cially
in the armed forces. They flooded the services with appeals for a
redress of black grievances and levied similar demands on the White
House, Congress, and the courts.
Black leaders concentrated on the services because they were public
institutions, their officials sworn to uphold the Constitution. The
leaders understood, too, that disciplinary powers peculiar to the
services enabled them to make changes that might not be possible for
other organizations; the armed forces could command where others could
only persuade. The Army bore the brunt of this attention, but not
because its policies were so benighted. In 1941 the Army was a fairly
progressive organization, and few institutions in America could match
its record. Rather, the civil rights leaders concentrated on the Army
because the draft law had made it the nation's largest employer of
minority groups.
For its part, the Army resisted the demands, its spokesmen contending
that the service's enormous size and power should not be used for
social experiment, especially during a war. Further justifying their
position, Army officials pointed out that their service had to avoid
conflict with prevailing social attitudes, particularly when such
attitudes were jealously guarded by Congress. In this period of
continuous demand and response, the Army developed a racial policy
that remained in effect throughout the war with only superficial
modifications sporadically adopted to meet changing conditions.
_A War Policy: Reaffirming Segregation_
The experience of World War I cast a shadow over the formation of the
Army's racial policy in World War II.[2-1] The chief architects of the
new policy, and many of its opponents, were veterans of the first war
and reflected in their judgments the passions and prejudices of that
era.[2-2] Civil rights activists were determined to eliminate the (p. 018)
segregationist practices of the 1917 mobilization and to win a
fair representation for Negroes in the Army. The traditionalists of
the Army staff, on the other hand, were determined to resist any
radical change in policy. Basing their arguments on their evaluation
of the performance of the 92d Division and some other black units in
World War I, they had made, but not publicized, mobilization plans
that recognized the Army's obligation to employ black soldiers yet
rigidly maintained the segregationist policy of World War I.[2-3] These
plans increased the number of types of b
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