Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 43

[Footnote 12-25: Ltr, Gibson to Ohly, 25 Nov 47, D54-1-3, Sec Def files.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A. PHILIP RANDOLPH. (_Detail from painting by Betsy G. Reyneau._)]

Gibson was no doubt referring to A. Philip Randolph, president (p. 300) of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and organizer of the 1940 March on Was.h.i.+ngton Movement, who had spoken out against the pending legislation. Randolph was particularly concerned that the bill did not prohibit segregation, and he quoted a member of the Advisory Commission on Universal Training who admitted that the bill ignored the racial issue because "the South might oppose UMT if Negroes were included." Drafting eighteen-year olds into a segregated Army was a threat to black progress, Randolph charged, because enforced segregation made it difficult to break down other forms of discrimination.

Convinced that the Pentagon was trying to bypa.s.s the segregation issue, Randolph and Grant Reynolds, a black clergyman and New York politician, formed a Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training. They planned to submit a proposal to the President and Congress for drafting a nondiscrimination measure for the armed forces, and they were prepared to back up this demand with a march on Was.h.i.+ngton--no empty gesture in an election year. Randolph had impressive backing from black leaders, among them Dr. Channing H.

Tobias of the Civil Rights Committee, George S. Schuyler, columnist of the Pittsburgh _Courier_, L. D. Redd.i.c.k, curator of the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library, and Joe Louis.[12-26]

[Footnote 12-26: New York Times, November 23, 1947; _Herald Tribune_, November 23, 1947. See also L. D.

Redd.i.c.k, "The Negro Policy of the American Army Since World War II," _Journal of Negro History_ 38 (April 1953):194-215.]

Black spokesmen were particularly incensed by the att.i.tude of the Secretary of the Army and his staff. Walter White pointed out that these officials continued to justify segregated units on the grounds that segregation was--he quoted them--"in the interest of national defense." White went to special pains to refute the Army's contention that segregation was necessary because the Army had to conform to local laws and customs. "How," he asked Secretary Forrestal,

can the imposition of segregation upon northern states having clear-cut laws and policies in opposition to such practices be justified by the Army?...

In view of President Truman's recent report to the Congress and in view of the report of his Committee on Civil Rights condemning segregation in the Armed Forces, I am at a loss to understand the reluctance on the part of the Department of Defense to immediately eliminate all vestiges of discrimination and (p. 301) segregation in the Armed Forces of this country. As the foremost defender of democratic principles in international councils, the United States can ill afford to any longer discriminate against its Negro citizens in its Armed Forces solely because they were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be born Negroes.[12-27]

[Footnote 12-27: Ltr, White to Forrestal, 17 Feb 48, D54-1-3, SecDef files.]

Forrestal stubbornly resisted the pleas of his advisers and black leaders that he a.s.sume a more active role. In the first place he had real doubts concerning his authority to do so. Forrestal was also aware of the consequences an integration campaign would have on Capitol Hill, where he was in the midst of delicate negotiations on defense measures. But most of all the role of crusader did not fit him. "I have gone somewhat slowly," Forrestal had written in late October 1947, "because I believe in the theory of having things to talk about as having been done rather than having to predict them, and ... morale and confidence are easy to destroy but not easy to rebuild.

In other words, I want to be sure that any changes we make are changes that accomplish something and not merely for the sake of change."[12-28]

[Footnote 12-28: Ltr, Forrestal to Rear Adm W. B.

Young, 23 Oct 47, quoted in Millis, _Forrestal Diaries_, p. 334.]

To Forrestal equal opportunity was not a pious plat.i.tude, but a practical means of solving the military's racial problems. Equal opportunity was the tactic he had used in the Navy where he had encouraged specialized training for all qualified Negroes. He understood that on s.h.i.+pboard machinists ate and bunked with machinists, firemen with firemen. Inaugurated in the fleet, the practice naturally spread to the sh.o.r.e establishment, and equal opportunity led inevitably to the integration of the general service.

Given the opportunity to qualify for all specialties, Negroes--albeit their number was limited to the small group in the general service--quickly gained equal treatment in off-the-job activities.

