Chapter 13: (p. 315) (2)

[Footnote 13-60: Testimony of Stickney Before the
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services, 25 Apr 49, pp.
19-20. See also, Memo, Actg SecNav for SecDef et
al., 28 Dec 48, sub: The Secretary of the Army's
Confidential Memorandum of 2 December....]

[Footnote 13-61: Lt Cmdr G. E. Minor, BuPers, Memo for
File, 10 Mar 49, sub: Information for Lt.
Nelson-Press Section, Pers 251, BuPersRecs.
_Separate_ is probably a better term for describing
the Steward's Branch, since the branch was never
completely segregated. On 31 March 1949, for
example, the racial and ethnic breakdown of the
branch was as follows:

Negro 10,499 Hawaiian 5
Filipino 4,707 Puerto Rican 4
Chamorro 641 Japanese 1
Chinese 55 American Indian 1
Samoan 25 Caucasian 1
Korean 9 Total 15,945

_Source_: Figures taken from BuPers, "Steward Group
Personnel by Race," 24 May 49, Pers 25,
BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 13-62: This dubious assertion on the
seagoing interests of races had been most recently
expressed by the Chief of Naval Personnel before a
meeting of the President's Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services;
see Testimony of Fechteler, 13 Jan 49, pp. 107-08.]

A substantial increase in the number of Negroes would have absolved the Navy from some of the stigma of racial discrimination it endured in the late 1940's. Since the size of the Steward's Branch was limited by regulation and budget, any increase in black enlistment would immediately raise the number of Negroes serving in the integrated general service. Increased enlistments would also widen the choice of assignments, creating new opportunities for promotion to higher grades. But even this obvious and basic response to the Truman order was not forthcoming. The Navy continued to exclude many potential black volunteers on the grounds that it needed to maintain stricter mental and physical standards to secure men capable of running a modern, technically complex Navy. True, regular and reserve officers were periodically sent to black colleges to discuss naval careers with the students, but as one official, speaking of the reserves, confessed to the Fahy Committee in April 1949, "We aren't doing anything special to procure Negro officers or Negro enlisted men."[13-63]

[Footnote 13-63: Testimony of Capt J. H. Schultz, Asst
Chief of Naval Personnel for Naval Reserve, Before
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services, 26 Apr 49,
afternoon session, p. 19.]

At best, recruiting more Negroes for the general service would only partly fulfill the Navy's obligation to conform to the Truman order. It would still leave untouched the Steward's Branch, which for years had kept alive the impression that the Navy valued minority groups only as servants. The Bureau of Naval Personnel had closed the branch to first enlistments and provided for the transfer of eligible stewards to the general service, but black stewards were only transferring at the rate of seven men per month, hardly enough to alter the racial composition of the branch. In the six months following September 1948 the branch's black strength dropped by 910 men, but because the total strength of the branch also dropped, the percentage of black stewards remained constant.[13-64] What was needed was an infusion of whites, but this remedy, like an increase of black officers, would require a fundamental change in the racial attitudes of Navy leaders. No such change was evident in the Navy's postwar racial policy. While solemnly proclaiming its belief in the principle of nondiscrimination, the service had continued to sanction practices that limited integration and equal opportunity to a degree consistent with its racial tradition and manpower needs. Curiously, the Navy managed to avoid strong criticism from the civil rights groups throughout the postwar period, and the Truman order notwithstanding, it was therefore in a strong position to resist precipitous change (p. 334) in its racial practices.

[Footnote 13-64: Memo, Head, Pers Accounting and
Statistical Control Sec, BuPers, for Dir, Fiscal
Div (Pers 83), 14 Dec 48, sub: Statistics on
Steward Group Personnel in Navy; Memo, W. C.
Kincaid, BuPers Fiscal Div, for Cmdr Smith, BuPers,
6 May 48, sub: Negroes, USN--Transferring From
Commissary or Steward Branch to General Service;
BuPers, "Steward Group Personnel by Race," 24 May
49. All in Pers 25, BuPersRecs.]

