IT'S BETTER IN THE ARMY

...But their case fell to the ground...

...The Committee and the Army, in consultation, worked out an assignment policy to make the slow transition practical...

...Additional "MOS" lists would follow at regular intervals...

...The Committee found, in fact, that inequality had contributed to inefficiency...

...There were those who confessed they took no comfort from the news...

...When the Fahy Committee analyzed all "military occupational specialties" in August, 1949, it learned that there were no authorizations at all for Negroes in 198 of the Army's 490 active "MOS" categories...

...There was no authorization for even one Negro telephone operator...

...The Air Force was in line with Fahy Committee policy by the same date...

...The Army in February, 1949, needed 188 more pharmacists than it had...

...But the Army, which had the greatest difficulty in accepting the Committee's proposals, accepted the final one Mar...

...From April through November, 1949, the Army's Negro quota was full, and original enlistments were halted for that period...

...On Jan...

...The Army was short 75 telephone operators...

...The Fahy Committee pointed to the experience of the Air Force, which had seen an increase in Negro enlistments of only one-half of one per cent in the six months after abolishing its racial quota...

...This first concrete action upon one of the Civil Rights Commission's recommendations came without one attempt to rekindle the civil rights controversy in the Democratic Party...

...Greater efficiency...

...In its method, the Fahy Committee made something of a record among Roosevelt or Truman Presidential commissions in controversial fields...

...What made this situation even less defensible," the Fahy Committee concluded, "was the fact that the Army was seriously under strength in a great many of the specialities which had no Negro authorizations...

...As the President greeted the Fahy Committee at the White House, the seismic waves of the 1948 explosion were still reverberating in Congress...

...This method, one of the Committee members says, might not have worked had not its executive secretary, E. W. Kenworthy, "known all the aces the military had up their sleeves...

...Two of them—Secretary of the Navy Matthews and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Stuart—reported on the new policy of the services toward Negro personnel...

...analyzed the actual provisions of the Administration's FEPC bill and stressed their dependence upon conciliation and agreement...

...Everywhere officer and NCO clubs were integrated, and colored officers and NCO's made use of those clubs...

...27, exactly 20 months after President Truman's executive order declaring "there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the Armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin...

...When the Fahy Committee's executive secretary toured seven Air Force installations, including three in the South, last January, he found every sort of arrangement in Negro and white recreational facilities but underlying them all a voluntary and evolutionary pattern...

...Truman.* Of the Army, the Fahy Committee had this to say: • All Army jobs now are open to Negroes...

...they asserted, however, that in discharging their duty they must maintain military efficiency...

...And there were still some people in Washington who thought release of the Fahy Committee's report eight days later would touch off cries of outrage in Congress...

...At others there was a tacit, though incomplete and unenforced, segregation in service clubs and pools, and separate dances for white and colored enlisted personnel...

...Negroes serving in mixed units will be integrated on the job, in barracks and messes...

...It further announced that an Army commander at his discretion could fill any other vacancies in white units with Negroes possessing the appropriate skills...

...Contrary to what many critics of the civil rights program may have expected when the Air Force proclaimed integration, it specifically excluded any reference to social and recreational facilities...

...At the same time, existing Negro units were scattered throughout the Army organization, and Negroes constituted 9 to 10% of all Army enlisted personnel...

...The Marine Corps, it said, had abolished segregated training units, still maintained a few segregated Negro units beyond the basic training stage...

...Daniels began the panel as a member of the audience, grew visibly restive as speaker after speaker equated FEPC with the complete abolition of all segregation, and finally began plucking at the sleeve of the panel's chairman, Sen...

...yet it had given a pharmacist's "MOS'' to only three Negroes in the entire service...

...One, Sen...

...There were 245 more specialties with authorizations for 10 or more whites and authorizations for 10 or fewer Negroes...

...Laws can not do away with prejudice, but laws can do away with the acts of prejudice," said Humphrey at Chicago two years later...

...Then, because the jobs were not available in segregated units, Negroes were often not given the military occupational specialty for which they were qualified...

...One key Southern figure in the Senate, contending that the new policy would not work if the United States had again to raise a large conscript army, announced that he might offer an amendment to the draft act giving each draftee the right to choose a segregated over a mixed unit...

...The "hands-off policy" on social and recreational facilities, the Fahy Committee reported to Mr...

...When the Fahy Committee staff moved into the Pentagon, the Army was operating on the conclusion of the 1946 Gillem Board report...

...ton," Douglas said, "demanding that the Senate have a right to vote on a fair employment practices measure...

...White combat units in World War II actually averaged only 5% in grade V.) Segregation clearly was not working for efficiency on this test...

...Nineteen other political, labor, and minority group leaders participated with Humphrey on the panel...

