f blacks and whites scoring between
eighty and eighty-nine to 13.4 percent of the total Army strength, a
percentage based on World War II strengths. With rare exception it
would close enlistment to anyone who scored less than eighty. Applying
this formula to the current Army, 611,400 men on 31 March 1949, and
assessing the number of men from seventeen to thirty-four years old in
the national population, the committee projected a total of 65,565
Negroes in the Army, almost exactly 10 percent of the Army's strength.
In a related statistical report prepared by Davenport, the committee
offered figures demonstrating that the higher black reenlistment rates
would not increase the number of black soldiers.[14-123]

[Footnote 14-123: D/PA Summary Sheet for SA, 28 Feb
50, sub: Fahy Committee Proposal re: Numerical
Enlistment Quota, CSGPA 291.2 (2 Nov 49); Roy
Davenport, "Figures on Reenlistment Rate and
Explanation," Document FC XL, FC file; Memo, Fahy
for SA, 9 Feb 50, sub: Recapitulation of the
Proposal of the President's Committee for the
Abolition of the Racial Quota, FC file; Memo,
Kenworthy for Dwight Palmer (cmte member), 8 Feb
50, Fahy Papers, Truman Library.]

The Army's reply was based on the premise that "the Negro strength of
the Army must be restricted and that the population ratio is the most
equitable method [of] limitation." In fact, the _only_ method of
controlling black strength was a numerical quota of original
enlistments. The personnel staff argued that enlistment specifically
unrestricted by race, as the high rate of unrestricted black
reenlistment had demonstrated, would inevitably produce a "very high
percentage of Negroes in the Army." A quota based on the
classification test scores could not limit sufficiently the number of
black enlistments if, as the committee insisted, it required that
identical enlistment standards be maintained for both blacks and
whites. Looking at the census figure another way, the Army had its own
statistics to prove its point. Basing its figures on the number of
Negroes who became eighteen each month (11,000), the personnel staff
estimated that black enlistments would total from 15 to 20 percent of
the Army's monthly strength if an entrance quota was imposed with the
cut-off score set at n