_Adjustments in the Marine Corps_

Unlike the Navy, the Marine Corps did not enjoy so secure a position. Its policy of keeping black marines strictly segregated was becoming untenable in the face of its shrinking size, and by the time President Truman issued his order the corps was finding it necessary to make some adjustments. Basic training, for example, was integrated in the cause of military efficiency. With fewer than twenty new black recruits a month, the corps was finding it too expensive and inefficient to maintain a separate recruit training program, and on 1 July 1949 the commandant, General Clifton B. Cates, ordered that Negroes be trained with the rest of the recruits at Parris Island, but in separate platoons.[13-65] Even this system proved too costly, however, because black recruits were forced to wait for training until their numbers built up to platoon size. Given the length of the training cycle, the camp commander had to reserve three training platoons for the few black recruits. Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Noble, the commander, repeatedly complained of the waste of instructors, time, and facilities and the "otherwise generally undesirable" features of separate black training platoons. He pointed out to the commandant that black students had been successfully assimilated into personnel administration and drill instructor schools without friction or incident, and reservist training and local intramural sports had already peacefully introduced integration to the base. Noble wanted to integrate black recruits as they arrived, absorbing them in the white training platoons then being processed. He also wanted to use selected black noncommissioned officers as instructors.[13-66]

[Footnote 13-65: Memo, CMC for CG, MB, Cp Lejeune,
N.C., 23 Aug 48, sub: Recruit Training Load at
Montford Point Camp, MC 1035238; idem for CG, MCRD,
26 May 49, MC 1091093; Memo, Dir of Recruiting for
Off in Charge, Recruit Divs, 13 Jun 49, sub:
Enlistment of Negro Personnel. All in Hist Div,
HQMC. Unless otherwise noted all documents cited in
this section are located in this office.]

[Footnote 13-66: Memo, CG, MCRD, Parris Island, for
CMC, 15 Sep 49, sub: Negro Recruits, ser. 08355.]

The commandant approved the integration of recruit training on 22 September, and Noble quietly began assigning recruits without regard to color.[13-67] Integration of black noncommissioned officer platoon leaders followed, along with integration of the noncommissioned officers' club and other facilities. Noble later recalled the circumstance of the first significant instance of integration in the history of the Marine Corps:

This innovation not only produced no unfavorable reaction among
the Marines, but also it had no unfavorable reaction among the
civilian citizens of South Carolina in the vicinity. Of course I
consulted the civilian leaders first and told them what I was
going to do and got their advice and promises of help to try to
stop any adverse criticisms of it. It seemed like integration was
due to take place sooner or later anyway in this country,
certainly in the Armed Forces, and I thought that it should take
place in the Armed Forces first.[13-68]

[Footnote 13-67: This limited integration program was
announced by the Secretary of the Navy on 22
December 1949; see Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn,
PPB, 22 Dec 49, PPB files.]

[Footnote 13-68: USMC Oral History Interview with
Noble, 20-23 May 68.]

Since manpower restrictions also made the organization of (p. 335) administratively separate black units hard to justify, the postwar reduction in the number of black marines eventually led to the formation of a number of racially composite units. Where once separate black companies were the norm, by 1949 the corps had organized most of its black marines into separate platoons and assigned them as parts of larger white units. In March 1949 Secretary of the Navy Sullivan reported that with the minor exception of several black depot companies, the largest black units in the Marine Corps were platoons of forty-three men, "and they are integrated with other platoons of whites."[13-69]

[Footnote 13-69: Testimony of the Secretary of the
Navy Before President's Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 28
Mar 49, afternoon session, p. 15.]

The cutback in the size and kinds of black units and the integration of recruit training removed the need for the separate camp at Montford Point, home base for black marines since the beginning of World War II. The camp's last two organizations, a provisional company and a headquarters company, were inactivated on 31 July and 9 September, respectively, thus ending an era in the history of Negroes in the Marine Corps.[13-70]

[Footnote 13-70: On the closing of Montford Point, see
Interv, Blumenson with Sgt Max Rousseau, Admin
Chief, G-1 Div, USMC (former member of the Montford
Point Camp headquarters), 21 Feb 66, CMH files.]

