Chapter 5: (p. 123) (1)

A Postwar Search

The nation's military leaders and the leaders of the civil rights movement were in rare accord at the end of World War II. They agreed that despite considerable wartime improvement the racial policies of the services had proved inadequate for the development of the full military potential of the country's largest minority as well as the efficient operation and management of the nation's armed forces. Dissatisfaction with the current policy of the armed forces was a spearpoint of the increasingly militant and powerful civil rights movement, and this dissatisfaction was echoed to a great extent by the services themselves. Intimate association with minority problems had convinced the Army's Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies and the Navy's Special Programs Unit that new policies had to be devised and new directions sought. Confronted with the incessant demands of the civil rights advocates and presented by their own staffs with evidence of trouble, civilian leaders of the services agreed to review the status of the Negro. As the postwar era opened, both the Army and the Navy were beginning the interminable investigations that augured a change in policy.

Unfortunately, the services and the civil rights leaders had somewhat different ends in mind. Concerned chiefly with military efficiency but also accustomed to racial segregation or exclusion, most military leaders insisted on a rigid appraisal of the performance of segregated units in the war and ignored the effects of segregation on that performance. Civil rights advocates, on the other hand, seeing an opportunity to use the military as a vehicle for the extension of social justice, stressed the baneful effects of segregation on the black serviceman's morale. They were inclined to ignore the performance of the large segregated units and took issue with the premise that desegregation of the armed forces in advance of the rest of American society would threaten the efficient execution of the services' military mission. Neither group seemed able to appreciate the other's real concerns, and their contradictory conclusions promised a renewal of the discord in their wartime relationship.

_Black Demands_

World War II marked the beginning of an important step in the evolution of the civil rights movement. Until then the struggle for racial equality had been sustained chiefly by the "talented tenth," the educated, middle-class black citizens who formed an economic and political alliance with white supporters. Together they fought to (p. 124) improve the racial situation with some success in the courts, but with little progress in the executive branch and still less in the legislative. The efforts of men like W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White, and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Lester Granger of the National Urban League were in the mainstream of the American reform movement, which stressed an orderly petitioning of government for a redress of grievances.

But there was another facet to the American reform tradition, one that stressed mass action and civil disobedience, and the period between the March on Washington Movement in 1940 and the threat of a black boycott of the draft in 1948 witnessed the beginnings of a shift in the civil rights movement to this kind of reform tactic. The articulate leaders of the prewar struggle were still active, and in fact would make their greatest contribution in the fight that led to the Supreme Court's pronouncement on school segregation in 1954. But their quiet methods were already being challenged by A. Philip Randolph and others who launched a sustained demand for equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces during the early postwar period. Randolph and leaders of his persuasion relied not so much on legal eloquence in their representations to the federal government as on an understanding of bloc voting in key districts and the implicit threat of civil disobedience. The civil rights campaign, at least in the effort to end segregation in the armed forces, had the appearance of a mass movement a full decade before a weary Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery bus and set off the all-embracing crusade of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The growing political power of the Negro and the threat of mass action in the 1940's were important reasons for the breakthrough on the color front that began in the armed forces in the postwar period. For despite the measure of good will and political acumen that characterized his social programs, Harry S. Truman might never have made the effort to achieve racial equality in the services without the constant pressure of civil rights activists.

The reasons for the transformation that was beginning in the civil rights struggle were varied and complex.[5-1] Fundamental was the growing urbanization of the Negro. By 1940 almost half the black population lived in cities. As the labor shortage became more acute during the next five years, movement toward the cities continued, not only in the south but in the north and west. Attracted by economic opportunities in Los Angeles war industries, for example, over 1,000 Negroes moved to that city each month during the war. Detroit, Seattle, and San Francisco, among others, reported similar migrations. The balance finally shifted during the war, and the 1950 census showed that 56 percent of the black population resided in metropolitan (p. 125) areas, 32 percent in cities of the north and west.[5-2]

[Footnote 5-1: This discussion is based in great part
on Arnold M. Rose, "The American Negro Problem in
the Context of Social Change," _Annals of the
Academy of Political Science_ 257 (January
1965):1-17; Rustin, _Strategies for Freedom_, pp.
26-46; Leonard Broom and Norval Glenn,
_Transformation of the Negro American_ (New York:
Harper and Row, 1965); St. Clair Drake and Horace
Cayton, _Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in
a Northern City_ (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970);
John Hope Franklin, _From Slavery to Freedom: A
History of Negro America_, 3d ed. (New York: Knopf,
1967); Woodward's _The Strange Career of Jim Crow_;
Seymour Wolfbein, "Postwar Trends in Negro
Employment," a report by the Occupational Outlook
Division, Bureau of Labor Statistics, in CMH; Oscar
Handlin, "The Goals of Integration," and Kenneth B.
Clark, "The Civil Rights Movement: Momentum and
Organization," both in _Daedalus_ 95 (Winter
1966).]

[Footnote 5-2: For a discussion of this trend, see
Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Social and Economic
Conditions of Negroes in the United States"
(Current Population Reports P23, October 1967); see
also Charles S. Johnson, "The Negro Minority,"
_Annals of the Academy of Political Science_ 223
(September 1942):10-16.]

This mass migration, especially to cities outside the south, was of profound importance to the future of American race relations. It meant first that the black masses were separating themselves from the archaic social patterns that had ruled their lives for generations. Despite virulent discrimination and prejudice in northern and western cities, Negroes could vote freely and enjoy some protection of the law and law-enforcement machinery. They were free of the burden of Jim Crow. Along with white citizens they were given better schooling, a major factor in improving status. The mass migration also meant that this part of America's peasantry was rapidly joining America's proletariat. The wartime shortage of workers, coupled with the efforts of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and other government agencies, opened up thousands of jobs previously denied black Americans. The number of skilled craftsmen, foremen, and semiskilled workers among black Americans rose from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 during the war, while the number of Negroes working for the federal government increased from 60,000 to 200,000.[5-3]

[Footnote 5-3: Selective Service System, _Special
Groups_, vol. I, pp. 177-78; see also Robert C.
Weaver, "Negro Labor Since 1929," _The Journal of
Negro History_ 35 (January 1950):20-38.]

