n Navalism_ (New
York: The Free Press, 1972); Frederick S. Harrod,
_Manning the New Navy: The Development of a Modern
Naval Enlisted Force, 1899-1940_ (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 1978).]

[Footnote 1-4: Ltr, Rear Adm C. W. Nimitz, Actg
Chief, Bureau of Navigation, to Rep. Hamilton Fish,
17 Jun 37, A9-10, General Records of the Department
of the Navy (hereafter GenRecsNav).]

[Illustration: BUFFALO SOLDIERS. (_Frederick Remington's 1888
sketch._)]

When postwar enlistment was resumed in 1923, the Navy recruited
Filipino stewards instead of Negroes, although a decade later it
reopened the branch to black enlistment. Negroes quickly took
advantage of this limited opportunity, their numbers rising from 441
in 1932 to 4,007 in June 1940, when they constituted 2.3 percent of
the Navy's 170,000 total.[1-5] Curiously enough, because black (p. 006)
reenlistment in combat or technical specialties had never been barred,
a few black gunner's mates, torpedomen, machinist mates, and the like
continued to serve in the 1930's.

[Footnote 1-5: Memo, H. A. Badt, Bureau of
Navigation, for Officer in Charge, Public
Relations, 24 Jul 40, sub: Negroes in U.S. Navy,
Nav-641, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel
(hereafter BuPersRecs).]

Although the Army's racial policy differed from the Navy's, the
resulting limited, separate service for Negroes proved similar. The
laws of 1866 and 1869 that guaranteed the existence of four black
Regular Army regiments also institutionalized segregation, granting
federal recognition to a system racially separate and theoretically
equal in treatment and opportunity a generation before the Supreme
Court sanctioned such a distinction in _Plessy_ v. _Ferguson_.[1-6] So
important to many in the black community was this guaranteed existence
of the four regiments that had served with distinction against the
frontier Indians that few complained about segregation. In fact, as
historian Jack Foner has pointed out, black leaders sometimes
interpreted demands for integration as attempts to eliminate black
soldiers altogether.[1-7]

[Footnote 1-6: 163 U.S. 537 (1896). In this 1896 case
concerning segregated seating on a Louis