Chapter 3: (p. 058) (1)

World War II: The Navy

The period between the world wars marked the nadir of the Navy's relations with black America. Although the exclusion of Negroes that began with a clause introduced in enlistment regulations in 1922 lasted but a decade, black participation in the Navy remained severely restricted during the rest of the inter-war period. In June 1940 the Navy had 4,007 black personnel, 2.3 percent of its nearly 170,000-man total.[3-1] All were enlisted men, and with the exception of six regular rated seamen, lone survivors of the exclusion clause, all were steward's mates, labeled by the black press "seagoing bellhops."

[Footnote 3-1: All statistics in this chapter are
taken from the files of the U.S. Navy, Bureau of
Naval Personnel (hereafter cited as BuPers).]

The Steward's Branch, composed entirely of enlisted Negroes and oriental aliens, mostly Filipinos, was organized outside the Navy's general service. Its members carried ratings up to chief petty officer, but wore distinctive uniforms and insignia, and even chief stewards never exercised authority over men rated in the general naval service. Stewards manned the officers' mess and maintained the officers' billets on board ship, and, in some instances, took care of the quarters of high officials in the shore establishment. Some were also engaged in mess management, menu planning, and the purchase of supplies. Despite the fact that their enlistment contracts restricted their training and duties, stewards, like everyone else aboard ship, were assigned battle stations, including positions at the guns and on the bridge. One of these stewards, Dorie (Doris) Miller, became a hero on the first day of the war when he manned a machine gun on the burning deck of the USS _Arizona_ and destroyed two enemy planes.[3-2]

[Footnote 3-2: After some delay and considerable
pressure from civil rights sources, the Navy
identified Miller, awarded him the Navy Cross, and
promoted him to mess attendant, first class. Miller
was later lost at sea. See Dennis D. Nelson, _The
Integration of the Negro Into the U.S. Navy_ (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), pp. 23-25.
The Navy further honored Miller in 1973 by naming a
destroyer escort (DE 1091) after him.]

By the end of December 1941 the number of Negroes in the Navy had increased by slightly more than a thousand men to 5,026, or 2.4 percent of the whole, but they continued to be excluded from all positions except that of steward.[3-3] It was not surprising that civil rights organizations and their supporters in Congress demanded a change in policy.

[Footnote 3-3: There were exceptions to this
generalization. The Navy had 43 black men with
ratings in the general service in December 1941:
the 6 regulars from the 1920's, 23 others returned
from retirement, and 14 members of the Fleet
Reserve. See U.S. Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel,
"The Negro in the Navy in World War II" (1947)
(hereafter "BuPers Hist"), p. 1. This study is part
of the bureau's unpublished multivolume
administrative history of World War II. A copy is
on file in the bureau's Technical Library. The work
is particularly valuable for its references to
documents that no longer exist.]

_Development of a Wartime Policy_ (p. 059)

At first the new secretary, Frank Knox, and the Navy's professional leaders resisted demands for a change. Together with Secretary of War Stimson, Knox had joined the cabinet in July 1940 when Roosevelt was attempting to defuse a foreign policy debate that threatened to explode during the presidential campaign.[3-4] For a major cabinet officer, Knox's powers were severely circumscribed. He had little knowledge of naval affairs, and the President, himself once an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, often went over his head to deal directly with the naval bureaus on shipbuilding programs and manpower problems as well as the disposition of the fleet. But Knox was a personable man and a forceful speaker, and he was particularly useful to the President in congressional liaison and public relations. Roosevelt preferred to work through the secretary in dealing with the delicate question of black participation in the Navy. Knox himself was fortunate in his immediate official family. James V. Forrestal became under secretary in August 1940; during the next year Ralph A. Bard, a Chicago investment banker, joined the department as assistant secretary, and Adlai E. Stevenson became special assistant.

[Footnote 3-4: One of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough
Riders, a World War I field artillery officer, and
later publisher of the Chicago _Daily News_, Knox
was an implacable foe of the New Deal but an ardent
internationalist, strongly sympathetic to President
Roosevelt's foreign policy.]

Able as these men were, Frank Knox, like most new secretaries unfamiliar with the operations and traditions of the vast department, was from the beginning heavily dependent on his naval advisers. These were the chiefs of the powerful bureaus and the prominent senior admirals of the General Board, the Navy's highest advisory body.[3-5] Generally these men were ardent military traditionalists, and, despite the progressive attitude of the secretary's highest civilian advisers, changes in the racial policy of the Navy were to be glacially slow.

[Footnote 3-5: In 1940 the bureaus were answerable
only to the Secretary of the Navy and the
President, but after a reorganization of 1942 they
began to lose some of their independence. In March
1942 President Roosevelt merged the offices of the
Chief of Naval Operations and Commander in Chief,
U.S. Fleet, giving Admiral Ernest J. King, who held
both titles, at least some direction over most of
the bureaus. Eventually the Chief of Naval
Operations would become a figure with powers
comparable to those exercised by the Army's Chief
of Staff. See Julius A. Furer, _Administration of
the Navy Department in World War II_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1959), pp. 113-14. This
shift in power was readily apparent in the case of
the administration of the Navy's racial policy.]

The Bureau of Navigation, which was charged with primary responsibility for all personnel matters, was opposed to change in the racial composition of the Navy. Less than two weeks after Knox's appointment, it prepared for his signature a letter to Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti of New York defending the Navy's policy. The bureau reasoned that since segregation was impractical, exclusion was necessary. Experience had proved, the bureau claimed, that when given supervisory responsibility the Negro was unable to maintain discipline among white subordinates with the result that teamwork, harmony, and ship's efficiency suffered. The Negro, therefore, had to be segregated from the white sailor. All-black units were impossible, the bureau argued, because the service's training and distribution system (p. 060) demanded that a man in any particular rating be available for any duty required of that rating in any ship or activity in the Navy. The Navy had experimented with segregated crews after World War I, manning one ship with an all-Filipino crew and another with an all-Samoan crew, but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and reasoned that ships with black crews would be no more satisfactory.[3-6]

[Footnote 3-6: Ltr, SecNav to Lt. Gov. Charles
Poletti (New York), 24 Jul 40, Nav-620-AT,
GenRecsNav.]

