Chapter 9

.]

These exclusions did not escape the attention of the civil rights spokesmen who took their demands to Secretary Knox and the White House.[4-35] It was to little avail. With the exception of the officer candidates in 1945, the separation of the races remained absolute, and Negroes continued to be excluded from the main combat units of the Marine Corps.

[Footnote 4-35: See, for example, Ltr, Mary Findley Allen, Interracial Cmte of Federation of Churches, to Mrs. Roosevelt (ca. 9 Mar 43); Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm Jacobs, 22 Mar 43, P-25; Memo, R. C. Kilmartin, Jr., Div of Plans and Policies, for Dir, Div of Plans and Policies, 25 Sep 43, AO-434. All in Hist Div, HQMC.]

Personal prejudices aside, the desire for social harmony and the fear of the unknown go far toward explaining the Marine Corps' wartime racial policy. A small, specialized, and racially exclusive organization, the Marine Corps reacted to the directives of the Secretary of the Navy and the necessities of wartime operation with a rigid segregation policy, its black troops restricted to about 4 percent of its enlisted strength. A large part of this black strength was assigned to labor units where Negroes performed valuable and sometimes dangerous service in the Pacific war. Complaints from civil rights advocates abounded, but neither protests nor the cost to military efficiency of duplicating training facilities were of (p. 112) sufficient moment to overcome the sentiment against significant racial change, which was kept to a minimum. Judged strictly in terms of keeping racial harmony, the corps policy must be considered a success. Ironically this very success prevented any modification of that policy during the war.

[Illustration: CREWMEN OF USCG LIFEBOAT STATION, PEA ISLAND, NORTH CAROLINA, _ready surf boat for launching_.]

_New Roles for Black Coast Guardsmen_

The Coast Guard's pre-World War II experience with Negroes differed from that of the other branches of the naval establishment. Unlike the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard could boast a tradition of black enlistment stretching far back into the previous century. Although it shared this tradition with the Navy, the Coast Guard, unlike the Navy, had always severely restricted Negroes both in terms of numbers enlisted and jobs assigned. A small group of Negroes manned a lifesaving station at Pea Island on North Carolina's outer banks. Negroes also served as crewmen at several lighthouses and on tenders in the Mississippi River basin; all were survivors of the transfer of the Lighthouse Service to the Coast Guard in 1939. These guardsmen were almost always segregated, although a few served in integrated crews or even commanded large Coast Guard vessels and small harbor (p. 113) craft.[4-36] They also served in the separate Steward's Branch, although it might be argued that the small size of most Coast Guard vessels integrated in fact men who were segregated in theory.

[Footnote 4-36: Capt. Michael Healy, who was of Irish and Afro-American heritage, served as commanding officer of the _Bear_ and other major Coast Guard vessels. At his retirement in 1903 Healy was the third ranking officer in the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. See Robert E. Greene, _Black Defenders of America, 1775-1973_ (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1974), p. 139. For pre-World War II service of Negroes in the Coast Guard, see Truman R. Strobridge, _Blacks and Lights: A Brief Historical Survey of Blacks and the Old U.S. Lighthouse Service_ (Office of the USCG Historian, 1975); H. Kaplan and J. Hunt, _This Is the United States Coast Guard_ (Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press, 1971); Rodney H. Benson, "Romance and Story of Pea Island Station," _U.S. Coast Guard Magazine_ (November 1932):52; George Reasons and Sam Patrick, "Richard Etheridge--Saved Sailors," Washington _Star_, November 13, 1971. For the position of Negroes on the eve of World War II induction, see Enlistment of Men of Colored Race (201), 23 Jan 42, Hearings Before the General Board of the Navy, 1942.]

[Illustration: COAST GUARD RECRUITS _at Manhattan Beach Training Station, New York_.]

The lot of the black Coast Guardsman on a small cutter was not necessarily a happy one. To a surprising extent the enlisted men of the prewar Coast Guard were drawn from the eastern shore and outer banks region of the Atlantic coast where service in the Coast Guard had become a strong family tradition among a people whose attitude toward race was rarely progressive. Although these men tolerated an occasional small black Coast Guard crew or station, they might well resist close service with individual Negroes. One commander reported that racial harassment drove the solitary black in the prewar (p. 114) crew of the cutter _Calypso_ out of the service.[4-37]

[Footnote 4-37: Interv, author with Capt W. C. Capron, USCGR, 20 Feb 75, CMH files.]

