The President Intervenes
On 26 July 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981,
calling on the armed forces to provide equal treatment and opportunity
for black servicemen. This act has variously been described as an
example of presidential initiative, the capstone of the Truman civil
rights program, and the climax of the struggle for racial equality in
the armed forces. But in some ways the order was simply a practical
response to a presidential dilemma.
The President's order was related to the advent of the cold war.
Developments in the Middle East and Europe testified to the ambitions
of the Soviet Union, and many Americans feared the spread of communism
throughout the world, a threat more ominous with the erosion of
American military strength since World War II. In March 1947 Truman
enunciated a new foreign policy calling for the containment of Soviet
expansion and pledging economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey.
A year later he asked Congress to adopt the Marshall Plan for economic
aid to Europe, authorize military training, and enact a new selective
service law to maintain the armed forces at expanded levels. That same
month his principal military advisers met at Key West, Florida, to
discuss new military roles and missions for the armed forces, grapple
with paralyzing divisions among the services, and re-form the military
establishment into a genuinely unified whole.[12-1] As if to underscore
the urgency of these measures, the Soviet Union began in April 1948 to
harass Allied troops in Berlin, an action that would develop into a
full-scale blockade by June.
[Footnote 12-1: On the development of cold war roles
and missions for the services, see Timothy W.
Stanley, _American Defense and National Security_
(Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1956), Chapter
VIII.]
Integration of the armed forces hardly loomed large on the
international scene, but if the problem of race appeared insignificant
to military planners, the sheer number of Negroes in the armed forces
gave them new prominence in national defense. Because of postwar
racial quotas, particularly in the Army and Air Force, black
servicemen now constituted a significant segment of the service
population, and consequently their abilities and well-being had a
direct bearing on the nation's cold war defenses. The black community
represented 10 percent of the country's manpower, and this also
influenced defense planning. Black threats to boycott the segregated
armed forces could not be ignored, and civil rights demands had to be
considered in developing laws relating to selective service and
universal training. Nor could the administration overlook the fact
that the United States had become a leading protagonist in a cold war
in which the sympathies of the undeveloped and mostly colored world
would soon assume a special importance. Inasmuch as integration of
the services had become an almost universal demand of the black (p. 292)
community, integration became, willy-nilly, an important defense
issue.
A second stimulus to improvement of the black serviceman's position
was the Truman administration's strong civil rights program, which
gave executive sanction to a national movement started some years
before. The civil rights movement was the product of many factors,
including the federal government's increased sense of responsibility
for the welfare of all its citizens, a sense that had grown out of the
New Deal and a world war which expanded horizons and increased
economic power for much of the black population. The Supreme Court had
recently accelerated this movement by broadening its interpretation of
the Fourteenth Amendment. In the black community itself greater
participation in elections and new techniques in community action were
eroding discriminatory traditions and practices in many communities.
The civil rights movement had in fact progressed by 1948 to a stage at
which it was politically attractive for a Democratic president to
assume a vigorous civil rights stance. The urban black vote had become
a major goal of Truman's election campaign, and he was being pressed
repeatedly by his advisers to demonstrate his support for black
interests. A presidential order on armed forces integration logically
followed because the services, conspicuous practitioners of
segregation and patently susceptible to unilateral action on the part
of the Chief Executive, were obvious and necessary targets in the
black voters' campaign for civil rights.
Finally, the integration order resulted in part from the move toward
service unification and the emergence of James V. Forrestal as
Secretary of Defense. Despite misgivings over centralized control of
the nation's defense establishment and overconcentration of power in
the hands of a Secretary of Defense, Forrestal soon discovered that
certain problems rising out of common service experiences naturally
converged on the office of the secretary. Both by philosophy and
temperament he was disposed to avoid a clash with the services over
integration. He remained sensitive to their interests and rights, and
he frankly doubted the efficacy of social change through executive
fiat. Yet Forrestal was not impervious to the aspirations of the civil
rights activists; guided by a humane interest in racial equality, he
made integration a departmental goal. His technique for achieving
integration, however, proved inadequate in the face of strong service
opposition, and finally the President, acting on the basis of these
seemingly unrelated motives, had to issue the executive order to
strengthen the defense secretary's hand.
_The Truman Administration and Civil Rights_
Executive and legislative interest in the civil rights of black
Americans reached a level in 1948 unmatched since Reconstruction. The
President himself was the catalyst. By creating a presidential
committee on civil rights and developing a legislative program based
on its findings, Truman brought the black minority into the political
arena and committed the federal government to a program of social
legislation that it has continued to support ever since. Little in (p. 293)
the President's background suggested he would sponsor basic social
changes. He was a son of the middle border, from a family firmly
dedicated to the Confederate cause. His appreciation of black
aspirations was hardly sophisticated, as he revealed to a black
audience in 1940: "I wish to make it clear that I am not appealing for
social equality of the Negro. The Negro himself knows better than
that, and the highest types of Negro leaders say quite frankly they
prefer the society of their own people. Negroes want justice, not
social relations."[12-2]
[Footnote 12-2: Jonathan Daniels, _The Man of
Independence_ (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950), p.
338. The quotation is from a speech before the
National Colored Democratic Convention, Chicago,
reprinted in the _Congressional Record_, 76th
Cong., 3d sess., vol. 86, 5 Aug 1940, Appendix, pp.
5367-69.]
Nor did his attitude change drastically in later years. In 1961, seven
years after the Supreme Court's vital school integration decision,
Truman was calling the Freedom Riders "meddlesome intruders who should
stay at home and attend to their own business." His suggestion to
proprietors of lunch counters undergoing sit-ins was to kick out
unwelcome customers.[12-3] But if he failed to appreciate the scope of
black demands, Truman nevertheless demonstrated as early as 1940 an
acute awareness of the connection between civil rights for blacks and
civil liberties for all Americans:
In giving Negroes the rights which are theirs we are only acting
in accord with our own ideals of a true democracy. If any class
or race can be permanently set apart from, or pushed down below
the rest in political and civil rights, so may any other class or
race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more powerful
associates, and we may say farewell to the principles on which we
count our safety.[12-4]
[Footnote 12-3: Quoted in James Peck, _Freedom Ride_
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), pp. 154-55.]
