Secretary Anderson, who
announced his intention of integrating the Steward's Branch and
ordered the Chief of Naval Personnel to draw up plans to that
end.[16-91] To devise some practical measures for handling the
problem, the personnel bureau brought back to active duty three
officers who had been important to the development of the Navy's 1946
integration policy. Their study produced three recommendations:
abolish the segregation of the Steward's Branch from the general
service and separate recruitment for its members; consider
consolidating the branch with the predominantly white Commissary
Branch; and change the steward's insignia.[16-92]

[Footnote 16-91: UP News Release, September 21, 1953,
copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 16-92: Ltr, Cmdr Durwood W. Gilmore, USNR et
al., to Chief, NavPers, Vice Adm J. L. Holloway,
Jr., 31 Aug 53, P 8 (4), BuPersRecs.]

The group acknowledged that the Steward's Branch was a "sore spot with
the Negroes, and is our weakest position from the standpoint of Public
Relations," and two of their recommendations were obviously aimed at
immediate improvement of public relations. Combining the messmen and
commissary specialists would of course create an integrated branch,
which Granger estimated would be only 20 percent black, and would
probably provide additional opportunities for promotions, but in the
end it could not mask the fact that a high proportion of black sailors
were employed in food service and valet positions. Nor was it clear
how changing the familiar crescent insignia, symbolic of the steward's
duties, would change the image of a separate group that still
performed the most menial duties. Long-term reform, everyone agreed,
demanded the presence of a significant number of whites in the branch,
and there was strong evidence that the general service contained more
than a few group IV white sailors. The group's proposal to abolish
separate recruiting would probably increase the number of blacks in
the general service and eliminate the possibility that unsuspecting
black recruits would be dragooned into a messman's career; both were
substantial reforms but did not guarantee that whites would be
attracted or assigned to the branch.

Admiral Holloway was concerned about this latter point, which dominated
his discussions with the Secretary of the Navy on 1 September 1953. He
had, he told Ander