In a Japanese best-seller of the 1920s, If Japan and America Fight, Lieutenant General Kojiro Sato predicted that America’s “colored people” would not be willing to take up arms to defend the United States if a war broke out. The author could not have been more incorrect. Before the war, the editors of the Baltimore Afro-American promised President Roosevelt that, should the country need them, black people would put aside their historic grievances and do their part. “Mr. President, you can count on us,” they promised. However, the editors added that they could not be expected to defend their country “with a whiskbroom and a wide grin.”
The truth was that although every branch of service desperately needed men, neither the Army nor the Marines nor the Navy wanted black men. In 1940 a group of fifteen black mess attendants aboard the cruiser Philadelphia risked their careers by signing a letter to the black-owned Pittsburgh Courier, which the paper promptly published. “Our main reason for writing,” the signers explained, “is to let all our colored mothers and fathers know how their sons are treated after taking an oath pledging allegiance and loyalty to their flag and country.… We sincerely hope to discourage any other colored boys who might have planned to join the Navy and make the same mistake as we did. All they would become is seagoing bellhops, chambermaids and dishwashers.”
The Navy threw all fifteen into jail, and the men were eventually discharged as undesirables. Following its ruling against the men, the Navy attempted to explain its rationale for using blacks only as messmen. “After many years of experience, the policy of not enlisting men of the colored race for any branch of the naval service except the messman’s branch was adopted to meet the best interests of the general ship efficiency.”
The severity of the Navy’s punishment, intended to intimidate other so-called malcontents, backfired. Men aboard other ships, inspired by the courage of the fifteen rebels, began to vent their anger. They, too, wrote the Courier and described the demoralizing conditions under which they served. The Pittsburgh Courier launched a vigorous national advertising campaign to push for minority participation in every aspect of the armed services. Meanwhile, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People committed itself to eliminating Jim Crow in all branches of the military. Discrimination had become a powerful symbol of injustice for blacks. Restrictions on their service were painful reminders of their status as second-class citizens.
By late summer 1940, under the threat of impending war, black resentment swelled across the country, and President Roosevelt fretted about what the racial disturbances meant for his reelection bid. With good cause, he worried about a black boycott of the election or, worse yet, support for his opponent, Wendell Willkie. Roosevelt knew that the election would be close enough that he would need to depend on the black vote. Blacks voted as a bloc, and that bloc had clearly gained political power.
In late September, in a meeting arranged by his wife, Eleanor, the president, along with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, and Robert Patterson, the assistant secretary of war, met with three black civil rights leaders. Much to the chagrin of Knox, Marshall, and Patterson, Roosevelt seemed ready to make changes in the military’s racial policies. That evening, Secretary of War Stimson, who was briefed on the details of the meeting by his undersecretary, confided in his diary that the president had “acted rambunctiously.” Later he would write, “We must not place too much responsibility on a race which is not showing initiative. The foolish leaders of the colored race are seeking, at bottom, social equality.” He considered the racial issue an annoying intrusion that distracted him from his primary job, which was to get the Army ready for war. Patterson, Marshall, and Knox were more direct. Patterson advised Roosevelt to “wait until V-E day to reform the world.” Marshall told the president that this was no time “for critical experiments which would have a highly destructive effect on morale.” Not mincing words either, Knox told the president that he would have to resign his position if the president forced him to desegregate the Navy at the same time he was gearing up for the monumental task of fielding a two-ocean force.
A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Walter White, executive director of the NAACP, and Arnold Hill, former secretary of the Urban League, left the president’s office with high expectations. After a week passed, they tried to reach the president by telephone. They sent telegrams, too. When it became apparent that the president was avoiding them, White contacted Eleanor Roosevelt. What he wanted was for the president to approve a draft of a statement highlighting their discussion of the prior week regarding incremental integration. White, Randolph, and Hill all hoped that they could issue the statement in conjunction with the White House. Roosevelt’s War Department, however, had very different ideas.
Eleanor Roosevelt intervened once again, pushing the War Department for a statement of its position regarding the use of black troops. Angered by Mrs. Roosevelt’s advocacy, Secretary Stimson issued an announcement that deeply disappointed Randolph and his associates. At their meeting with the president, the civil rights leaders had broached the idea of integrated Northern regiments and Negro officers leading white troops. Their understanding was that the president was willing to consider both proposals. The reality, though, was that from the moment they left the White House, the president’s military advisers dismissed those notions as reckless.
The War Department’s announcement was little more than a reiteration of General Marshall’s earlier statement to the president. “The policy of the War Department,” it said, “is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel.… This policy has been proven satisfactory over a long period of years and to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparation of national defense.”
When Roosevelt’s press secretary, Steve Early, suggested to newspaper and magazine reporters that the three civil rights leaders had approved the War Department’s proposal, White, Randolph, and Hill were incensed. Accused of having sold out minorities, they lashed out and issued a hard-hitting statement titled “White House Charged with Trickery in Announcing Jim Crow Policy of Army,” suggesting that the White House had misled them, had gutted the nation’s democracy, and had struck a “blow at the patriotism of twelve million Negro citizens.”
