take their
rightful place in the Navy and Marine Corps. This acceptance, in turn,
had led to "very satisfactory progress" in the integration of the
department's black personnel without producing problems of morale and
discipline or a lowering of _esprit de corps_.[13-59]

[Footnote 13-59: Memo, Actg SecNav for SecDef et al.,
28 Dec 48, sub: The Secretary of the Army's
Confidential Memorandum of 2 December..., copy in
SecAF files.]

Brown had ample statistics at hand to demonstrate that at least in the
Navy this nondiscrimination policy was progressive. Whereas at the end
of the World War II demobilization only 6 percent of the Navy's
Negroes served in the general service, some two years later 38 percent
were so assigned. These men and women generally worked and lived under
total integration, and the men served on many of the Navy's combat
ships. The Bureau of Naval Personnel predicted in early 1949 that
before the end of the year at least half of all black sailors would be
assigned to the general service.[13-60] In contrast to the Army's policy
of separate but equal service for its black troops, the Navy's postwar
racial policy was technically correct and essentially in compliance
with the President's order. Yet progress was very limited and in fact
in the two years under its postwar nondiscrimination policy, the
Navy's performance was only marginally different from that of the
other services. The number of Negroes in the Navy in December 1948,
the same month Brown was extolling its nondiscrimination policy,
totaled some 17,000 men, 4.5 percent of its strength and about half
the Army's proportion. This percentage had remained fairly constant
since World War II and masked a dramatic drop in the number of black
men in uniform as the Navy demobilized. Thus while the _percentage_ of
the Navy's black sailors assigned to the integrated general service
rose from 6 to 38, the _number_ of Negroes in the general service
dropped from 9,900 in 1946 to some 6,000 in 1948. Looked at another
way, the 38 percent figure of blacks in the general service meant that
62 percent of all Negroes in the Navy, 10,871 men in December 1948,
still served in the separate Steward's Branch.[13-61] In contrast to the
Army and Air Force, the Navy's Negroes were, with only the rarest
exception, enlisted men. The number of black officers in December 1948
was four; the WAVES cou