The Relative Status of the Negro in the American Armed Forces

Abstract

The of the 1940's had a war at each end. Hitler launched the second world war a few months before the began and six months after it had ended Korea's thirty-eighth parallel burst into flames. Thus, the past ten years or so deserve the label decade of war-especially when we recall that the forty-five months of America's participation in the world conflagration were preceded by largescale mobilization and succeeded by military occupation in Europe and Asia. The subsequent nation-wide campaign for peacetime universal military service and training also contributed to the martial atmosphere. Military necessity, therefore, has been, for some time, the primary question of national interest. It has absorbed most of the Federal budget; almost all of the fit young men, and given color and shape to over-all attitudes of the American people on a