During the next weeks Secretary Knox warmed to the subject, speaking of the difficulty faced by the Navy when men had to live aboard ship together. He was convinced that "it is no kindness to Negroes to thrust them upon men of the white race," and he suggested that the Negro might make his major contribution to the armed forces in the Army's black regimental organizations.[3-7] Confronted with widespread criticism of this policy, however, Knox asked the Navy's General Board in September 1940 to give him "some reasons why colored persons should not be enlisted for general service."[3-8] He accepted the board's reasons for continued exclusion of Negroes--generally an extension of the ones advanced in the Poletti letter--and during the next eighteen months these reasons, endorsed by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Bureau of Navigation, were used as the department's standard answer to questions on race.[3-9] They were used at the White House conference on 18 June 1941 when, in the presence of black leaders, Knox told President Roosevelt that the Navy could do nothing about taking Negroes into the general service "because men live in such intimacy aboard ship that we simply can't enlist Negroes above the rank of messman."[3-10]

[Footnote 3-7: Idem to Sen. Arthur Capper (Kansas), 1
Aug 40, QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-8: Memo, Rear Adm W. R. Sexton, Chmn of
Gen Bd, for Capt Morton L. Deyo, 17 Sep 40, Recs of
Gen Bd, OpNavArchives.]

[Footnote 3-9: Idem for SecNav, 17 Sep 40, sub:
Enlistment of Colored Persons in the U.S. Navy,
Recs of Gen Bd, OpNavArchives. 1st Ind to Ltr, Natl
Public Relations Comm of the Universal Negro
Improvement Assn to SecNav, 4 Oct 41; Memo, Chief,
BuNav, for CNO, 24 Oct 41, and 2d Ind to same, CNO
to SecNav (Public Relations). Both in BuPers
QN/P14-4 (411004), GenRecsNav. For examples of the
Navy's response on race, see Ltr, Ens Ross R.
Hirshfield, Off of Pub Relations, to Roberson
County Training School, 25 Oct 41; Ltr, Ens William
Stucky to W. Henry White, 4 Feb 42. Both in
QN/P14-4. BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 3-10: Quoted in White, _A Man Called
White_, p. 191.]

The White House conference revealed an interesting contrast between Roosevelt and Knox. Whatever his personal feelings, Roosevelt agreed with Knox that integration of the Navy was an impractical step in (p. 061) wartime, but where Knox saw exclusion from general service as the alternative to integration Roosevelt sought a compromise. He suggested that the Navy "make a beginning" by putting some "good Negro bands" aboard battleships. Under such intimate living conditions white and black would learn to know and respect each other, and "then we can move on from there."[3-11] In effect the President was trying to lead the Navy toward a policy similar to that announced by the Army in 1940. While his suggestion about musicians was ignored by Secretary Knox, the search for a middle way between exclusion and integration had begun.

[Footnote 3-11: Ibid.]

The general public knew nothing of this search, and in the heightened atmosphere of early war days, charged with unending propaganda about the four freedoms and the forces of democracy against fascism, the administration's racial attitudes were being questioned daily by civil rights spokesmen and by some Democratic politicians.[3-12] As protest against the Navy's racial policy mounted, Secretary Knox turned once again to his staff for reassurance. In July 1941 he appointed a committee consisting of Navy and Marine Corps personnel officers and including Addison Walker, a special assistant to Assistant Secretary Bard, to conduct a general investigation of that policy. The committee took six months to complete its study and submitted both a majority and minority report.

[Footnote 3-12: Memo, W. A. Allen, Office of Public
Relations, for Lt Cmdr Smith, BuPers, 29 Jan 42,
BuPers QN/P-14, BuPersRecs.]

The majority report marshaled a long list of arguments to prove that exclusion of the Negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the Navy as a whole." It concluded that no change in policy was necessary since "within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain races, the enlisted personnel of the Naval Establishment is representative of all the citizens of the United States."[3-13] The majority invoked past experience, efficiency, and patriotism to support the _status quo_, but its chorus of reasons for excluding Negroes sounded incongruous amid the patriotic din and call to colors that followed Pearl Harbor.

[Footnote 3-13: Ltr, Chief, BuNav, to Chmn, Gen Bd,
22 Jan 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race
in Other Than Messman Branch, Recs of Gen Bd,
OpNavArchives.]

Demonstrating changing social attitudes and also reflecting the (p. 062) compromise solution suggested by the President in June, Addison Walker's minority report recommended that a limited number of Negroes be enlisted for general duty "on some type of patrol or other small vessel assigned to a particular yard or station." While the enlistments could frankly be labeled experiments, Walker argued that such a step would mute black criticism by promoting Negroes out of the servant class. The program would also provide valuable data in case the Navy was later directed to accept Negroes through Selective Service. Reasoning that a man's right to fight for his country was probably more fundamental than his right to vote, Walker insisted that the drive for the rights and privileges of black citizens was a social force that could not be ignored by the Navy. Indeed, he added, "the reconciliation of social friction within our own country" should be a special concern of the armed forces in wartime.[3-14]

[Footnote 3-14: Ibid.]