[Footnote 12-4: Quoted in Daniels, _Man of
Independence_, pp. 339-40.]
He would repeat these sentiments to other gatherings, including the
assembled delegates of the NAACP's 1946 convention.[12-5] The President's
civil rights program would be based, then, on a practical concern for
the rights of the majority. Neither his social philosophy nor his
political use of black demands should detract from his achievements in
the field of civil rights.
[Footnote 12-5: Msg, HST to NAACP Convention, 29 Jun
47, _Public Papers of the President, 1947_
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), pp.
311-13.]
It was probably just as well that Truman adopted a pragmatic approach
to civil rights, for there was little social legislation a reform
president could hope to get through the postwar Congresses. Dominated
by a conservative coalition that included the Dixiecrats, a group of
sometimes racially reactionary southerners, Congress showed little
interest in civil rights. The creation of a permanent Fair Employment
Practices Commission, the one piece of legislation directly affecting
Negroes and the only current test of congressional intent in civil
rights, was floundering on Capitol Hill. Truman conspicuously
supported the fair employment measure, but did little else
specifically in the first year after the war to advance civil rights.
Instead he seemed content to carry on with the New Deal approach to
the problem: improve the social condition of all Americans and the
condition of the minorities will also improve. In this vein his first
domestic program concentrated on national projects for housing,
health, and veterans' benefits.
The conversion of Harry Truman into a forceful civil rights (p. 294)
advocate seems to have come about, at least partially, from his
exposure to what he later called the "anti-minority" incidents visited
on black servicemen and civilians in 1946.[12-6] Although the lynchings,
property destruction, and assaults never matched the racial violence
that followed World War I, they were enough to convince many civil
rights leaders that the pattern of racial strife was being repeated.
Some of these men, along with a group of labor executives and
clergymen, formed a National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence
to warn the American public against the dangers of racial intolerance.
A delegation from this committee, with Walter White as spokesman, met
with the President on 19 September 1946 to demand government action.
White described the scene:
The President sat quietly, elbows resting on the arms of his
chair and his fingers interlocked against his stomach as he
listened with a grim face to the story of the lynchings.... When
I finished, the President exclaimed in his flat, midwestern
accent, "My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We've
got to do something!"[12-7]
[Footnote 12-6: Harry S. Truman, _Memoirs_ (New York:
Doubleday, 1958), II:180-81; White, _A Man Called
White_, pp. 330-31. Truman's concept of civil
rights is analyzed in considerable detail in Donald
R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, _Quest and
Response: Minority Rights and the Truman
Administration_ (Lawrence, Kansas: University of
Kansas Press, 1973), Chapter III.]
[Footnote 12-7: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]
But the Truman administration had nearly exhausted the usual remedies
open to it. The Attorney General had investigated the lynchings and
Klan activities and the President had spoken out strongly and
repeatedly against mob violence but without clear and pertinent civil
rights legislation presidential exhortations and investigations
counted for very little. Civil rights leaders like White understood
this, and, given the mood of Congress, they were resigned to the lack
of legislative support. Nevertheless, it was in this context that the
President decided to create a committee to investigate and report on
the status of civil rights in America.
The concept of a federal civil rights group had been circulating in
the executive branch for some time. After the Detroit race riot in
1943, presidential assistant Jonathan Daniels had organized a
committee to deal with racial troubles. Proposals to create a national
organization to reduce racial tensions were advanced later in the war,
principally by Saul K. Padover, a minority specialist in the Interior
Department, and David K. Niles of the White House staff. Little came
of the committee idea, however, because Roosevelt was convinced that
any steps associated with integration would prove divisive and were
unwise during wartime.[12-8] With the war over and a different political
climate prevailing, Niles, now senior White House adviser on minority
affairs, proposed the formation of a committee not only to investigate
racial violence but also to explore the entire subject of civil
rights.
[Footnote 12-8: Intervs, Nichols with Oscar Ewing,
former federal security administrator and senior
presidential adviser, and Jonathan Daniels, 1954,
in Nichols Collection, CMH; see also McCoy and
Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, p. 49.]
Walter White and his friends greeted the idea with some skepticism.
They had come demanding action, but were met instead with another
promise of a committee and the probability of interminable (p. 295)
congressional debate and unproductive hearings.[12-9] But this time,
for several reasons, it would be different. In the first place the
civil rights leaders underestimated the sincerity of Truman's reaction
to the racial violence. He had quickly agreed to create Niles's
committee by executive order to save it from possible pigeonholing at
the hands of a hostile Congress. He had also given the group, called
the President's Committee on Civil Rights, a broad directive "to
determine whether and in what respect current law enforcement measures
and the authority and means possessed by Federal, State, and local
governments may be strengthened and improved to safeguard the civil
rights of the people."[12-10] The civil rights leaders also failed to
gauge the effect Republican victories in the 1946 congressional
elections would have on the administration. Finding it necessary to
court the Negro and other minorities and hoping to confound
congressional opposition, the administration sought a strong civil
rights program to put before the Eightieth Congress. Thus, the
committee's recommendations would get respectful attention in the
White House. Finally, neither the civil rights leaders nor the
President could have foreseen the effectiveness of the committee
members. Serving under Charles E. Wilson, president of the General
Electric Company, the group included among its fifteen members
distinguished church leaders, public service lawyers, the presidents
of Dartmouth College and the University of North Carolina, and
prominent labor executives. The committee had two black members, Sadie
T. M. Alexander, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and Channing H. Tobias,
director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Its members not only prepared a
comprehensive survey of the condition of civil rights in America but
also presented to the President on 29 October 1947 a far-reaching
series of recommendations, in effect a program for corrective action
that would serve as a bench mark for civil rights progress for many
years.[12-11]
[Footnote 12-9: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]
[Footnote 12-10: Executive Order 9808, 5 Dec 46.]
[Footnote 12-11: In addition to Chairman Wilson, the
following people served on the committee: Sadie T.
M. Alexander, James B. Carey, John S. Dickey,
Morris L. Ernst, Roland B. Gittelsohn, Frank P.
Graham, Francis J. Haas, Charles Luckman, Francis
P. Matthews, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Knox
Sherrill, Boris Shishkin, Dorothy Tilly, and
Channing Tobias.]
[Illustration: WALTER WHITE.]