Forrestal intended to apply the same tactic to achieve the same results in the other services.[12-29]

[Footnote 12-29: Interv, Blumenson with Marx Leva, Special a.s.sistant to the Secretary of Defense (1947-49) and later a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense (Legal and Legislative Affairs), 4 May 64, CMH files.]

As in the past, he turned first to Lester Granger, his old friend from the National Urban League. Acting on the recommendation of his special a.s.sistant, Marx Leva, Forrestal invited Granger to the Pentagon to discuss the department's racial problems with a view to holding a general conference and symposium on the subject. As usual, Granger was full of ideas, and he and the secretary agreed that Forrestal should create a "critics group," which would discuss "Army and general defense policies in the use of Negro personnel."[12-30] Granger suggested a roster of black and white experts, influential in the black community and representing most shades of opinion, but he would exclude those apt to make political capital out of the issues.

[Footnote 12-30: Handwritten Memo, Leva for Forrestal, attached to Ltr, White to Forrestal, 17 Feb 48; Ltr, Leva to Granger, 19 Feb 48; Ltr, Granger to Forrestal, 2 Mar 48. All in D54-1-3, SecDef files.

The quotation is from the 2 March letter.]

The Leva-Granger conference idea fitted neatly into Forrestal's thinking. It offered the possibility of introducing to the services in a systematic and doc.u.mented way the complaints of responsible black leaders while instructing those leaders in the manpower problems confronting the postwar armed forces. He hoped the conference (p. 302) would modify traditionalist att.i.tudes toward integration while curbing mounting unrest in the black community. Granger and Forrestal agreed that the conference should be held soon. Although Granger wanted some "good solid white representation" in the group, Forrestal decided instead to invite fifteen black leaders to meet on 26 April in the Pentagon; he alerted the service secretaries, asking them to attend or to designate an a.s.sistant to represent them in each case.[12-31]

[Footnote 12-31: Memo, Marx Leva for SA et al., 13 Apr 48; idem for Forrestal, 24 Apr 48; ltr, SecDef to All Invited, 10 Apr 48. All in D54-1-3, SecDef files. Those invited were Truman Gibson; Dr.

Channing Tobias; Dr. Sadie T. M. Alexander; Mary McLeod Bethune; Dr. John W. Davis of West Virginia State College; Dr. Benjamin E. Mays of Morehouse College; Dr. Mordecai Johnson of Howard University; P. B. Young, Jr., of the Norfolk _Journal and Guide_; Willard Townsend of the United Transport Service Employees; Rev. John H. Johnson of New York; Walter White; Hobson E. Reynolds of the International Order of Elks; Bishop J. W. Gregg of Kansas City; Loren Miller of Los Angeles; and Charles Houston of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Unable to attend, White sent his a.s.sistant Roy Wilkins, Townsend sent George L. P. Weaver, and Mrs. Bethune was replaced by Ira F. Lewis of the Pittsburgh _Courier_.]

Announcement of the conference was upstaged in the press by the activities of some civil rights militants, including those whom Granger sought to exclude from the Forrestal conference because he thought they would make a political issue of the war against segregation. Forrestal first learned of the militants' plans from members of the National Negro Publishers a.s.sociation, a group of publishers and editors of important black journals who were about to tour European installations as guests of the Army.[12-32] At Granger's suggestion Forrestal had met with the publishers and editors to explain the causes for the delay in desegregating the services.

Instead, he found himself listening to an impa.s.sioned demand for immediate change. Ira F. Lewis, president of the Pittsburgh _Courier_ and spokesman for the group, told the secretary that the black community did not expect the services to be a laboratory or clearinghouse for processing the social ills of the nation, but it wanted to warn the man responsible for military preparedness that the United States could not afford another war with one-tenth of its population lacking the spirit to fight. The problem of segregation could best be solved by the policymakers. "The colored people of the country have a high regard for you, Mr. Secretary, as a square shooter," Lewis concluded. And from Forrestal they expected action.[12-33]

[Footnote 12-32: Representing eight papers, a cross section of the influential black press, the journalists included Ira F. Lewis and William G.

