Integration of the Armed Forces | Page 8

1974); Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, Unknown Soldiers:
Black American Troops in World War I (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1974). For a general survey of black soldiers in
America's wars, see Jack Foner, Blacks and the Military in American
History: A New Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1974).]
Yet the fact that the British themselves were taking large numbers
(p. 004) of Negroes into their ranks proved more important than
revolutionary idealism in creating a place for Negroes in the American
forces. Above all, the participation of both slaves and freedmen in the
Continental Army and the Navy was a pragmatic response to a pressing
need for fighting men and laborers. Despite the fear of slave
insurrection shared by many colonists, some 5,000 Negroes, the
majority from New England, served with the American forces in the
Revolution, often in integrated units, some as artillerymen and
musicians, the majority as infantrymen or as unarmed pioneers detailed
to repair roads and bridges.
Again, General Jackson's need for manpower at New Orleans explains
the presence of the Louisiana Free Men of Color in the last great battle

of the War of 1812. In the Civil War the practical needs of the Union
Army overcame the Lincoln administration's fear of alienating the
border states. When the call for volunteers failed to produce the
necessary men, Negroes were recruited, generally as laborers at first
but later for combat. In all, 186,000 Negroes served in the Union Army.
In addition to those in the sixteen segregated combat regiments and the
labor units, thousands also served unofficially as laborers, teamsters,
and cooks. Some 30,000 Negroes served in the Navy, about 25 percent
of its total Civil War strength.
The influence of the idealism fostered by the abolitionist crusade
should not be overlooked. It made itself felt during the early months of
the war in the demands of Radical Republicans and some Union
generals for black enrollment, and it brought about the postwar
establishment of black units in the Regular Army. In 1866 Congress
authorized the creation of permanent, all-black units, which in 1869
were designated the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th
Infantry.
[Illustration: CREWMEN OF THE USS MIAMI DURING THE
CIVIL WAR]
Military needs and idealistic impulses were not enough to guarantee
uninterrupted racial progress; in fact, the status of black servicemen
tended to reflect the changing patterns in American race relations.
During most of the nineteenth century, for example, Negroes served in
an integrated U.S. Navy, in the latter half of the century averaging
between 20 and 30 percent of the enlisted strength.[1-3] But the
employment of Negroes in the Navy was abruptly curtailed after 1900.
Paralleling the rise of Jim Crow and legalized segregation (p. 005) in
much of America was the cutback in the number of black sailors, who
by 1909 were mostly in the galley and the engine room. In contrast to
their high percentage of the ranks in the Civil War and
Spanish-American War, only 6,750 black sailors, including twenty-four
women reservists (yeomanettes), served in World War I; they
constituted 1.2 percent of the Navy's total enlistment.[1-4] Their
service was limited chiefly to mess duty and coal passing, the latter

becoming increasingly rare as the fleet changed from coal to oil.
[Footnote 1-3: Estimates vary; exact racial statistics concerning the
nineteenth century Navy are difficult to locate. See Enlistment of Men
of Colored Race, 23 Jan 42, a note appended to Hearings Before the
General Board of the Navy, 1942, Operational Archives, Department of
the Navy (hereafter OpNavArchives). The following brief summary of
the Negro in the pre-World War II Navy is based in part on Foner's
Blacks and the Military in American History as well as Harold D.
Langley, "The Negro in the Navy and Merchant Service, 1798-1860,"
Journal of Negro History 52 (October 1967):273-86; Langley's Social
Reform in the United States Navy 1798-1862, (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1967) Peter Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden
Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism
(New York: The Free Press, 1972); Frederick S. Harrod, Manning the
New Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force,
1899-1940 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978).]
[Footnote 1-4: Ltr, Rear Adm C. W. Nimitz, Actg Chief, Bureau of
Navigation, to Rep. Hamilton Fish, 17 Jun 37, A9-10, General Records
of the Department of the Navy (hereafter GenRecsNav).]
[Illustration: BUFFALO SOLDIERS. (Frederick Remington's 1888
sketch.)]
When postwar enlistment was resumed in 1923, the Navy recruited
Filipino stewards instead of Negroes, although a decade later it
reopened the branch to black enlistment. Negroes quickly took
advantage of this limited opportunity, their numbers rising from 441 in
1932 to 4,007 in June 1940, when they constituted 2.3 percent of the
Navy's 170,000 total.[1-5] Curiously enough, because black (p. 006)
reenlistment in combat or technical specialties