The Golden Thirteen

by Dan Goldberg

  Knox created twenty-seven new construction battalions: of those, twenty-four were required to have all nonrated men be black and three were made up entirely of black men. Knox increased the number of black crews on harbor craft and the number of black cooks and bakers in the commissary branch for shore establishments. Other black men were sent to shore stations, where they performed guard duty.56

  Knox’s decision to push black men into labor units and shore establishments while refusing to fully integrate ships was, predictably, condemned by the black press. It was a betrayal, it was said, and the only advancement had been in “black sailors trading in their waiters’ aprons for the carpenters’ hammers and stevedores’ hooks.”57

  The Navy defended its position by explaining that segregation did not mean discrimination and that black men were treated on a par with white men. “They undergo the same training given white recruits at the same station and for the same period,” Lieutenant Commander P. B. Brannen, director of public relations for Rear Admiral Jacobs, told the Pittsburgh Courier. It was, he said, separate but equal.

  Why, then, a Courier reporter asked, are there no black officers?

  The Navy’s policy was not to have black men in a position to command white men, Brannen said, and black men couldn’t be placed in charge of a ship with an all-black crew because it took years to train a man to boss a ship. Simple as that.58

  Roosevelt understood how devastating this situation was for morale, and while he wasn’t ready to integrate ships, the president leaned on Knox to find more opportunities for black sailors.

  “The point of the thing is this,” Roosevelt wrote to Knox.

  There is going to be a great deal of feeling if the Government in winning this war does not employ approximately 10 percent 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. . . . 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.59

  Four days later, the Bureau of Naval Personnel recommended increasing the monthly quota of black entrants to 5,000 by April, and then to 7,350 per month after that. This increase forced the Navy’s highest-ranking officials to consider, for the first time, commissioning African American officers. The men working inside the Bureau of Naval Personnel could read the political tea leaves. The president was responding to pressure from the black community, and there was little chance that the Navy could induct one hundred thousand black men over the next twelve months and not commission a single black officer without setting off a new round of protests.

  The bureau circulated a memo in early 1943 outlining a plan to commission fifty black men from civilian life and twenty-five more from the enlisted ranks. They would be assigned activities already dominated by black men, such as guarding the ammunition depots, so as to avoid mixing the races as much as possible.

  The plan was considered but ultimately rejected, deemed impractical. Black officers remained too great a hurdle to overcome and the General Board’s concern about white men refusing to accept a black man in a superior position still held sway, as did Knox’s fears that too much integration would dampen morale among whites and damage battle efficiency.60

  Having black men as officers might not have been the Navy’s preference, but there was an undisputable need for additional officers to handle the thousands of men enlisting or being drafted. So began the V-12 program, which combined college education and officer training. Dozens of the nation’s colleges would teach students to be officers so that they would graduate with a degree and be ready for the Navy.

  The admissions test for the program was offered on April 2, 1943. No one had mentioned race when the program was concocted and so no one in the Navy was certain whether the V-12 Navy College Training Program would be open to African Americans.

  True, no V-12 programs were offered at traditionally black colleges, but there were no explicit instructions to turn black men away if they enrolled at one of the fifty-two integrated colleges where the V-12 was offered.

  In March, about one month before the exam took place, Lieutenant Commander Alvin Eurich, the director of the Standards and Curriculum Section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, asked Rear Admiral Jacobs if black men would be allowed to sit for the admissions exam. Jacobs would not rule on his own and forwarded Eurich’s memo to Knox, who passed it along to Roosevelt.

  “Of course, Negroes will be tested!” Roosevelt scrawled in reply.

  Knox would not contradict the president’s order, but he made no move to advertise it, either. That left many black men assuming that the V-12 was just another Navy program for which they were not wanted, and Knox was fine letting them believe it.

  Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, put Knox on the spot just days before the exam, demanding to know “whether the Navy now has a policy, which will admit a Negro student to the real possibility of becoming an officer in the Navy, and whether these examinations in reality do as a matter of fact offer such a Negro student a first step toward this end.”

  Knox waited until April 3, the day after the entrance exam was to be held, to reply. “The Navy College Training Program admits all students selected for this program, including Negroes, to the possibility of becoming officers in the Navy, and the examinations offer the first step toward this end.”61

  It was the first time the Navy publicly stated it was open to the idea of black officers, though coming as it did the day after the admissions exam, the statement was of little use.

  The V-12 program would eventually commission seventy thousand white men and fifty-two African Americans, including Samuel Gravely, who became the Navy’s first black admiral, and Carl Rowan, the famed journalist who would later become the first black deputy secretary of state and the first black director of the US Information Agency.62

  But at the time, no one knew if any black men had bothered to join or were capable of finishing.

  Shortly after the first entrance exam, hundreds of teachers in the Virginia Peninsula Teachers Union, which represented employees at Hampton, wrote an open letter to President Roosevelt protesting the Navy’s opposition to black officers.

