The Negro in the Armed Forces

Abstract

Negroes have worn their country's uniform since before the Civil War, and have acquitted themselves very well on many occasions. As elsewhere in America, the policy of the Armed Forces has been that of segregation; usually that of establishing separate colored units. Segregation in the Armed Forces has been much discussed; the arguments against segregation are generally the same as those against segregation elsewhere, but one purely military argument is to be added: Since Negroes comprise about 10 percent of the Army, Negro units must necessarily be more limited in the fields they cover than the 90 percent of white units. Negroes with training in fields in which Negro units do not exist are thus unable to put their specialized training to use, and may be found performing menial tasks in units devoted to other purposes. A Negro electroencephalograph operator-a specialty of which the Army was desperately short-might very well be placed in the Engineers or the Quartermaster Corps, because there were no Negrooperated General Hospitals in the jurisdiction of the Headquarters responsible for his assignment. Potent arguments are, however, advanced in favor of such segregation. It is maintained that the primary mission of an Army and Navy is to fight, not to try and reform or improve the social customs of the country which it serves; ignoring the custom of segregation on the part of the Army or Navy would have decreased its fighting potentialities because of the presence in the ranks of a large number of individuals who would strenuously object to being made to live, work, eat, and fight with colored brothers-in-arms. Another argument, often overlooked by those who preach abolition of segregation is that separate Negro units have full complements of men through all the enlisted ranks, and a certain proportion of colored officers. This assures promotion to about the same percentage of Negro enlisted personnel as white. If segregation were abolished, and 10 percent of every organization were Negro, the number of Negro NCO's would be greatly reduced, because of the refusal on the part of many whites to serve under Negroes, and the reluctance of white officers to promote a Negro over a white; Negroes would be relegated almost entirely to menial tasks. A survey of the role of the Negro in the various Armed Services will serve to clarify the picture. In 1940, the Regular Army contained five Negro Officers; Brigadier General Benjamin 0. Davis, an officer who had risen from the ranks, Lt. Col. Benjamin 0. Davis, Jr., West Point '36-the only Negro West Point graduate then alive, the three previous Negro graduates, West Point '77, '87, and '89 respectively having since died -and three Chaplains. There were, however, a certain number of Negro Reserve Officers who were called to active duty upon the outbreak of war. The Army has used the bulk of its Negro personnel as work troops: Quartermasters, Engineers, Transportation Corps, Medical Sanitary Companies, and so forth. It has been the policy, though, to have Negro personnel in every branch of the Army, and one Negro unit at least of almost every type extant. This has been done largely so that it would be possible to make the statement that Negroes participate in every one of the Army's activities, and has had a beneficial effect in some directions. the Army asked for volunteers for paratrooper training, it took the white volunteers that met the qualifications, and formed them into companies, more or less the first 150 qualified applicants for one company, the next for the next company, and so on. When they announced that Negroes were to be permitted to volunteer for the same training, they organized just one company, picking the men from among the hundreds who applied. The result is that the colored paratrooper company contains soldiers carefully selected from among hundreds of applicants, and therefore, a group on a much higher social and intellectual level than the average among colored soldiers in the Army as a whole, while the white company contains a group of whites who are, on the whole, selected only from the point of view of meeting physical standards. As a result, the Negro company has much higher standards than the white. The fact that the Company was not organized until too late to