Coast Guard officials were obviously mindful of such potential troubles when, at Secretary Knox's bidding, they joined in the General Board's discussion of the expanded use of Negroes in the general service in January 1942. In the name of the Coast Guard, Commander Lyndon Spencer agreed with the objections voiced by the Navy and the Marine Corps, adding that the Coast Guard problem was "enhanced somewhat by the fact that our units are small and contacts between the men are bound to be closer." He added that while the Coast Guard was not "anxious to take on any additional problems at this time, if we have to we will take some of them [Negroes]."[4-38]

[Footnote 4-38: Enlistment of Men of Colored Race (201), 23 Jan 42, Hearings Before the General Board of the Navy, 1942.]

When President Roosevelt made it clear that Negroes were to be enlisted, Coast Guard Commandant Rear Adm. Russell R. Waesche had a plan ready. The Coast Guard would enlist approximately five hundred Negroes in the general service, he explained to the chairman of the General Board, Vice Adm. Walton R. Sexton. Some three hundred of these men would be trained for duty on small vessels, the rest for shore duty under the captain of the port of six cities throughout the United States. Although his plan made no provision for the training of black petty officers, the commandant warned Admiral Sexton that 50 to 65 percent of the crew in these small cutters and miscellaneous craft held such ratings, and it followed that Negroes would eventually be allowed to try for such ratings.[4-39]

[Footnote 4-39: Memo, Cmdt, CG, for Adm Sexton, Chmn of Gen Bd, 2 Feb 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of the Colored Race in Other Than Messman Branch, attached to Enlistment of Men of Colored Race (201), 23 Jan 42, Hearings Before the General Board of the Navy, 1942.]

Further refining the plan for the General Board on 24 February, Admiral Waesche listed eighteen vessels, mostly buoy tenders and patrol boats, that would be assigned black crews. All black enlistees would be sent to the Manhattan Beach Training Station, New York, for a basic training "longer and more extensive" than the usual recruit training. After recruit training the men would be divided into groups according to aptitude and experience and would undergo advanced instruction before assignment. Those trained for ship duty would be grouped into units of a size to enable them to go aboard and assume all but the petty officer ratings of the designated ships. The commandant wanted to initiate this program with a group of 150 men. No other Negroes would be enlisted until the first group had been trained and assigned to duty for a period long enough to permit a survey of its performance. Admiral Waesche warned that the whole program was frankly new and untried and was therefore subject to modification as it evolved.[4-40]

[Footnote 4-40: Memo, Cmdt, CG, for Chmn of Gen Bd, 24 Feb 42. sub: Enlistment of Men of the Colored Race in Other Than Messman Branch, P-701, attached to Recs of Gen Bd, No 421 (Serial 204-X), OpNavArchives.]

The plan was a major innovation in the Coast Guard's manpower policy. For the first time a number of Negroes, approximately 1.6 percent of the guard's total enlisted complement, would undergo regular (p. 115) recruit and specialized training.[4-41] More than half would serve aboard ship at close quarters with their white petty officers. The rest would be assigned to port duty with no special provision for segregated service. If the provision for segregating nonrated Coast Guardsmen when they were at sea was intended to prevent the development of racial antagonism, the lack of a similar provision for Negroes ashore was puzzling; but whatever the Coast Guard's reasoning in the matter, the General Board was obviously concerned with the provisions for segregation in the plan. Its chairman told Secretary Knox that the assignment of Negroes to the captains of the ports was a practical use of Negroes in wartime, since these men could be segregated in service units. But their assignment to small vessels, Admiral Sexton added, meant that "the necessary segregation and limitation of authority would be increasingly difficult to maintain" and "opportunities for advancement would be few." For that reason, he concluded, the employment of such black crews was practical but not desirable.[4-42]

[Footnote 4-41: Unless otherwise noted, all statistics on Coast Guard personnel are derived from Memo, Chief, Statistical Services Div, for Chief, Pub Information Div, 30 Mar 54, sub: Negro Personnel, Officers and Enlisted; Number of, Office of the USCG Historian; and "Coast Guard Personnel Growth Chart," _Report of the Secretary of the Navy-Fiscal 1945_, p. A-15.]

[Footnote 4-42: Memo, Chmn of Gen Bd for SecNav, 20 Mar 42, sub: Enlistment of Men of the Colored Race in Other Than Messman Branch, G.B. No. 421 (Serial 204), OpNavArchives.]