Composite grouping of small black units usually provided for separate assignment and segregated facilities. As late as February 1949, the commandant made clear he had no intention of allowing the corps to drift into a _de facto_ integration policy. When, for example, it came to his attention that some commanders were restricting appointment of qualified black marines to specialist schools on the grounds that their commands lacked billets for black specialists, the commandant reiterated the principle that assignment to specialty training was to be made without regard to race. At the same time he emphasized that this policy was not to be construed as an endorsement of the use of black specialists in white units. General Cates specifically stipulated that where no billets in their specialty or a related one were available for black specialists in black units, his headquarters was to be informed. The implication of this order was obvious to the Division of Plans and Policies. "This is an important one," a division official commented, "it involves finding billets for Negro specialists even if we have to create a unit to do it."[13-71] It was also obvious that when the Under Secretary of the Navy, Dan A. Kimball, (p. 336) reported to the Personnel Policy Board in May that "Negro Marines, including Stewards, are assigned to other [white] Marine Corps units in accord with their specialty," he was speaking of rare exceptions to the general rule.[13-72]

[Footnote 13-71: Memo, CMC for CG, FMF, Pacific, 11
Feb 49, with attached Handwritten Note, Div of
Plans and Policies to Asst CMC, 11 Feb 49.]

[Footnote 13-72: Memo, Under SecNav for Chmn, PPB, 2
May 49, PPB 291.2.]

Cates seemed determined to ignore the military inefficiency attendant on such elaborate attempts to insure the continued isolation of black marines. The defense establishment, he was convinced, "could not be an agency for experimentation in civil liberty without detriment to its ability to maintain the efficiency and the high state of readiness so essential to national defense." Having thus tied military efficiency to segregation, Cates explained to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air that the efficiency of a unit was a command responsibility, and so long as that responsibility rested with the commander, he must be authorized to make such assignments as he deemed necessary. It followed, then, that segregation was a national, not a military, problem, and any attempt to change national policy through the armed forces was, in the commandant's words, "a dangerous path to pursue inasmuch as it affects the ability of the National Military Establishment to fulfill its mission." Integration must first be accepted as a national custom, he concluded, "before it could be adopted in the armed forces."[13-73] Nor was General Cates ambiguous on Marine Corps policy when it was questioned by civil rights leaders. Individual marines, he told the commander of a black depot company in a case involving opportunities available to reenlisting black marines, would be employed in the future as in the past "to serve the best interests of the Corps under existing circumstances."[13-74]

[Footnote 13-73: Memo, CMC for Asst SecNav for Air, 17
Mar 49, sub: Proposed Directive for the Armed
Forces for the Period 1 July 1949 to 1 July 1950,
AO-1, MC files.]

[Footnote 13-74: Idem for CO, Second Depot Co, Service
Cmd, FMF, 2 May 49, sub: Employment of Negroes in
the Marine Corps, MC1008783, MC files.]

Actually, Cates was only forcibly expressing a cardinal tenet common to all the military services: the civil rights of the individual must be subordinated to the mission of the service. What might appear to a civil rights activist to be a callous and prejudiced response to a legitimate social complaint was more likely an expression of the commandant's overriding concern for his military mission. Still it was difficult to explain such elaborate precautions in a corps where Negroes numbered less than 2 percent of the total strength.[13-75] How could the integration of 1,500 men throughout the worldwide units of the corps disrupt its mission, civil rights spokesmen might well (p. 337) ask, especially given the evidence to the contrary in the Navy? In view of the President's order, how could the corps justify the proliferation of very small black units that severely restricted the spread of occupational opportunities for Negroes?

[Footnote 13-75: On 30 June 1949 the Marine Corps had
1,504 Negroes on active duty, 1.9 percent of the
total if the one-year enlistees were included or
2.08 percent if the one-year enlistees were
excluded. See Office of the Civilian Aide, OSD,
_Negro Strength Summary_, 18 Jul 49, copy in CMH.
For purposes of comparison, the following gives the
percentage of Negroes in the Navy and the Marine
Corps for earlier years.

_Date_ _Navy_ _Marine Corps_

Dec 43 5.0 3.2
Dec 44 5.5 3.6
Dec 45 5.9 5.4
Dec 46 4.7 2.3
Dec 47 5.4 1.6
Feb 48 5.05 1.9

_Source_: Officer in Charge, Pers Acctg & Stat
Control, Memo for File, 23 Apr 48, Pers 215
BuPersRecs.]