The group recommended the concentration of civil rights work in the
Department of Justice, the establishment of a permanent civil rights
commission, a federal antilynching act, a permanent Fair Employment
Practices Commission, and legislation to correct discrimination in
voting and naturalization laws. It also examined the state of (p. 296)
civil rights in the armed forces and incidentally publicized the
long-ignored survey of black infantry platoons that had fought in
Europe in 1945.[12-12] It concluded:
The injustice of calling men to fight for freedom while
subjecting them to humiliating discrimination within the fighting
forces is at once apparent. Furthermore, by preventing entire
groups from making their maximum contribution to the national
defense, we weaken our defense to that extent and impose heavier
burdens on the remainder of the population.[12-13]
[Footnote 12-12: Parts of the survey of attitudes of
participants in the World War II integration of
platoons were included in remarks by Congresswoman
Helen G. Douglas, published in the _Congressional
Record_, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1 Feb 1946,
Appendix, pp. 432-443.]
[Footnote 12-13: _To Secure These Rights_, p. 162.]
The committee called for sweeping change in the armed forces,
recommending that Congress enact legislation, followed by appropriate
administrative action, to end all discrimination and segregation in
the services. Concluding that the recent service unification provided
a timely opportunity for revision of existing policies and practices,
the committee proposed a specific ban on discrimination and
segregation in all phases of recruitment, assignment, and training,
including selection for service schools and academies, as well as in
mess halls, quarters, recreational facilities, and post exchanges. It
also wanted commissions and promotions awarded on merit alone and
asked for new laws to protect servicemen from discrimination in
communities adjacent to military bases.[12-14] The committee wanted the
President to look beyond the integration of people working and living
on military bases, and it introduced a concept that would gain
considerable support in a future administration. The armed forces, it
declared, _should_ be used as an instrument of social change. World
War II had demonstrated that the services were a laboratory in which
citizens could be educated on a broad range of social and political
issues, and the administration was neglecting an effective technique
for teaching the public the advantages of providing equal treatment
and opportunity for all citizens.[12-15]
[Footnote 12-14: Ibid., pp. 162-63.]
[Footnote 12-15: Ibid., p. 47.]
President Truman deleted the recommendations on civil rights in the
services when he transmitted the committee's recommendations to
Congress in the form of a special message on 2 February 1948. Arguing
that the services' race practices were matters of executive interest
and pointing to recent progress toward better race relations in the
armed forces, the President told Congress that he had already
instructed the Secretary of Defense to take steps to eliminate
remaining instances of discrimination in the services as rapidly as
possible. He also promised that the personnel policies and practices
of all the services would be made uniform.[12-16]
[Footnote 12-16: Truman, Special Message to the
Congress on Civil Rights, 2 Feb 48, _Public Papers
of the President, 1948_, pp. 121-26.]
To press for civil rights legislation for the armed forces or even to
mention segregation was politically imprudent. Truman had two pieces
of military legislation to get through Congress: a new draft law and a
provision for universal military training. These he considered (p. 297)
too vital to the nation's defense to risk grounding on the shoals of
racial controversy. For the time being at least, integration of the
armed forces would have to be played down, and any civil rights
progress in the Department of Defense would have to depend on the
persuasiveness of James Forrestal.
[Illustration: TRUMAN'S CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGN _as seen by Washington
Star cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, March 14, 1948_.]
_Civil Rights and the Department of Defense_
The basic postwar reorganization of the National Military
Establishment, the National Security Act of 1947, created the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, a separate Department of the Air Force,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. It
also reconstituted the War Department as the Department of the Army
and gave legal recognition as a permanent agency to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. The principle of military unification that underlay the
reorganization plan was muted in the legislation that finally emerged
from Congress. Although the Secretary of Defense was given authority
to establish general policies and to exercise general direction (p. 298)
and control of the services, the services themselves retained a large
measure of autonomy in their internal administration and individual
service secretaries retained cabinet rank. In effect, the act created
a secretary without a department, a reorganization that largely
reflected the viewpoint of the Navy. The Army had fought for a much
greater degree of unification, which would not be achieved until the
passage of the National Security Act amendments of 1949. This
legislation redesignated the unified department the Department of
Defense, strengthened the powers of the Secretary of Defense, and
provided for uniform budgetary procedures. Although the services were
to be "separately administered," their respective secretaries
henceforward headed "military departments" without cabinet status.
The first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, was a man of
exceptional administrative talents, yet even before taking office he
expressed strong reservations on the wisdom of a unified military
department. As early as 30 July 1945, at breakfast with President
Truman during the Potsdam Conference, Forrestal questioned whether any
one man "was good enough to run the combined Army, Navy, and Air
Departments." What kind of men could the president get in peacetime,
he asked, to be under secretaries of War, Navy, and Air if they were
subordinate to a single defense secretary?[12-17] Speaking to Lester
Granger that same year on the power of the Secretary of the Navy to
order the Marine Corps to accept Negroes, Forrestal expressed
uncertainty about a cabinet officer's place in the scheme of things.
"Some people think the Secretary is god-almighty, but he's just a
god-damn civilian."[12-18] Even after his appointment as defense
secretary doubts lingered: "My chief misgivings about unification
derived from my fear that there would be a tendency toward
overconcentration and reliance on one man or one-group direction. In
other words, too much central control."[12-19]
[Footnote 12-17: Quoted in Walter Millis, ed., _The
Forrestal Diaries_ (New York: Viking Press, 1951),
p. 88.]
[Footnote 12-18: Quoted by Granger in the interview he
gave Nichols in 1954.]
[Footnote 12-19: Quoted in Millis, _Forrestal
Diaries_, p. 301.]
Forrestal's philosophy of management reinforced the limitations placed
on the Secretary of Defense by the National Security Act. He sought a
middle way in which the efficiency of a unified system could be
obtained without sacrificing what he considered to be the real
advantages of service autonomy. Thus, he supported a 1945 report of
the defense study group under Ferdinand Eberstadt that argued for a
"coordinated" rather than a "unitary" defense establishment.[12-20]
Practical experience modified his fears somewhat, and by October 1948,
convinced he needed greater power to control the defense
establishment, Forrestal urged that the language of the National
Security Act, which limited the Secretary of Defense to "general"
authority only over the military departments, be amended to eliminate
the word _general_. Yet he always retained his basic distrust of (p. 299)
dictation, preferring to understand and adjust rather than to conclude
and order.[12-21]
[Footnote 12-20: Ibid., pp. 117, 147. Timothy Stanley
describes the Eberstadt report as the Navy's
"constructive alternative" to unification. See
Stanley's _American Defense and National Security_,
p. 75; see also Hewes, _From Root to McNamara_, pp.
