- Recent controversy over how issues of race are taught in the US has ensnared grade schools, universities, and even the military.
- As World War II-era surveys show, the military has grappled with those issues for decades and often falls short of its own standards.
- Edward J.K. Gitre is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech and director of The American Soldier in World War II project.
Months of protests over how the US's troubled history of race is taught came to a head on Election Day in Virginia.
If Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin bans critical race theory in the commonwealth's public schools on "Day One," as he vowed on Fox News in the closing hours of his campaign, the battle will hardly be over.
In those same remarks, Youngkin implored viewers to heed Martin Luther King Jr.'s "immortal words" that "we're called to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin." Heirs of King's work and others have pilloried invocations of his "I have a dream" sermon to justify banning discussion of systemic racism.
The agitation over critical race theory — a field of scholarly inquiry that examines how racism, intentional or not, is institutionalized and embedded in laws, systems, and policies — and competing citations of King are only the latest expressions of a long-running conflict over persistent racial inequality in America.
This phase has focused on schools, but for 80 years, and well before King's sermon, the US military has struggled with the same issue.
'We will do better'
Over those eight decades, the military has espoused the precept that people ought to be judged by their character and performance, not their skin color. It has fallen well short of its own standard.
The Department of Defense does now have its first Black secretary, Lloyd Austin. While African-Americans represent 19% of all active-duty service members, the military has only two Black four-star generals and admirals, as Maryland Rep. Anthony Brown, a retired Army colonel, reminded Austin during a hearing this summer.
Pressed by Brown on the "significant underrepresentation" of people of color and women in the senior ranks, Austin touted the military's diversity as reflective of the American public but concurred with Brown: "We need to do better. You have my commitment. We will do better."
The military hasn't avoided backlash over critical race theory, either. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made headlines at the same hearing for his considered but forceful response to another congressman's accusation that cadets were being indoctrinated with critical race theory.
The military's handling of other race-related issues has received much less coverage, however.
At the same hearing, Brown asked more pointed questions about a 2019 study by the Government Accountability Office, which found that minority personnel across the military were more than five times as likely as White personnel to be court-martialed for similar conduct.
"Why are the commanders woefully failing our Black service members who serve at higher rates than any other demographic group?" Brown asked Austin. "And how do we fix this system so that there is truly equal justice under the Uniform Code of Military Justice?"
Fighting 2 wars
When challenged on similar issues during World War II, the US War Department took the position that it did not see skin color.
Before and long after Congress passed the country's first peacetime draft in September 1941, Black leaders lobbied the Roosevelt administration to enact anti-discrimination policies.
To one such recommendation, the Secretary of War Henry Stimson responded that not only was "everything possible" being done, but also that "Our policies make no distinction between white and colored soldiers."
Distinctions, of course, were made every day across the force and in the communities that surrounded and served the department's facilities and installations — and it was official department policy.
Despite this "extensive campaign," Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall assured one northern senator that the department's policy "not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental organization" would hold.
Preventing racial commingling was costly and difficult. It required the construction and maintenance (of differing quality) of separate barracks, latrines, mess halls, clubs, theaters, swimming pools, and post exchanges, among others — expanding Jim Crow's reach as more bases were built.
Beginning in August 1942, the War Department delegated the segregation of recreation facilities, including theaters and post exchanges, to local commanders.
The following March the department went a step further, prohibiting separate Black and White recreation facilities where two or more races were garrisoned.
Resistance was predicted. From surveys administered to monitor morale, the Army already knew that the majority of White soldiers — from the north and south — opposed integration.
Only 148 of the 4,793 enlisted personnel who participated in a large cross-section survey given in March 1943 thought Black and White soldiers should serve in the same outfits. Just one in 12 thought it OK to share service clubs, and only one in seven approved of sharing post exchanges.
Opponents listed the likelihood of conflict as their primary concern.
"If negroes & whites were in same outfits, naturally there would be much blood shed. It would lead into serious developments, in the future. In fact I believe we would be fighting two wars, negroes & the Axis," wrote one White soldier.
Some commanders responded to the new order by replacing the offending signs and maintaining Jim Crow in other ways. Others simply ignored it.
Non-enforcement coincided with a buildup of Black troops, and by summer 1943 discontented Black Americans took to the streets across the US.
The Army did take steps to address segregated transportation facilities — a frequent source and site of racial intimidation, conflict, and violence — by ordering local commanders to eliminate discrimination based on color, race, or creed.
Those commanders, even cooperative ones, still had to rely on civilian services that maintained those practices. But with White soldiers and officers in open defiance of the military's efforts to end discrimination, resentment mounted.
Handwritten open-ended responses from an August 1944 survey, which have only recently been transcribed, reveal the depth and breadth of what Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy described as a "radical change" in attitudes.
"Sooner or later there will be some changes made one way or the other," warned one Black soldier. "The boys are getting tired of it. We all fighting like any other soldier and it is a god dam[n] shame that some people can let such conditions exist & call this a democracy."
"Fascism is fascism, whether in America or in Europe and if we are all fighting for the same common purpose why must there be a White Army and Negro Army," wrote another.
Lessons unlearned
The Army could not wait for White attitudes to change. A pressing need for replacements in Europe led the Army to compromise its commitment not to intermingle personnel.
Gen. John C. H. Lee, deputy theater commander in Europe, issued a letter on December 26, 1944, recruiting Black volunteers to join White rifle companies. Mixed companies were soon formed in 11 divisions in two separate armies.
The results, documented by before-and-after surveys of White officers, were remarkable.
Only one-third of those initially surveyed were in favor of leading mixed companies. After integration, that rose to 77%.
When asked how Black troops had performed in combat, 84% of the officers and 81% of the platoon sergeants said they had done so admirably, improving relations between Black and White troops.
Aware of the political potency of such unambiguous data, especially for anti-segregationists, the Army initially withheld it, but it made its way into the recommendations of the Faye Committee, which supported President Harry S. Truman's 1948 executive order ending segregation in the military.
Army survey researchers also later assisted defendants in Brown v. Board of Education, the case that rejected the segregationist doctrine of "separate but equal."
That Brown could speak of the committee's recommendations as unfulfilled as he did during his questioning of Austin this summer, after all these years, shows the US's failure to learn World War II's lessons.
As the military saying goes, all soldiers bleed green and their color is camouflage, but without justice, opportunity, and leadership — and without enforcement of rules and guidelines meant to undo that inequality — the notion that skin color doesn't matter only masks social and racial inequities and ensures the status quo.
Edward J.K. Gitre is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech and director of The American Soldier in World War II project.