The corps ignored these questions during the summer of 1949, concentrating instead on the problem of finding racially separate assignments for its 1,000 Negroes in the general service. As the number of marines continued to drop, the Division of Plans and Policies was forced to justify the existence of black units by a series of reorganizations and redistributions. When, for example, the reorganization of the Fleet Marine Force caused the inactivation of two black depot units, the division designated a 108-man truck company as a black unit to take up the slack. At the same time the division found yet another "suitable" occupation for black marines by laying down a policy that all security detachments at inactive naval facilities were to be manned by Negroes. It also decided to assign small black units to the service battalions of the Marine divisions, maintaining that such assignments would not run counter to the commandant's policy of restricting Negroes to noncombat organizations.[13-76]

[Footnote 13-76: Memo, Dir, Div of Plans and Policies,
for CMC, 28 Jul 49, sub: Re-assignment of Negro
Marines to Existing units (DP&P Study 88-49), MC
files.]

The Marine Corps, in short, had no intention of relaxing its policy of separating the races. The timing of the integration of recruit training and the breakup of some large black units perhaps suggested a general concession to the Truman order, but these administrative changes were actually made in response to the manpower restrictions of the Truman defense budget. In fact, the position of black marines in small black units became even more isolated in the months (p. 338) following the Truman order as the Division of Plans and Policies began devising racially separate assignments. Like the stewards before them, the security guards at closed naval installations and ammunition depots found themselves in assignments increasingly viewed as "colored" jobs. That the number of Negroes in the Marine Corps was so small aided and abetted these arrangements, which promised to continue despite the presidential order until some dramatic need for change arose.

_The Air Force Plans for Limited Integration_

Of all the services, the Air Force was in the best position to respond promptly to President Truman's call for equal treatment and opportunity. For some time a group of Air staff officers had been engaged in devising a new approach to the use of black manpower. Indeed their study, much of which antedated the Truman order, represented the solution of the Air Force's manpower experts to a pressing problem in military efficiency. More important than the executive order or demands of civil rights advocates, the criticism of segregation by these experts in uniform led the Air Force to accept the need for limited integration.

But there was to be no easy road to integration for the service. Considerable resistance was yet to be overcome, both in the Air staff and among senior commanders. As Secretary Zuckert later put it, while there was sentiment for integration among a few of the highest officers, "you didn't have to scratch far to run into opposition."[13-77] The Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Edwards, reported to Secretary Symington that he had found solid opposition to any proposed policy of integration in the service.[13-78] Normally such resistance would have killed the study group's proposals. In the Army, for example, opposition supported by Secretary Royall had blocked change. In the Air Force, the opposition received no such support. Indeed, Secretary Symington proved to be the catalyst that the Army had lacked. He was the Air Force's margin of difference, transforming the study group's proposal from a staffing paper into a program for substantial change in racial policy.

[Footnote 13-77: Notes on Telecon, author with
Zuckert, 28 Apr 70, CMH files.]

[Footnote 13-78: Memo, DCofS/P&A, USAF, for SecAF, 29
Apr 48, sub: Conference With Group of Prominent
Negroes, Negro Affairs, 1948, SecAF files.]

In Symington the Air Force had a secretary who was not only a tough-minded businessman demanding efficiency but a progressive politician with a humanitarian interest in providing equal opportunity for Negroes. "With Symington," Eugene Zuckert has pointed out, "it was principle first, efficiency second."[13-79] Symington himself later explained the source of his humanitarian interest. "What determined me many years ago was a quotation from Bernard Shaw in Myrdal's book, _American Dilemma_, which went something like this--'First the American white man makes the negro clean his shoes, then criticizes him for being a bootblack.' All Americans should have their chance. And both my grandfathers were in the Confederate Army."[13-80] Symington had successfully combined efficiency and humanitarianism before. (p. 339) As president of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, he had racially integrated a major industry carrying out vital war work in a border state, thereby increasing productivity. When he became secretary, Symington was immediately involved in the Air Force's race problems; he wanted to know, for instance, why only nine black applicants had passed the qualifying examination for the current cadet program.[13-81] When President Truman issued his executive order, Symington was ready to move. In his own words, "when Mr. Truman as Commander-in-Chief issued an order to integrate the Air Force, I asked him if he was serious. He said he was. Accordingly we did just that. I turned the actual operations of the job over to my Assistant Secretary Eugene Zuckert.... It all worked out routinely."[13-82]

[Footnote 13-79: Telecon, author with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 13-80: Ltr, Symington to David K. Niles, 28
Jan 50, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 13-81: Memo, SecAF for Zuckert, 5 Jan 48;
Penciled Note, signed "Stu," attached to Memo,
ASecAF for Symington, 20 Jan 48. All in SecAF
files.]

