Railey wrote, “Men of all branches … do not believe the U.S. is imperiled … it points … to their conviction that, ‘This is England’s war,’ or is, at most, ‘just another European brawl.’ … The overwhelming majority believe that they are being dragged into a war which is none of their business … and distrust the president’s relations with Mr. Churchill.”
Sulzberger sent the report to Washington at the end of September 1941. In a memorandum to General Marshall concerning Railey’s findings, Brigadier General L. J. McNair, who, as chief of staff of U.S. Army general headquarters, supervised the army training program, expressed his dismay. He wrote that the “revelations” were “astounding.” After circulating the document to Army corps commanders, the War Department promptly classified it as secret. Sulzberger held up his end of the bargain and the pages of the Times never carried a whisper of what Railey had found.
While Railey focused on the American GI, and most especially on National Guard units, the implication of the report was far-reaching. It suggested that the military, in general, would be dealing with a less committed, less patriotic, softer, and more materialistic generation of young men. According to Railey, “We cannot whip Hitler with the force now in training.”
The black community, in general, had turned against the president so much that some of his closest advisers feared that he had already lost the election. Later in the war, the leading black newspapers were very critical of FDR’s administration, and the black press’s intense coverage of racial abuses concerned FDR. The president feared that it was wearing away the black community’s support for the war. FDR tried to persuade Walter White to muzzle the black press. White called a meeting of black publishers, including Carl Murphy of the Baltimore Afro-American, to warn the publishers about going too far in their criticisms. The FBI subjected black newspapers to intense scrutiny, and there had been talk about charging some black newspapers with sedition. In the January 1943 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond Times Dispatch, criticized the black press for “stirring up interracial hate.”
After Steve Early suggested to newspaper and magazine reporters that the three civil rights leaders had approved the War Department’s proposal, The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, wrote that the Roosevelt administration had acted shamefully by not allowing “Negroes a fair chance in the armed forces.” The statement was dated October 11 and read in full: “We are inexpressibly shocked that a president of the United States at a time of national peril should surrender so completely to enemies of Democracy who would destroy national unity by advocating segregation. Official approval by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of such discrimination is a stab in the back of Democracy and a blow at the patriotism of twelve million Negro citizens.” In the midst of the storm, Randolph wrote angrily to FDR: “I was shocked and amazed when I saw the newspaper reports that the Negro committee had sanctioned segregation of Negroes in the armed forces of our country because I am sure that the committee made it definitely clear that it was opposed to segregation of the armed forces of the nation.” White chose another avenue and wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt that her husband’s administration had regrettably forced his hand. White knew where the First Lady’s interests and sympathies lay and knew that he could count on her to press her husband.
Black newspapers printed Randolph’s call to march in big headlines so that all could see. Randolph raised money and rallied the black community: “Be not dismayed in these terrible times. You possess power, great power. The Negro stake in national defense is big. It consists of jobs, thousands of jobs. It consists of new industrial opportunities and hope. This is worth fighting for.… We call upon President Roosevelt … to follow in the footsteps of his noble and illustrious predecessor [Lincoln] and take the second decisive step to free America—an executive order to abolish discrimination in the work place. One thing is certain and that is if Negroes are going to get anything out of this National defense, we must fight for it and fight for it with gloves off.”
According to NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, Randolph was a “tall courtly black man with Shakespearean diction and the stare of an eagle [who] had looked the patrician FDR in the eye—and made him back down.”
General Holcomb’s quotes are from Blacks in the Marine Corps by Henry Shaw and Ralph Donnelly and The Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II by Bernard Nalty.
CHAPTER 7: THE RIGHT TO FIGHT
Hoping to stave off the entrance of blacks, every branch of service seized upon an Army War College report titled “The Use of Negro Manpower in War.” The report was written by Major-General H. E. Ely. “In physical courage,” the report concluded, “it must be admitted that the American Negro falls well back of the white man and possibly all other races.” When a new War College report was issued more than a decade later, in 1936, it echoed the same sentiments, “As an individual the negro is docile, tractable, lighthearted, care free and good natured. If unjustly treated he is likely to become surly and stubborn.… He is careless, shiftless, irresponsible and secretive. He is unmoral, untruthful; and his sense of right and wrong is relatively inferior.”
General Lewis Hershey, who presided over the Selective Service Board, loyally carried out the racist policies of the War Department. In direct violation of the Selective Service Act, which stipulated that there could be no “discrimination” in the selection and training of men, as long as a minority’s numbers in the military did not exceed its percentage of the total population of the country, he established racial quotas. Ignoring the quotas, some state board directors sent men to induction stations by draft order number, regardless of race. This practice was especially common in the South, where state boards tried to send blacks to war in numbers exceeding established War Department allotments. These men were most often returned to Selective Service without a physical examination or were rejected for a host of contrived physical ailments. Hershey warned the defiant directors and local board members that those “who sent blacks to induction would be subject to suspension.”
