[Footnote 3-29: Quoted in Nelson, "The Integration of
the Negro," p. 37.]

[Footnote 3-30: _Opportunity_ (May 1942), p. 82.]

_A Segregated Navy_

With considerable alacrity the Navy set a practical course for the
employment of its black volunteers. On 21 April 1942 Secretary Knox
approved a plan for training Negroes at Camp Barry, an isolated
section of the Great Lakes Training Center. Later renamed Camp Robert
Smalls after a black naval hero of the Civil War, the camp not only
offered the possibility of practically unlimited expansion but, as the
Bureau of Navigation put it, made segregation "less obvious" to
recruits. The secretary also approved the use of facilities at Hampton
Institute, the well-known black school in Virginia, as an advanced
training school for black recruits.[3-31]

[Footnote 3-31: Memo, Chief, BuNav, for SecNav, 17
Apr 42, sub: Training Facilities for Negro
Recruits, Nav-102; Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm
Randall Jacobs, 21 Apr 42, 54-1-22. Both in
GenRecsNav.]

Black enlistments began on 1 June 1942, and black volunteers started
entering Great Lakes later that month in classes of 277 men. At the
same time the Navy opened enlistments for an unlimited number of black
Seabees and messmen. Lt. Comdr. Daniel Armstrong commanded the recruit
program at Camp Smalls. An Annapolis graduate, son of the founder of
Hampton Institute, Armstrong first came to the attention of Knox in
March 1942 when he submitted a plan for the employment of black
sailors that the secretary considered practical.[3-32] Under Armstrong's
energetic leadership, black recruits received training that was in
some respects superior to that afforded whites. For all his success,
however, Armstrong was strongly criticized, especially by educated
Negroes who resented his theories of education. Imbued with the
paternalistic attitude of Tuskegee and Hampton, Armstrong saw the
Negro as possessing a separate culture more attuned to vocational
training. He believed that Negroes needed special treatment and
discipline in a totally segregated environment free from white
competition. Educated Negroes, on the other hand, saw in this special
treatment another form of discrimination.[3-33]

[Footnote 3-32: Memo, SecNav for Chmn, Gen Bd, 7 Mar
42, GenRecsNav