Although the committee's majority won the day, its arguments were overtaken by events that followed Pearl Harbor. The NAACP, viewing the Navy's rejection of black volunteers in the midst of the intensive recruiting campaign, again took the issue to the White House. The President, in turn, asked the Fair Employment Practices Committee to consider the case.[3-15] Committee chairman Mark Ethridge conferred with Assistant Secretary Bard, pointing out that since Negroes had been eligible for general duty in World War I, the Navy had actually taken a step backward when it restricted them to the Messman's Branch. The committee was even willing to pay the price of segregation to insure the Negro's return to general duty. Ethridge recommended that the Navy amend its policy and accept Negroes for use at Caribbean stations or on harbor craft.[3-16] Criticism of Navy policy, hitherto emanating almost exclusively from the civil rights organizations and a few (p. 063) congressmen, now broadened to include another government agency. As President Roosevelt no doubt expected, the Fair Employment Practices Committee had come out in support of his compromise solution for the Navy.

[Footnote 3-15: The FEPC was established 25 June 1941
to carry out Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802
against discrimination in employment in defense
industries and in the federal government.]

[Footnote 3-16: "BuPers Hist," pp. 4-5; Ltr, Mark
Ethridge to Lee Nichols. 14 Jul 53, in Nichols
Collection, CMH.]

But the committee had no jurisdiction over the armed services, and Secretary Knox continued to assert that with a war to win he could not risk "crews that are impaired in efficiency because of racial prejudice." He admitted to his friend, conservationist Gifford Pinchot, that the problem would have to be faced someday, but not during a war. Seemingly in response to Walker and Ethridge, he declared that segregated general service was impossible since enough men with the skills necessary to operate a war vessel were unavailable even "if you had the entire Negro population of the United States to choose from." As for limiting Negroes to steward duties, he explained that this policy avoided the chance that Negroes might rise to command whites, "a thing which instantly provokes serious trouble."[3-17] Faced in wartime with these arguments for efficiency, Assistant Secretary Bard could only promise Ethridge that black enlistment would be taken under consideration.

[Footnote 3-17: Ltr, SecNav to Gifford Pinchot, 19
Jan 42, 54-1-15, GenRecsNav.]

At this point the President again stepped in. On 15 January 1942 he asked his beleaguered secretary to consider the whole problem once more and suggested a course of action: "I think that with all the Navy activities, BuNav might invent something that colored enlistees could do in addition to the rating of messman."[3-18] The secretary passed the task on to the General Board, asking that it develop a plan for recruiting 5,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-19]

[Footnote 3-18: Quoted in "BuPers Hist," p. 5.]

[Footnote 3-19: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 16 Jan
42, sub: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race in Other
Than Messman Branch, Recs of Gen Bd,
OpNavArchives.]

When the General Board met on 23 January to consider the secretary's request, it became apparent that the minority report on the role of Negroes in the Navy had gained at least one convert among the senior officers. One board member, the Inspector General of the Navy, Rear Adm. Charles P. Snyder, repeated the arguments lately advanced by Addison Walker. He suggested that the board consider employing Negroes in some areas outside the servant class: in the Musician's Branch, for example, because "the colored race is very musical and they are versed in all forms of rhythm," in the Aviation Branch where the Army had reported some success in employing Negroes, and on auxiliaries and minor vessels, especially transports. Snyder noted that these schemes would involve the creation of training schools, rigidly segregated at first, and that the whole program would be "troublesome and require tact, patience, and tolerance" on the part of those in charge. But, he added, "we have so many difficulties to surmount anyhow that one more possibly wouldn't swell the total very much." Foreseeing that segregation would become the focal point of black protest, he argued that the Navy had to begin accepting Negroes somewhere, and it might as well begin with a segregated general service.

Adamant in its opposition to any change in the Navy's policy, the (p. 064) Bureau of Navigation ignored Admiral Snyder's suggestions. The spokesman for the bureau warned that the 5,000 Negroes under consideration were just an opening wedge. "The sponsors of the program," Capt. Kenneth Whiting contended, "desire full equality on the part of the Negro and will not rest content until they obtain it." In the end, he predicted, Negroes would be on every man-of-war in direct proportion to their percentage of the population. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, echoed the bureau's sentiments. He viewed the issue of black enlistments as crucial.

If we are defeated we must not close our eyes to the fact that
once in they [Negroes] will be strengthened in their effort to
force themselves into every activity we have. If they are not
satisfied to be messmen, they will not be satisfied to go into
the construction or labor battalions. Don't forget the colleges
are turning out a large number of well-educated Negroes. I don't
know how long we will be able to keep them out of the V-7 class.
I think not very long.

The commandant called the enlistment of Negroes "absolutely tragic"; Negroes had every opportunity, he added, "to satisfy their aspiration to serve in the Army," and their desire to enter the naval service was largely an effort "to break into a club that doesn't want them."

The board heard similar sentiments from representatives of the Bureau of Aeronautics, the Bureau of Yards and Docks, and, with reservations, from the Coast Guard. Confronted with such united opposition from the powerful bureaus, the General Board capitulated. On 3 February it reported to the secretary that it was unable to submit a plan and strongly recommended that the current policy be allowed to stand. The board stated that "if, in the opinion of higher authority, political pressure is such as to require the enlistment of these people for general service, let it be for that." If restriction of Negroes to the Messman's Branch was discrimination, the board added, "it was but part and parcel of a similar discrimination throughout the United States."[3-20]

[Footnote 3-20: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race
(201), 23 Jan 42, Hearings Before the General Board
of the Navy, 1942; Memo, Chmn, Gen Bd, for SecNav,
3 Feb 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race in
Other Than Messman Branch. Both in Recs of Gen Bd,
OpNavArchives.]