276-77. For a detailed analysis of defense
unification, see Lawrence Legere, Jr., "Unification
of the Armed Forces," Chapter VI, in CMH.]
[Footnote 12-21: Millis, _Forrestal Diaries_, pp. 301,
497.]
Nowhere was Forrestal's philosophy of government more evident than in
his approach to the problem of integration. His office would be
concerned with equal opportunity, he promised Walter White soon after
his elevation to the new post, but "the job of Secretary of Defense,"
he warned, "is one which will have to develop in an evolutionary
rather than a revolutionary manner." Further dashing hopes of sudden
reform, Forrestal added that specific racial problems, as distinct
from general policy matters, would remain the province of the
individual services.[12-22] He retained this attitude throughout his
tenure. He considered the President's instructions to end remaining
instances of discrimination in the services "in accord with my own
conception of my responsibilities under unification," and he was in
wholehearted agreement with a presidential wish that the National
Military Establishment work out the answer to its racial problems
through administrative action. He wanted to see a "more nearly uniform
approach to interracial problems by the three Services," but
experience had demonstrated, he believed, that racial problems could
not be solved simply by publishing an executive order or passing a
law. Racial progress would come from education. Such had been his
observation in the wartime Navy, and he was ready to promise that
"even greater progress will be made in the future." But, he added,
"progress must be made administratively and should not be put into
effect by fiat."[12-23]
[Footnote 12-22: Ltr, Forrestal to White, 21 Oct 47,
Day file, Forrestal Papers, Princeton University
Library.]
[Footnote 12-23: Remarks by James Forrestal at Dinner
Meeting of the National Urban League, 12 Feb 48,
copy in Misc file, Forrestal Papers; see also Ltr,
Forrestal to John N. Brown, 27 Oct 47, Day file,
ibid.]
Executive fiat was just what some of Forrestal's advisers wanted. For
example, his executive assistant, John H. Ohly, his civilian aide,
James C. Evans,[12-24] and Truman Gibson urged the secretary to consider
establishing an interservice committee along the lines of the old
McCloy committee to prepare a uniform racial policy that he could
apply to all the services. They wanted the committee to examine past
and current practices as well as the recent reports of the President's
Advisory Commission on Universal Training and the Committee on Civil
Rights and to make specific recommendations for carrying out and
policing department policy. Truman Gibson went to the heart of the
matter: the formulation of such an interservice committee would signal
to the black community better than anything else the defense
establishment's determination to change the racial situation. More and
more, he warned, the discrepancies among the services' racial
practices were attracting public attention. Most important to the
administration was the fact that these discrepancies were
strengthening opposition to universal military training and the
draft.[12-25]
[Footnote 12-24: In addition to his duties as Civilian
Aide to the Secretary of the Army, Evans was made
aide to the Secretary of Defense on 29 October
1947. (See Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 29 Oct 47,
D70-1-5, files of Historian, OSD.) Evans was
subsequently appointed "civilian assistant" to the
Secretary of Defense by Secretary Louis Johnson on
28 Apr 49. (See NME Press Release, 17-49-A.)]
[Footnote 12-25: Ltr, Gibson to Ohly, 25 Nov 47,
D54-1-3, Sec Def files.]
[Illustration: 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 Washington 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 bypass 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
Washington--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. Reddick, 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.
Reddick, "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 attitude 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 assume 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 platitude, 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 shipboard machinists ate and bunked with
machinists, firemen with firemen. Inaugurated in the fleet, the
practice naturally spread to the shore 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 Assistant to the Secretary of Defense
(1947-49) and later Assistant 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
assistant, 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 documented 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 attitudes 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 assistant 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 Washington, D.C. Unable to
attend, White sent his assistant 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 Association, 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 impassioned 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_ (Washington:
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 shifted 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 mass 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 participate 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 analysis of the mood of Negroes, but shied 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
Washington _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: Washington _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 associates 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 document 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 Assistant to the Secretary of Defense;
James Evans, Adviser to the Secretary of Defense;
Kenneth C. Royall, Secretary of the Army; John N.
Brown, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; W. Stuart
Symington, Secretary of the Air Force; and
personnel officials and consultants from each
service.]
While the group refrained from endorsing Randolph's position, it also
refrained from criticizing him and strongly supported his thesis that
segregation in itself was discrimination. Nor were its views
soft-pedaled in the press release issued after the conference. The
Secretary of Defense was forced to announce that the black leaders
declined to serve as advisers to the National Military Establishment
as long as the services continued to practice segregation. The group
unanimously recommended that the armed services eliminate segregation
and challenged the Army's interpretation of its own policy, insisting
that the Army could abolish segregation even within the framework of
the Gillem Board recommendations. The members planned no future
meetings but adjourned to prepare their report.[12-45]
[Footnote 12-45: NME Press Releases, 26 Apr and 8 Sep
48.]
This adamant stand should not have surprised the Secretary of Defense.
Forrestal could appreciate more than most the pressures operating on
the group. In the aftermath of the report of the President's Committee
on Civil Rights and in the heightened atmosphere caused by the
rhetoric of the Randolph campaign, these men were also caught up in
the militants' cause. If they were reluctant to attack the services
too severely lest they lose their chance to influence the course of
racial events in the department, they were equally reluctant to accept
the pace of reform dictated by the traditionalists. In the end they
chose to side with their more radical colleagues. Thus despite Lester
Granger's attempt to soften the blow, the conference designed to bring
the opponents together ended with yet another condemnation of
Forrestal's gradualism.