The General Board was overruled, and the Coast Guard proceeded to recruit its first group of 150 black volunteers, sending them to Manhattan Beach for basic training in the spring of 1942. The small size of the black general service program precluded the establishment of a separate training station, but the Negroes were formed into a separate training company at Manhattan Beach. While training classes and other duty activities were integrated, sleeping and messing facilities were segregated. Although not geographically separated as were the black sailors at Camp Smalls or the marines at Montford Point, the black recruits of the separate training company at Manhattan Beach were effectively impressed with the reality of segregation in the armed forces.[4-43]

[Footnote 4-43: Interv, author with Ira H. Coakley, 26 Feb 75, CMH files. Coakley was a recruit in one of the first black training companies at Manhattan Beach.]

After taking a four-week basic course, those who qualified were trained as radiomen, pharmacists, yeomen, coxswains, fire controlmen, or in other skills in the seaman branch.[4-44] Those who did not so qualify were transferred for further training in preparation for their assignment to the captains of the ports. Groups of black Coast Guardsmen, for example, were sent to the Pea Island Station after their recruit training for several weeks' training in beach duties. Similar groups of white recruits were also sent to the Pea Island Station for training under the black chief boatswain's mate in charge.[4-45] By August 1942 some three hundred Negroes had been recruited, trained, and assigned to general service duties under the new program. At the same time the Coast Guard continued to recruit hundreds of Negroes for its separate Steward's Branch.

[Footnote 4-44: For a brief account of the Coast Guard recruit training program, see Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," pp. 84-87, and "A Black History in World War II," _Octagon_ (February 1972): 31-32.]

[Footnote 4-45: Log of Pea Island Station, 1942, Berry Collection, USCG Headquarters.]

The commandant's program for the orderly induction and assignment (p. 116) of a limited number of black volunteers was, as in the case of the Navy and Marine Corps, abruptly terminated in December 1942 when the President ended volunteer enlistment for most military personnel. For the rest of the war the Coast Guard, along with the Navy and Marine Corps, came under the strictures of the Selective Service Act, including its racial quota system. The Coast Guard, however, drafted relatively few men, issuing calls for a mere 22,500 and eventually inducting only 15,296. But more than 12 percent of its calls (2,500 men between February and November 1943) and 13 percent of all those drafted (1,667) were Negro. On the average, 137 Negroes and 1,000 whites were inducted each month during 1943.[4-46] Just over 5,000 Negroes served as Coast Guardsmen in World War II.[4-47]

[Footnote 4-46: Selective Service System, _Special Groups_, 2:196-201.]

[Footnote 4-47: Testimony of Coast Guard Representatives Before the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 18 Mar 49, p. 8.]

As it did for the Navy and Marine Corps, the sudden influx of Negroes from Selective Service necessitated a revision of the Coast Guard's personnel planning. Many of the new men could be assigned to steward duties, but by January 1943 the Coast Guard already had some 1,500 stewards and the branch could absorb only half of the expected black draftees. The rest would have to be assigned to the general service.[4-48] And here the organization and mission of the Coast Guard, far more so than those of the Navy and Marine Corps, militated against the formation of large segregated units. The Coast Guard had no use for the amorphous ammunition and depot companies and the large Seabee battalions of the rest of the naval establishment. For that reason the large percentage of its black seamen in the general service (approximately 37 percent of all black Coast Guardsmen) made a considerable amount of integration inevitable; the small number of Negroes in the general service (1,300 men, less than 1 percent of the total enlisted strength of the Coast Guard) made integration socially acceptable.

[Footnote 4-48: USCG Public Relations Div, Negroes in the U.S. Coast Guard, July 1943, Office of the USCG Historian.]

The majority of black Coast Guardsmen were only peripherally concerned with this wartime evolution of racial policy. Some 2,300 Negroes served in the racially separate Steward's Branch, performing the same duties in officer messes and quarters as stewards in the Navy and Marine Corps. But not quite, for the size of Coast Guard vessels and their crews necessitated the use of stewards at more important battle stations. For example, a group of stewards under the leadership of a black gun captain manned the three-inch gun on the afterdeck of the cutter _Campbell_ and won a citation for helping to destroy an enemy submarine in February 1943.[4-49] The Personnel Division worked to make the separate Steward's Branch equal to the rest of the service in terms of promotion and emoluments, and there were instances when individual stewards successfully applied for ratings in general service.[4-50] Again, the close quarters aboard Coast Guard (p. 117) vessels made the talents of stewards for general service duties more noticeable to officers.[4-51] The evidence suggests, however, that the majority of the black stewards, about 63 percent of all the Negroes in the Coast Guard, continued to function as servants throughout the war. As in the rest of the naval establishment, the stewards in the Coast Guard were set apart not only by their limited service but also by different uniforms and the fact that chief stewards were not regarded as chief petty officers. In fact, the rank of chief steward was not introduced until the war led to an enlargement of the Coast Guard.[4-52]