Secretary Knox was certainly not one to dispute the board's findings, but it was a different story in the White House. President Roosevelt refused to accept the argument that the only choice lay between exclusion in the Messman's Branch and total integration in the general service. His desire to avoid the race issue was understandable; the war was in its darkest days, and whatever his aspirations for American society, the President was convinced that, while some change was necessary, "to go the whole way at one fell swoop would seriously impair the general average efficiency of the Navy."[3-21] He wanted the board to study the question further, noting that there were some additional tasks and some special assignments that could be worked (p. 065) out for the Negro that "would not inject into the whole personnel of the Navy the race question."[3-22]

[Footnote 3-21: Quoted in "BuPers Hist," p. 6.]

[Footnote 3-22: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 14 Feb
42, Recs of Gen Bd, OpNavArchives. The quotation is
from the Knox Memo and is not necessarily in the
exact words of the President.]

The Navy got the message. Armed with these instructions from the White House, the General Board called on the bureaus and other agencies to furnish lists of stations or assignments where Negroes could be used in other than the Messman's Branch, adding that it was "unnecessary and inadvisable" to emphasize further the undesirability of recruiting Negroes. Freely interpreting the President's directive, the board decided that its proposals had to provide for segregation in order to prevent the injection of the race issue into the Navy. It rejected the idea of enlisting Negroes in such selected ratings as musician and carpenter's mate or designating a branch for Negroes (the possibility of an all-black aviation department for a carrier was discussed). Basing its decision on the plans quickly submitted by the bureaus, the General Board recommended a course that it felt offered "least disadvantages and the least difficulty of accomplishment as a war measure": the formation of black units in the shore establishment, black crews for naval district local defense craft and selected Coast (p. 066) Guard cutters, black regiments in the Seabees, and composite battalions in the Marine Corps. The board asked that the Navy Department be granted wide latitude in deciding the number of Negroes to be accepted as well as their rate of enlistment and the method of recruiting, training, and assignment.[3-23] The President agreed to the plan, but balked at the board's last request. "I think this is a matter," he told Secretary Knox, "to be determined by you and me."[3-24]

[Footnote 3-23: Memos, Chmn, Gen Bd, for Chief,
BuNav, Cmdt, CG, and Cmdt, MC, 18 Feb 42, sub:
Enlistment of Men of Colored Race in Other Than
Messman Branch. For examples of responses, see Ltr,
Cmdt, to Chmn, Gen Bd, 24 Feb 42, same sub; Memo,
Chief, BuNav, for Chmn, Gen Bd, 7 Mar 42, same sub;
Memo, CNO for Chief, BuNav, 25 Feb 42, same sub,
with 1st Ind by CINCUSFLT, 28 Feb 42, same sub. The
final enlistment plan is found in Memo, Chmn, Gen
Bd, for SecNav, 20 Mar 42, same sub (G. B. No 421).
All in Recs of Gen Bd, OpNavArchives. It was
transmitted to the President in Ltr, SecNav to
President, 27 Mar 42, P14-4/MM, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-24: Memo, President for Secy of Navy, 31
Mar 42, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park,
New York.]

The two-year debate over the admission of Negroes ended just in time, for the opposition to the Navy's policy was enlisting new allies daily. The national press made the expected invidious comparisons when Joe Louis turned over his share of the purse from the Louis-Baer fight to Navy Relief, and Wendell Willkie in a well-publicized speech at New York's Freedom House excoriated the Navy's racial practices as a "mockery" of democracy.[3-25] But these were the last shots fired. On 7 April 1942 Secretary Knox announced the Navy's capitulation. The Navy would accept 277 black volunteers per week--it was not yet drafting anyone--for enlistment in all ratings of the general service of the reserve components of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. Their actual entry would have to await the construction of suitable, meaning segregated, facilities, but the Navy's goal for the first year was 14,000 Negroes in the general service.[3-26]

[Footnote 3-25: New York _Times_, January 10 and
March 20, 1942.]

[Footnote 3-26: Office of SecNav, Press Release, 7
Apr 42.]

Members of the black community received the news with mixed emotions. Some reluctantly accepted the plan as a first step; the NAACP's _Crisis_ called it "progress toward a more enlightened point of view." Others, like the National Negro Congress, complimented Knox for his "bold, patriotic action."[3-27] But almost all were quick to point out that the black sailor would be segregated, limited to the rank of petty officer, and, except as a steward, barred from sea duty.[3-28] The Navy's plan offered all the disadvantages of the Army's system with none of the corresponding advantages for participation and advancement. The NAACP hammered away at the segregation angle, informing its public that the old system, which had fathered inequalities and humiliations in the Army and in civilian life, was now being followed by the Navy. A. Philip Randolph complained that the change in Navy policy merely "accepts and extends and consolidates the policy of Jim-Crowism in the Navy as well as proclaims it as an accepted, recognized government (p. 067) ideology that the Negro is inferior to the white man."[3-29] The editors of the National Urban League's _Opportunity_ concluded that, "faced with the great opportunity to strengthen the forces of Democracy, the Navy Department chose to affirm the charge that Japan is making against America to the brown people ... that the so-called Four Freedoms enunciated in the great 'Atlantic Charter' were for white men only."[3-30]

[Footnote 3-27: "The Navy Makes a Gesture," _Crisis_
49 (May 1942):51. The National Negro Congress
quotation reprinted in Dennis D. Nelson's summary
of reactions to the Secretary of the Navy's
announcement. See Nelson, "The Integration of the
Negro in the United States Navy, 1776-1947"
(NAVEXOS-P-526), p. 38. (This earlier and different
version of Nelson's published work, derived from
his master's thesis, was sponsored by the U.S.
Navy.)]

[Footnote 3-28: Although essentially correct, the
critics were technically inaccurate since some
Negroes would be assigned to Coast Guard cutters
which qualified as sea duty.]

[Footnote 3-29: Quoted in Nelson, "The Integration of
the Negro," p. 37.]

[Footnote 3-30: _Opportunity_ (May 1942), p. 82.]