...31, had integrated 74% of its Negro personnel and the process was continuing...

...The Chicago civil rights panel at which Sen...

...He reminded the assembled northern Democrats of the progress made by North Carolina in race relations, of the uniform salaries to white and Negro teachers there...

...The Committee on its part did not deny the claim of military efficiency...

...Many commanders had argued that dropping the quota would mean that the Army would be swamped with Negro applicants...

...The Fahy Committee discovered that the Army had sent Negro units into battle in World War II with 49% of the men in grade V, the lowest category on the Army general classification test, whereas the Army had a fixed policy that it was dangerous to fight a white unit with more than 5 to 10% of its men in that category...

...And the services, not the Fahy Committee, got the credit for the new policies...

...In its basic assumption, the Fahy Committee ignored any such consideration that "you are either for civil rights or you are not for civil rights...

...Douglas' place at the speakers' table...

...We are down there in Washing*Other members were Lester B. Granger, of the National Urban League, William E. Stevenson, president of Oberlin College, John H. Sengstacke, publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Dwight R. G. Palmer, president of the General Cable Corp...

...The Navy had launched an effective policy of utilizing Negro manpower two years before the President's order, and the Fahy Committee had only minor recommendations to make to the Navy after that service's sweeping integration order of June 23, 1949...

...The Fahy Committee did not feel that it could reasonably recommend that the Army, like the Air Force, break up all its Negro units at once...

...Negroes no longer are limited in assignment to Negro and overhead (housekeeping) units, but are to be assigned according to their qualifications to any unit, including formerly white units...

...For none of these military occupational specialties were there Negro authorizations...

...Paul Douglas of Illinois, W. McNEIL LOWRY, The Progressive's Washington correspondent, ranges over a wide field of the top news-producing areas in the nation's capital in his role as chief of the Washington Bureau for the four dailies owned by former Gov...

...Can we blame our Southern friends in the Senate after that...

...Even worse, "by concentrating large numbers of unskilled Negroes in combat units, it multiplied inefficiency...

...But the most significant fact in the report of the Presidential Committee was that it contained no recommendations for action...

...But combat effectiveness was not the only victim of the Army's policy...

...And on Mar...

...Third, because they were not given the specialty, they did not receive school training...

...The story of how the President's Committee turned the argument of "efficiency" against the military is largely a story of the Army...

...The President's Committee," its report states, "began its task convinced that the problem confronting it could not be resolved by appealing to moral justice or democratic ideals alone...

...I don't know...

...Before going to Washington he was as- sociate editor of the Dayton (O...

...At some bases," Kenworthy reported, "there was complete integration of clubs, swimming pools, and dances...

...Of the Navy, the Committee's report told a story of complete racial integration in general service...

...By this point in its investigations, the Fahy Committee had a pretty good idea of its recommendations, not from the a priori assumption of "equality of treatment and opportunity" but from the inescapable facts of personnel inefficiency...

...Though the Washington and New York papers read daily on Capitol Hill carried long summaries of the Fahy Committee's report, there were no outbursts...

...Sixteen, including Humphrey, directly or by implication, equated the civil rights legislation demanded by President Truman with the complete abolition of segregation in the United States...

...30, 1949, Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray took the Fahy Committee's first two recommendations...

...Daily News, and served for a while on the faculty of the University of Illinois...

...But here in Chicago this Democratic meeting is advertising to the South and the whole country that the civil rights legislative program means the abolition of segregation...

...and so on...

...III The Fahy Committee, in short, found an interlocking primer of inefficiency reading in this order...

...But even this reaction was mild, and was offered in calm and moderate tone...

...If the Army wanted to look at the facts on efficiency rather than the slogans, they were there for anybody to see...

...The 20th speaker on the panel was unscheduled—Jonathan Daniels, newspaper publisher, Truman adviser, Democratic national committeeman from North Carolina, and one of the 11 delegates from the South to vote for President Truman's nomination at Philadelphia...

...The Committee took 1,025 pages of testimony...

...The Air Force, as of Jan...

...But for the entire eight months, the Army continued to reenlist both Negroes and whites who fell far below the current enlistment classification test score minimum of 90...

...Half the Fahy Committee's job was done...

...The Gillem Board's recommendation that the Army create segregated Negro units which would conform in general to white units had proved impractical...

...Truman, has caused " a steady movement in the direction of shared facilities...

...but it believed the assumption that equality of treatment and opportunity would impair efficiency was of doubtful validity...

...Thus the very Negro "craftsmen" looked for by the Gillem Board in 1946 were being kept out of the Army while 41% of all Negro reenlistments in the same period had GCT scores below 80...

...Military officials did not deny the claim of these ideals...

...Frank Graham, Daniels' good friend, was in the closing stretch of a tough campaign...