[Footnote 4-49: Ltr, Cmdt, USCG, to Cmdr, Third CG District, 18 Jan 52, sub: ETHERIDGE, Louis C; ... Award of the Bronze Star Medal, P15, BuPersRecs; USCG Pub Rel Div, Negroes in the U.S. Coast Guard, Jul 43.]

[Footnote 4-50: USCG Pers Bull 37-42, 31 Mar 43, sub: Apprentice Seamen and Mess Attendants, Third Class, Advancement of, USCG Cen Files 61A701.]

[Footnote 4-51: Intervs, author with Cmdt Carlton Skinner, USCGR, 18 Feb 75, and with Capron, CMH files.]

[Footnote 4-52: For discussion of limited service of Coast Guard stewards, see Testimony of Coast Guard Representatives Before the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 18 Mar 49, pp. 27-31.]

[Illustration: STEWARDS AT BATTLE STATION _on the afterdeck of the cutter Campbell_.]

The majority of black guardsmen in general service served ashore under the captains of the ports, local district commanders, or at headquarters establishments. Men in these assignments included hundreds in security and labor details, but more and more served as yeomen, radio operators, storekeepers, and the like. Other Negroes were assigned to local Coast Guard stations, and a second all-black station was organized during the war at Tiana Beach, New York. Still others participated in the Coast Guard's widespread beach patrol (p. 118) operations. Organized in 1942 as outposts and lookouts against possible enemy infiltration of the nation's extensive coastlines, the patrols employed more than 11 percent of all the Coast Guard's enlisted men. This large group included a number of horse and dog patrols employing only black guardsmen.[4-53] In all, some 2,400 black Coast Guardsmen served in the shore establishment.

[Footnote 4-53: USCG Historical Section, The Coast Guard at War, 18:1-10, 36.]

[Illustration: SHORE LEAVE IN SCOTLAND. (_The distinctive uniform of the Coast Guard steward is shown_.)]

The assignment of so many Negroes to shore duties created potential problems for the manpower planners, who were under orders to rotate sea and shore assignments periodically.[4-54] Given the many black general duty seamen denied sea duty because of the Coast Guard's segregation policy but promoted into the more desirable shore-based jobs to the detriment of whites waiting for rotation to such assignments, the possibility of serious racial trouble was obvious.

[Footnote 4-54: USCG Pers Bull 44-42, 25 Jun 42, sub: Relief of Personnel Assigned to Seagoing Units, USCG Cen Files 61A701.]

At least one officer in Coast Guard headquarters was concerned enough to recommend that the policy be revised. With two years' service in Greenland waters, the last year as executive officer of the USCGC _Northland_, Lt. Carlton Skinner had firsthand experience with the limitations of the Coast Guard's racial policy. While on the _Northland_ Skinner had recommended that a skilled black mechanic, (p. 119) then serving as a steward's mate, be awarded a motor mechanic petty officer rating only to find his recommendation rejected on racial grounds. The rating was later awarded after an appeal by Skinner, but the incident set the stage for the young officer's later involvement with the Coast Guard's racial traditions. On shore duty at Coast Guard headquarters in June 1943, Skinner recommended to the commandant that a group of black seamen be provided with some practical seagoing experience under a sympathetic commander in a completely integrated operation. He emphasized practical experience in an integrated setting, he later revealed, because he was convinced that men with high test scores and specialized training did not necessarily make the best sailors, especially when their training was segregated. Skinner envisioned a widespread distribution of Negroes throughout the Coast Guard's seagoing vessels. His recommendation was no "experiment in social democracy," he later stressed, but was a design for "an efficient use of manpower to help win a war."[4-55]

[Footnote 4-55: Interv, author with Skinner; Ltr, Skinner to author, 29 Jun 75, in CMH files. The Skinner memorandum to Admiral Waesche, like so many of the personnel policy papers of the U.S. Coast Guard from the World War II period, cannot be located. For a detailed discussion of Skinner's motives and experiences, see his testimony before the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 25 Apr 49, pp. 1-24.]

