its director, Brig. Gen. Gerald C.
Thomas. It was a complicated task, and General Thomas and his staff
after some delay established a series of guidelines intended to steer
a middle path between exclusion and integration that would be
nondiscriminatory. In addition to serving in the Steward's Branch,
which contained 10 percent of all blacks in the corps, Negroes would
serve in segregated units in every branch of the corps, and their
strength would total some 2,800 men. This quota would not be like that
established in the Army, which was pegged to the number of black
soldiers during the war and which ultimately was based on national
population ratios. The Marine Corps ratio of blacks to whites would be
closer to 1 in 30 and would merely represent the estimated number of
billets that might be filled by Negroes in self-sustaining segregated
units.

The directorate also established a table of distribution plan that for
the first time provided for black regular marines in aviation units
and several other Marine Corps activities. Aviation units alone (p. 173)
accounted for 25 percent of the marines in the postwar corps, General
Thomas contended, and must absorb their proportionate share of black
strength. Further, the Navy's policy of nondiscrimination demanded
that all types of assignments be opened to black marines. Segregation
"best suits the needs of the Marine Corps," General Thomas concluded.
Ignoring the possibility of black officers and women marines, he
thought that the opening of all specialties and types of duty to the
enlisted ranks would find the Marine Corps "paralleling Navy
policy."[6-54] Clearly, the Division of Plans and Policies wanted the
corps to adopt a formula roughly analogous to the Gillem Board's
separate but equal system without that body's provisions for a fixed
quota, black officers, or some integrated service.

[Footnote 6-54: Memo, Dir, Div of Plans and Policies,
for CMC, 8 Apr 46, sub: Negro Personnel in the
Post-War Marine Corps. This memo was not submitted
for signature and was superseded by a memo of 13
May 46.]

But even this concession to nondiscrimination was never approved, for
the Plans and Policies Division ran afoul of a basic fact of
segregation: the postwar strength of many elements of the Marine Corps
was too small to support separate racial units. The Director of
Aviation, for exa