully maintained racially separate draft calls, the National Army conscripted some 368,000 Negroes, 13.08 percent of all those drafted in World War I.[1-11]
[Footnote 1-8: Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1966), p. 5. See also Army War College Historical Section, "The Colored Soldier in the U.S. Army," May 1942, p. 22, copy in CMH.]
[Footnote 1-9: For a modern analysis of the two incidents and the effect of Jim Crow on black units before World War I, see John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1970); Robert V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976).]
[Footnote 1-10: On the racial attitudes of the Wilson administration, see Nancy J. Weiss, "The Negro and the New Freedom: Fighting Wilsonian Segregation," Political Science Quarterly 84 (March 1969):61-79.]
[Footnote 1-11: Special Report of the Provost Marshal General on Operations of the Selective Service System to December 1918 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 193.]
Black assignments reflected the opinion, expressed repeatedly in Army staff studies throughout the war, that when properly led by whites, blacks could perform reasonably well in segregated units. Once again Negroes were called on to perform a number of vital though unskilled jobs, such as construction work, most notably in sixteen specially formed pioneer infantry regiments. But they also served as frontline combat troops in the all-black 92d and 93d Infantry Divisions, the latter serving with distinction among the French forces.
Established by law and tradition and reinforced by the Army staff's conviction that black troops had not performed well in combat, segregation survived to flourish in the postwar era.[1-12] The familiar practice of maintaining a few black units was resumed in the Regular Army, with the added restriction that Negroes were totally excluded from the Air Corps. The postwar manpower retrenchments common to all Regular Army units further reduced the size of the remaining black units. By June 1940 the number of Negroes on active duty stood at approximately 4,000 men, 1.5 percent of the Army's total, about the same proportion as Negroes in the Navy.[1-13]
[Footnote 1-12: The development of post-World War I policy is discussed in considerable detail in Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, Chapters I and II. See also U.S. Army War College Miscellaneous File 127-1 through 127-23 and 127-27, U.S. Army Military History Research Collection, Carlisle Barracks (hereafter AMHRC).]
[Footnote 1-13: The 1940 strength figure is extrapolated from Misc Div, AGO, Returns Sec, 9 Oct 39-30 Nov 41. The figures do not include some 3,000 Negroes in National Guard units under state control.]
Civil Rights and the Law in 1940 (p.?008)
The same constants in American society that helped decide the status of black servicemen in the nineteenth century remained influential between the world wars, but with a significant change.[1-14] Where once the advancing fortunes