Although Skinner's immediate superior forwarded the recommendation as "disapproved," Admiral Waesche accepted the idea. In November 1943 Skinner found himself transferred to the USS _Sea Cloud_ (IX 99), a patrol ship operating in the North Atlantic as part of Task Force 24 reporting on weather conditions from four remote locations in northern waters.[4-56] The commandant also arranged for the transfer of black apprentice seamen, mostly from Manhattan Beach, to the _Sea Cloud_ in groups of about twenty men, gradually increasing the number of black seamen in the ship's complement every time it returned to home station. Skinner, promoted to lieutenant commander and made captain of the _Sea Cloud_ on his second patrol, later decided that the commandant had "figured he could take a chance on me and the _Sea Cloud_."[4-57]

[Footnote 4-56: A unique vessel, the _Sea Cloud_ was on loan to the government for the duration of the war by its owner, the former Ambassador to Russia, Joseph Davies. Davies charged a nominal sum and extracted the promise that the vessel would be restored to its prewar condition as one of the world's most famous private yachts.]

[Footnote 4-57: Interv, author with Skinner.]

It was a chance well taken. Before decommissioning in November 1944, the _Sea Cloud_ served on ocean weather stations off the coasts of Greenland, Newfoundland, and France. It received no special treatment and was subject to the same tactical, operating, and engineering requirements as any other unit in the Navy's Atlantic Fleet. It passed two Atlantic Fleet inspections with no deficiencies and was officially credited with helping to sink a German submarine in June 1944. The _Sea Cloud_ boasted a completely integrated operation, its 4 black officers and some 50 black petty officers and seamen serving throughout the ship's 173-man complement.[4-58] No problems of a racial nature arose on the ship, although its captain reported that his crew experienced some hostility in the various departments of the Boston Navy Yard from time to time. Skinner was determined to provide truly integrated conditions. He personally introduced his black officers (p. 120) into the local white officers' club, and he saw to it that when his men were temporarily detached for shore patrol duty they would go in integrated teams. Again, all these arrangements were without sign of racial incident.[4-59]

[Footnote 4-58: Log of the _Sea Cloud_ (IX 99), Aug-Nov 44, NARS, Suitland.]

[Footnote 4-59: Interv, author with Skinner.]

[Illustration: COMMANDER SKINNER AND CREW OF THE USS SEA CLOUD. _Skinner officiates at awards ceremony._]

It is difficult to assess the reasons for the commandant's decision to organize an integrated crew. One senior personnel officer later suggested that the _Sea Cloud_ was merely a public relations device designed to still the mounting criticism by civil rights spokesmen of the lack of sea duty for black Coast Guardsmen.[4-60] The public relations advantage of an integrated ship operating in the war zone must have been obvious to Admiral Waesche, although the Coast Guard made no effort to publicize the _Sea Cloud_. In fact, this absence of special attention had been recommended by Skinner in his original proposal to the commandant. Such publicity, he felt, would disrupt the military experiment and make it more difficult to apply generally the experience gained.

[Footnote 4-60: Interv, author with Rear Adm R. T. McElligott, 24 Feb 75, CMH files. For an example of the Coast Guard reaction to civil rights criticism, see Ltr, USCG Public Relations Officer to Douglas Hall, Washington _Afro-American_, July 12, 1943, CG 051, Office of the USCG Historian.]

The success of the _Sea Cloud_ experiment did not lead to the widespread integration implied in Commander Skinner's recommendation. The only other extensively integrated Coast Guard vessel assigned to a war zone was the destroyer escort _Hoquim_, operating in 1945 out (p. 121) of Adak in the Aleutian Islands, convoying shipping along the Aleutian chain. Again, the commander of the ship was Skinner. Nevertheless the practical reasons for Skinner's first recommendation must also have been obvious to the commandant, and the evidence suggests that the _Sea Cloud_ project was but one of a series of liberalizing moves the Coast Guard made during the war, not only to still the criticism in the black community but also to solve the problems created by the presence of a growing number of black seamen in the general service. There is also reason to believe that the Coast Guard's limited use of racially mixed crews influenced the Navy's decision to integrate the auxiliary fleet in 1945. Senior naval officials studied a report on the _Sea Cloud_, and one of Secretary Forrestal's assistants consulted Skinner on his experiences and their relation to greater manpower efficiency.[4-61]

[Footnote 4-61: Ltr, Skinner to author, 2 Jun 75.]

