vy to draft at least 125,000
Negroes before January 1944, and he insisted that the practice of
placing separate calls be terminated "as soon as feasible."[3-48] The
Navy finally struck a compromise with the commission, agreeing that up
to 14,150 Negroes a month would be inducted for the rest of 1943 to
reach the 125,000 figure by January 1944.[3-49] The issue of separate
draft calls for Negroes and whites remained in abeyance while the
services made common cause against the commission by insisting that
the orderly absorption of Negroes demanded a regular program that
could only be met by maintaining the quota system.

[Footnote 3-48: Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Mar 43, WMC
Gen files.]

[Footnote 3-49: Ltr, SecNav to Paul McNutt, 13 Apr
43; Ltr, McNutt to Knox, 23 Apr 43; both in WMC Gen
files.]

Total black enlistments never reached 10 percent of the Navy's wartime
enlisted strength but remained nearer the 5 percent mark. But this
figure masks the Navy's racial picture in the later years of the war
after it became dependent on Selective Service. The Navy drafted
150,955 Negroes during the war, 11.1 percent of all the men it
drafted. In 1943 alone the Navy placed calls with Selective Service
for 116,000 black draftees. Although Selective Service was unable to
fill the monthly request completely, the Navy received 77,854 black
draftees (versus 672,437 whites) that year, a 240 percent rise over
the 1942 black enlistment rate.[3-50]

[Footnote 3-50: Selective Service System, _Special
Groups_, vol. II, pp. 198-201. See also Memos,
Director of Planning and Control, BuPers, for
Chief, BuPers, 25 Feb 43, sub: Increase in Colored
Personnel for the Navy; and 1 Apr 43, sub; Increase
in Negro Personnel in Navy. Both in P-14,
BuPersRecs.]

Although it wrestled for several months with the problem of
distributing the increased number of black draftees, the Bureau of
Naval Personnel could invent nothing new. The Navy, Knox told
President Roosevelt, would continue to segregate Negroes and restrict
their service to certain occupations. Its increased black strength
would be absorbed in twenty-seven new black Seabee battalions, in
which Negroes would serve overseas as stevedores; in black crews for
harbor craft a