_A Segregated Navy_

With considerable alacrity the Navy set a practical course for the employment of its black volunteers. On 21 April 1942 Secretary Knox approved a plan for training Negroes at Camp Barry, an isolated section of the Great Lakes Training Center. Later renamed Camp Robert Smalls after a black naval hero of the Civil War, the camp not only offered the possibility of practically unlimited expansion but, as the Bureau of Navigation put it, made segregation "less obvious" to recruits. The secretary also approved the use of facilities at Hampton Institute, the well-known black school in Virginia, as an advanced training school for black recruits.[3-31]

[Footnote 3-31: Memo, Chief, BuNav, for SecNav, 17
Apr 42, sub: Training Facilities for Negro
Recruits, Nav-102; Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm
Randall Jacobs, 21 Apr 42, 54-1-22. Both in
GenRecsNav.]

Black enlistments began on 1 June 1942, and black volunteers started entering Great Lakes later that month in classes of 277 men. At the same time the Navy opened enlistments for an unlimited number of black Seabees and messmen. Lt. Comdr. Daniel Armstrong commanded the recruit program at Camp Smalls. An Annapolis graduate, son of the founder of Hampton Institute, Armstrong first came to the attention of Knox in March 1942 when he submitted a plan for the employment of black sailors that the secretary considered practical.[3-32] Under Armstrong's energetic leadership, black recruits received training that was in some respects superior to that afforded whites. For all his success, however, Armstrong was strongly criticized, especially by educated Negroes who resented his theories of education. Imbued with the paternalistic attitude of Tuskegee and Hampton, Armstrong saw the Negro as possessing a separate culture more attuned to vocational training. He believed that Negroes needed special treatment and discipline in a totally segregated environment free from white competition. Educated Negroes, on the other hand, saw in this special treatment another form of discrimination.[3-33]

[Footnote 3-32: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 7 Mar
42, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-33: For a discussion of Armstrong's
philosophy from the viewpoint of an educated black
recruit, see Nelson, "Integration of the Negro,"
pp. 28-34. Sec also Ltr, Nelson to author, 10 Feb
70, CMH files.]

During the first six months of the new segregated training program, before the great influx of Negroes from the draft, the Navy set the training period at twelve weeks. Later, when it had reluctantly abandoned the longer period, the Navy discovered that the regular eight-week course was sufficient. Approximately 31 percent of those graduating from the recruit course were qualified for Class A (p. 068) schools and entered advanced classes to receive training that would normally lead to petty officer rating for the top graduates and prepare men for assignment to naval stations and local defense and district craft. There they would serve in such class "A" specialties as radioman, signalman, and yeoman and the other occupational specialties such as machinist, mechanic, carpenter, electrician, cook, and baker.[3-34] Some of these classes were held at Hampton, but, as the number of black recruits increased, the majority remained at Camp Smalls for advanced training.

[Footnote 3-34: With the exception of machinist
school, where blacks were in training twice as long
as whites, specialist training for Negroes and
whites was similar in length. See "BuPers Hist,"
pp. 28-30, 60-61.]

The rest of the recruit graduates, those unqualified for advanced schooling, were divided. Some went directly to naval stations and local defense and district craft where they relieved whites as seaman, second class, and fireman, third class, and as trainees in specialties that required no advanced schooling; the rest, approximately eighty men per week, went to naval ammunition depots as unskilled laborers.[3-35]

[Footnote 3-35: BuPers, "Reports, Schedules, and
Charts Relating to Enlistment, Training, and
Assignment of Negro Personnel," 5 Jun 42, Pers-617,
BuPersRecs.]

The Navy proceeded to assimilate the black volunteers along these lines, suffering few of the personnel problems that plagued the Army in the first months of the war. In contrast to the Army's chaotic situation, caused by the thousands of black recruits streaming in from Selective Service, the Navy's plans for its volunteers were disrupted only because qualified Negroes showed little inclination to flock to the Navy standard, and more than half of those who did were rejected. The Bureau of Naval Personnel[3-36] reported that during the first three weeks of recruitment only 1,261 Negroes volunteered for general service, and 58 percent of these had to be rejected for physical and other reasons. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Adm. Randall Jacobs, was surprised at the small number of volunteers, a figure far below the planners' expectations, and his surprise turned to concern in the next months as the seventeen-year-old volunteer inductees, the primary target of the armed forces recruiters, continued to choose the Army over the Navy at a ratio of 10 to 1.[3-37] The Navy's personnel officials agreed that they had to attract their proper share of intelligent and able Negroes but seemed unable to isolate the (p. 069) cause of the disinterest. Admiral Jacobs blamed it on a lack of publicity; the bureau's historians, perhaps unaware of the Navy's nineteenth century experience with black seamen, later attributed it to Negroes' "relative unfamiliarity with the sea or the large inland waters and their consequent fear of the water."[3-38]

[Footnote 3-36: In May 1942 the name of the Bureau of
Navigation was changed to the Bureau of Naval
Personnel to reflect more accurately the duties of
the organization.]

[Footnote 3-37: Memo, Chief, NavPers, for CO, Great
Lakes NTC, 23 Apr 43. P14-1, BuPersRecs.]

[Footnote 3-38: "BuPers Hist," p. 54.]

The fact was, of course, that Negroes shunned the Navy because of its recent reputation as the exclusive preserve of white America. Only when the Navy began assigning black recruiting specialists to the numerous naval districts and using black chief petty officers, reservists from World War I general service, at recruiting centers to explain the new opportunities for Negroes in the Navy was the bureau able to overcome some of the young men's natural reluctance to volunteer. By 1 February 1943 the Navy had 26,909 Negroes (still 2 percent of the total enlisted): 6,662 in the general service; 2,020 in the Seabees; and 19,227, over two-thirds of the total, in the Steward's Branch.[3-39]

[Footnote 3-39: Ibid., p. 9.]