Though much of the increase in black employment was the result of temporarily expanded wartime industries, black workers gained valuable training and experience that enabled them to compete more effectively for postwar jobs. Employment in unionized industries strengthened their position in the postwar labor movement. The severity of inevitable postwar cuts in black employment was mitigated by continued prosperity and the sustained growth of American industry. Postwar industrial development created thousands of new upper-level jobs, allowing many black workers to continue their economic advance without replacing white workers and without the attendant development of racial tensions.

The armed forces played their part in this change. Along with better food, pay, and living conditions provided by the services, many Negroes were given new work experiences. Along with many of their white fellows, they acquired new skills and a new sophistication that prepared them for the different life of the postwar industrial world. Most important, military service in World War II divorced many Negroes from a society whose traditions had carefully defined their place, and exposed them for the first time to a community where racial equality, although imperfectly realized, was an ideal. Out of this experience many Negroes came to understand that their economic and political position could be changed. Ironically, the services themselves became an early target of this rising self-awareness. The integration of the armed forces, immediate and total, was a popular goal of the newly franchised voting group, which was turning away from leaders of both races who preached a philosophy of gradual change.

The black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for (p. 126) equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the Negro, so was the civil rights movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh _Courier_ was but one of many black papers and journals that developed a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that it was "no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights during World War II."[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied the opposition to segregation during and after the war.

[Footnote 5-4: E. Franklin Frazier, _The Negro in the
United States_ (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p.
513.]

Much of the black unrest and dissatisfaction dramatized by the press continued to be mobilized through the efforts of such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality. The NAACP, for example, revitalized by a new and broadened appeal to the black masses, had some 1,200 branches in forty-three states by 1946 and boasted a membership of more than half a million. While the association continued to fight for minority rights in the courts, to stimulate black political participation, and to improve the conditions of Negroes generally, its most popular activity during the 1940's was its effort to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces. The files of the services and the White House are replete with NAACP complaints, requests, demands, and charges that involved the military departments in innumerable investigations and justifications. If the complaints effected little immediate change in policy, they at least dramatized the plight of black servicemen and mobilized demands for reform.[5-5]

[Footnote 5-5: Clark, "The Civil Rights Movement,"
pp. 240-47.]

Not all racial unrest was so constructively channeled during the war. Riots and mutinies in the armed services were echoed around the country. In Detroit competition between blacks and whites, many recently arrived from the south seeking jobs, culminated in June 1943 in the most serious riot of the decade. The President was forced to declare a state of emergency and dispatch 6,000 troops to patrol the city. The Detroit riot was only the most noticeable of a number of racial incidents that inevitably provoked an ugly reaction, and the postwar period witnessed an increase in antiblack sentiment and violence in the United States.[5-6] Testifying to the black community's economic and political progress during the war as well as a corresponding increase in white awareness of and protest against the mistreatment of black citizens, this antiblack sentiment was only the pale ghost of a similar phenomenon after World War I.

[Footnote 5-6: _Report of the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders, 1 March 1968_,
Kerner Report (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1968), pp. 104-05; see also Dalfiume,
_Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces_, pp.
132-34. For a detailed account of the major riot,
see R. Shogan and T. Craig, _The Detroit Race Riot:
A Study in Violence_ (New York: Chilton Books,
1964).]

Nevertheless, the sentiment was widespread. Traveling cross-country in a train during Christmastime, 1945, the celebrated American essayist Bernard De Voto was astonished to hear expressions of antiblack (p. 127) sentiment. In Wisconsin, "a state where I think I had never before heard the word 'nigger,' that [dining] car was full of talk about niggers and what had to be done about them."[5-7] A white veteran bore out the observation. "Anti-Negro talk ... is cropping up in many places ... the assumption [being] that there is more prejudice, never less.... Throughout the war the whites were segregated from the Negroes (why not say it this way for a change?) so that there were almost no occasions for white soldiers to get any kind of an impression of Negroes, favorable or otherwise." There had been some race prejudice among servicemen, but, the veteran asked, "What has caused this anti-Negro talk among those who stayed at home?"[5-8] About the same time, a U.S. senator was complaining to the Secretary of War that white and black civilians at Kelly Field, Texas, (p. 128) shared the same cafeterias and other facilities. He hoped the secretary would look into the matter to prevent disturbances that might grow out of a policy of this sort.[5-9]

[Footnote 5-7: Bernard De Voto, "The Easy Chair"
_Harper's_ 192 (January 1946):38-39.]

[Footnote 5-8: Ltr, John H. Caldwell (Hartsdale, New
York) to the Editor, _Harper's_ 192 (March 1946):
unnumbered front pages.]

[Footnote 5-9: Ltr, Sen. W. Lee O'Daniel of Texas to
SW, 27 Feb 46, ASW 291.2 (1946).]

