Part 47 (1/2)
[Footnote 13-31: General Paul's Remarks at Army Commanders Conference, 30 Mar-2 Apr 48, p. 30, CSUSA 337.]
Secure in his belief that segregation was right and necessary, Royall confidently awaited the judgment of the recently appointed President's committee. He was convinced that any fair judge could draw but one conclusion: under the provisions of Circular 124, Negroes had (p. 323) already achieved equal treatment and opportunity in the Army. His job, therefore, was relatively simple. He had to defend Army policy against outside attack and make sure it was applied uniformly throughout the service. His stand marked one of the last attempts by a major federal official to support a racially separate but equal system before the principle was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in _Brown_ v.
_Board of Education_.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SECRETARY ROYALL REVIEWS MILITARY POLICE, _Yokohama, j.a.pan, 1949_.]
Royall readily conceded that it was proper and necessary for Negroes to insist on integration, but, echoing a long-cherished Army belief, he adamantly opposed using the Army to support or oppose any social cause. The Army, he contended, must follow the nation, not lead it, in social matters. The Army must not experiment. When, ”without prejudice to the National Defense,” the Army could reduce segregation to the platoon level it would do so, but all such steps should be taken one at a time. And 1948, he told the conference of black leaders in April of that year, was not the time.[13-32]
[Footnote 13-32: See Testimony of Royall at National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs, 26 Apr 48, pp.
24-26.]
Convinced of the rightness of the Army's policy, Secretary Royall was understandably agitated by the unfavorable publicity directed at him and his department. The publicity, he was convinced, resulted from discrimination on the part of ”the Negro and liberal press” (p. 324) against the Army's policy in favor of the Navy and Air Force. He was particularly incensed at the way the junior services had escaped the ”rap”--his word--on racial matters. He ascribed it in large part, he told the Secretary of Defense in September 1948, to the ”unfortunate”
National Defense Conference, the gathering of black spokesmen held under Forrestal's auspices the previous spring.[13-33] The specific object of Royall's indignation was Lester Granger's final report on the work of the National Defense Conference. That report emphasized the conferees' reb.u.t.tal to Royall's defense of segregation on the grounds of military expediency and past experience with black soldiers. The Army has a.s.sumed a position, Granger claimed, that was unjustified by its own experience. Overlooking evidence to the contrary, Granger added that the Army position was at variance with the experience of the other services. His parting shot was aimed at the heart of the Army's argument: ”It is as unwise as it is unsound to cite the resistance of military leaders.h.i.+p against basic changes in policy as sufficient cause for delaying immediate and effective action.”[13-34]
[Footnote 13-33: Memo, SA for SecDef, 22 Sep 48, copy in CD30-1-2, SecDef files.]
[Footnote 13-34: Ltr, Granger and Conferees to Forrestal, 26 Aug 48, D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
Adding to Royall's discomfort, Forrestal released the report on 8 September, and his letter of appreciation to Granger and the conferees a.s.sured them he would send their report to the President's committee.
The New York _Times_ promptly picked up Granger's reference to opposition among military leaders.[13-35] Royall tried to counter this attack. Since neither the President nor the Secretary of Defense had disapproved the Army's racial policy nor suggested any modifications, Royall told Forrestal he wanted him to go on record as approving the Army position. This course would doubtless be more palatable to Forrestal, Royall suggested, than having Royall announce that Forrestal had given tacit approval to the Army's policy.[13-36]
[Footnote 13-35: NME Press Release, 8 Sep 48; New York _Times_, September 9, 1948; Memo, Leva for Forrestal, 30 Aug 48; Ltr, Forrestal to Granger, 30 Aug 48. Last two in D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
[Footnote 13-36: Memo, SA for SecDef, 22 Sep 48, copy in CD30-1-2, SecDef files.]
Forrestal quickly scotched this maneuver. It was true, he told Royall, that the Army's policy had not been disapproved. But neither had the Army's policy or that of the Navy or Air Force yet been reviewed by the Secretary of Defense. The President's committee would probably make such a review an early order of business. Meanwhile, the Army's race policy would continue in effect until it was altered either by Forrestal's office or by action from some other source.[13-37]
[Footnote 13-37: Memo (unsigned), Forrestal for Royall, 22 Sep 48. The answer was prepared by Leva and used by Forrestal as the basis for his conversation with Royall. See Memos, Leva for Forrestal, undated, and 30 Sep 48, both in CD30-1-2, SecDef files.]
Even as Secretary Royall tried to defend the Army from the attacks of the press, the service's policy was challenged from another quarter.