[Footnote 13-82: Ltr, W. Stuart Symington to author, 6
May 70, CMH files.]

To call "routine" the fundamental change that took place in Air Force manpower practices stretches the definition of the word. The integration program required many months of intensive study and planning, and many more months to carry out. Yet if integration under Symington was slow, it was also inevitable. Zuckert reported that Symington gave him about eight reasons for integration, the last "because I said do it."[13-83] Symington's tough attitude, along with the presidential order, considerably eased the burden of those in the Air Force who were expected to abandon a tradition inherited from their Army days. The secretary's diplomatic skill also softened opposition in other quarters. Symington, a master at congressional relations, smoothed the way on Capitol Hill by successfully reassuring some southern leaders, in particular Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia, that integration had to come, but that it would come quietly and in a way least calculated to provoke its congressional opponents.[13-84]

[Footnote 13-83: Telecon, author with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 13-84: Ibid.; see also USAF Oral Hist Interv
with Zuckert.]

Symington assigned general responsibility for equal opportunity matters to his assistant secretary for management, Eugene Zuckert, but the task of formulating the specific plan fell to General Edwards. To avoid conflict with some of his colleagues, Edwards resorted to the unorthodox means of ignoring the usual staff coordination. He sent his proposals directly to the Chief of Staff and then on to the secretary for approval without reference to other staff agencies, one of which, the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff, General Muir S. Fairchild, was the focal point of staff opposition.[13-85]

[Footnote 13-85: For discussion of the close-held
nature of the USAF integration plan, see USAF Oral
Hist Intervs with Davis and Marr; see also Ltrs,
Marr to author, 19 Jun and 28 Jul 70.]

On the basis of evidence submitted by his long-standing study group, General Edwards concluded that current Air Force policy for the use of black manpower was "wasteful, deleterious to military effectiveness and lacking in wartime application." The policy of the Navy was superior, he told the Chief of Staff and the secretary, with respect to military effectiveness, economy, and morale, especially when the needs of full mobilization were considered. The Air Force would (p. 340) profit by adopting a policy similar to that of the Navy, and he proposed a program, to be "vigorously implemented and monitored," that would inactivate the all-black fighter wing and transfer qualified black servicemen from that wing as well as from all the major commands to white units. One exception would be that those black specialists, whose work was essential to the continued operation of their units, would stay in their black units. Some black units would be retained to provide for individuals ineligible for transfer to white units or for discharge.

The new program would abolish the 10 percent quota and develop recruiting methods to enable the Air Force to secure only the "best qualified" enlistees of both races. Men chronically ineligible for advancement, both black and white, would be eliminated. If too many Negroes enlisted despite these measures, Edwards explained that an "administratively determined ceiling of Negro intake" could be established, but the Air Force had no intention of establishing a minimum for black enlistees. As the Director of Personnel Planning put it, a racial floor was just as much a quota as a racial ceiling and had the same effect of denying opportunity to some while providing special consideration for others.[13-86]

[Footnote 13-86: Memo, Dir, Personnel Planning USAF,
for the Fahy Cmte, 15 Jan 49, sub: Air Force
Policies Regarding Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

The manpower experts had decided that the social complications of such a policy would be negligible--"more imaginary than real." Edwards referred to the Navy's experience with limited integration, which, he judged, had relieved rather than multiplied social tensions between the races. Nevertheless he and his staff proposed "as a conservative but progressive step" toward the integration of living quarters that the Air Force arrange for separate sleeping quarters for blacks and whites. The so-called "barracks problem" was the principal point of discussion within the Air staff, Edwards admitted, and "perhaps the most critical point of the entire policy." He predicted that the trend toward more privacy in barracks, especially the separate cubicles provided in construction plans for new barracks, would help solve whatever problems might arise.[13-87]

[Footnote 13-87: Summary Sheet DCS/P, USAF, for CS,
USAF, and SecAF, 29 Dec 48, sub: Air Force Policies
on Negro Personnel, SecAF files.]