The president promptly and publicly apologized for his press secretary’s misstep, and further admitted that he believed that desegregating the military was a worthwhile goal. “Further developments of policy,” he explained to White, “will be forthcoming to ensure fair treatment on a non-discriminatory basis.”
In mid-September 1940, President Roosevelt made good on his promise, signing the Selective Training and Service Act, which established the first peacetime draft in American history. The legislation was extremely popular in the black community. Black leaders considered it a milestone because of two important antidiscrimination clauses. The first provided that all men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six could volunteer for service in the land and naval forces of the United States. The second clause prohibited discrimination (based on race) in the selection and training of men. The addition of the antidiscrimination clause was a major achievement for the civil rights movement and influential black coalitions across the country. It was this clause that so worried members of the president’s own administration, especially Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Stimson wrote in his diary, “Colored men do very well under white officers but every time we try to lift them a little beyond where they can go, disaster and confusion follows.… I hope for heaven sakes they don’t mix the white and colored troops together in the same units for then we shall certainly have trouble.”
In the spring of 1941, Roosevelt was three months into an unprecedented third term. Although he had supported major legislative breakthroughs, progress had come slowly for blacks. Frustrated by continuing roadblocks to integration in the military and defense industries, A. Philip Randolph hit upon a s
olution: he would stage a massive protest march on Washington.
Randolph traveled the country raising money and rallying support for the march. The response, though tepid at first, became overwhelmingly positive. “Never before in the history of the nation,” wrote the Chicago Defender, had blacks “ever been so united in an objective and so insistent upon action being taken.” Randolph established a March on Washington Committee with branches in major cities across the country. Although the prospect of the rally worried the Roosevelt administration, the president repeatedly declined Walter White’s requests to meet. Not until mid-June did the president make time for Randolph and the NAACP’s executive director, finally agreeing to meet with Stimson, Knox, and a number of civilian affairs officials. Early on, Randolph pushed the conversation toward the matter at hand.
“Well, Phil,” the president asked, “what do you want me to do?”
Randolph did not demur. “Mr. President,” he said, “we want you to issue an executive order making it mandatory that Negroes be permitted to work in these plants.”
When the president replied that he would be unable to meet Randolph’s request, Randolph answered, “I’m sorry, Mr. President, then the march cannot be called off.”
“How many people do you plan to bring?” inquired Roosevelt.
“One hundred thousand,” Randolph countered.
Randolph may have exaggerated its size, but Roosevelt could not risk the possibility of 100,000, or even tens of thousands, of blacks gathering on the streets of Washington. It spelled trouble, perhaps disaster. If signing an executive order was the only way to stop the march and the potential unrest and bloodshed, then he would do it.
A lawyer drafted the language and sent it to Randolph for his approval. The activist refused to let this final step fall short of his expectations, and sent the draft back numerous times for revisions. On June 25, 1941, after Randolph had endorsed the language, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which called upon employers and labor unions “to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin … all departments of the government, including the Armed Forces, shall lead the way in erasing discrimination over color or race.” To ensure compliance, the order established a five-member Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
Black newspapers heralded the decision as “epochal.” The Chicago Defender wrote that the order renewed Negroes’ faith in a democracy that had gone astray. The National Negro Congress lauded the move as a “bold, patriotic action in smashing age-old color restrictions.”
While the news thrilled the black community, generals and admirals across the country deeply resented the order. They felt that Roosevelt, by giving in to the black community, had opened Pandora’s box. Now they were being told to accept blacks as the nation geared up for the possibility of war. During a meeting of the General Board of the Navy, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Major General Thomas Holcomb, argued that blacks had no place in the Marines. “If it were a question of having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes, I would rather have the whites.” Later the obdurate commandant added, “The Negro race has every opportunity now to satisfy its aspirations for combat in the Army—a very much larger organization than the Navy or Marine Corps—and their desire to enter the naval service is largely, I think, to break into a club that doesn’t want them.”
In the wake of Roosevelt’s order, realizing that the admission of blacks into the Marine Corps was an inevitability, General Holcomb issued an urgent memorandum: “The mixing of white and colored enlisted personnel within the same unit,” it said, “will be avoided.”
CHAPTER 7
The Right to Fight
Hoping to stave off the entrance of blacks, every branch of service seized upon an Army War College Report on “The Use of Negro Manpower in War.” “In the process of evolution,” the report stipulated, “the American Negro has not progressed as far as other sub species of the human family.… The cranial cavity of the Negro is smaller than whites.… The psychology of the Negro, based on heredity derived from mediocre African ancestors, cultivated by generations of slavery, is one from which we cannot expect to draw leadership material.… In general the Negro is jolly, docile, tractable, and lively but with harsh or unkind treatment can become stubborn, sullen and unruly. In physical courage, [he] falls well back of whites.… He is most susceptible to ‘Crowd Psychology.’ He cannot control himself in fear of danger.… He is a rank coward in the dark.”
