executive interest
and pointing to recent progress toward better race relations in the
armed forces, the President told Congress that he had already
instructed the Secretary of Defense to take steps to eliminate
remaining instances of discrimination in the services as rapidly as
possible. He also promised that the personnel policies and practices
of all the services would be made uniform.[12-16]

[Footnote 12-16: Truman, Special Message to the
Congress on Civil Rights, 2 Feb 48, _Public Papers
of the President, 1948_, pp. 121-26.]

To press for civil rights legislation for the armed forces or even to
mention segregation was politically imprudent. Truman had two pieces
of military legislation to get through Congress: a new draft law and a
provision for universal military training. These he considered (p. 297)
too vital to the nation's defense to risk grounding on the shoals of
racial controversy. For the time being at least, integration of the
armed forces would have to be played down, and any civil rights
progress in the Department of Defense would have to depend on the
persuasiveness of James Forrestal.

[Illustration: TRUMAN'S CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGN _as seen by Washington
Star cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, March 14, 1948_.]

_Civil Rights and the Department of Defense_

The basic postwar reorganization of the National Military
Establishment, the National Security Act of 1947, created the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, a separate Department of the Air Force,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. It
also reconstituted the War Department as the Department of the Army
and gave legal recognition as a permanent agency to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. The principle of military unification that underlay the
reorganization plan was muted in the legislation that finally emerged
from Congress. Although the Secretary of Defense was given authority
to establish general policies and to exercise general direction (p. 298)
and control of the services, the services themselves retained a large
measure of autonomy in their internal administration and individual
service secretaries retained cabinet rank. In effect, the act created
a secretary without a department, a reorganization that largely
reflected the viewpoint of the Navy. The Army had fought for a much
greater degree of unification, which would not be achieved until the
pass