Forrestal himself agreed with the goals of the conferees, he told
Granger, but at the same time he refused to abandon his approach,
insisting that he could not force people into cooperation and mutual
respect by issuing a directive. Instead he arranged for Granger to
meet with Army leaders to spread the gospel of equal opportunity and
ordered a report prepared showing precisely what the Navy did during
the late months of the war and "how much of it has stuck--on the
question of non-segregation both in messing and barracks." The report,
written by Lt. Dennis D. Nelson, was sent to Secretary of the Army
Royall along with sixteen photographs picturing blacks and whites (p. 306)
being trained together and working side by side.[12-46]
[Footnote 12-46: Memo, Forrestal for Marx Leva, 30 Apr
48; Ltr, Nelson to Leva, 24 May 48; Memo, Leva for
SA, 25 May 48. All in D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
[Illustration: NATIONAL DEFENSE CONFERENCE ON NEGRO AFFAIRS.
_Conferees prepare to meet with the press, 26 April 1948._]
Given the vast size of the Army, it was perfectly feasible to open all
training to qualified Negroes and yet continue for years racial
practices that had so quickly proved impossible in the Navy's smaller
general service. Of course, even in the Army the number of segregated
jobs that could be created was limited, and in time Forrestal's
tactics might, it could be argued, have succeeded despite the Army's
size and the intractability of its leaders. Time, however, was
precisely what Forrestal lacked, given the increasing political
strength of the civil rights movement.
Sparked by Randolph's stand before the congressional committee, some
members of the black community geared up for greater protests. Worse
still for an administration facing a critical election, the protest
was finding some support in the camps of the President's rivals. Early
in May, for example, a group of prominent civil rights activists
formed the Commission of Inquiry with the expressed purpose of
examining the treatment of black servicemen during World War II.
Organized by Randolph and Reynolds, the commission boasted Arthur
Garfield Hayes, noted civil libertarian and lawyer, as its counsel.
The commission planned to interrogate witnesses and, on the basis of
the testimony gathered, issue a report to Congress and the public that
would include recommendations on conscription legislation. Various
Defense Department officials were invited to testify but only James C.
Evans, who acted as department spokesman, accepted. During the (p. 307)
inquiry, which Evans estimated was attended by 180 persons, little
attention was given to Randolph's civil disobedience pledge, but Evans
himself came in for considerable ridicule, and there were headlines
aplenty in the black press.[12-47]
[Footnote 12-47: Ltr, Grant Reynolds and Randolph to
Evans, 3 May 48; Memo, Evans for SecDef, 13 May 48,
sub: Commission of Inquiry; both in SecDef files.
See also A. Philip Randolph, Statement Before
Commission of Inquiry, 8 May 48, copy in USAF
Special Files 35, 1948, SecAF files.]
These attacks were being carried out in an atmosphere of heightened
political interest in the civil rights of black servicemen. Henry A.
Wallace, the Progressive Party's presidential candidate, had for some
time been telling his black audiences that the administration was
insincere because if it wanted to end segregation it could simply
force the resignation of the Secretary of the Army.[12-48] Henry Cabot
Lodge, the Republican senator from Massachusetts, called on Forrestal
to make "a real attempt, well thought out and well organized," to
integrate a sizable part of the armed forces with soldiers
volunteering for such arrangements. Quoting from General Eisenhower's
testimony before the Armed Services Committee, he reminded Forrestal
that segregation was not only an undeserved and unjustified
humiliation to the Negro, but a potential danger to the national
defense effort. In the face of a manpower shortage, it was inexcusable
to view segregation simply as a political question, "of concern to a
few individuals and to a few men in public life and to be dealt with
as adroitly as possible, always with an eye to the largest number of
votes."[12-49]
[Footnote 12-48: New York _Times_, February 16, 1948.]
[Footnote 12-49: Ltr, Sen. Henry C. Lodge, Jr.
(Mass.), to SecDef, 19 Apr 48, D54-1-3, SecDef
files.]
Yet as the timing of Senator Lodge's letter suggests, the political
implications of the segregation fight were a prime concern of every
politician involved, and Forrestal had to act with this fact in mind.
The administration considered the Wallace campaign a real but minor
threat because of his appeal to black voters in the early months of
the campaign.[12-50] The Republican incursion into the civil rights field
was more ominous, and Forrestal, having acknowledged Lodge's letter,
turned to Lester Granger for help in drafting a detailed reply. It
took Granger some time to suggest an approach because he agreed with
Lodge on many points but found some of his inferences as unsound as
the Army's policy. For instance Lodge approved Eisenhower's comments
on segregation, and the only real difference between Eisenhower and
the Army staff was that Eisenhower wanted segregation made more
efficient by putting smaller all-black units into racially composite
organizations. Negroes opposed segregation as an insult to their race
and to their manhood. Granger wanted Forrestal to tell Lodge that no
group of Negroes mindful of its public standing could take a position
other than total opposition to segregation. Having to choose between
Randolph's stand and Eisenhower's, Negroes could not endorse
Eisenhower. Granger also thought Forrestal would do well to explain to
Lodge that he himself favored for the other services the policy
followed by the Navy in the name of improving efficiency and
morale.[12-51]
[Footnote 12-50: McCoy and Ruetten, _Quest and
Response_, pp. 98-99.]
[Footnote 12-51: Ltr, Granger to Leva, 14 May 48,
D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
A reply along these line was prepared, but Marx Leva persuaded (p. 308)
Forrestal not to send it until the selective service bill had safely
passed Congress.[12-52] Forrestal was "seriously concerned," he wrote
the President on 28 May 1948, about the fate of that legislation. He
wanted to express his opposition to an amendment proposed by Senator
Richard B. Russell of Georgia that would guarantee segregated units
for those draftees who wished to serve only with members of their own
race. He also wanted to announce his intention of making "further
progress" in interracial relations. To that end he had discussed with
Special Counsel to the President Clark M. Clifford the creation of an
advisory board to recommend specific steps his department could take
in the race relations field. Reiterating a long-cherished belief,
Forrestal declared that this "difficult problem" could not be solved
by issuing an executive order or passing a law, "for progress in this
field must be achieved by education, and not by mandate."[12-53] The
President agreed to these maneuvers,[12-54] but just three days later
Forrestal returned to the subject, passing along to Truman a warning
from Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio that both the Russell amendment
and one proposed by Senator William Langer of North Dakota to prohibit
all segregation were potential roadblocks to passage of the
bill.[12-55] In the end Congress rejected both amendments, passing a
draft bill without any special racial provisions on 19 June 1948.
