degree, was made a warrant officer because of his outstanding work in the course.
Two of the twelve new ensigns were assigned to the faculty at Hampton training school, four others to yard and harbor craft duty, and the rest to training duty at Great Lakes. All carried the label "Deck Officers Limited—only," a designation usually reserved for officers whose physical or educational deficiencies kept them from performing all the duties of a line officer. The Bureau of Naval Personnel never explained why the men were placed in this category, but it was clear that none of them lacked the physical requirements of a line officer and all had had business or professional careers in civil life.
Operating duplicate training facilities for officer candidates was costly, and the bureau decided shortly after the first group of black candidates was trained that future candidates of both races would be trained together. By early summer ten more Negroes, this time civilians with special professional qualifications, had been trained with whites and were commissioned as staff officers in the Medical, Dental, Chaplain, Civil Engineer, and Supply Corps. These twenty-two men were the first of some sixty Negroes to be commissioned during the war.
Since only a handful of the Negroes in the Navy were officers, the preponderance of the race problems concerned relations between black enlisted men and their white officers. The problem of selecting the proper officers to command black sailors was a formidable one never satisfactorily solved during the war. As in the Army, most of the white officers routinely selected for such assignments were southerners, chosen by the Bureau of Naval Personnel for their assumed "understanding" of Negroes rather than for their general competency. The Special Programs Unit tried to work with these officers, assembling them for conferences to discuss the best techniques and procedures for dealing with groups of black subordinates. Members of the unit sought to disabuse the officers of preconceived biases, constantly reminding them that "our prejudices must be subordinated to our traditional unfailing obedience to orders."78 Although there was ample proof that many Negroes actively resented the paternalism exhibited by many of even the best of these officers, this fact was slow to filter through the naval establishment. It was not until January 1944 that an officer who had compiled an enviable record in training Seabee units described how his organization had come to see the light:
We in the Seabees no longer follow the precept that southern officers exclusively should be selected for colored battalions. A man may be from the north, south, east or west. If his attitude is to do the best possible job he knows how, regardless of what the color of his personnel is, that is the man we want as an officer for our colored Seabees. We have learned to steer clear of the "I'm from the South—I know how to handle 'em variety." It follows with reference to white personnel, that deeply accented southern whites are not generally suited for Negro battalions.79
Further complicating the task of selecting suitable officers for black units was the fact that when the Bureau of Naval Personnel asked unit commanders to recommend men for such duty many commanders used the occasion to rid themselves of their least desirable officers. The Special Programs Unit then tried to develop its own source of officers for black units. It discovered a fine reservoir of talent among the white noncommissioned officers who ran the physical training and drill courses at Great Lakes. These were excellent instructors, mature and experienced in dealing with people. In January 1944 arrangements were made to commission them and to assign them to black units.
Improvement in the quality of officers in black units was especially important because the attitude of local commanders was directly related to the degree of segregation in living quarters and recreational facilities, and such segregation was the most common source of racial tension. Although the Navy's practice of segregating units clearly invited separate living and recreational facilities, the rules were unwritten, and local commanders had been left to decide the extent to which segregation was necessary. Thus practices varied greatly and policy depended ultimately on the local commanders. Rather than attack racial practices at particular bases, the unit decided to concentrate on the officers. It explained to these leaders the Navy's policy of equal treatment and opportunity, a concept basically incompatible with many of their practices.
This conclusion was embodied in a pamphlet entitled Guide to the Command of Negro Naval Personnel and published by the Bureau of Naval Personnel in February 1944.80 The Special Programs Unit had to overcome much opposition within the bureau to get the pamphlet published. Some thought the subject of racial tension was best ignored; others objected to the "sociological" content of the work, considering this approach outside the Navy's province. The unit argued that racial tension in the Navy was a serious problem that could not be ignored, and since human relations affected the Navy's mission the Navy should deal with social matters objectively and frankly.81
Scholarly and objective, the pamphlet was an important document in the history of race relations in the Navy. In language similar to that used in the War Department's pamphlet on race, the Bureau of Naval Personnel stated officially for the first time that discrimination flowed of necessity out of the doctrine of segregation:
The idea of compulsory racial segregation is disliked by almost all Negroes, and literally hated by many. This antagonism is in part a result of the fact that as a principle it embodies a doctrine of racial inferiority. It is also a result of the lesson taught the Negro by experience that in spite of the legal formula of "separate but equal" facilities, the facilities open to him under segregation are in fact usually inferior as to location or quality to those available to others.82
The guide also foreshadowed the end of the old order of things: "The Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability, but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity determined on the basis of individual performance."83
Forrestal Takes the Helm
The Navy got a leader sympathetic to the proposition of equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes, and possessed of the bureaucratic skills to achieve reforms, when President Roosevelt appointed Under Secretary James Forrestal to replace Frank Knox, who died suddenly on 28 April 1944. During the next five years Forrestal, a brilliant, complex product of Wall Street, would assume more and more responsibility for directing the integration effort in the defense establishment. Although no racial crusader, Forrestal had been for many years a member of the National Urban League, itself a pillar of the civil rights establishment. He saw the problem of employing Negroes as one of efficiency and simple fair play, and as the months went by he assumed an active role in experimenting with changes in the Navy's policy.84
His first experiment was with sea duty for Negroes. After the experience of the Mason and the other segregated ships which actually proved very little, sentiment for a partial integration of the fleet continued to grow in the Bureau of Naval Personnel. As early as April 1943, officers in the Planning and Control Activity recommended that Negroes be included in small numbers in the crews of the larger combat ships. Admiral Jacobs, however, was convinced that "you couldn't dump 200 colored boys on a crew in battle,"85 so this and similar proposals later in the year never survived passage through the bureau.
Forrestal accepted Jacob's argument that as long as the war continued any move toward integrating the fighting ships was impractical. At the same time, he agreed with the Special Programs Unit that large concentrations of Negroes in shore duties lowered efficiency and morale. Forrestal compromised by ordering the bureau to prepare as an experiment a plan for the integration of some fleet auxiliary ships. On 20 May 1944 he outlined the problem for the President:
"From a morale standpoint, the Negroes resent the fact that they are not assigned to general service billets at sea, and white personnel resent the fact that Negroes have been given less hazardous assignments." He explained that at first Negroes would be used only on the large auxiliaries, and their number would be limited to not more than 10 percent of the ship's complement. If this step proved workable, he planned to use Negroes in small numbers on other types of ships
