p IV from fiscal
year 1953 to 1956, 18 percent in fiscal year 1957, and 12 percent
thereafter. Between 1953 and 1956 the Navy accepted well above the
required 24 percent of group IV men, but in fiscal year 1957 took only
15.1 percent, and in 1958 only 6.8 percent. In 1958, with the
knowledge of the Secretary of Defense, all the services took in fewer
of the group IV's than the distribution program required, but
justified the reduction on the grounds that declining strength made it
necessary to emphasize high quality in recruits. In a move endorsed by
the Navy, the Air Force finally requested in 1959 that the qualitative
distribution program be held in abeyance. On the basis of this request
the Navy temporarily ceased to accept all group IV and some group III
men, but resumed recruiting them when it seemed likely that the (p. 417)
Secretary of Defense would refuse the request.[16-68]

[Footnote 16-68: BuPers, "Memo on Discrimination of
the Negro," 24 January 1959, Pers A1224, BuPers
Tech Library.]

[Illustration: CHRISTMAS IN KOREA, 1950.]

The correlation between the rise and fall of the group IV enlistments
and the percentage of Negroes in the Navy shows that all the increases
in black strength between 1952 and 1959 came not through the Navy's
publicized and organized effort to attract the qualified black
volunteers it had promised the Fahy Committee, but from the men forced
upon it by the Defense Department's distribution program. The
correlation also lends credence to the charges of some of the civil
rights critics who saw another reason for the shortage of Negroes.
They claimed that there had been no drop in the number of applicants
but that fewer Negroes were being accepted by Navy recruiters. One
NAACP official claimed that Negroes were "getting the run around."
Those who had fulfilled all enlistment requirements were not being
informed, and others were being given false information by recruiters.
He concluded that the Navy was operating under an unwritten policy of
filling recruit quotas with whites, accepting Negroes only when whites
were unavailable.[16-69] If these accusations were true, the Navy was
denying itself the services of highly qualified black applicants at a
time when the Defense Department's qualitative distribution program
was forcing it to take large numbers of the less gifted. Certainly the
number of Negroes capable of moving up the