Integration of the Armed Forces | Page 2

service historical sections, in this case the Army's Center of
Military History. Although the book was written by an Army historian,
he was generously given access to the pertinent records of the other
services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and this initial
volume in the Defense Studies Series covers the experiences of all
components of the Department of Defense in achieving integration.
Washington, D.C. JAMES L. COLLINS, Jr. 14 March 1980 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 interviews, and detailed
sociological measurements. How did the serviceman view his condition,
how did he convey his desire for redress, and what was his reaction to
social change? Even now the answers to these questions are blurred by
time and distorted by emotions engendered by the civil rights
revolution. Few citizens, black or white, who witnessed it can claim
immunity to the influence of that paramount social phenomenon of our
times.
At times I do generalize on the attitudes of both black and white
servicemen and the black and white communities at large as well. But I
have permitted myself to do so only when these attitudes were clearly
pertinent to changes in the services' racial policies and only when the
written record supported, or at least did not contradict, the memory of
those participants who had been interviewed. In any case this study is
largely history written from the top down and is based primarily on the
written records left by the administrations of five presidents and by
civil rights leaders, service officials, and the press.
Many of the attitudes and expressions voiced by the participants in the
story are now out of fashion. The reader must be constantly on guard

against viewing the beliefs and statements of many civilian and military
officials out of context of the times in which they were expressed.
Neither bigotry nor stupidity was the monopoly of some of the people
quoted; their statements are important for what they tell us about
certain attitudes of our society rather than for what they reveal about
any individual. If the methods or attitudes of some (p. x) of the black
spokesmen appear excessively tame to those who have lived through
the 1960's, they too should be gauged in the context of the times. If
their statements and actions shunned what now seems the more
desirable, albeit radical, course, it should be given them that the style
they adopted appeared in those days to be the most promising for racial
progress.
The words black and Negro have been used interchangeably in the
book, with Negro generally as a noun and black