[Footnote 12-52: Memo, Leva to Forrestal, 18 May 48,
D54-1-3, SecDef files. Forrestal's response,
suggesting that Lodge meet with Lester Granger to
discuss the matter, was finally sent on 24 Jun 48.
See also Memo, Leva for Forrestal, 22 Jun 48, and
Ltr, SecDef to Sen. Lodge, 24 Jun 48, both in
D51-1-3, SecDef files.]
[Footnote 12-53: Memo, James Forrestal for President,
28 May 48, Secretary's File (PSF), Harry S. Truman
Library.]
[Footnote 12-54: Memo, President for SecDef, 1 Jun 48,
Secretary's File (PSF), Truman Library.]
[Footnote 12-55: Note, SecDef for President, 31 May
48, sub: Conversation With Senator Taft,
Secretary's File (PSF), Truman Library.]
The proposal for an advisory board proved to be Forrestal's last
attempt to change the racial practices of the armed forces through
gradualism. In the next few weeks the whole problem would be taken out
of his hands by a White House grown impatient with his methods. There,
in contrast to the comparatively weak position of the Secretary of
Defense, who had not yet consolidated his authority, the full force
and power of the Commander in Chief would be used to give a dramatic
new meaning to equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces.
Given the temper of the times, Forrestal's surrender was inevitable,
for a successful reform program had to show measurable improvements,
and despite his maneuvers with the civil rights activists, the
Congress, and the services, Forrestal had no success worth proclaiming
in his first eight months of office.
This lack of progress disappointed civil rights leaders, who had
perhaps overestimated the racial reforms made when Forrestal was
Secretary of the Navy. It can be argued that as Secretary of Defense
Forrestal himself was inclined to overestimate them. Nevertheless, he
could demonstrate some systematic improvement in the lot of the black
sailor, enough improvement, according to his gradualist philosophy, to
assure continued progress. Ironically, considering Forrestal's faith
in the efficacy of education and persuasion, whatever can be counted
as his success in the Navy was accomplished by the firm authority he
and his immediate subordinates exercised during the last months of (p. 309)
the war. Yet this authority was precisely what he lacked in his new
office, where his power was limited to only a general control over
intransigent services that still insisted on their traditional
autonomy.
In any case, by 1948 there was no hope for widespread reform through a
step-by-step demonstration of the practicality and reasonableness of
integration. Too much of the remaining opposition was emotional,
rooted in prejudice and tradition, to yield to any but forceful
methods. If the services were to be integrated in the short run,
integration would have to be forced upon them.
_Executive Order 9981_
Although politics was only one of several factors that led to
Executive Order 9981, the order was born during a presidential
election campaign, and its content and timing reflect that fact.
Having made what could be justified as a military decision in the
interest of a more effective use of manpower in the armed forces, the
President and his advisers sought to capitalize on the political
benefits that might accrue from it.[12-56] The work of the President's
Committee on Civil Rights and Truman's subsequent message to Congress
had already elevated civil rights to the level of a major campaign
issue. As early as November 1947 Clark Clifford, predicting the
nomination of Thomas Dewey and Henry Wallace, had advised the
President to concentrate on winning the allegiance of the nation's
minority voters, especially the black, labor, and Jewish blocs.[12-57]
Clifford had discounted the threat of a southern defection, but in the
spring of 1948 southern Democrats began to turn from the party, and
the black vote, an important element in the big city Democratic vote
since the formation of the Roosevelt coalition, now became in the
minds of the campaign planners an essential ingredient in a Truman
victory. Through the efforts of Oscar Ewing, head of the Federal
Security Administration and White House adviser on civil rights
matters, and several other politicians, Harry Truman was cast in the
role of minority rights champion.[12-58]
[Footnote 12-56: Interv, Nichols with Ewing; Interv,
Blumenson with Leva.]
[Footnote 12-57: Memo, Clark Clifford for President,
19 Nov 47; ibid., 17 Aug 48, sub: The 1948
Campaign; both in Truman Library. See also Cabell
B. Phillips, _The Truman Presidency_ (New York:
Macmillan, 1966), pp. 198-99, and McCoy and
Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, ch. VI.]
[Footnote 12-58: Interv, Nichols with Ewing.]
Theirs was not a difficult task, for the President's identification
with the civil rights movement had become part of the cause of his
unpopularity in some Democratic circles and a threat to his
renomination. He overcame the attempt to deny him the presidential
nomination in June, and he accepted the strong civil rights platform
that emerged from the convention. The resolution committee of that
convention had proposed a mild civil rights plank in the hope of
preventing the defection of southern delegates, but in a dramatic
floor fight Hubert H. Humphrey, the mayor of Minneapolis and a
candidate for the U.S. Senate, forced through one of the strongest
civil rights statements in the history of the party. This plank
endorsed Truman's congressional message on civil rights and called (p. 310)
for "Congress to support our President in guaranteeing these basic and
fundamental rights ... the right of equal treatment in the service and
defense of our nation."[12-59]
[Footnote 12-59: Quoted in Memo, Leva for SecDef, 15
Jul 48, D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
Truman admitted to Forrestal that "he had not himself wanted to go as
far as the Democratic platform went on the civil rights issue." The
President had no animus toward those who voted against the platform;
he would have done the same if he had come from their states. But he
was determined to run on the platform, and for him, he later said, a
platform was not a window dressing. His southern colleagues understood
him. When a reporter pointed out to Governor Strom Thurmond of South
Carolina that the President had only accepted a platform similar to
those supported by Roosevelt, the governor answered, "I agree, but
Truman really means it."[12-60] After the platform fight the Alabama and
Mississippi delegates walked out of the convention. The Dixiecrat
revolt was on in earnest.
[Footnote 12-60: Quoted in Truman, _Memoirs_, II:183;
see also Interv, Nichols with Truman, and Millis,
_Forrestal Diaries_, p. 458.]
Both the Democratic platform and the report of the President's Civil
Rights Committee referred to discrimination in the federal government,
a matter obviously susceptible to presidential action. For once the
"do-nothing" Congress could not be blamed, and if Truman failed to act
promptly he would only invite the wrath of the civil rights forces he
was trying to court. Aware of this political necessity, the
President's advisers had been studying the areas in which the
President alone might act in forbidding discrimination as well as the
mechanics by which he might make his actions effective. According to
Oscar Ewing, the advisers had decided as early as October 1947 that
the best way to handle discrimination in the federal government was to
issue a presidential order securing the civil rights of both civilian
government employees and members of the armed forces. In the end the
President decided to issue two executive orders.[12-61]
[Footnote 12-61: Interv, Nichols with Ewing.]