The smooth and efficient distribution of black recruits was short-lived. Under pressure from the Army, the War Manpower Commission, and in particular the White House, the Navy was forced into a sudden and significant expansion of its black recruit program. The Army had long objected to the Navy's recruitment method, and as early as February 1942 Secretary Stimson was calling the volunteer recruitment system a waste of manpower.[3-40] He was even more direct when he complained to President Roosevelt that through voluntary recruiting the Navy had avoided acceptance of any considerable number of Negroes. Consequently, the Army was now faced with the possibility of having to accept an even greater proportion of Negroes "with adverse effect on its combat efficiency." The solution to this problem, as Stimson saw it, was for the Navy to take its recruits from Selective Service.[3-41] Stimson failed to win his point. The President accepted the Navy's argument that segregation would be difficult to maintain on board ship. "If the Navy living conditions on board ship were similar to the Army living conditions on land," he wrote Stimson, "the problem would be easier but the circumstances ... being such as they are, I feel that it is best to continue the present system at this time."[3-42]

[Footnote 3-40: Memo, SW for SecNav, 16 Feb 42, sub:
Continuing of Voluntary Recruiting by the Navy,
QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-41: Idem for President, 16 Mar 42, copy
in QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-42: Memo, President for SW, 20 Mar 42,
copy in QN/P14-4, GenRecsNav.]

But the battle over racial quotas was only beginning. The question of the number of Negroes in the Navy was only part of the much broader considerations and conflicts over manpower policy that finally led the President, on 5 December 1942, to direct the discontinuance in all services of volunteer enlistment of men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight.[3-43] Beginning in February 1943 all men in this age group would be obtained through Selective Service. The order also placed Selective Service under the War Manpower Commission.

[Footnote 3-43: Executive Order 9279, 5 Dec 42.]

The Navy issued its first call for inductees from Selective (p. 070) Service in February 1943, adopting the Army's policy of placing its requisition on a racial basis and specifying the number of whites and blacks needed for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The Bureau of Naval Personnel planned to continue its old monthly quota of about 1,200 Negroes for general service and 1,500 for the Messman's Branch. Secretary Knox explained to the President that it would be impossible for the Navy to take more Negroes without resorting to mixed crews in the fleet, which, Knox reminded Roosevelt, was a policy "contrary to the President's program." The President agreed with Knox and told him so to advise Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service.[3-44]

[Footnote 3-44: Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm Randall
Jacobs, 5 Feb 43, 54-1-22, GenRecsNav.]

The problem of drafting men by race was a major concern of the Bureau of Selective Service and its parent organization, the War Manpower Commission. At a time when a general shortage of manpower was developing and industry was beginning to feel the effects of the draft, Negroes still made up only 6 percent of the armed forces, a little over half their percentage of the population, and almost all of these were in the Army. The chairman of the War Manpower Commission, Paul V. McNutt, explained to Secretary Knox as he had to Secretary Stimson that the practice of placing separate calls for white and black registrants could not be justified. Not only were there serious social and legal implications in the existing draft practices, he pointed out, but the Selective Service Act itself prohibited racial discrimination. It was necessary, therefore, to draft men by order number and not by color.[3-45]

[Footnote 3-45: Ltr, Paul McNutt to SecNav, 17 Feb
43, WMC Gen files, NARS.]

On top of this blow, the Navy came under fire from another quarter. The President was evidently still thinking about Negroes in the Navy. He wrote to the secretary on 22 February:

I guess you were dreaming or maybe I was dreaming if Randall
Jacobs is right in regard to what I am supposed to have said
about employment of negroes in the Navy. If I did say that such
employment should be stopped, I must have been talking in my
sleep. Most decidedly we must continue the employment of negroes
in the Navy, and I do not think it the least bit necessary to put
mixed crews on the ships. I can find a thousand ways of employing
them without doing so.

The point or the thing is this. There is going to be a great deal
of feeling if the Government in winning this war does not employ
approximately 10% of negroes--their actual percentage to the
total population. The Army is nearly up to this percentage but
the Navy is so far below it that it will be deeply criticized by
anybody who wants to check into the details.

Perhaps a check by you showing exactly where all white enlisted
men are serving and where all colored enlisted men are serving
will show you the great number of places where colored men could
serve, where they are not serving now--shore duty of all kinds,
together with the handling of many kinds of yard craft.

You know the headache we have had about this and the reluctance
of the Navy to have any negroes. You and I have had to veto that
Navy reluctance and I think we have to do it again.[3-46]

[Footnote 3-46: Memo, President for SecNav, 22 Feb
43, FDR Library.]

In an effort to save the quota concept, the Bureau of Naval (p. 071) Personnel ground out new figures that would raise the current call of 2,700 Negroes per month to 5,000 in April and 7,350 for each of the remaining months of 1943. Armed with these figures, Secretary Knox was able to promise Commissioner McNutt that 10 percent of the men inducted for the rest of 1943 would be Negroes, although separate calls had to be continued for the time being to permit adjusting the flow of Negroes to the expansion of facilities.[3-47] In other words, the secretary promised to accept 71,900 black draftees in 1943; he did not promise to increase the black strength of the Navy to 10 percent of the total.

[Footnote 3-47: Ltr, Knox to McNutt, 26 Feb 43, WMC
Gen files.]