Nor did the armed forces escape the rise in racial tension. For example, the War Department received many letters from the public and members of Congress when black officers, nearly the base's entire contingent of four hundred, demonstrated against the segregation of the officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana, in April 1945. The question at issue was whether a post commander had the authority to exclude individuals on grounds of race from recreational facilities on an Army post. The Army Air Forces supported the post commander and suggested a return to a policy of separate and equal facilities for whites and blacks, primarily because a club for officers was a social center for the entire family. Since it was hardly an accepted custom in the country for the races to intermingle, officials argued, the Army had to follow rather than depart from custom, and, further, the wishes of white officers as well as those of Negroes deserved consideration.[5-10]

[Footnote 5-10: This important incident in the Air
Force's racial history has been well documented.
See AAF Summary Sheet, 5 May 45, sub: Racial
Incidents at Freeman Field and Ft. Huachuca,
Arizona, and Memo, Maj Gen H. R. Harmon, ACofS,
AAF, for DCofS, 29 May 45, both in WDGAP 291.2. See
also Memo, The Inspector General for DCofS, 1 May
45, sub: Investigation at Freeman Field, WDSIG
291.2 Freeman Field, and Memo, Truman Gibson for
ASW, 14 May 45, ASW 291.2 NT. For a critical
contemporary analysis, see Hq Air Defense Command,
"The Training of Negro Combat Units by the First
Air Force" (Monograph III, May 1946), vol. 1; ch.
III, AFSHRC. The incident is also discussed in
Osur, _Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World
War II_, ch. VI, and in Alan L. Gropman's _The Air
Force Integrates, 1943-1964_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1978). Gropman's work
is the major source for the history of Negroes in
the postwar Air Force.]

The controversy reached the desk of John McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, who considered the position taken by the Army Air Forces a backward step, a reversal of the War Department position in an earlier and similar case at Selfridge Field, Michigan. McCloy's contention prevailed--that the commander's administrative discretion in these matters fell short of authority to exclude individuals from the right to enjoy recreational facilities provided by the federal government or maintained with its funds. Secretary of War Stimson agreed to amend the basic policy to reflect this clarification.[5-11]

[Footnote 5-11: Memo, ASW for SW, 4 Jun 45; Memo, SGS
for DCofS, 7 Jun 45, sub: Report of Advisory
Committee on Special Troop Policies, both in ASW
291.2 (NT).]

In December 1945 the press reported and the War and Navy Departments investigated an incident at Le Havre, France, where soldiers were embarking for the United States for demobilization. Officers of a Navy escort carrier objected to the inclusion of 123 black enlisted men on the grounds that the ship was unable to provide separate accommodations for Negroes. Army port authorities then substituted another group that included only one black officer and five black enlisted men who were placed aboard over the protests of the ship's officers.[5-12] The Secretary of the Navy had already declared that the Navy did not differentiate between men on account of race, and on (p. 129) 12 December 1945 he reiterated his statement, adding that it applied to members of all the armed forces.[5-13] Demonstrating the frequent gap between policy and practice, Forrestal's order was ignored six months later by port officials when a group of black officers and men was withdrawn from a shipping list at Bremerhaven, Germany, on the grounds that "segregation is a War Department policy."[5-14]

[Footnote 5-12: OPD Summary Sheet to CofS, 2 Apr 46,
CS 291.2 Negroes; Memo, WD Bureau of Public
Relations for Press, 5 Jan 46; Ltr, Exec to Actg
ASW to P. Bernard Young, Jr., Norfolk _Journal and
Guide_, 14 Dec 45, ASW 291.2.]

[Footnote 5-13: ALNAV 423-45, 12 Dec 45.]

[Footnote 5-14: Memo, Marcus H. Ray, Civ Aide to SW,
for ASW, 11 Jun 46, ASW 291.2 (NT).]

Overt antiblack behavior and social turbulence in the civilian community also reached into the services. In February 1946 Issac Woodard, Jr., who had served in the Army for fifteen months in the Pacific, was ejected from a commercial bus and beaten by civilian police. Sergeant Woodard had recently been discharged from the Army at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and was still in uniform at the time of the brutal attack that blinded him. His case was quickly taken up by the NAACP and became the centerpiece of a national protest.[5-15] Not only did the civil rights spokesmen protest the sadistic blinding, they also charged that the Army was incapable of protecting its own members in the community.

[Footnote 5-15: See Ltr, Walter White, Secy, NAACP,
to SW, 6 May 46, and a host of letters in SW 291.2
file. See also copies of NAACP press releases on
the subject in CMH files.]

While service responsibility for countering off-base discrimination against servicemen was still highly debatable in 1946, the right of men on a military base to protection was uncontestable. Yet even service practices on military bases were under attack as racial conflicts and threats of violence multiplied. "Dear Mother," one soldier stationed at Sheppard Field, Texas, felt compelled to write in early 1946, "I don't know how long I'll stay whole because when those Whites come over to start [trouble] again I'll be right with the rest of the fellows. Nothing to worry about. Love,..."[5-16] If the soldier's letter revealed continuing racial conflict in the service, it also testified to a growing racial unity among black servicemen that paralleled the trend in the black community. When Negroes could resolve with a new self-consciousness to "be right with the rest of the fellows," their cause was immeasurably strengthened and their goals brought appreciably nearer.

[Footnote 5-16: Ltr, 28 Feb 46, copy in SW 291.2.]

Civil rights spokesmen had several points to make regarding the use of Negroes in the postwar armed forces. Referring to the fact that World War II began with Negroes fighting for the right to fight, they demanded that the services guarantee a fair representation of Negroes in the postwar forces. Furthermore, to avoid the frustration suffered by Negroes trained for combat and then converted into service troops, they demanded that Negroes be trained and employed in all military specialties. They particularly stressed the correlation between poor leaders and poor units. The services' command practices, they charged, had frequently led to the appointment of the wrong men, either black or white, to command black units. Their principal solution was to provide for the promotion and proper employment of a proportionate share of competent black officers and noncommissioned officers. Above all, they pointed to the humiliations black soldiers suffered in (p. 130) the community outside the limits of the base.[5-17] One particularly telling example of such discrimination that circulated in the black press in 1945 described German prisoners of war being fed in a railroad restaurant while their black Army guards were forced to eat outside. But such discrimination toward black servicemen was hardly unique, and the civil rights advocates were quick to point to the connection between such practices and low morale and performance. For them there was but one answer to such discrimination: all men must be treated as individuals and guaranteed equal treatment and opportunity in the services. In a word, the armed forces must integrate. They pointed with pride to the success of those black soldiers who served in integrated units in the last months of the European war, and they repeatedly urged the complete abolition of segregation in the peacetime Army and Navy.[5-18]

[Footnote 5-17: For a summary of these views, see
Warman Welliver, "Report on the Negro Soldier,"
_Harper's_ 192 (April 1946):333-38 and back pages.]

