troops.[2-18]

[Footnote 2-18: Strength of the Army, 1 Jan 46,
STM-30, p. 61.]

The effect of segregation on manpower efficiency became apparent only
as the Army tried to translate policy into practice. In the face of
rising black protest and with direct orders from the White House, the
Army had announced that Negroes would be assigned to all arms and
branches in the same ratio as whites. Several forces, however, worked
against this equitable distribution. During the early months of
mobilization the chiefs of those arms and services that had
traditionally been all white accepted less than their share of black
recruits and thus obliged some organizations, the Quartermaster Corps
and the Engineer Corps in particular, to absorb a large percentage of
black inductees. The imbalance worsened in 1941. In December of that
year Negroes accounted for 5 percent of the Infantry and less than 2
percent each of the Air Corps, Medical Corps, and Signal Corps. The
Quartermaster Corps was 15 percent black, the Engineer Corps 25
percent, and unassigned and miscellaneous detachments were 27 percent
black.

The rejection of black units could not always be ascribed to racism
alone. With some justification the arms and services tried to restrict
the number and distribution of Negroes because black units measured
far below their white counterparts in educational achievement and
ability to absorb training, according to the Army General
Classification Test (AGCT). The Army had introduced this test system
in March 1941 as its principal instrument for the measurement of a
soldier's learning ability. Five categories, with the most gifted in
category I, were used in classifying the scores made by the soldiers
taking the test (_Table 1_). The Army planned to take officers and
enlisted specialists from the top three categories and the semiskilled
soldiers and laborers from the two lowest.

Table 1--Classification of All Men Tested From March 1941 Through
December 1942

White Black
AGCT Category Number Percentage Number Percentage

I 273,626 6.6 1,580 0.4
II 1,154,700 28.0 14,891 3.4
III 1,327,164 32.1 54,302 12.3
IV 1,021,818 24.8 152,725 34.7
V 351,951 8.5 216,664 49.2
Total