Blacks faced hurdles in the defense industry, too. They could work as janitors, but the better-paying positions as mechanics and aircraft workers were taken and reserved for whites. Echoing the resistance of the military establishment to using blacks, a belligerent Standard Steel spokesman told the Urban League, “We have not had a Negro working in 25 years and do not plan to start now.” Vultee Air in California was equally emphatic: “It is not the policy of this company to employ workers other than those of the Caucasian race.”
William Hastie, a black man, was an energetic advocate of integration and the person whom President Roosevelt chose to be the civilian aide to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Regarding the military’s stance on racial issues, Hastie said of Stimson, “Well, Mr. Stimson was concerned but he, in my judgment, had no feel for, no real perception of the problems of race in America, or their impact, or the relation of the military to them. He was a most honest and dedicated man, a patriot in the best and the highest sense of the word, but he was a man whose whole life in his practice of law, in his social contacts, his whole background, had isolated him from the areas, the problems, of which I was basically concerned. Mr. Stimson was entirely well meaning and I have no reason that he was in any way a prejudiced person. I always felt that he was basically uncomprehending as to the realities of the problems of race in the Army and in the American society generally. Secretary Patterson, a much younger man, was much more perceptive and I think did whatever he could, but, as I said, I think even more then than today, perhaps, or as much then as today, the civilian leadership in the War Department was a captive of the military.”
Nevertheless, on July 2, 1941, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who had gone on record saying that any service at sea other than cooking or serving food lay beyond the capabilities of nonwhites, created a committee to inquire into the “existing relationship between the United States Navy, United States Marine Corps and the Negro
race” and to investigate whether the Navy should accept blacks for other duties. Its explicit purpose was to “investigate and report to SecNav the extent to which [sic] the enlisted personnel of the Navy and Marine Corps is representative of all United States Citizens, and in case there should be any evidence of discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin, to suggest corrections.”
As the Navy resisted the inclusion of blacks on a large scale, so, too, did the Army. William Hastie issued a biting report that left the Army stubbornly defending its policies. The essence of Hastie’s paper was that the Army was doing an abysmal job of utilizing black troops. It began, “The traditional mores of the South have been widely accepted and adopted by the Army as the basis of policy and practice affecting the Negro soldier.… In tactical organization, in physical location, in human contacts, the Negro soldier is separated from the white soldier as completely as possible.… The isolation of Negro combat troops, the failure to make many of them parts of large combat teams, the refusal to mingle Negro officers—most of whom have had little opportunity to command and train soldiers in units with experienced officers of the Regular Army, all are retarding the training of Negro soldiers.” He continued, “The newly enlisted Negro soldiers have been disproportionately concentrated in the Corps of Engineers, the Quartermaster Corps, and installations” where they perform “nonmilitary duties of unskilled and menial character” that were best left to “civilian employees.… Where there are both colored and white service detachments in the Overhead of a particular station, the most undesirable duties are assigned to the colored detachment.”
William Hastie’s papers are housed in the Harvard Law School Library. Hastie is also quoted at length in Morris MacGregor’s exhaustive Integration of the Armed Forces 1940–1965. Marshall’s reply to Hastie’s proposal can also be found in MacGregor’s book.
Secretray Knox’s quote is from “The Negro in the United States Navy in World War II” (written by the Historical Section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel), which is a section of The U.S. Navy in World War II.
The Army’s defense was that the concentration of blacks in labor units was justified by the proportionately large numbers of blacks in Class V, the lowest on the Army General Classification Test (AGCT). Hastie disputed this logic. “The evidence of field commanders,” he wrote, “indicates that a high percentage of the men with little education or acquired skill at the time of their induction, can be used effectively in combat units. Many such men have basic intelligence and are eager to learn for the very reason that opportunity has been denied them in civilian life. And even for men of small intelligence there are many important jobs in Combat organizations.”
Hastie added, “I sincerely believe that much of the difficulty being experienced in arousing the nation today is traceable to the fact that we have lost that passion for national ideals which a people must have if it is to work and sacrifice for its own survival.… Until the men in our Army and civilians at home believe in and work for democracy with similar fervor and determination, we will not be an effective nation in the face of a foreign foe. So long as we condone and appease un-American attitudes and practices within our own military and civilian life, we can never arouse ourselves to the exertion which the present emergency requires.”
Hastie then went on to make a series of recommendations for the integration of black troops. Most were largely symbolic. The last point, however, in which he called for the Army to make a “beginning in the employment of soldiers without racial separation,” served only to inspire the Army’s intransigence. He submitted his recommendations to Robert Patterson, the assistant secretary of war, who in turn forwarded it to General Marshall with a note. Patterson asked, “Will you please give this your careful consideration and let me have your views on it? It will probably be best to have an oral discussion of these issues.” In mid-November 1941, almost two months after Hastie presented his suggestions, Patterson reminded General Marshall that he hoped to discuss “at an early date Judge Hastie’s memorandum of suggestions on Negro troops in the Army.” Patterson had sent the memo to Marshall on October 6.