[Footnote 5-18: Murray, _Negro Handbook, 1946-1947_,
pp. 369-70.]

When an executive of the National Urban League summed up these demands for President Truman at the end of the war, he clearly indicated that the changes in military policy that had brought about the gradual improvement in the lot of black servicemen during the war were now beside the point.[5-19] The military might try to ignore this fact for a little while longer; a politically sensitive President was not about to make such an error.

[Footnote 5-19: Ltr, Exec Secy, National Urban
League, to President Truman, 27 Aug 45, copy in
Forrestal file, GenRecsNav.]

_The Army's Grand Review_

In the midst of this intensifying sentiment for integration, in fact a full year before the war ended, the Army began to search for a new racial policy. The invasion of Normandy and the extraordinary advance to Paris during the summer of 1944 had led many to believe that the war in Europe would soon be over, perhaps by fall. As the Allied leaders at the Quebec Conference in September discussed arrangements to be imposed on a defeated Germany, American officials in Washington began to consider plans for the postwar period. Among them was Assistant Secretary of War McCloy. Dissatisfied with the manner in which the Army was using black troops, McCloy believed it was time to start planning how best to employ them in the postwar Army, which (p. 131) according to current assumptions, would be small and professional and would depend upon a citizen reserve to augment it in an emergency.

McCloy concluded that despite a host of prewar studies by the General Staff, the Army War College, and other military agencies, the Army was unprepared during World War II to deal with and make the most efficient use of the large numbers of Negroes furnished by Selective Service. Policies for training and employing black troops had developed in response to specific problems rather than in accordance with a well thought out and comprehensive plan. Because of "inadequate preparation prior to the period of sudden expansion," McCloy believed a great many sources of racial irritation persisted. To develop a "definite, workable policy, for the inclusion and utilization in the Army of minority racial groups" before postwar planning crystallized and solidified, McCloy suggested to his assistants that the War Department General Staff review existing practices and experiences at home and abroad and recommend changes.[5-20]

[Footnote 5-20: Memos, McCloy for Advisory Committee
on Special Troop Policies, 31 Jul and 1 Sep 44,
sub: Participation of Negro Troops in the Post-War
Military Establishment; Memo, ASW for SW, 10 Jan
45, same sub, all in ASW 291.2 (NT).]

The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, continued to insist that the Army's racial problem was but part of a larger national problem and, as McCloy later recalled, had no strong views on a solution.[5-21] Whatever his personal feelings, Marshall, like most Army staff officers, always emphasized efficiency and performance to the exclusion of social concerns. While he believed that the limited scope of the experiment with integrated platoons toward the end of the war in Europe made the results inconclusive, Marshall still wanted the platoons' performance considered in the general staff study.[5-22]

[Footnote 5-21: Ltr, John J. McCloy to author, 18 Sep
69, CMH files.]

[Footnote 5-22: Memo, CofS for McCloy, 25 Aug 45,
WDCSA 291.2 Negroes (25 Aug 45).]

The idea of a staff study on the postwar use of black troops also found favor with Secretary Stimson, and a series of conferences and informal discussions on the best way to go about it took place in the highest echelons of the Army during the early months of 1945. The upshot was a decision to ask the senior commanders at home and overseas for their comments. How did they train and use their black troops? What irritations, frictions, and disorders arising from racial conflicts had hampered their operations? What were their (p. 132) recommendations on how best to use black troops after the war? Two weeks after the war ended in Europe, a letter with an attached questionnaire was sent to senior commanders.[5-23] The questionnaire asked for such information as: "To what extent have you maintained segregation beyond the actual unit level, and what is your recommendation on this subject? If you have employed Negro platoons in the same company with white platoons, what is your opinion of the practicability of this arrangement?"

[Footnote 5-23: Ltr, TAG to CinC, Southwest Pacific
Area, et al., 23 May 45, sub: Participation of
Negro Troops in Post-War Military Establishment, AG
291.2 (23 May 45). On the high-level discussions,
see Memo, Maj Gen W. F. Tompkins, Dir, Special
Planning Div, for ACofS, G-1, and Personnel
Officers of the Air, Ground, and Service Forces, 24
Feb 45, same sub; DF, G-1, WDGS (Col O. G. Haywood,
Exec), 8 Mar 45, same sub; Memo, Col G. E. Textor,
Dep Dir, WDSSP, for ACofS, G-1, 10 Mar 45, same
sub; Memo for the File (Col Lawrence Westbrook), 16
Mar 45; Memo, Maj Bell I. Wiley for Col Mathews, 18
Apr 45, all in AG 291.2.]

Not everyone agreed that the questionnaire was the best way to review the performance of Negroes in World War II. Truman Gibson, for one, doubted the value of soliciting information from senior commanders, feeling that these officers would offer much subjective material of little real assistance. Referring to the letter to the major senior commanders, he said:

Mere injunctions of objectivity do not work in the racial field
where more often than not decisions are made on a basis of
emotion, prejudice or pre-existing opinion.... Much of the
difficulty in the Army has arisen from improper racial attitudes
on both sides. Indeed, the Army's basic policy of segregation is
said to be based principally on the individual attitudes and
desires of the soldiers.