While the Chief of Staff, General Vandenberg, initialed the program without comment, Assistant Secretary Zuckert was enthusiastic. As Zuckert explained to Symington, the program was predicated on free competition for all Air Force jobs, and he believed that it would also eliminate social discrimination by giving black officers and men (p. 341) all the privileges of Air Force social facilities. Although he admitted that in the matter of living arrangements the plan "only goes part way," he too was confident that time and changes in barracks construction would eliminate any problems.[13-88]

[Footnote 13-88: Memo, ASecAF for Symington, 5 Jan 49,
SecAF files.]

Symington was already familiar with most of Edwards's conclusions, for a summary had been sent him by the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff on 22 December "for background."[13-89] When he received Zuckert's comments he acted quickly. The next day he let the Secretary of Defense know what the Air Force was doing. "We propose," he told Forrestal, "to adopt a policy of integration." But he qualified that statement along the lines suggested by the Air staff: "Although there will still be units manned entirely by Negroes, all Negroes will not necessarily be assigned to these units. Qualified Negro personnel will be assigned to any duties in any Air Force activity strictly on the basis of the qualifications of the individual and the needs of the Air Force."[13-90] Symington tied the new program to military efficiency, explaining to Forrestal that efficient use of black servicemen was one of the essentials of economic and effective air power. In this vein he summarized the program and listed what he considered its advantages for the Air Force.

[Footnote 13-89: Memo, Maj Gen William F. McKee for
Symington, 22 Dec 48, sub: Mr. Royall's Negro
Experiment, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 13-90: Memo, SecAF for Forrestal, 6 Jan 49,
Negro Affairs, 1949, SecAF files.]

The proposal forwarded to the Secretary of Defense in January 1949 committed the Air Force to a limited integration policy frankly imitative of the Navy's. A major improvement over the Air Force's current practices, the plan still fell considerably short of the long-range goals enunciated in the Gillem Board Report, to say nothing of the implications of the President's equal opportunity order. Although it is impossible to say exactly why Symington decided to settle for less than full integration, there are several explanations worth considering.

In the first place the program sent to Forrestal may well not have reflected the exact views of the Air Force secretary, nor conveyed all that his principal manpower assistant intended. Actually, the concern expressed by Air Force officials for military efficiency and by civil rights leaders for equal opportunity always centered specifically on the problems of the black tactical air unit and related specialist billets at Lockbourne Air Force Base. In fact, the need to solve the pressing administrative problems of Colonel Davis's command provoked the Air staff study that eventually evolved into the integration program. The program itself focused on this command and provided for the integrated assignment of its members throughout the Air Force. Other black enlisted men, certainly those serving as laborers in the F Squadrons, scattered worldwide, did not pose a comparable manpower problem. They were ignored on the theory that abolition of the quota, along with the application of more stringent recruitment procedures, would in time rid the services of its unskilled and unneeded men.

It can be argued that the purpose of the limited integration proposal was not so much to devise a new policy as to minimize the impact of change on congressional opponents. Edwards certainly hoped that his plan would placate senior commanders and staff officers who (p. 342) opposed integration or feared the social upheaval they assumed would follow the abolition of all black units. This explanation would account for the cautious approach to racial mixing in the proposal, the elaborate administrative safeguards against social confrontation, and the promised reduction in the number of black airmen. Some of those pressing for the new program certainly considered the retention of segregated units a stopgap measure designed to prevent a too precipitous reorganization of the service. As Lt. Col. Jack Marr, a member of Edwards's staff and author of the staff's integration study, explained to the Fahy Committee, "we are trying to do our best not to tear the Air Force all apart and try to reorganize it overnight."[13-91] Marr predicted that as those eligible for reassignment were transferred out of black units, the units themselves, bereft of essential personnel, would become inoperative and disappear one by one.

[Footnote 13-91: Testimony of Lt Col Jack F. Marr
Before President's Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 13
Jan 49, afternoon session, p 46.]

In the end it must be admitted that race relations possess an inner dynamic, and it is impossible to relate the integration of the Air Force to any isolated decision by a secretary or proposal by a group from his military staff. The decision to integrate was the result of several disparate forces--the political interests of the administration, the manpower needs of the Air Force, the aspirations of its black minority, and perhaps more than all the rest, the acceptance by its airmen of a different social system. Together, these factors would make successive steps to full integration impossible to resist. Integration, then, was an evolutionary process, and Symington's acceptance of a limited integration plan was only one step in a continuing process that stretched from the Air staff's study of black manpower in 1948 to the disappearance of the last black unit two years later.