Clifford, Ewing, and Philleo Nash, who was a presidential specialist
on minority matters, worked on drafting both orders. After consulting
with Truman Gibson, Nash proposed that the order directed to the
services should create a committee within the military establishment
to push for integration, one similar to the McCloy committee in World
War II. Like Gibson, Nash was convinced that change in the armed
forces racial policy would come only through a series of steps
initiated in each service. By such steps progress had been made in the
Navy through its Special Programs Unit and in the Army through the
efforts of the McCloy committee. Nash argued against the publication
of an executive order that spelled out integration or condemned
segregation. Rather, let the order to the services call for equal
treatment and opportunity--the language of the Democratic platform.
Tie it to military efficiency, letting the services discover, under
guidance from a White House committee, the inefficiency of segregation.
The services would quickly conclude, the advisers assumed, that equal
treatment and opportunity were impossible in a segregated (p. 311)
system.[12-62] After a series of discussions with the President, Nash,
Clifford, and Ewing drew up a version of the order to the services
along the lines suggested by Nash.[12-63]
[Footnote 12-62: Memo, Niles for Clifford, 12 May 48;
Memo, Clifford for SecDef, 13 May 48, Nash
Collection, Truman Library.]
[Footnote 12-63: Interv, Nichols with Ewing.]
The draft underwent one significant revision at the request of the
Secretary of Defense. In keeping with his theory that the services
should be given the chance to work out their own methods of compliance
with the order to integrate, Forrestal wanted no deadlines set. To
keep antagonisms to a minimum he wanted the order to call simply for
progress "as rapidly as feasible." The President agreed.[12-64]
[Footnote 12-64: Nichols, _Breakthrough on the Color
Front_, p. 86.]
The timing of the order was politically important to Truman, and by
late July the White House was extremely anxious to publish the
document. The President now had his all-important selective service
legislation; he was beginning to campaign on a platform calling for a
special session of Congress--a Congress dominated by Republicans, who
had also just approved a party platform calling for an end to
segregation in the armed forces. Haste was evident in the fact that
the order, along with copies for the service secretaries, was sent to
the Secretary of Defense on the morning of 26 July--the day it was
issued--for comment and review by that afternoon.[12-65] The order was
also submitted to Walter White and A. Philip Randolph before it was
issued.[12-66]
[Footnote 12-65: Ltr, Donald S. Dawson, Admin Asst to
the President, to SecDef, 26 Jul 48. The executive
order on equal opportunity for federal employees
was also issued on 26 July.]
[Footnote 12-66: Columbia University Oral Hist Interv
with Wilkins.]
Actually, the order had been read to Forrestal on the evening of the
previous day, and his office had suggested one more change. Marx Leva
believed that the order would be improved if it mentioned the fact
that substantial progress in civil rights had been made during the war
and in the years thereafter. Since a sentence to this effect had been
included in Truman's civil rights message of February, Leva thought it
would be well to include it in the executive order. Believing also
that policy changes ought to be the work of the government or of the
executive branch of the government rather than of the President alone,
he offered a sentence for inclusion: "To the extent that this policy
has not yet been completely implemented, such alterations or
improvements in existing rules, procedures and practices as may be
necessary shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible." Although
Forrestal approved the sentence, it was not accepted by the
President.[12-67]
[Footnote 12-67: Memo, Leva for Forrestal, 26 Jul 48,
SecDef files.]
Approvals were quickly gathered from interested cabinet officials. The
Attorney General passed on the form and legality of the order.
Forrestal was certain that Stuart Symington of the Air Force and John
L. Sullivan, Secretary of the Navy, would approve the order, but he
suggested that Oscar Ewing discuss the draft with Kenneth Royall.
According to Ewing, the Secretary of the Army read the order twice (p. 312)
and said, "tell the President that I not only have no objections but
wholeheartedly approve, and we'll go along with it."[12-68]
[Footnote 12-68: Interv, Nichols with Ewing: Ltr, Atty
Gen to President, 26 Jul 48, 1285-0, copy in
Eisenhower Library.]
The historic document, signed by Truman on 26 July 1948, read as
follows:
EXECUTIVE ORDER 9981
Whereas it is essential that there be maintained in the armed
services of the United States the highest standards of democracy,
with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who
serve in our country's defense:
Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as
President of the United States, and as Commander in Chief of the
armed services, it is hereby ordered as follows:
1. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that
there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all
persons in the armed services without regard to race, color,
religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect
as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to
effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or
morale.
2. There shall be created in the National Military Establishment
an advisory committee to be known as the President's Committee on
Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services,
which shall be composed of seven members to be designated by the
President.
3. The Committee is authorized on behalf of the President to
examine into the rules, procedures and practices of the armed
services in order to determine in what respect such rules,
procedures and practices may be altered or improved with a view
to carrying out the policy of this order. The Committee shall
confer and advise with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of
the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Air
Force, and shall make such recommendations to the President and
to said Secretaries as in the judgment of the Committee will
effectuate the policy hereof.
4. All executive departments and agencies of the Federal
Government are authorized and directed to cooperate with the
Committee in its work, and to furnish the Committee such
information or the services of such persons as the Committee may
require in the performance of its duties.
5. When requested by the Committee to do so, persons in the armed
services or in any of the executive departments and agencies of
the Federal Government shall testify before the Committee and
shall make available for the use of the Committee such documents
and other information as the Committee may require.
6. The Committee shall continue to exist until such time as the
President shall terminate its existence by Executive Order.
The White House HARRY S. TRUMAN
July 26, 1948
As indicated by the endorsement of such diverse protagonists as Royall
and Randolph, the wording of the executive order was in part both
vague and misleading. The vagueness was there by design. The failure
to mention either segregation or integration puzzled many people and
angered others, but it was certainly to the advantage of a president
who wanted to give the least offense possible to voters who supported
segregation. In fact integration was not the precise word to describe
the complex social change in the armed forces demanded by civil rights
leaders, and the emphasis on equality of treatment and opportunity with
its portent for the next generation was particularly appropriate.
