Integration of the Armed Forces | Page 7

Bases, 1949............................................ 403 5. Racial
Composition of Air Force Units.................. 404 6. Black Strength in the
Air Force........................ 405 7. Racial Composition of the Training
Command, December 1949.......................................... 406 8. Black
Manpower, U.S. Navy.............................. 416 (p. xx) 9. Worldwide
Distribution of Enlisted Personnel by Race, October
1952........................................... 458 10. Distribution of Black Enlisted
Personnel by Branch and Rank, 31 October 1952............................. 458
11. Black Marines, 1949-1955.............................. 463 12. Defense
Installations With Segregated Public Schools.. 491 13. Black Strength

in the Armed Forces for Selected Years. 522 14. Estimated Percentage
Distribution of Draft-Age Males in U.S. Population by AFQT
Groups............... 523 15. Rate of Men Disqualified for Service in
1962.......... 523 16. Rejection Rates for Failure To Pass Armed Forces
Mental Test, 1962..................................... 524 17. Nonwhite Inductions
and First Enlistments, Fiscal Years 1953-1962.......................................
525 18. Distribution of Enlisted Personnel in Each Major Occupation,
1956...................................... 525 19. Occupational Group Distribution
by Race, All DOD, 1962.................................................. 525 20.
Occupational Group Distribution of Enlisted Personnel by Length of
Service, and Race.............. 526 21. Percentage Distribution of Navy
Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups and Occupational Areas,
and Length of Service, 1962............................... 526 22. Percentage
Distribution of Blacks and Whites by Pay Grade, All DOD,
1962.................................. 527 23. Percentage Distribution of Navy
Enlisted Personnel by Race, AFQT Groups, Pay Grade, and Length of
Service, 1962......................................... 528 24. Black Percentages,
1962-1968.......................... 568 25. Rates for First Reenlistments,
1964-1967.............. 569 26. Black Attendance at the Military
Academies, July 1968. 569 27. Army and Air Force Commissions
Granted at Predominately Black Schools........................... 570 28.
Percentage of Negroes in Certain Military Ranks,
1964-1966............................................. 571 29. Distribution of
Servicemen in Occupational Groups by Race,
1967......................................... 573

INTEGRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES (p. 001) 1940-1965
CHAPTER 1
(p. 003)
Introduction
In the quarter century that followed American entry into World War II,
the nation's armed forces moved from the reluctant inclusion of a few

segregated Negroes to their routine acceptance in a racially integrated
military establishment. Nor was this change confined to military
installations. By the time it was over, the armed forces had redefined
their traditional obligation for the welfare of their members to include a
promise of equal treatment for black servicemen wherever they might
be. In the name of equality of treatment and opportunity, the
Department of Defense began to challenge racial injustices deeply
rooted in American society.
For all its sweeping implications, equality in the armed forces
obviously had its pragmatic aspects. In one sense it was a practical
answer to pressing political problems that had plagued several national
administrations. In another, it was the services' expression of those
liberalizing tendencies that were permeating American society during
the era of civil rights activism. But to a considerable extent the policy
of racial equality that evolved in this quarter century was also a
response to the need for military efficiency. So easy did it become to
demonstrate the connection between inefficiency and discrimination
that, even when other reasons existed, military efficiency was the one
most often evoked by defense officials to justify a change in racial
policy.
The Armed Forces Before 1940
Progress toward equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces
was an uneven process, the result of sporadic and sometimes
conflicting pressures derived from such constants in American society
as prejudice and idealism and spurred by a chronic shortage of military
manpower. In his pioneering study of race relations, Gunnar Myrdal
observes that ideals have always played a dominant role in the social
dynamics of America.[1-1] By extension, the ideals that helped involve
the nation in many of its wars also helped produce important changes in
the treatment of Negroes by the armed forces. The democratic spirit
embodied in the Declaration of Independence, for example, opened the
Continental Army to many Negroes, holding out to them the promise of
eventual freedom.[1-2]
[Footnote 1-1: Gunnar Myrdal, The American Dilemma: The Negro

Problem and Modern Democracy, rev. ed. (New York: Harper Row,
1962), p. lxi.]
[Footnote 1-2: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American
Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), pp.
182-85. The following brief summary of the Negro in the pre-World
War II Army is based in part on the Quarles book and Roland C.
McConnell, Negro Troops of Antebellum Louisiana: A History of the
Battalion of Free Men of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1968); Dudley T. Cornish, Sable Arm: Negro Troops
in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: Norton, 1966); William H.
Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the
West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969); William Bruce
White, "The Military and the Melting Pot: The American Army and
Minority Groups, 1865-1924" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Wisconsin, 1968); Marvin E. Fletcher, The Black Soldier and Officer in
the United States Army, 1891-1917 (Columbia: University of Missouri
Press,