ailable when applied to the
plight of a relatively small number of talented and qualified black
soldiers, a different solution would have to prevail when the far
larger number of Negroes ineligible for Army schooling either by
talent, inclination, or previous education was considered. Here the
Army's plea for continued segregation in the name of military efficiency
carried some weight. How could it, the Army asked, endanger the
morale and efficiency of its fighting forces by integrating these (p. 356)
men? How could it, with its low enlistment standards, abandon its
racial quota and risk enlarging the already burdensome concentration
of "professional black privates?" The committee admitted the justice
of the Army's claim that the higher enlistment score required by the
Navy and Air Force resulted in the Army's getting more than its share
of men in the low-test categories IV and V. And while Kenworthy
believed that immediate integration was less likely to cause serious
trouble than the Army's announced plan of mixing the races in
progressively smaller units, he too accepted the argument that it
would be dangerous to reassign the Army's group of professional black
privates to white units. Fahy saw the virtue of the Army's position
here; his committee never demanded the immediate, total integration of
the Army.

One solution to the problem, reducing the number of soldiers with low
aptitude by forcing the other services to share equally in the burden
of training and assimilating the less gifted and often black enlistee
and draftee, had recently been rejected by the Navy and Air Force, a
rejection endorsed by Secretary of Defense Forrestal. Even in the
event that the Army could raise its enlistment standards and the other
services be induced to lower theirs, much time would elapse before the
concentration of undereducated Negroes could be broken up. Davenport
was aware of all this when he limited his own recommendations to the
committee to matters concerning the integration of black specialists,
the opening of all Army schools to Negroes, and the establishment of
some system to monitor the Army's implementation of these reforms.[14-51]

[Footnote 14-51: Interv, author with Davenport, 31 Oct
71.]

Having gained some experience, the committee was now able to turn the
Army's efficiency argument against the racial quota. It decided that
the quota had helped defeat the Gillem Board's aim