But who knew what soldiers' attitudes were? Why not, he suggested, make some scientific inquiries? Why not try to determine, for example, how far public opinion and pressure would permit the Army to go in developing policies for black troops?[5-24]

[Footnote 5-24: Memo, Gibson for ASW, 30 May 45, ASW
291.2 (NT).]

Gibson had become, perforce, an expert on public opinion. During the last several months he had suffered the slings and arrows of an outraged black press for his widely publicized analysis of the performance of black troops. Visiting black units and commanders in the Mediterranean and European theaters to observe, in McCloy's words, "the performance of Negro troops, their attitudes, and the attitudes of their officers toward them,"[5-25] Gibson had arrived in Italy at the end of February 1945 to find theater officials concerned over the poor combat record of the 92d Infantry Division, the only black division in the theater and one of three activated by the War Department. After a series of discussions with senior commanders and a visit to the division, Gibson participated in a press conference in Rome during which he spoke candidly of the problems of the division's infantry units.[5-26] Subsequent news reports of the conference stressed Gibson's confirmation of the division's disappointing performance, but neglected the reasons he advanced to explain its failure. The reports earned a swift and angry retort from the black community. Many (p. 133) organizations and journals condemned Gibson's evaluation of the 92d outright. Some seemed less concerned with the possible accuracy of his statement than with the effects it might have on the development of future military policy. The NAACP's _Crisis_, for example, charged that Gibson had "carried the ball for the War Department," and that "probably no more unfortunate words, affecting the representatives of the entire race, were ever spoken by a Negro in a key position in such a critical hour. We seem destined to bear the burden of Mr. Gibson's Rome adventure for many years to come."[5-27]

[Footnote 5-25: Ltr, Gibson to Gen John C. H. Lee,
CG, ComZ, ETOUSA, 31 Mar 45, ASW 291.2 (NT).]

[Footnote 5-26: Memo, Truman Gibson for Maj Gen O. L.
Nelson, 12 Mar 45, sub: Report on Visit to 92d
Division (Negro Troops), ASW 291.2.]

[Footnote 5-27: "Negro Soldier Betrayed," _Crisis_ 52
(April 1945):97; "Gibson Echo," ibid. (July
1945):193.]

Other black journals took a more detached view of the situation, asserting that Gibson's remarks revealed nothing new and that the problem was segregation, of which the 92d was a notable victim. Gibson took this tack in his own defense, pointing to the irony of a situation in which "some people can, on the one hand, argue that segregation is wrong, and on the other ... blindly defend the product of that segregation."[5-28]

[Footnote 5-28: Washington _Afro-American_, April 15,
1945, quoted in Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
p. 579. For details of the Gibson controversy, see
Lee, pp. 575-79.]

Gibson had defenders in the Army whose comments might well apply to all the large black units in the war. At one extreme stood the Allied commander in Italy, General Mark W. Clark, who attributed the 92d's shortcomings to "our handling of minority problems at home." Most of all, General Clark thought, black soldiers needed the incentive of feeling that they were fighting for home and country as equals. But his conclusion--"only the proper environment in his own country can provide such an incentive"--neatly played down Army responsibility for the division's problems.[5-29]

[Footnote 5-29: Mark W. Clark, _A Calculated Risk_
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), pp. 414-15.]

Another officer, who as commander of a divisional artillery unit was intimately acquainted with the division's shortcomings, delineated an entirely different set of causes. The division was doomed to mediocrity and worse, Lt. Col. Marcus H. Ray concluded, from the moment of its activation. Undercurrents of racial antipathy as well as distrust and prejudice, he believed, infected the organization from the outset and created an unhealthy beginning. The practice of withholding promotion from deserving black officers along with preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. The basic misconception was that southern white officers understood Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect--necessary attributes of leadership--were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "I was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who preceded us to place their own lives in a hazardous position in order to have tractable Negroes around them."[5-30] In short, the men of the 92d who fought and died bravely should be honored, but their unit, which on balance did not perform well, should be considered a (p. 134) failure of white leadership.

[Footnote 5-30: Ltr, Ray to Gibson, 14 May 45, WDGAP
291.2. Ray later succeeded Gibson as Civilian Aide
to the Secretary of War.]

Lt. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., then Fifth Army commander in Italy, disagreed. Submitting the proceedings of a board of review that had investigated the effectiveness of black officers and enlisted men in the 92d Division, he was sympathetic to the frustrations encountered by the division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond. "In justice to those splendid officers"--a reference to the white senior commanders and staff members of the division--"who have devoted themselves without stint in an endeavor to produce a combat division with Negro personnel and who have approached this problem without prejudice," Truscott endorsed the board's hard view that many infantrymen in the division "would not fight."[5-31] This conclusion was in direct conflict with the widely held and respected truism that competent leadership solved all problems, from which it followed that the answer to the problem of Negroes in combat was command. Good commanders prevented friction, performed their mission effectively, and achieved success no matter what the obstacles--a view put forth in a typical report from World War II that "the efficiency of Negro units depends entirely on the leadership of officers and NCO's."[5-32]

[Footnote 5-31: 1st Ind, Hq Fifth Army (signed L. K.
Truscott, Jr.), 30 Jul 45, to Proceedings and Board
of Review, 92d Inf Div, Fifth Army files.]

[Footnote 5-32: WD file 291.2 (Negro Troop Policy),
1943-1945, is full of statements to this effect.
The quote is from 2d Ind, Hq USASTAF, 26 Jul 45,
attached to AAF Summary Sheets to CofS, 17 Sep 45,
sub: Participation of Negro Troops in the Post-War
Military Establishment, AG 291.2 (23 May 45).]