  Richard Kidd, president of Local 607, said his members “can no longer afford to continue losing the war at home. What upset the whole Hampton Institute community was the fact that colored members of the faculty who applied for commissions in the Navy were refused, while white members of the Hampton faculty were accepted,” he wrote.63

  “The practice of the Navy in commissioning white men as officers from biracial faculties in a Negro college and refusing to commission equally qualified men of color from the same faculty points up a Navy policy in an ugly way,” John W. Davis wrote in the summer of 1943 in the Journal of Negro Education. “All of this results in a low ceiling for Negro participation in the Navy. This policy of exclusion has caused many thoughtful Negroes to wonder whether the recent action of the Navy to enlist Negroes in capacities other than ‘steward, first, second and third class’ is to remain a feeble gesture.”64

  Meanwhile, Hampton’s training school was growing exponentially. When Reagan and Sublett arrived in September, Hampton had only 11 officers and 28 enlisted men. Within a year, staff grew to 139 officers and enlisted men in charge of 900 black sailors.65 Downes kept looking for talented African Americans such as Cooper to teach the mechanical subjects to the thousands of men coming from boot camp. In April 1943, he found just such a talent: Dalton Louis Baugh, a whip-smart sailor from Crossett, Arkansas, who was just shy of his thirtieth birthday.

  Baugh had enlisted the previous September, just after his fellow Arkansan, Jesse Arbor. He had spent the previous three years attending Arkansas AM&N, so he was familiar with the discipline needed for classroom work. He excelled at Hampton, finishing second in his sixty-two-man class. He gradu
ated on April 22 as a motor machinist’s mate second class, specializing in the maintenance and repair of diesel and gasoline engines. The next day he was an instructor working for Downes.

  Baugh had some experience in front of a class, having taught auto mechanics for a year before beginning college. He was a man of few words, but he had a knack for explaining difficult concepts, turning them into basic principles most men could understand. And he had the bearing of an authority figure. He was 6 feet tall and 175-pounds, a solid man with a deep, booming voice that gave an air of importance to whatever he said.66

  He enjoyed his work and Downes enjoyed him.

  Cooper, meanwhile, was teaching sheet-metal work, which he loved, and helping some of the less educated men learn to read. He’d show students a picture of a bolt next to the letters B-O-L-T. It wasn’t overly sophisticated, but that’s how scores of men learned basic literacy while at Hampton being trained for the nation’s defense.

  Cooper was very fond of Downes, who invited faculty to lavish parties at his townhouse, where the booze flowed freely.

  The pair worked well together, but by mid-1943, with the call for men growing increasingly desperate, Downes knew his original deal with Cooper to protect him from being drafted needed to be altered.

  “I can’t keep you out any longer,” Downes said. “But if you sign up for the Navy, I don’t think you’ll be sorry. I think I can guarantee you chief petty officer right off the bat. And I think I can bring you back here to do the same job as you’re doing now.”

  “That’s a winner,” Cooper said. “Let’s go.”

  Cooper enlisted on June 21, 1943, and just by virtue of signing his name he became a chief petty officer. No boot camp, no training, no nothing. The next day he was back at Hampton doing the exact same work, only this time as a member of the United States Armed Forces.67

  CHAPTER 9

  “I FEEL VERY EMPHATICALLY THAT We should COMMISSION A FEW NEGROES.”

  Sam Barnes was on duty in the drill hall at Camp Robert Smalls when Commander Armstrong approached and asked if the young man knew how to play badminton.

  “Yes, sir,” Barnes said—a lie. He had never played badminton in his life.

  “Well,” Armstrong replied, “I want you to have the nets up tomorrow . . . because I want to play badminton.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Barnes raced to the library and picked up a book on badminton. He spent the day practicing what he read and let his natural athleticism take over. He held his own in the match, and Armstrong took a liking to the petty officer third class.

  Rank had its privileges. If there was a questionable call, Armstrong might say the birdie landed in bounds.

  “Commander, you sure that was in? It looked out to me,” Barnes would say.

  “Yes, it was in,” Armstrong would reply.

  “It certainly was, now that you call it to my attention.”1

  Armstrong was competitive and had an excellent smash shot, but Barnes, younger and faster, had more stamina and could easily wear down his older opponent. After a while, Barnes had to let his commander win, but not every game: if the men played four games, Barnes won one. If they played six, Barnes won two.

  The two played badminton at noon every day for about an hour and grew to genuinely enjoy each other’s company.2

  It seemed everything was going right for the Oberlin native: he had been in the Navy for about a year, had a job he enjoyed, was buddying up to the commander and he was about to get married to Olga Lash, the woman who had stolen his heart five years earlier and would never give it back.

  It had all worked out so much better than Barnes had feared when he left his job at the YMCA in Cincinnati and enlisted on September 17, 1942, about two months after his friend Reginald Goodwin.

