general service. Increased enlistments would also widen the choice of
assignments, creating new opportunities for promotion to higher
grades. But even this obvious and basic response to the Truman order
was not forthcoming. The Navy continued to exclude many potential
black volunteers on the grounds that it needed to maintain stricter
mental and physical standards to secure men capable of running a
modern, technically complex Navy. True, regular and reserve officers
were periodically sent to black colleges to discuss naval careers with
the students, but as one official, speaking of the reserves, confessed
to the Fahy Committee in April 1949, "We aren't doing anything special
to procure Negro officers or Negro enlisted men."[13-63]

[Footnote 13-63: Testimony of Capt J. H. Schultz, Asst
Chief of Naval Personnel for Naval Reserve, Before
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services, 26 Apr 49,
afternoon session, p. 19.]

At best, recruiting more Negroes for the general service would only
partly fulfill the Navy's obligation to conform to the Truman order.
It would still leave untouched the Steward's Branch, which for years
had kept alive the impression that the Navy valued minority groups
only as servants. The Bureau of Naval Personnel had closed the branch
to first enlistments and provided for the transfer of eligible
stewards to the general service, but black stewards were only
transferring at the rate of seven men per month, hardly enough to
alter the racial composition of the branch. In the six months
following September 1948 the branch's black strength dropped by 910
men, but because the total strength of the branch also dropped, the
percentage of black stewards remained constant.[13-64] What was needed
was an infusion of whites, but this remedy, like an increase of black
officers, would require a fundamental change in the racial attitudes
of Navy leaders. No such change was evident in the Navy's postwar
racial policy. While solemnly proclaiming its belief in the principle
of nondiscrimination, the service had continued to sanction practices
that limited integration and equal opportunity to a degree consistent
with its racial tradition and manpower needs. Curiously, the Navy
managed to avoid strong criticism from the civil rights groups
throughout the postwar period, and the Truman o