...A Presidential Committee in a highly controversial area had altered military and social customs and attitudes which had been frozen for generations...

...These matters were left entirely to the discretion of the individual commanding officer in each unit...

...The 10% limitation on Negro strength in the Army has been abolished, and there no longer are Negro quotas for enlistment...

...Negro units, despite the Gillem Board's recommendations, could not offer as wide a range of jobs as white units...

...At the dinner meeting that night, 1 happened to have a press seat under Sen...

...16, 1950, the Army published a list of 40 military occupational specialties in which there were critical shortages, and directed commanders to assign qualified Negroes to any unit requiring such specialties...

...This apparently is not a conscious or calculated movement, but a natural development of daily contact at work, in school, in barracks and dining halls...

...However, there was one more question to be investigated—the 10% Negro racial quota on enlistments...

...91 with authorizations for 100 or more whites and for 10 or less Negroes...

...The Senate was preparing for its unsuccessful effort to limit debate on a fair employment practices bill...

...his membership on the Truman Civil Rights Commission was one of the principal targets of his reactionary opponents...

...But the only really significant advance resulting from the Gillem Board's recommendations was made in utilizing Negroes in overhead (housekeeping) installations, some 13% of which were Negro by 1947...

...Movies and athletic contests are everywhere unsegregated...

...They were wrong...

...They are now in effect...

...And with these steps taken, the abolition of the 10% Negro enlistment quota became an academic question...

...Eight days later, led by Judge Charles Fahy of the District of Columbia, the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services went to the White House to make its report to Mr...

...AH of the Committee's recommendations," the report stated, "have been approved and accepted by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the service secretaries...

...IV Now the road was clear to the efficient military utilization of Negro skills on a strictly competitive basis with those possessed by white personnel...

...Humphrey took his black-or-white stand on the subject was another wavelet from the two-year-old blast...

...And so on, around the circle...

...Theodore Green of Rhode Island...

...Down in North Carolina, the libera] Sen...

...All Army school courses are open to Negroes without restriction or quota...

...President Truman had at long last seen action taken on one of the recommendations of the famed Civil Rights Commission, whose report had hit Capitol Hill like a bomb in 1948...

...But it had realized from the outset that the qualified Army Negro could not find an assignment where he could use his specialty if he had to find it in housekeeping installations or the few composite units created by the Gillem Board...

...The Minnesota Democrat spoke in the same fervid language with which he had dramatically spark-plugged the Truman civil rights program into the 1948 Democratic platform at Philadelphia...

...Its success could be attributed to two important factors, one in assumption and one in method...

...II The remarks of Navy's Matthews and the Air Force's Stuart had been vigorously applauded at the afternoon panel, but were not reported in press accounts...

...On Sept...

...namely, that "many Negroes who, before the war, were laborers, are now craftsmen, capable in many instances of competing with the white man on an equal basis...

...At one or two bases, however, I gathered that the NCO's did not much frequent the NCO clubs...

...And he pleaded with those who favored a compulsory FEPC "not to arm our Dixiecrat enemies with a weapon they will use against the whole Fair Deal program...

...Mutual respect engendered on the job or in school seemed to translate itself into friendly association...

...Hubert Humphrey at the Chicago Democratic conference last month...

...It was short 143 transmitter attendants, 66 generator repairmen, 79 radio repairmen, 79 telephone and telegraph repairmen, 53 shop maintenance mechanics, 79 anti-aircraft minor maintenance mechanics...

...James Cox in Ohio, Georgia, and Florida...

...He was plainly concerned over the tenor of the afternoon civil rights panel, and as clearly grateful to Daniels...

...But instead of writing its recommendations on the basis of testimony and attitude and slapping them down on the President's desk with a demand for action, the Committee worked with the services—pushing, relaxing, pushing, relaxing—until the recommendations had been adopted...

...I am a Southerner, and a long way from home," began Daniels, when Green finally gave him permission to speak...

...He opened all military occupational specialities and all Army technical schools to qualified personnel regardless of race...

...And the Fahy Committee, in its turn, concluded early in its career that "by requiring skilled Negroes to serve in racial units, the Army lost skills which could find no place in Negro organizations...

...newsmen had to solicit comment from Southern Democratic leaders...

...That was the story, except for one important postscript which came from the Air Force...

...27, the Pentagon sent out the order: "Effective with the month of April all enlistments in the Army within overall recruiting quotas will be open to qualified applicants without regard to race or color...

...The Negro now had to compete with all other personnel in the Army once he was in, and he could not get in without the current GCT minimum score of 90 that is required of all enlistees...

...At the same time, Secretary Gray proclaimed the policy that "Negro manpower possessing appropriate skills and qualifications will be utilized in accordance with such skills and qualifications, and will be assigned to any unit without regard to race or color...