Commissioner McNutt understood the distinction and found the Navy's offer wanting for two reasons. The proposed schedule was inadequate to absorb the backlog of black registrants who should have been inducted into the armed services, and it did not raise the percentage of Negroes in the Navy to a figure comparable to their strength in the national population. McNutt wanted the Navy to draft at least 125,000 Negroes before January 1944, and he insisted that the practice of placing separate calls be terminated "as soon as feasible."[3-48] The Navy finally struck a compromise with the commission, agreeing that up to 14,150 Negroes a month would be inducted for the rest of 1943 to reach the 125,000 figure by January 1944.[3-49] The issue of separate draft calls for Negroes and whites remained in abeyance while the services made common cause against the commission by insisting that the orderly absorption of Negroes demanded a regular program that could only be met by maintaining the quota system.

[Footnote 3-48: Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Mar 43, WMC
Gen files.]

[Footnote 3-49: Ltr, SecNav to Paul McNutt, 13 Apr
43; Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Apr 43; both in WMC Gen
files.]

Total black enlistments never reached 10 percent of the Navy's wartime enlisted strength but remained nearer the 5 percent mark. But this figure masks the Navy's racial picture in the later years of the war after it became dependent on Selective Service. The Navy drafted 150,955 Negroes during the war, 11.1 percent of all the men it drafted. In 1943 alone the Navy placed calls with Selective Service for 116,000 black draftees. Although Selective Service was unable to fill the monthly request completely, the Navy received 77,854 black draftees (versus 672,437 whites) that year, a 240 percent rise over the 1942 black enlistment rate.[3-50]

[Footnote 3-50: Selective Service System, _Special
Groups_, vol. II, pp. 198-201. See also Memos,
Director of Planning and Control, BuPers, for
Chief, BuPers, 25 Feb 43, sub: Increase in Colored
Personnel for the Navy; and 1 Apr 43, sub; Increase
in Negro Personnel in Navy. Both in P-14,
BuPersRecs.]

Although it wrestled for several months with the problem of distributing the increased number of black draftees, the Bureau of Naval Personnel could invent nothing new. The Navy, Knox told President Roosevelt, would continue to segregate Negroes and restrict their service to certain occupations. Its increased black strength would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black Seabee battalions, in which Negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for harbor craft and local defense forces; and in billets for cooks and port hands. The rest would be sent to shore stations for guard (p. 072) and miscellaneous duties in concentrations up to about 50 percent of the total station strength. The President approved the Navy's proposals, and the distribution of Negroes followed these lines.[3-51]

[Footnote 3-51: Memos, SecNav for President, 25 Feb
and 14 Apr 43, quoted in "BuPers Hist," pp. 13-14;
Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for SecNav, 24 Feb 43,
sub: Employment of Colored Personnel in the Navy,
Pers 10, GenRecsNav. For Roosevelt's approval see
"BuPers Hist," p. 14.]

To smooth the racial adjustments implicit in these plans, the Bureau of Naval Personnel developed two operating rules: Negroes would be assigned only where need existed, and, whenever possible, those from northern communities would not be used in the south. These rules caused some peculiar adjustments in administration. Negroes were not assigned to naval districts for distribution according to the discretion of the commander, as were white recruits. Rather, after conferring with local commanders, the bureau decided on the number of Negroes to be included in station complements and the types of jobs they would fill. It then assigned the men to duty accordingly, and the districts were instructed not to change the orders without consulting the bureau. Subsequently the bureau reinforced this rule by enjoining the commanders to use Negroes in the ratings for which they had been trained and by sending bureau representatives to the various commands to check on compliance.

Some planners feared that the concentration of Negroes at shore stations might prove detrimental to efficiency and morale. Proposals were circulated in the Bureau of Naval Personnel for the inclusion of Negroes in small numbers in the crews of large combat ships--for example, they might be used as firemen and ordinary seamen on the new aircraft carriers--but Admiral Jacobs rejected the recommendations.[3-52] The Navy was not yet ready to try integration, it seemed, even though racial disturbances were becoming a distinct possibility in 1943. For as Negroes became a larger part of the Navy, they also became a greater source of tension. The reasons for the tension were readily apparent. Negroes were restricted for the most part to shore duty, concentrated in large groups and assigned to jobs with little prestige and few chances of promotion. They were excluded from the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Nurse Corps, and the commissioned ranks. And they were rigidly segregated.

[Footnote 3-52: "BuPersHist," p. 41.]

Although the Navy boasted that Negroes served in every rating and at every task, in fact almost all were used in a limited range of occupations. Denied general service assignments on warships, trained Negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the harbor defense, district, and small craft service. Although assigning Negroes to these duties met the President's request for variety of opportunity, the small craft could employ only 7,700 men at most, a minuscule part of the Navy's black strength.

Most Negroes performed humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs remained in the Negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more (p. 073) stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for that separate duty. Often recruiters took in many as stewards who were equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local naval stations the result was often dismaying. The Navy thus received poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a segregated servants' branch. In an effort to standardize the training of messmen, the Bureau of Naval Personnel established a stewards school in the spring of 1943 at Norfolk and later one at Bainbridge, Maryland. The change in training did little to improve the standards of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among many stewards.

Another 12,000 Negroes served as artisans and laborers at overseas bases. Over 7,000 of these were Seabees, who, with the exception of two regular construction battalions that served with distinction in the Pacific, were relegated to "special" battalions stevedoring cargo and supplies. The rest were laborers in base companies assigned to the South Pacific area. These units were commanded by white officers, and almost all the petty officers were white.

Approximately half the Negroes in the Navy were detailed to shore billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section (p. 074) bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]

[Footnote 3-53: Naval districts organized section
bases during the war with responsibility, among
other things, for guarding beaches, harbors, and
installations and maintaining equipment.]

[Footnote 3-54: See CNO ALNAV, 7 Aug 44, quoted in
Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 46.]

While some billets existed in practically every important rating for graduates of the segregated specialty schools, these jobs were so few that black specialists were often assigned instead to unskilled laboring jobs.[3-55] Some of these men were among the best educated Negroes in the Navy, natural leaders capable of articulating their dissatisfaction. They resented being barred from the fighting, and their resentment, spreading through the thousands of Negroes in the shore establishment, was a prime cause of racial tension.

