med services. In its special preelection session, the Eightieth
Congress ignored the recently issued Truman order on racial equality
just as it ignored the President's admonition to enact a general civil
rights program. But when the new Eighty-first Congress met in January
1949 the subjects of armed forces integration, the Truman order, and
the Fahy Committee all began to receive attention. Debate on race in
the services occurred frequently in both houses. Each side appealed to
constitutional and legal principles to support its case, but the
discussions might well have remained a philosophical debate if the
draft law had not come up for renewal in 1950. The debate focused
mostly on an amendment proposed by Senator Richard B. Russell of
Georgia that would allow inductees and enlistees, upon their written
declaration of intent, to serve in a unit manned exclusively by
members of their own race. Russell had made this proposal once before,
but because it seemed of little consequence to the still largely
segregated services of 1948 it was ignored. Now in the wake of the
executive order and the Fahy Committee Report, the amendment came to
sudden prominence. And when Russell succeeded in discharging the draft
bill with his amendment from the Senate Armed Forces Committee with
the members' unanimous approval, civil rights supporters quickly (p. 390)
jumped to the attack. Even before the bill was formally introduced on
the floor, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon told his colleagues that the
Russell amendment conflicted with the stated policy of the
administration as well as with sound Republican principles. He cited
the waste of manpower the amendment would bring about and reminded his
colleagues of the international criticism the armed forces had endured
in the past because of undemocratic social practices.[15-42]

[Footnote 15-42: _Congressional Record_, 81st Cong.,
2d sess., vol. 96, p. 8412.]

When debate began on the amendment, Senator Leverett Saltonstall of
Massachusetts was one of the first to rise in opposition. While
confessing sympathy for the states' rights philosophy that recognized
the different customs of various sections of the nation, he branded
the Russell amendment unnecessary, provocative, and unworkable, and
suggested Congress leave the services alone in this matter. To support
his views he read into the record portions of the Fahy Committee
Report, which represented, he