h 9,
1946.]

[Footnote 6-30: Ltr, L. D. Reddick, N.Y. Pub. Lib.,
to SW, 12 Mar 46, SW 291.]

[Footnote 6-31: Ltr, Bernard Jackson, Youth Council,
NAACP Boston Br, to ASW, 4 Apr 46, ASW 291.2 (NT).]

[Footnote 6-32: Pittsburgh _Courier_, May 11, 1946.]

[Footnote 6-33: Ltr, Charles G. Bolte, Chmn, Amer
Vets Cmte, to SW, 8 Mar 46; see also Ltr, Ralph
DeNat, Corr Secy, Amer Vets Cmte, to SW, 28 May 46,
both in SW 291.2 (Cmte) (9 Aug 46).]

Clearly, opposition to segregation was not going to be overcome with
palliatives and promises, yet Petersen could only affirm that the
Gillem Board Report would mean significant change. He admitted
segregation's tenacious hold on Army thinking and that black units
would continue to exist for some time, but he promised movement toward
desegregation. He also made the Army's usual distinction between
segregation and discrimination. Though there were many instances of
unfair treatment during the war, he noted, these were individual
matters, inconsistent with Army policy, which "has consistently
condemned discrimination." Discrimination, he concluded, must be
blamed on "defects" of enforcement, which would always exist to some
degree in any organization as large as the Army.[6-34]

[Footnote 6-34: Ltrs, ASW to Bernard H. Solomon and
to Bernard Jackson, 9 Apr 46, both in ASW 291.2.]

Actually, Petersen's promised "movement" toward integration was likely
to be a very slow process. So substantive a change in social practice,
the Army had always argued, required the sustained support of the
American public, and judging from War Department correspondence and
press notices large segments of the public remained unaware of what
the Army was trying to do about its "Negro problem." Most military
journalists continued to ignore the issue; perhaps they considered the
subject of the employment of black troops unimportant compared with
the problems of demobilization, atomic weaponry, and service
unification. For example, in listing the principal military issues
before the United States in the postwar period, military analyst
Hanson Baldwin did not mention the employment of Negroes in the
service.[6-35]

[Footnote 6-35: Hanson Baldwin, "Wanted: An American