ally
and ordered major commanders to assign Negroes who possessed those
specialties to fill the vacancies without regard to race. The first
such list was published at the same time as the new regulation. The
Army had taken a significant step, Fahy told the President, toward the
realization of equal treatment and opportunity for all soldiers.[14-122]

[Footnote 14-122: Memo, Fahy for President, 16 Jan 50,
FC file; SR 600-629-1, 16 Jan 50; DOD, Off of Pub
Info, Release 64-50, 16 Jan 50. The special
regulation was circulated worldwide on the day of
the issue; see Memo, D/P&A to TAG, 16 Jan 50, WDGPA
291.2.]

Secretary of Defense Johnson was also optimistic, but he warned Gordon
Gray that many complex problems remained and asked the Army for
periodic reports. His request only emphasized the fact that the Army's
new regulation lacked the machinery for monitoring compliance with its
provisions for integration. As the history of the Gillem Board era
demonstrated, any attempt to change the Army's traditions demanded not
only exact definition of the intermediate steps but also establishment
of a responsible authority to enforce compliance.

_Quotas_

In the wake of the Army's new assignment regulation, the committee
turned its full attention to the last of its major recommendations,
the abolition of the numerical quota. Despite months of discussion,
the disagreement between the Army and the committee over the quota (p. 372)
showed no signs of resolution. Simply put, the Fahy Committee wanted
the Army to abolish the Gillem Board's racial quota and to substitute
a quota based on General Classification Test scores of enlistees. The
committee found the racial quota unacceptable in terms of the
executive order and wasteful of manpower since it tended to encourage
the reenlistment of low-scoring Negroes and thereby prevented the
enlistment of superior men. None of the Negroes graduating from high
school in June 1949, for example, no matter how high their academic
rating, could enlist because the black quota had been filled for
months. Quotas based on test scores, on the other hand, would limit
enlistment to only the higher scoring blacks and whites.

Specifically, the committee wanted no enlistment to be decided by
race. The Army would open all enlistments to anyone who scored ninety
or above, limiting the number o