Nunn, Pittsburgh _Courier_; Cliff W. Mackay, _Afro-American_; Louis Martin and Charles Browning, Chicago _Defender_; Thomas W. Young and Louis R.

Lautier, Norfolk _Journal and Guide_; Carter Wesley, Houston _Defender_; Frank L. Stanley, Louisville _Defender_; Dowdal H. Davis, Kansas City _Call_; Dan Burley, _Amsterdam News_. See Evans, list of Publishers and Editors of Negro Newspapers, Pentagon, 18 Mar 48, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 12-33: Sentiments of the meeting were summarized in Ltr, Ira F. Lewis to Forrestal, 24 Mar 48; see also Ltr, Granger to Forrestal, 2 Mar 48; both in D54-1-4, SecDef files.]

While black newspapermen were pressing the executive branch, Randolph and his Committee Against Jim Crow were demanding congressional action. Randolph concentrated on one explosive issue, the Army's procurement of troops. The first War Department plans for postwar manpower procurement were predicated on some form of universal military training, a new concept for the United States. The plans immediately came under fire from Negroes because the Army, citing the Gillem Board Report as its authority, had specified that black recruits be trained in segregated units. The Army had also specified that the black units form parts of larger, racially mixed units and would be trained in racially mixed camps.[12-34] The President's (p. 303) Advisory Commission on Universal Training (the Compton Commission), appointed to study the Army's program, strongly objected to the segregation provisions, but to no avail.[12-35] As if to signal its intentions the Army trained an experimental universal military training unit in 1947 at Fort Knox that carefully excluded black volunteers.

[Footnote 12-34: WD Ltr, AGAO-S 353 (28 May 47), WDGOT-M, 11 Jun 47.]

[Footnote 12-35: _A Program for National Security: Report of the President's Advisory Commission on Universal Training, 29 May 1947_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: Government Printing Office, 1947), p. 42.]

The showdown between civil rights organizations and the administration over universal military training never materialized. Faced with chronic opposition to the program and the exigencies of the cold war, the administration quietly shelved universal training and concentrated instead on the reestablishment of the selective service system. When black attention naturally s.h.i.+fted to the new draft legislation, Randolph was able to capitalize on the determination of many leaders in the civil rights movement to defeat any draft law that countenanced the Army's racial policy. Appearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the draft bill, Randolph raised the specter of civil disobedience, pledging

to openly counsel, aid, and abet youth, both white and Negro, to quarantine any Jim Crow conscription system, whether it bear the label of universal military training or selective service....

From coast to coast in my travels I shall call upon all Negro veterans to join this civil disobedience movement and to recruit their younger brothers in an organized refusal to register and be drafted....

I shall appeal to the thousands of white youths ... to demonstrate their solidarity with Negro youth by ignoring the entire registration and induction machinery....

I shall appeal to the Negro parents to lend their moral support to their sons, to stand behind them as they march with heads held high to Federal prisons as a telling demonstration to the world that Negroes have reached the limit of human endurance, that, in the words of the spiritual, we will be buried in our graves before we will be slaves.[12-36]

[Footnote 12-36: Senate, Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, _Universal Military Training_, 80th Cong., 2d sess., 1948, p. 688.]

Randolph argued that hard-won gains in education, job opportunity, and housing would be nullified by federal legislation supporting segregation. How could a Fair Employment Practices Commission, he asked, dare criticize discrimination in industry if the government itself was discriminating against Negroes in the services? "Negroes are just sick and tired of being pushed around," he concluded, "and we just do not propose to take it, and we do not care what happens."[12-37]

[Footnote 12-37: Ibid., p. 689.]

When Senator Wayne Morse warned Randolph that such statements in times of national emergency would leave him open to charges of treason, Randolph replied that by fighting for their rights Negroes were serving the cause of American democracy. Borrowing from the rhetoric of the cold war, he predicted that such was the effect of segregation on the international fight for men's minds that America could never stop communism as long as it was burdened with Jim Crowism. Randolph threw down the gauntlet. "We have to face this thing sooner or (p. 304) later, and we might just as well face it now."[12-38] It was up to the administration and Congress to decide whether his challenge was the beginning of a ma.s.s movement or a weightless threat by an extremist group.

