ck airmen rose from 5.1 to 10.4 percent of the enlisted strength
and the black officers from 0.6 to 1.1 percent. Reviewing the
situation in 1960, _Ebony_ noted that the program begun in 1949 was
working well and that white men were accepting without question
progressive racial practices forbidden in their home communities.
Minor racial flare-ups still occurred, but integration was no longer a
major problem in the Air Force; it was a fact of life.[16-51]

[Footnote 16-50: Memo for Rcd, ADS(M), 12 Sep 56, sub:
Integration Percentages, ADS(M) 291.2. For further
discussion of the qualitative distribution program,
see Navy section, below.]

[Footnote 16-51: "Integration in the Air Force
Abroad," _Ebony_ 15 (March 1960):27.]

_The Navy and Executive Order 9981_

The changing government attitude toward integration in the late 1940's
had less dramatic effect on the Navy than upon the other services
because the Navy was already the conspicuous possessor of a racial
policy guaranteeing equal treatment and opportunity for all its
members. But as the Fahy Committee and many other critics insisted,
the Navy's 1946 equality guarantee was largely theoretical; its major
racial problem was not one of policy but of practice as statistics
demonstrated. It was true, for example, that the Navy had abolished
racial quotas in recruitment, yet the small number of black
sailors--17,000 during 1949, averaging 4.5 percent of the total
strength--made the absence of a quota academic.[16-52] It was true
that Negroes served side by side with white sailors in almost every
occupation and training program in the Navy, but it was also a fact
that 62 percent of all Negroes in the Navy in 1949 were still assigned
to the nonwhite Steward's Branch. This figure shows that as late as
December 1949 fewer than 7,000 black sailors were serving in racially
integrated assignments.[16-53] Again, with only 19 black officers,
including 2 nurses, in a 1949 average officer strength of 45,464, it
meant little to say that the Navy had an integrated officer corps. A
shadow had fallen, then, between the promise of the Navy's policy and
its fulfillment, partly because of indifferent execution.

[Footnote 16-52: Unless otherwise noted all statistics
are from information supplied by the Bureau of
Naval