ary efficiency. More important than the
executive order or demands of civil rights advocates, the criticism of
segregation by these experts in uniform led the Air Force to accept
the need for limited integration.

But there was to be no easy road to integration for the service.
Considerable resistance was yet to be overcome, both in the Air staff
and among senior commanders. As Secretary Zuckert later put it, while
there was sentiment for integration among a few of the highest
officers, "you didn't have to scratch far to run into opposition."[13-77]
The Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Edwards, reported to
Secretary Symington that he had found solid opposition to any proposed
policy of integration in the service.[13-78] Normally such resistance
would have killed the study group's proposals. In the Army, for
example, opposition supported by Secretary Royall had blocked change.
In the Air Force, the opposition received no such support. Indeed,
Secretary Symington proved to be the catalyst that the Army had
lacked. He was the Air Force's margin of difference, transforming the
study group's proposal from a staffing paper into a program for
substantial change in racial policy.

[Footnote 13-77: Notes on Telecon, author with
Zuckert, 28 Apr 70, CMH files.]

[Footnote 13-78: Memo, DCofS/P&A, USAF, for SecAF, 29
Apr 48, sub: Conference With Group of Prominent
Negroes, Negro Affairs, 1948, SecAF files.]

In Symington the Air Force had a secretary who was not only a
tough-minded businessman demanding efficiency but a progressive
politician with a humanitarian interest in providing equal opportunity
for Negroes. "With Symington," Eugene Zuckert has pointed out, "it was
principle first, efficiency second."[13-79] Symington himself later
explained the source of his humanitarian interest. "What determined me
many years ago was a quotation from Bernard Shaw in Myrdal's book,
_American Dilemma_, which went something like this--'First the
American white man makes the negro clean his shoes, then criticizes
him for being a bootblack.' All Americans should have their chance.
And both my grandfathers were in the Confederate Army."[13-80] Symington
had successfully combined efficiency and humanitarianism before. (p. 339)
As president of the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company of St.
Louis, he had racially integrated a major ind