[Footnote 12-38: Ibid., pp. 691-94. The quotation is from page 694.]

The immediate reaction of various spokesmen for the black community supported both possibilities. Also testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Truman Gibson, who was a member of the Compton Commission that had objected to segregation, expressed "shock and dismay" at Randolph's pledge and predicted that Negroes would continue to partic.i.p.ate in the country's defense effort.[12-39] For his pains Gibson was branded a "rubber stamp Uncle Tom" by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The black press, for the most part, applauded Randolph's a.n.a.lysis of the mood of Negroes, but s.h.i.+ed away from the threat of civil disobedience. The NAACP and most other civil rights organizations took the same stand, condemning segregation but disavowing civil disobedience.[12-40]

[Footnote 12-39: Ibid., p. 645.]

[Footnote 12-40: The Philadelphia _Inquirer_, April 11, 1948; PM, April 11, 1948. See also McCloy and Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, pp. 107-08; "Crisis in the Making: U.S. Negroes Tussle With the Issue,"

_Newsweek_, June 7, 1948, pp. 28-29; L. Bennett, Jr., _Confrontation Black and White_ (Chicago: Johnson Press, 1965), pp. 192-94; Grant Reynolds, "A Triumph for Civil Disturbance," _Nation_ 167 (August 28, 1948):228-29.]

Although the administration could take comfort in the relatively mild reaction from conservative blacks, an important element of the black community supported Randolph's stand. A poll of young educated Negroes conducted by the NAACP revealed that 71 percent of those of draft age would support the civil disobedience campaign. So impressive was Randolph's support--the New York _Times_ called it a blunt warning from the black public--that one news journal saw in the campaign the specter of a major national crisis.[12-41] On the other hand, the Was.h.i.+ngton _Post_ cautioned its readers not to exaggerate the significance of the protest. Randolph's words, the _Post_ declared, were intended "more as moral pressure" for nondiscrimination clauses in pending draft and universal military training legislation than as a serious threat.[12-42]

[Footnote 12-41: New York _Times_, April 1, 1948.]

[Footnote 12-42: Was.h.i.+ngton _Post_, April 2, 1948.]

Whatever its ultimate influence on national policy, the Randolph civil disobedience pledge had no visible effect on the position of the President or Congress. With a draft bill and a national political convention pending, the President was not about to change his hands-off policy toward the segregation issue in the services. In fact he showed some heat at what he saw as a threat by extremists to exploit an issue he claimed he was doing his best to resolve.[12-43] As for members of Congress, most of those who joined in the debate on the draft bill simply ignored the threatened boycott.

[Footnote 12-43: McCoy and Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, p. 107.]

In contrast to the militant Randolph, the Negroes who gathered at Secretary Forrestal's invitation for the National Defense Conference on 26 April appeared to be a rather sedate group. But academic honors, business success, and gray hairs were misleading. These eminent educators, clergymen, and civil rights leaders proved just as (p. 305) determined as Randolph and his a.s.sociates to be rid of segregation and, considering their position in the community, were more likely to influence the administration. That they were their own men quickly became apparent in the stormy course of the Pentagon meeting. They subjected a score of defense officials[12-44] to searching questions, submitted themselves to cross-examination by the press, and agreed to prepare a report for the Secretary of Defense.

[Footnote 12-44: Department of National Defense, "National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs," 26 Apr 48. This doc.u.ment includes the testimony and transcript of the news conference that followed.

Officials appearing before the committee included James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense; Robert P.

Patterson, former Secretary of War; Marx Leva, Special a.s.sistant to the Secretary of Defense; James Evans, Adviser to the Secretary of Defense; Kenneth C. Royall, Secretary of the Army; John N.

Brown, a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy; W. Stuart Symington, Secretary of the Air Force; and personnel officials and consultants from each service.]