In fact, General Truscott's analysis of the 92d Division's problems seemed at variance with his analysis of command problems in other units, as illustrated by his later attention to problems in the all-white 34th Infantry Division.[5-33] The habit of viewing unit problems as command problems was also demonstrated by General Jacob L. Devers, who was deputy Allied commander in the Mediterranean when the 92d arrived in Italy. Reflecting later upon the 92d Division, General Devers agreed that its engineer and armor unit performed well, but the infantry did not "because their commanders weren't good enough."[5-34]

[Footnote 5-33: L. K. Truscott, Jr., _Command
Missions: A Personal Story_ (New York: Dutton,
1959), see pages 461-62 and 471-72 for comparison
of Truscott's critical analysis of problems of the
34th and 92d Infantry Divisions.]

[Footnote 5-34: Interv, author with General Jacob
Devers, 30 Mar 71, CMH files.]

Years later General Almond, the division's commander, was to claim (p. 135) that the 92d Division had done "many things well and some things poorly." It fought in extremely rugged terrain against a determined enemy over an exceptionally broad front. The division's artillery as well as its technical and administrative units performed well. Negroes also excelled in intelligence work and in dealing with the Italian partisans. On the other hand, General Almond reported, infantry elements were unable to close with the enemy and destroy him. Rifle squads, platoons, and companies tended "to melt away" when confronted by determined opposition. Almond blamed this on "a lack of dedication to purpose, pride of accomplishment and devotion to duty and teammates by the majority of black riflemen assigned to Infantry Units."[5-35]

[Footnote 5-35: Ltr, Lt Gen Edward M. Almond to Brig
Gen James L. Collins, Jr., 1 Apr 72, CMH files.
General Almond's views are thoroughly explored in
Paul Goodman, _A Fragment of Victory_ (Army War
College, 1952). For an objective and detailed
treatment of the 92d Division, see Lee, _Employment
of Negro Troops_, Chapter XIX, and Ernest F.
Fisher, Jr., _Cassino to the Alps_, United States
Army in World War II (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1977), Chapter XXIII.]

Similar judgments were expressed concerning the combat capability of the other major black unit, the 93d Infantry Division.[5-36] When elements of the 93d, the 25th Regimental Combat Team in particular, participated in the Bougainville campaign in the Solomon Islands, their performance was the subject of constant scrutiny by order of the Chief of Staff.[5-37] The combat record of the 25th included enough examples of command and individual failure to reinforce the War Department's decision in mid-1944 to use the individual units of the division in security, laboring, and training duties in quiet areas of the theater, leaving combat to more seasoned units.[5-38] During the last year of the war the 93d performed missions that were essential but not typical for combat divisions.

[Footnote 5-36: A third black division, the 2d
Cavalry, never saw combat because it was disbanded
upon arrival in the Mediterranean theater.]

[Footnote 5-37: Rad, Marshall to Lt Gen Millard
Harmon, CG, USAFISPA, 18 Mar 44, CM-OUT 7514 (18
Mar 44).]

[Footnote 5-38: Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
pp. 498-517. Lee discusses here the record of the
93d Infantry Division and War Department decisions
concerning its use.]

Analyses of the division's performance ran along familiar lines. The XIV Corps commander, under whom the division served, rated the performance of the 25th Regimental Combat Team infantry as fair and artillery as good, but found the unit, at least those parts commanded by black officers, lacking in initiative, inadequately trained, and poorly disciplined. Other reports tended to agree. All of them, along with reports on the 24th Infantry, another black unit serving in the area, were assembled in Washington for Assistant Secretary McCloy. While he admitted important limitations in the performance of the units, McCloy nevertheless remained encouraged. Not so the Secretary of War. "I do not believe," he told McCloy, "they can be turned into really effective combat troops without all officers being white."[5-39]

[Footnote 5-39: The above digested reports and
quotations are from Lee, _Employment of Negro
Troops_, pp. 513-17.]

Black officers of the 93d, however, entertained a different view. They generally cited command and staff inefficiencies as the major cause of the division's discipline and morale problems. One respondent, a company commander in the 25th Infantry, singled out the "continuous (p. 136) dissension and suspicion characterizing the relations between white and colored officers of the division." All tended to stress what they considered inadequate jungle training, and, like many white observers, they all agreed the combat period was too brief to demonstrate the division's developing ability.[5-40]

[Footnote 5-40: USAFFE Board Reports No. 185, 20 Jan
45, and 221, 25 Feb 45, sub: Information on Colored
Troops. These reports were prepared at the behest
of the commanding general of the Army Ground Forces
during the preparation of Bell I. Wiley's _The
Training of Negro Troops_ (AGF Study No. 36, 1946).
The quotation is from Exhibit K of USAFFE Board
Report No. 221.]

Despite the performance of some individuals and units praised by all, the combat performance of the 92d and 93d Infantry Divisions was generally considered less than satisfactory by most observers. A much smaller group of commentators, mostly black journalists, never accepted the prevailing view. Pointing to the decorations and honors received by individuals in the two divisions, they charged that the adverse reports were untrue, reflections of the prejudices of white officers. Such an assertion presupposed that hundreds of officers and War Department officials were so consumed with prejudice that they falsified the record. And the argument from decorations, as one expert later pointed out, faltered once it was understood that the 92d (p. 137) and 93d Infantry Divisions combined a relatively high number of decorations with relatively few casualties.[5-41]

[Footnote 5-41: E. W. Kenworthy, "The Case Against
Army Segregation," _Annals of the American Academy
of Political Science_ 275 (May 1952):28-29. A low
decoration to casualty ratio is traditionally used
as one measure of good unit performance. However,
so many different unit attitudes and standards for
decorations existed during World War II that any
argument over ratios can only be self-defeating no
matter what the approach.]

