nits in the Regular Army. In 1866 Congress
authorized the creation of permanent, all-black units, which in 1869
were designated the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th
Infantry.

[Illustration: CREWMEN OF THE USS MIAMI DURING THE CIVIL WAR]

Military needs and idealistic impulses were not enough to guarantee
uninterrupted racial progress; in fact, the status of black servicemen
tended to reflect the changing patterns in American race relations.
During most of the nineteenth century, for example, Negroes served in
an integrated U.S. Navy, in the latter half of the century averaging
between 20 and 30 percent of the enlisted strength.[1-3] But the
employment of Negroes in the Navy was abruptly curtailed after
1900. Paralleling the rise of Jim Crow and legalized segregation (p. 005)
in much of America was the cutback in the number of black sailors, who
by 1909 were mostly in the galley and the engine room. In contrast to
their high percentage of the ranks in the Civil War and Spanish-American
War, only 6,750 black sailors, including twenty-four women reservists
(yeomanettes), served in World War I; they constituted 1.2 percent of
the Navy's total enlistment.[1-4] Their service was limited chiefly to
mess duty and coal passing, the latter becoming increasingly rare as
the fleet changed from coal to oil.

[Footnote 1-3: Estimates vary; exact racial
statistics concerning the nineteenth century Navy
are difficult to locate. See Enlistment of Men of
Colored Race, 23 Jan 42, a note appended to
Hearings Before the General Board of the Navy,
1942, Operational Archives, Department of the Navy
(hereafter OpNavArchives). The following brief
summary of the Negro in the pre-World War II Navy
is based in part on Foner's _Blacks and the
Military in American History_ as well as Harold D.
Langley, "The Negro in the Navy and Merchant
Service, 1798-1860," _Journal of Negro History_ 52
(October 1967):273-86; Langley's _Social Reform in
the United States Navy 1798-1862_, (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1967) Peter Karsten,
_The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis
and the Emergence of Modern America