The blunt fact was that with the reinst.i.tution of selective service in 1948 the Army was receiving more black recruits--especially those in the lower mental categories--than a segregated system could easily absorb. The high percentage of black soldiers so proudly publicized by Royall at the National Defense Conference was in fact a source of anxiety for Army planners. The staff particularly resented the different standards adopted by the other services to determine (p. 325) the acceptability of selectees. The Navy and Air Force, pleading their need for skilled workers and dependence on volunteer enlistments, imposed a higher minimum achievement score for admission than the Army, which, largely dependent upon the draft for its manpower, was required to accept men with lower scores. Thousands of Negroes, less skilled and with little education, were therefore eligible for service in the Army although they were excluded from the Navy and Air Force.
Given such circ.u.mstances, it was probably inevitable that differences in racial policies would precipitate an interservice conflict. The Army claimed the difference in enlistment standards was discriminatory and contrary to the provisions of the draft law which required the Secretary of Defense to set enlistment standards. In April 1948 Secretary Royall demanded that Forrestal impose the same mental standards on all the services. He wanted inductees allocated to the services according to their physical and mental abilities and Negroes apportioned among them.
The other services countered that there were not enough well-educated people of draft age to justify raising the Army's mental standards to the Navy and Air Force levels, but neither service wanted to lower its own entrance standards to match the level necessity had imposed on the Army. The Air Force eventually agreed to enlist Negroes at a 10 percent ratio to whites, but the Navy held out for higher standards and no allocation by race. It contended that setting the same standards for all services would improve the quality of the Army's black enlistees only imperceptibly while it would do great damage to the Navy. The Navy admitted that the other services should help the Army, but not ”up to the point of _unnecessarily_ reducing their own effectiveness.... The modern Navy cannot operate its s.h.i.+ps and aircraft with personnel of G.C.T. 70.”[13-38] General Bradley cut to the point: if the Navy carried the day it would receive substantially fewer Negroes than the other two services and a larger portion of the best qualified.[13-39] Secretary Forrestal first referred the interservice controversy to the Munitions Board in May 1948 and later that summer to a special interservice committee. After both groups failed to reach an agreement,[13-40] Forrestal decided not to force a parity in mental standards upon the services. On 12 October he explained to the secretaries that parity could be imposed only during time of full mobilization, and since conditions in the period between October 1948 and June 1949 could not be considered comparable to those of full mobilization, parity was impossible. He promised, however, to study the qualitative needs of each service. Meanwhile, he had found no evidence that any service was discriminating in the selection of enlistees and settled for a warning that any serious (p. 326) discrimination by any two of the services would place ”an intolerable burden” on the third.[13-41]
[Footnote 13-38: Memo, SecNav for SecDef, 27 May 48, sub: Liaison With the Selective Service System and Determination of Parity Standards, P14-6; Memo, Actg SecNav for SecDef, 17 Aug 48; sub: Items in Disagreement Between the Services as Listed in SecDef's Memo of 15 Jul 48, P 14-4; both in GenRecsNav. The quotation is from an inclosure to the latter memo.]
[Footnote 13-39: CofSA, Rpt of War Council Min, 3 Aug 48, copy in OSD Historical Office files.]
[Footnote 13-40: For a detailed a.n.a.lysis of the various service arguments and positions, see Office of the Secretary of Defense, ”Proposed Findings and Decisions on Questions of Parity of Mental Standards, Allocation of Inductees According to Physical and Mental Capabilities and Allocation of Negroes” (n.o.ble Report), 29 Oct 48, copy in SecDef files.]
[Footnote 13-41: Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 12 Oct 48, with attached Summary of Supplement, copy in CMH.]
Convinced that Forrestal had made the wrong decision, the Army staff was nevertheless obliged to concern itself with the percentage of Negroes it would have to accept under the new selective service law.
Although by November 1948 the Army's black strength had dropped to 9.83 percent of the total, its proportion of Negroes was still large when compared with the Navy's 4.3 percent, the Marine Corps' 1.79 percent, and the Air Force's 6 percent. Projecting these figures against the possible mobilization of five million men (a.s.suming each service increased in proportion to its current strength and absorbed the same percentage of a black population remaining at 12 percent of the whole), the Army calculated that its low entrance requirements would give it a black strength of 21 percent. In the event of a mobilization equaling or surpa.s.sing that of World War II, the minimum test score of seventy would probably be lowered, and thus the Army would shoulder an even greater burden of poorly educated men, a burden that in the Army's view should be shared by all the services.[13-42]
[Footnote 13-42: DF, Dir, P&A, to CofS, 24 Jan 49, sub: Experimental Unit, GSPGA 291.2 (24 Jan 49).]