Actually, there was little doubt that the performance of the black divisions in World War II was generally unacceptable. Beyond that common conclusion, opinions diverged widely. Commanders tended to blame undisciplined troops and lack of initiative and control by black officers and noncommissioned officers as the primary cause of the difficulty. Others, particularly black observers, cited the white officers and their lack of racial sensitivity. In fact, as Ulysses Lee points out with careful documentation, all these factors were involved, but the underlying problem usually overlooked by observers was segregation. Large, all-black combat units submerged able soldiers in a sea of men with low aptitude and inadequate training. Segregation also created special psychological problems for junior black officers. Carefully assigned so that they never commanded white officers or men, they were often derided by white officers whose attitudes were quickly sensed by the men to the detriment of good discipline. Segregation was also a factor in the rapid transfer of men in and out of the divisions, thus negating the possible benefits of lengthy training. Furthermore, the divisions were natural repositories for many dissatisfied or inadequate white officers, who introduced a host of other problems.

Truman Gibson was quick to point out how segregation had intensified the problem of turning civilians into soldiers and groups into units. The "dissimilarity in the learning profiles" between black and white soldiers as reflected in their AGCT scores was, he explained to McCloy, primarily a result of inferior black schooling, yet its practical effect on the Army was to burden it with several large units of inferior combat ability (_Table 2_). In addition to the fact that large black units had a preponderance of slow learners, Gibson emphasized that nearly all black soldiers were trained near "exceedingly hostile" communities. This hostile atmosphere, he believed, had played a decisive role in their adjustment to Army life and adversely affected individual motivation. Gibson also charged the Army with promoting some black officers who lacked leadership qualifications and whose performance, consequently, was under par. He recommended a single measure of performance for officers and a single system for promotion, even if this system reduced promotions for black officers. Promotions on any basis other than merit, he concluded, deprived the Army of the best leadership and inflicted weak commanders on black units.

Table 2--AGCT Percentages in Selected World War II Divisions

Unit I II III IV V Total
(130 +) (110-120) (90-109) (60-89) (0-59)

11th Armored
Division....... 3.0 23.8 33.8 33.1 6.3 100
35th Infantry
Division....... 3.3 27.0 34.2 28.0 7.5 100
92d Infantry
Division (Negro) 0.4 5.2 11.8 43.5 39.1 100
93d Infantry
Division (Negro) 0.1 3.5 13.0 38.4 45.0 100
100th Infantry
Division........ 3.6 27.1 34.1 29.1 6.1 100

_Source_: Tables submitted by The Adjutant General to the Gillem Board, 1945.

Gibson was not trying to magnify the efficiency of segregated (p. 138) units. He made a special effort to compare the performance of the 92d Division with that of the integrated black platoons in Germany because such a comparison would demonstrate, he believed, that the Army's segregation policy was in need of critical reexamination. He cited "many officers" who believed that the problems connected with large segregated combat units justified their abolition in favor of the integration of black platoons into larger white units. Although such unit integration would not abolish segregation completely, Gibson concluded, it would permit the Army to use men and small units on the basis of ability alone.[5-42]

[Footnote 5-42: Memo, Gibson for ASW, 23 Apr 45, sub:
Report of Visit to MTO and ETO, ASW 291.2 (NT); see
also Interv, Bell I. Wiley with Truman K. Gibson,
Civilian Aide to Secretary of War, 30 May 45, CMH
files.]

The flexibility Gibson detected among many Army officers was not apparent in the answers to the McCloy questionnaire that flowed into the War Department during the summer and fall of 1945. With few exceptions, the senior officers queried expressed uniform reactions. They reiterated a story of frustration and difficulty in training and employing black units, characterized black soldiers as unreliable and inefficient, and criticized the performance of black officers and noncommissioned officers. They were particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, they believed, were not only the work of racial agitators but also the result of poor morale and a sense of discrimination among black troops. Yet they wanted to retain segregation, albeit in units of smaller size, and they wanted to depend, for the most part, on white officers to command these black units. Concerned with performance, pragmatic rather than reflective in their habits, the commanders showed little interest in or understanding of the factors responsible for the conditions of which they complained. Many believed that segregation actually enhanced black pride.[5-43]

[Footnote 5-43: Eventually over thirty-five commands
responded to the McCloy questionnaire. For examples
of the attitudes mentioned above, see Ltr, HQ, U.S.
Forces, European Theater (Main) to TAG, 1 Oct 45,
sub: Study of Participation of Negro Troops in the
Postwar Establishment; Ltr, HQ, U.S. Forces, India,
Burma Theater, to TAG, 28 Aug 45, same sub; Ltr,
GHQ USARPAC to TAG, 3 Sep 45, same sub. All in AG
291.2 (23 May 45). Some of these and many others
are also located in WDSSP 291.2 (1945).]

These responses were summarized by the commanding generals of the major force commands at the request of the War Department's Special Planning Division.[5-44] For example, the study prepared by the Army Service Forces, which had employed a high proportion of black troops in its technical services during the war, passed on the recommendations made by these far-flung commands and touched incidentally on several of the points raised by Gibson.[5-45] Like Gibson, the Army Service Forces recommended that Negroes of little (p. 139) or no education be denied induction or enlistment and that no deviation from normal standards for the sake of maintaining racial quotas in the officer corps be tolerated. The Army Service Forces also wanted Negroes employed in all major forces, participating proportionately in all phases of the Army's mission, including overseas and combat assignments, but not in every occupation. For the Army Service Forces had decided that Negroes performed best as truck drivers, ammunition handlers, stevedores, cooks, bakers, and the like and should be trained in these specialties rather than more highly skilled jobs such as armorer or machinist. Even in the occupations they were best suited to, Negroes should be given from a third more to twice as much training as whites, and black units should have 25 to 50 percent more officers than white units. At the same time, the Army Service Forces wanted to retain segregated units, although it recommended limiting black service units to company size. Stating in conclusion that it sought only "to insure the most efficient training and utilization of Negro manpower" and would ignore the question of racial equality or the "wisdom of segregation in the social sense," the Army Service Forces overlooked the possibility that the former could not be attained without consideration of the latter.