On December 1, 1941, Marshall finally addressed himself to the report. In a memorandum to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, he wrote, “A solution of many of the issues presented by Judge Hastie in his memorandum on ‘The Integration of the Negro Soldier into the Army,’ dated September 22, would be tantamount to solving a social problem that has perplexed the American people throughout the history of this nation. The Army cannot accomplish such a solution, and should not be charged with the undertaking. The settlement of vexing racial problems cannot be permitted to complicate the tremendous task of the War Department and thereby jeopardize discipline and morale.
“The problems presented with reference to utilizing negro personnel in the Army should be faced squarely. In doing so, the following facts must be recognized: first, that the War Department cannot ignore the social relationships between negroes and whites which has been established by the American people through custom and habit; second, that either through lack of educational opportunities or other causes the level of intelligence and occupational skill of the negro population is considerably below that of the white; third, that the Army will attain its maximum strength only if its personnel is properly placed in accordance with the capabilities of individuals; and fourth, that experiments within the Army in the solution of social problems are fraught with danger to efficiency, discipline, and morale.”
Four days later, Marshall’s Deputy Chief of Staff discussed the matter with Undersecretary Patterson, explaining that “[t]he immediate task of the Army is the efficient completion of our Defense Program. Nothing should be permitted to divert us from this task. Contrary to the bulk of the recommendations, every effort should be made by the War Department to maintain in the Army the social and racial conditions, which exist in civil life in order that the normal customs of the white and colored personnel now in the army may not be suddenly disrupted. The Army can, under no circumstances, adopt a policy, which is contrary to the dictates of a majority of the people. To do so would alienate the people from the Army and lower their morale at a time when their support of the Army and high morale are vital to our National needs.”
Two days after Pearl Harbor, the NAACP wired Secretary Knox, asking whether, in light of the war effort, the Navy would accept colored recruits for other than the messman’s branch. In the vacuum created by the committee’s lack of a decision, the Bureau of the Navy issued a stock reply: there had been no change in policy and none was contemplated. Furious, the NAACP took its case to the president on December 17, 1941. The Baltimore Afro-American, which, prior to the war, had assured Roosevelt of the black community’s support, lashed out, too. “Why not let the country go to the dogs and go about our business?” its editors asked in a stinging editorial.
Many of the conversations, and much of the correspondence, between FDR and Secretary Knox can be found in “The Negro in the United States Navy in World War II.”
An editorial in the May 1942 issue of the magazine Opportunity blasted the Navy’s policy of segregation. “They might have provided for the training of small units of white and Negro boys together as an experiment,” the editorial read. “Vast experiments are being conducted with machines, why not experiment with men? But the Navy Department … chose rather to perpetuate and extend second-class status for citizens of color. Faced with a 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 of Malaya, and the Philippines, India and the Dutch East Indies … that the so-called ‘Four Freedoms’ are for white men only.”
FDR’s comment about finding room for “colored enlistees” is from “The Negro in the United States Navy in World War II.”
One biographer of Admiral King called his approach to blacks one of “benevolent ignorance.” King was no racist. Rather, his opinion of blacks reflected the preju
dices of his generation. He was largely ignorant of their condition, his attitudes informed by author Octavus Roy Cohen, who wrote stories for The Saturday Evening Post. Cohen said that he depicted Negroes as they were in the South, “the happiest people on the face of the globe.” He loved Negro spirituals, sometimes told off-color ethnic jokes, and called black men “darkies” and Navy messmen “boys.”
The use of African American manpower late in the war was a result of the massive attrition suffered in the winter of 1944 in Europe. As the infantry replacement pool evaporated in the ETO, radical steps were taken. In January 1945, General Eisenhower took the then-unprecedented step of allowing African American soldiers to volunteer as combat infantry replacements. The response was overwhelming. Soldiers accepted reductions in rank in exchange for the chance to fight. These men were assigned to hard-hit divisions, where they soon made an impression. Eager to prove critics of African American combat prowess wrong, these men made up for their lack of experience with reckless bravery. Most of the replacements continued to serve in effectively segregated units; most of the divisions, however, formed them into separate platoons or companies that were attached to white units.
A thorough description of the high-level discussions regarding the integration of the Navy can be found in “The Negro in the United States Navy in World War II.”
CHAPTER 8: THE FIRST
Many of the details for this chapter are taken from Lieutenant T. A. Larson’s History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois, In World War II and a thirty-five-page Naval Intelligence Service (Ninth Naval District) confidential memorandum regarding racial tension at the Naval Training Center, Great Lakes.
The Color of War Page 41