[Footnote 3-55: Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for Cmdts,
AlNav Districts et al., 26 Sep 44, sub: Enlisted
Personnel--Utilization of in Field for which
Specifically Trained, Pers 16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

No black women had been admitted to the Navy. Race was not mentioned in the legislation establishing the WAVES in 1942, but neither was exclusion on account of color expressly forbidden. The WAVES and the Women's Reserve of both the Coast Guard (SPARS) and the Marine Corps therefore celebrated their second birthday exclusively white. The Navy Nurse Corps was also totally white. In answer to protests passed to the service through Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy admitted in November 1943 that it had a shortage of 500 nurses, but since another (p. 075) 500 white nurses were under indoctrination and training, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery explained, "the question relative to the necessity for accepting colored personnel in this category is not apparent."[3-56]

[Footnote 3-56: Ltr, Eleanor Roosevelt to SecNav, 20
Nov 43; Ltr, SecNav to Mrs. Roosevelt, 27 Nov 43;
both in BUMED-S-EC, GenRecsNav. Well known for her
interest in the cause of racial justice, the
President's wife received many complaints during
the war concerning discrimination in the armed
forces. Mrs. Roosevelt often passed such protests
along to the service secretaries for action.
Although there is no doubt where Mrs. Roosevelt's
sympathies lay in these matters, her influence was
slight on the policies and practices of the Army or
Navy. Her influence on the President's thinking is,
of course, another matter. See White, _A Man Called
White_, pp. 168-69, 190.]

Another major cause of unrest among black seamen was the matter of rank and promotion. With the exception of the Coast Guard, the naval establishment had no black officers in 1943, and none were contemplated. Nor was there much opportunity for advancement in the ranks. Barred from service in the fleet, the nonrated seamen faced strong competition for the limited number of petty officer positions in the shore establishment. In consequence, morale throughout the ranks deteriorated.

The constant black complaint, and the root of the Navy's racial problem, was segregation. It was especially hard on young black recruits who had never experienced legal segregation in civilian life and on the "talented tenth," the educated Negroes, who were quickly frustrated by a policy that decided opportunity and assignment on the basis of color. They particularly resented segregation in housing, messing, and recreation. Here segregation off the job, officially sanctioned, made manifest by signs distinguishing facilities for white and black, and enforced by military as well as civilian police, was a daily reminder for the Negro of the Navy's discrimination.

Such discrimination created tension in the ranks that periodically released itself in racial disorder. The first sign of serious unrest occurred in June 1943 when over half the 640 Negroes of the Naval Ammunition Depot at St. Julien's Creek, Virginia, rioted against alleged discrimination in segregated seating for a radio show. In July, 744 Negroes of the 80th Construction Battalion staged a protest over segregation on a transport in the Caribbean. Yet, naval investigators cited leadership problems as a major factor in these and subsequent incidents, and at least one commanding officer was relieved as a consequence.[3-57]

[Footnote 3-57: For a discussion of these racial
disturbances, see "BuPers Hist," pp. 75-80.]

_Progressive Experiments_

Since the inception of black enlistment there had been those in the Bureau of Naval Personnel who argued for the establishment of a group to coordinate plans and policies on the training and use of black sailors. Various proposals were considered, but only in the wake of the racial disturbances of 1943 did the bureau set up a Special Programs Unit in its Planning and Control Activity to oversee the whole black enlistment program. In the end the size of the unit governed the scope of its program. Originally the unit was to monitor all transactions involving Negroes in the bureau's operating divisions, thus relieving the Enlisted Division of the critical task of (p. 076) distributing billets for Negroes. It was also supposed to advise local commanders on race problems and interpret departmental policies for them. When finally established in August 1943, the unit consisted of only three officers, a size which considerably limited its activities. Still, the unit worked diligently to improve the lot of the black sailor, and eventually from this office would emerge the plans that brought about the integration of the Navy.

The Special Programs Unit's patron saint and the guiding spirit of the Navy's liberalizing race program was Lt. Comdr. Christopher S. Sargent. He never served in the unit himself, but helped find the two lieutenant commanders, Donald O. VanNess and Charles E. Dillon, who worked under Capt. Thomas F. Darden in the Plans and Operations Section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel and acted as liaison between the Special Programs Unit and its civilian superiors. A legendary figure in the bureau, the 31-year-old Sargent arrived as a lieutenant, junior grade, from Dean Acheson's law firm, but his rank and official position were no measure of his influence in the Navy Department. By birth and training he was used to moving in the highest circles of American society and government, and he had wide-ranging interests and duties in the Navy. Described by a superior as "a philosopher who could not tolerate segregation,"[3-58] Sargent waged something of a moral crusade to integrate the Navy. He was convinced that a social change impossible in peacetime was practical in war. Not only would integration build a more efficient Navy, it might also lead the way to changes in American society that would bridge the gap between the races.[3-59] In effect, Sargent sought to force the generally conservative Bureau of Naval Personnel into making rapid and sweeping changes in the Navy's racial policy.

[Footnote 3-58: Interv, Lee Nichols with Rear Adm. R.
H. Hillenkoetter, 1953, in Nichols Collection,
CMH.]

[Footnote 3-59: Nichols, _Breakthrough on the Color
Front_, pp. 54-59. Nichols supports his
affectionate portrait of Sargent, who died shortly
after the war, with interviews of many wartime
officials who worked in the Bureau of Naval
Personnel with Sargent. See Nichols Collection,
CMH. See also _Christopher Smith Sargent,
1911-1946_, a privately printed memorial prepared
by the Sargent family in 1947, copy in CMH.]