Truman, however, was not allowed to remain vague for long. (p. 313)
Questioned at his first press conference after the order was issued, the
President refused to set a time limit, but he admitted that he expected
the order to abolish racial segregation in the armed forces.[12-69]
The order was also misleading when it created the advisory committee
"in" the National Military Establishment. Truman apparently intended
to create a presidential committee to oversee the manpower policies of
all the services, and despite the wording of the order the committee
would operate as a creature of the White House, reporting to the
President rather than to the Secretary of Defense.
[Footnote 12-69: Presidential News Conference, 29 Jul
48, _Public Papers of the President_, 1948, p.
422.]
The success of the new policy would depend to a great extent, as
friends and foes of integration alike recognized, on the ability and
inclination of this committee. The final choice of members was the
President's, but he conspicuously involved the Democratic National
Committee, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Army. He
repeatedly solicited Forrestal's suggestions, and it was apparent that
the views of the Pentagon would carry much weight in the final
selection. Just four days after the publication of Executive Order
9981, the President's administrative assistant, Donald S. Dawson,
wrote Forrestal that he would be glad to talk to him about the seven
members.[12-70] Before Forrestal replied he had Leva discuss possible
nominees with the three military departments and obtain their
recommendations. The Pentagon's list went to the White House on 3
August. A list compiled subsequently by Truman's advisers, chiefly
Philleo Nash and Oscar Ewing, and approved by the Democratic National
Committee, duplicated a number of Forrestal's suggestions; its
additions and deletions revealed the practical political
considerations under which the White House had to operate.[12-71]
[Footnote 12-70: Ltr, Dawson to Forrestal, 30 Jul 48,
SecDef files.]
[Footnote 12-71: Memos, Leva for Forrestal, 3 and 12
Aug 48; Ltr, Forrestal to President, 3 Aug 48,
D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
By mid-September the committee was still unformed. The White House had
been unable to get either Frank Graham, president of the University of
North Carolina, a member of the President's Committee on Civil Rights,
and the first choice of both the White House and the Pentagon for
chairman, or Charles E. Wilson, second choice, to accept the
chairmanship. Secretary of the Army Royall was particularly incensed
that some of the men being considered for the committee "have publicly
expressed their opinion in favor of abolishing segregation in the
Armed Services. At least one of them, Lester Grainger [_sic_], has
been critical both of the Army and of me personally on this particular
matter."[12-72] Royall wanted no one asked to serve on the President's
committee who had fixed opinions on segregation, and certainly no one
who had made a public pronouncement on the subject. He wanted the
nominees questioned to make sure they could give "fair consideration"
to the subject.[12-73] Royall favored Jonathan Daniels, Ralph McGill of
the Atlanta _Constitution_, Colgate Darden, president of the
University of Virginia, and Douglas Southall Freeman, distinguished
Richmond historian.[12-74] Names continued to be bruited about. (p. 314)
Dawson asked Forrestal if he had any preferences for Reginald E.
Gillmor, president of Sperry Gyroscope, or Julius Ochs Adler, noted
publisher and former military aide to Secretary Stimson, as
possibilities for chairman. Forrestal inclined toward Adler; "I
believe he would be excellent although as a Southerner he might have
limiting views."[12-75]
[Footnote 12-72: Ltr, Royall to President, 17 Sep 48,
OSA 291.2 (17 Sep 48).]
[Footnote 12-73: Ibid.]
[Footnote 12-74: Memo, Royall for Forrestal, 10 Sep
48, OSA 291.2 (10 Sep 48).]
[Footnote 12-75: Memo, Leva for Forrestal, 1 Sep 48,
and Handwritten Note by Forrestal, D54-1-3, SecDef
files.]
With the election imminent, the need for an announcement on the
membership of the committee became pressing. On 16 September Dawson
told Leva that a chairman and five of the six members had been
selected and had agreed to serve: Charles Fahy, chairman, Charles
Luckman, Lester Granger, John H. Sengstacke, Jacob Billikopf, and
Alphonsus J. Donahue. The sixth member, still uninvited, was to be
Dwight Palmer. Dawson said he would wait on this appointment until
Forrestal had time to consider it, but two days later he was back,
telling the secretary that the President had instructed him to release
the names. There was final change: William E. Stevenson's name was
substituted for Billikopf's.[12-76]
[Footnote 12-76: Memo, Leva for Forrestal, 18 Sep 48,
D54-1-3, SecDef files.]
Although only two of Forrestal's nominees, Lester Granger and John
Sengstacke, survived the selection process, the final membership was
certainly acceptable to the Secretary of Defense. Charles Fahy was
suggested by presidential assistant David K. Niles, who described the
soft-voiced Georgian as a "reconstructed southerner liberal on race."
A lawyer and former Solicitor General, Fahy had a reputation for
sensitive handling of delicate problems, "with quiet authority and the
punch of a mule." Granger's appointment was a White House bow to
Forrestal and a disregard for Royall's objections. Sengstacke, a noted
black publisher suggested by Forrestal and Ewing and supported by
William L. Dawson, the black congressman from Chicago, was appointed
in deference to the black press. Moreover, he had supported Truman's
reelection "in unqualified terms." William Stevenson was the president
of Oberlin College and was strongly recommended by Lloyd K. Garrison,
president of the National Urban League. Finally, there was a trio of
businessmen on the committee: Donahue was a Connecticut industrialist,
highly recommended by Senator Howard J. McGrath of Rhode Island and
Brian McMahon of Connecticut; Luckman was president of Lever Brothers
and a native of Kansas City, Missouri; and Dwight Palmer was president
of the General Cable Corporation.[12-77]
[Footnote 12-77: Interv, Nichols with Ewing; Interv,
Blumenson with Leva. Donahue resigned for health
reasons shortly after the committee began its work;
see Ltr, Donahue to Truman, 23 May 49, Truman
Library. Luckman did not participate at all in the
committee's work or sign its report. The
committee's active members, in addition to its
chairman, were Granger, Sengstacke, Palmer, and
Stevenson.]
These were the men with whom, for a time at least, the Secretary of
Defense would share his direction over the racial policies of the
armed forces.