e
percentage of black draftees in the total number of draftees supplied
by Selective Service averaged 13 percent.[17-5]

[Footnote 17-5: Memo, G-1 for VCofS, sub: Negro
Statistics, 16 Jun 50-6 Oct 50, CS 291.2 Negro;
idem for G-3, 18 Apr 51, sub: Training Spaces for
Negro Personnel, OPS 291.2; Memo, Chief, Mil Opers
Management Branch, G-1, for G-1, 1 Feb 51, sub:
Distribution of Negro Manpower in the Army, G-1
291.2, and Memo, Chief, Procurement and
Distribution Div, G-1, for G-1, 20 Oct 53, same sub
and file.]

[Illustration: MOVING UP. _25th Division infantrymen head for the
front, Korea, July 1950._]

The effect of these increases on a segregated army was tremendous. (p. 431)
By April 1951, black units throughout the Army were reporting large
overstrengths, some as much as 60 percent over their authorized
organization tables. Overstrength was particularly evident in the
combat arms because of the steady increase in the number of black
soldiers with combat occupational specialties. Largely assigned to
service units during World War II--only 22 percent, about half the
white percentage, were in combat units--Negroes after the war were
assigned in ever-increasing numbers to combat occupational specialties
in keeping with the Gillem Board recommendation that they be trained
in all branches of the service. By 1950 some 30 percent of all black
soldiers were in combat units, and by June 1951 they were being
assigned to the combat branches in approximately the same percentage
as white soldiers, 41 percent.[17-6]

[Footnote 17-6: STM-30, Strength of the Army, Sep 50,
Mar 51, and Jul 51.]

The Chief of Staff's concern with the Army's segregation policy went
beyond immediate problems connected with the sudden manpower increases.
Speaking to Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Craig, the Inspector General, in August
1950, Collins declared that the Army's social policy was unrealistic
and did not represent the views of younger Americans whose attitudes
were much more relaxed than those of the senior officers who (p. 432)
established policy. Reporting Collins's comment to the staff, Craig
went on to say the situation in Korea confirmed his own observations
that mixing whites and blacks "in reasonable proportions" did not
cause fri