Brigadier General, USA
Chief of Military History

The Author

Morris J. MacGregor, Jr., received the A.B. and M.A. degrees in
history from the Catholic University of America. He continued his
graduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of
Paris on a Fulbright grant. Before joining the staff of the U.S. Army
Center of Military History in 1968 he served for ten years in the
Historical Division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has written
several studies for military publications including "Armed Forces
Integration--Forced or Free?" in _The Military and Society:
Proceedings of the Fifth Military Symposium of the U.S. Air Force
Academy_. He is the coeditor with Bernard C. Nalty of the
thirteen-volume _Blacks in the United States Armed Forces: Basic
Documents_ and with Ronald Spector of _Voices of History:
Interpretations in American Military History_. He is currently working
on a sequel to _Integration of the Armed Forces_ which will also
appear in the Defense Studies Series.

Preface (p. ix)

This book describes the fall of the legal, administrative, and social
barriers to the black American's full participation in the military
service of his country. It follows the changing status of the black
serviceman from the eve of World War II, when he was excluded from
many military activities and rigidly segregated in the rest, to that
period a quarter of a century later when the Department of Defense
extended its protection of his rights and privileges even to the
civilian community. To round out the story of open housing for members
of the military, I briefly overstep the closing date given in the
title.

The work is essentially an administrative history that attempts to
measure the influence of several forces, most notably the civil rights
movement, the tradition of segregated service, and the changing
concept of military efficiency, on the development of racial policies
in the armed forces. It is not a history of all minorities in the
services. Nor is it an account of how the black American responded to
discrimination. A study of racial attitudes, both black and white, in
the military services would be a valuable addition to human knowledge,
but practically impossible of accomplishment in the absence of
sufficient autobiographical accounts, oral history intervi