Outraged, William Hastie, the man chosen by the president to advise Secretary of War Henry Stimson on racial affairs, disputed the logic of the report. “The evidence of field commanders,” he wrote, “indicates that a high percentage of the men with little education or acquired skill at the time of their induction, can be used effectively in combat units. Many such men have basic intelligence and are eager to learn for the very reason that opportunity has been denied them in civilian life.”
On December 1, 1941, General George Marshall addressed himself to Hastie’s reponse. In a memorandum to Henry Stimson, he wrote that Hastie’s suggestions “would be tantamount to solving a social problem which has perplexed the American people throughout the history of this nation. The Army cannot accomplish such a solution, and should not be charged with the undertaking.”
Within twenty-four hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the NAACP, believing the demands of war would force the military to reconsider its racist policies, issued a public statement to the president offering its unwavering support. That statement read, “Though thirteen million Negroes have more often than not been denied democracy, they are American citizens and will as in every war give unqualified support to the protection of their country.” Two days later the NAACP wired Secretary Knox, asking whether the Navy planned to accept colored recruits for service other than the messman’s branch. “We will fight,” the NAACP added, “but we demand the right to fight as equals in every branch of military, naval and aviation service.” The Bureau of the Navy Personnel replied that no policy change was being discussed. Furious, the NAACP took its case to the president on December 17, 1941.
Roosevelt now had a war brewing on three fronts: Europe, the Pacific, and at home, too. While he deliberated on how to reply to the NAACP, the committee that Knox had appointed to look into the Navy’s racial policies issued an uninspired report that did little more than uphold the status quo. It concluded that “the enlistment of Negroes (other than as mess attendants) leads to disruptive and undermining conditions.”
On January 9, 1942, the president sent the NAACP’s letter of December 17 to Secretary Knox. “I think that with all the Navy activities,” Roosevelt wrote, “BuNav [Bureau of Navy Personnel] might invent something that colored enlistees could do in addition to the rating of messman.”
Just one week later, responding to the commander-in-chief’s memo, Secretary Knox instructed the Navy’s General Board to describe what assignments would “permit the Navy to best utilize the services of these [Negro] men.” In early February the board responded. The mixing of races aboard ship, it said, would lead to “race friction and lowered efficiency.” It added further that if restricting Negroes to the messman’s branch was discrimination, “it is but part and parcel of similar discrimination throughout the United States.”
President Roosevelt reviewed the board’s report and again wrote Secretary Knox encouraging him to find a middle ground between confining Negroes to messman duties and opening up all duties to them. But “to go the whole way,” Roosevelt cautioned, “at one fell swoop would seriously impair the general average efficiency of the Navy.” Wartime mobilization had already proved chaotic enough.
Days later, Admiral King weighed in on the issue. His recommendation was that if Negroes were going to be enlisted in the Navy in ratings other than the messman’s branch, they should be assigned to “Construction Battalions under the Bureau of Yards and Docks;
and Shore Stations … in places like Naval Supply Depots, Navy Yards, Ordnance Stations, Training Stations, Experimental Stations. Section Bases, Air Stations, etc.,—in general—the Naval Shore Establishment.” What this meant for blacks in the Navy was that they would not be allowed to serve at sea. Rather, they would be confined to a support role, to behind-the-scenes jobs where they would have little opportunity for promotion or the kind of service they had envisioned when they signed up.
Almost one month later, the Navy’s General Board again reported to Secretary Knox. The “organization of colored units,” it said, “could be effected with the least amount of turmoil, if they were assigned to service units, construction battalions, and composite Marine battalions.”
By early spring, after nearly a year, the executive order to end discrimination in the armed forces and repay the black community for its election support was still sitting on Secretary Knox’s desk. On April 7, realizing that he now had a solution to the problem of how to utilize large numbers of blacks in the Navy, Knox announced that beginning on June 1, 1942, Negroes could enlist in general service. The plan established a weekly quota of 277 men. By year’s end, Knox hoped to have seven thousand blacks enlisted for general service.
CHAPTER 8
The First
In the summer of 1942, with high school behind them, and still inspired by the image of J. C. Clark in his dashing uniform, Sammie Boykin and Elester Cunningham made their way to the recruiting station in Birmingham, Alabama. They walked through the front door and saw only one recruiter, a tall, serious-looking man with close-cropped brown hair. He spoke cordially, even solicitously, telling Boykin and Cunningham that the Navy was looking for the best Negroes in all of Alabama. What he did not say was that having resisted the enlistment of Negroes for general service for its entire history, the Navy was trying to kick-start its “Negro” program and was desperate to find “qualified” black men willing to commit themselves to a branch of service that had never wanted them.
The Color of War Page 5