[Illustration: ENSIGN JENKINS AND LIEUTENANT SAMUELS, _first black Coast Guard officers, on board the Sea Cloud_.]

Throughout the war the Coast Guard never exhibited the concern shown by the other services for the possible disruptive effects if blacks outranked whites. As the war progressed, more and more blacks advanced into petty officer ranks; by August 1945 some 965 Negroes, almost a third of their total number, were petty or warrant officers, many of them in the general service. Places for these trained specialists in any kind of segregated general service were extremely limited, and by the last year of the war many black petty officers could be found serving in mostly white crews and station complements. For example, a black pharmacist, second class, and a signalman, third class, served on the cutter _Spencer_, a black coxswain served on a cutter in the Greenland patrol, and other black petty officers were assigned to recruiting stations, to the loran program, and as instructors at the Manhattan Beach Training Station.[4-62]

[Footnote 4-62: USCG Historical Section, The Coast Guard at War, 23:53; Intervs, author with Lt Harvey C. Russell, USCGR, 14 Feb 75, and with Capron, CMH files.]

The position of instructor at Manhattan Beach became the usual avenue to a commission for a Negro. Joseph C. Jenkins went from Manhattan Beach to the officer candidate school at the Coast Guard Academy, graduating as an ensign in the Coast Guard Reserve in April 1943, almost a full year before Negroes were commissioned in the Navy. Clarence Samuels, a warrant officer and instructor at Manhattan (p. 122) Beach, was commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade) and assigned to the _Sea Cloud_ in 1943. Harvey C. Russell was a signal instructor at Manhattan Beach in 1944 when all instructors were declared eligible to apply for commissions. At first rejected by the officer training school, Russell was finally admitted at the insistence of his commanding officer, graduated as an ensign, and was assigned to the _Sea Cloud_.[4-63]

[Footnote 4-63: "A Black History in WWII," pp. 31-34. For an account of Samuels' long career in the Coast Guard, see Joseph Greco and Truman R. Strobridge, "Black Trailblazer Has Colorful Past," _Fifth Dimension_ (3d Quarter, 1973); see also Interv, author with Russell.]

These men commanded integrated enlisted seamen throughout the rest of the war. Samuels became the first Negro in this century to command a Coast Guard vessel in wartime, first as captain of Lightship No. 115 and later of the USCGC _Sweetgum_ in the Panama Sea Frontier. Russell was transferred from the integrated _Hoquim_ to serve as executive officer on a cutter operating out of the Philippines in the western Pacific, assuming command of the racially mixed crew shortly after the war.

At the behest of the White House, the Coast Guard also joined with the Navy in integrating its Women's Reserve. In the fall of 1944 it recruited five black women for the SPARS. Only token representation, but understandable since the SPARS ceased all recruitment except for replacements on 23 November 1944, just weeks after the decision to recruit Negroes was announced. Nevertheless the five women trained at Manhattan Beach and were assigned to various Coast Guard district offices without regard to race.[4-64]

[Footnote 4-64: USCG Historical Section, The Coast Guard at War, 25:25. See also Oral History Interview, Dorothy C. Stratton, 24 Sep 70, Center of Naval History.]

This very real progress toward equal treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Coast Guard must be assessed with the knowledge that the progress was experienced by only a minuscule group. Negroes never rose above 2.1 percent of the Coast Guard's wartime population, well below the figures for the other services. This was because the other services were forced to obtain draft-age men, including a significant number of black inductees from Selective Service, whereas the Coast Guard ceased all inductions in early 1944.

Despite their small numbers, however, the black Coast Guardsmen enjoyed a variety of assignments. The different reception accorded this small group of Negroes might, at least to some extent, be explained by the Coast Guard's tradition of some black participation for well over a century. To a certain extent this progress could also be attributed to the ease with which the directors of a small organization can reorder its policies.[4-65] But above all, the different reception accorded Negroes in the Coast Guard was a small organization's practical reaction to a pressing assimilation problem dictated by the manpower policies common throughout the naval establishment.

[Footnote 4-65: For discussion of this point, see Testimony of Coast Guard Representatives Before the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, 18 Mar 49, pp. 25-26.]

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