Memo, Chief, NavPers, for ASD/M,
29 Mar 61, sub: Stewards in U.S. Navy, Pers 8 (4),
BuPersRecs; Memo, Special Asst to SecDef, Adam
Yarmolinsky, for Frederic Dutton, Special Asst to
President, 31 Oct 61, sub: Yarmolinsky Memo of
October 26, Harris Wofford Collection, J. F.
Kennedy Library.]

However well founded these arguments were, they did not satisfy the
Navy's critics, who continued to press for the establishment of one
recruitment standard and the assignment of men on the basis of
interest and training rather than race. Lester Granger, for example,
warned Secretary Kimball of the skepticism that persisted among
sections of the black community: "As long as that branch [the
Steward's Branch] is composed entirely of nonwhite personnel, the Navy
is apt to be held by some to be violating its own stated
policy."[16-87] To Kimball's successor, Robert B. Anderson,[16-88]
Granger was even more blunt. The Steward's Branch, he declared, was "a
constant irritant to the Negro public." He saw some logical reason for
the continued concentration of Negroes in the branch but added "logic
does not necessarily imply wisdom and I sincerely believe that it is
unwise from the standpoint of efficiency and public relations to
continue the Stewards Branch on its present basis."[16-89]

[Footnote 16-87: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 24 Oct 52,
SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 16-88: Secretary Anderson, appointed by
President Eisenhower, became Secretary of the Navy
on 4 February 1953.]

[Footnote 16-89: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 24 Apr 53,
SecNav files, GenRecsNav.]

Granger's suggestion for change was straightforward. He wanted the
Bureau of Naval Personnel to find a way to introduce a sufficiently
large number of whites into the branch to transform its racial
composition. The task promised to be difficult if the charges leveled
in the Detroit _Free Press_ were accurate. In May 1953 the paper (p. 422)
reported incidents of naval recruiting officers who, "by one ruse or
another," were shunting young volunteers, sometimes without their
knowledge, into the Steward's Branch.[16-90]

[Footnote 16-90: Detroit _Free Press_, May 16, 1953.]

Granger's suggestions were taken up by