[Footnote 5-44: Memo, Dir, WDSSP, for CG's, ASF et
al., 23 May 45, sub: Participation of Negro Troops
in the Postwar Military Establishment, AG 291.2 (23
May 45).]

[Footnote 5-45: Memo, CofS, ASF, for Dir, Special
Planning Division, WDSS, 1 Oct 45, sub:
Participation of Negro Troops in the Postwar
Military Establishment, WDSSP 291.2 (2 Oct 45). On
the use of Negroes in the Signal Corps, see the
following volumes in the United States Army in
World War II series: Dulany Terrett, _The Signal
Corps: The Emergency_ (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1956); George Raynor Thompson et
al., _The Signal Corps: The Test_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1957); George Raynor
Thompson and Dixie R. Harris, _The Signal Corps:
The Outcome_ (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1966).]

The Army Ground Forces, which trained black units for all major branches of the field forces, also wanted to retain black units, but its report concluded that these units could be of battalion size. The organization of black soldiers in division-size units, it claimed, only complicated the problem of training because of the difficulty in developing the qualified black technicians, noncommissioned officers, and field grade officers necessary for such large units and finding training locations as well as assignment areas with sufficient off-base recreational facilities for large groups of black soldiers. The Army Ground Forces considered the problem of finding and training field grade officers particularly acute since black units employing black officers, at least in the case of infantry, had proved ineffective. Yet white officers put in command of black troops felt they were being punished, and their presence added to the frustration of the blacks.

The Army Ground Forces was also particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, it believed, stemmed from conflicting white and black concepts of the Negro's place in the social pattern. The Army Ground Forces saw no military solution for a problem that transcended the contemporary national emergency, and its conclusion--that the solution lay in society at large and not primarily in the armed forces--had the effect, whether or not so intended, of neatly exonerating the Army. In fact, the detailed conclusions and recommendations of the Army Ground Forces were remarkably similar to those of the Army Service Forces, but the Ground Forces study, more than any other, was shot full with blatant racism. The study quoted a 1925 War College study to the effect that the black officer was (p. 140) "still a Negro with all the faults and weaknesses of character inherent in the Negro race." It also discussed the "average Negro" and his "inherent characteristics" at great length, dwelling on his supposed inferior mentality and weakness of character, and raising other racial shibboleths. Burdened with these prejudices, the Army Ground Forces study concluded

that the conception that negroes should serve in the military
forces, or in particular parts of the military forces, or sustain
battle losses in proportion to their population in the United
States, may be desirable but is impracticable and should be
abandoned in the interest of a logical solution to the problem of
the utilization of negroes in the armed forces.[5-46]

[Footnote 5-46: Memo, Ground AG, AGF, for CofSA, 28
Nov 45, sub: Participation of Negro Troops in the
Postwar Military Establishment, with Incl, WDSSP
291.2 (27 Dec 45).]

The Army Air Forces, another large employer of black servicemen, reported a slightly different World War II experience. Conforming with departmental policies on utilizing black soldiers, it had selected Negroes for special training on the same basis as whites with the exception of aviation cadets. Negroes with a lower stanine (aptitude) had been accepted in order to secure enough candidates to meet the quota for pilots, navigators, and bombardiers in the black units. In its preliminary report to the War Department on the employment of Negroes, the Army Air Forces admitted that individuals of both races with similar aptitudes and test scores had the same success in technical schools, could be trained as pilots and technicians in the same period of time, and showed the same degree of mechanical proficiency. Black units, on the other hand, required considerably more time in training than white units, sometimes simply because they were understrength and their performance was less effective. At the same time the Air Forces admitted that even after discounting the usual factors, such as time in service and job assignment, whites advanced further than blacks. No explanation was offered. Nevertheless, the commanding general of the Air Forces reported very little racial disorder or conflict overseas. There had been a considerable amount in the United States, however; many Air Forces commanders ascribed this to the unwillingness of northern Negroes to accept southern laws or social customs, the insistence of black officers on integrated officers' clubs, and the feeling among black fliers that command had been made an exclusive prerogative of white officers rather than a matter depending on demonstrated qualification.

In contrast to the others, the Army Air Forces revealed a marked change in sentiment over the post-World War I studies of black troops. No more were there references to congenital inferiority or inherent weaknesses, but everywhere a willingness to admit that Negroes had been held back by the white majority.

The commanding general of the Army Air Forces recommended Negroes be apportioned among the three major forces--the Army Ground Forces, the Army Service Forces, and the Army Air Forces--but that their numbers in no case exceed 10 percent of any command; that black servicemen be trained exactly as whites; and that Negroes be segregated in units (p. 141) not to exceed air group size. Unlike the others, the Army Air Forces wanted black units to have black commanders as far as possible and recommended that the degree of segregation in messing, recreation, and social activities conform to the custom of the surrounding community. It wanted Negroes assigned overseas in the same proportion as whites, and in the United States, to the extent practicable, only to those areas considered favorable to their welfare. Finally, the Air Forces wanted Negroes to be neither favored nor discriminated against in disciplinary matters.[5-47]

[Footnote 5-47: Memo, CG, AAF, for CofSA, 17 Sep 45,
sub: Participation of Negro Troops in the Postwar
Military Establishment, WDSSP 291.2 (1945). For the
final report of 2 Oct 45, which summed up the
previous recommendations, see Summary Sheet,
AC/AS-1 for Maj Gen C. C. Chauncey, DCofAS, 2 Oct
45, same sub and file.]