  Like Jesse Arbor and George Cooper, Barnes was a reluctant recruit, but his twin sister, Becky, living back home in Oberlin, was friendly with Hilda, the lady at the draft board, who let it slip that Sam’s name would soon be called.

  Sam Barnes, like Graham Martin, was a neat freak, and the Navy’s emphasis on cleanliness and order appealed to him. He also considered geography. Camp Robert Smalls was in Illinois, the North. Army training was most often in the South. A man who preferred to say his name was S.E. rather than subject himself to the indignity of being called Sam by white men knew he would not fare well in the Jim Crow South. Barnes had a wry sense of humor, but he also had a temper and a history of throwing a punch after being called a “nigger.” Best to avoid the South if he could.

  His fiancée, Olga, disagreed and begged him not to join the Navy. The branch had not shaken its reputation as a dead-end job for black men. Sure, the general service was now open, but the black press still highlighted a myriad of injustices, and the stories of the Philadelphia Fifteen remained fresh in many minds. Barnes was too smart, too educated, too talented for the Navy, Olga said. His skills would not be appreciated.

  The Navy wouldn’t even commission black men.

  “You’ll be a sailor all your life,” she warned.3

  But Barnes’s mind was set, and soon he could assure Olga that he had made the right decision. Boot camp and military discipline were easy for the football and track star, a five-foot ten-inch 175-pound rock, who did 100 sit-ups every day (he would wear the same-size clothes his entire adult life).4

  Barnes had been right regarding the Navy’s attention to detail and cleanliness. Uniforms were washed every day, so they were always fresh. Seabags were rolled and ready. Nothing dirty was ever allowed in the barracks. Barnes excelled in that kind of environment.

  He was selected company clerk, perhaps, he reasoned, because he was a college graduate and the company commander believed he could handle the work that position entailed. The clerk was charged with keeping all the records for the company, including medical records.

  Barnes graduated boot camp in December 1942 as a seaman first class. He was named honor man of the company, which came with the privilege of selecting the service school he preferred to attend. Barnes chose aviation mechanic school but was offered a job at Great Lakes as the assistant in recreation and athletics and intramurals. He was already familiar with athletics and drill, so working on intramural sports seemed like a natural fit, not dissimilar from the work he had done at Livingstone, and staying in ship’s company meant he could remain at Camp Robert Smalls, where he had grown comfortable.

  It was a great gig for Barnes. Men who worked at Great Lakes were allowed liberty in Chicago with few restrictions. The only real requirement was a “short-arm” inspection for venereal disease upon return. Any sailor who contracted a disease had to give the name of the woman he had been with so that the Navy could warn other sailors.

  After about a year working in recreation and athletics, Reginald Goodwin, his friend from Cincinnati, and Lewis “Mummy” Williams asked if Barnes wanted to work in the selection office.

  This was a prestigious position, responsible for interviewing new enlistees and assigning them positions once they graduated boot camp. It came with a chance for promotion. Goodwin and Williams were already among the most respected men at Camp Robert Smalls, having both been there longer than almost anyone else, so Barnes took on his next challenge.

  It was difficult work. Barnes conducted one-on-one interviews with hundreds of men, trying to discern where their talents might best be utilized. He asked what experiences they had had before the war, what jobs they had held, how much schooling they had. Men who seemed fit for service schools either were sent to Hampton or would stay at Great Lakes. Men not fit for service schools were sent to the outgoing unit and assigned to shore installations, naval ammunition depots, or the operating company at Great Lakes.5

  Goodwin helped Barnes stand out, offering tips about Navy decorum and interviewing boots who came through the selection office. He explained to Barnes what questions were most likely to elicit the most helpful responses.

  Barnes’s work ethic and physical prowess impressed Armstrong,
who figured an athlete like that must surely be a formidable foe on the badminton court.6

  By the time Armstrong and Barnes became badminton buddies, the training of black men at Camp Robert Smalls, both the basic training and the advanced training for general-service ratings, was proceeding with assembly-line-like efficiency. There were more racist officers at Camp Robert Smalls than at Hampton, but the men who trained were, for the most part, protected from the violence and brutality that was becoming almost routine in the United States throughout 1943 as black men, both in and out of uniform, were targeted, beaten, and lynched.

  The escalating violence engendered Northern and liberal sympathies and once again pushed the “race question” to the fore. During the first few months of 1943, several books, pamphlets, and articles were published proclaiming that race relations were the nation’s weakest link, and that racism was based on a set of ill-conceived principles and discredited science that were depriving the nation of its full fighting force and wasting precious manpower on pointless bickering.7

  Wendell Willkie’s One World, released in April 1943, excoriated the nation over its treatment of black men in the military. It sold one million copies in the first two months, spent four months atop the New York Times bestseller list, and became one of the greatest nonfiction bestsellers in US history.8

  “Our very proclamations of what we are fighting for have rendered our own inequities self-evident,” Willkie wrote. “When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored. If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean freedom for others as well as ourselves, and we must mean freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.”9