res generated by the
civil rights movement compelled all the services--Army, Navy, Air
Force, and Marine Corps--to reexamine their traditional practices of
segregation. While there were differences in the ways that the
services moved toward integration, all were subject to the same
demands, fears, and prejudices and had the same need to use their
resources in a more rational and economical way. All of them reached
the same conclusion: traditional attitudes toward minorities must give
way to democratic concepts of civil rights.

If the integration of the armed services now seems to have been
inevitable in a democratic society, it nevertheless faced opposition
that had to be overcome and problems that had to be solved through the
combined efforts of political and civil rights leaders and civil and
military officials. In many ways the military services were at the
cutting edge in the struggle for racial equality. This volume sets
forth the successive measures they and the Office of the Secretary of
Defense took to meet the challenges of a new era in a critically
important area of human relationships, during a period of transition
that saw the advance of blacks in the social and economic order as
well as in the military. It is fitting that this story should be told
in the first volume of a new Defense Studies Series.

The Defense Historical Studies Program was authorized by the then
Deputy Secretary of Defense, Cyrus Vance, in April 1965. It is
conducted under the auspices of the Defense Historical Studies Group,
an _ad hoc_ body chaired by the Historian of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and consisting of the senior officials in the
historical offices of the services and of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Volumes produced under its sponsorship will be interservice histories,
covering matters of mutual interest to the Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marine Corps, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The preparation of each
volume is entrusted to one of the service historical sections, in this
case the Army's Center of Military History. Although the book was
written by an Army historian, he was generously given access to the
pertinent records of the other services and the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, and this initial volume in the Defense Studies
Series covers the experiences of all components of the Department of
Defense in achieving integration.

Washington, D.C. JAMES L. COLLINS, Jr.
14 March 1980