tinct from restricting men according to mental, moral, or
professional standards, could achieve the "effective working (p. 459)
level" posited by the Army's scientific advisers.

These questions would still be pertinent years later because the
alternative to the racial quota--the enlistment and assignment of men
without regard for color--would continue to be unacceptable to many.
They would argue that to abandon the quota, as the services did in the
1960's, was to violate the concept of racial balance, which is yet
another hallmark of an egalitarian society. For example, during the
Vietnam War some black Americans complained that too many Negroes were
serving in the more dangerous combat arms. Since men were assigned
without regard to race, these critics were in effect asking for the
quota again, reminding the service that the population of the United
States was only some 11 percent black. And during discussions of the
all-volunteer Army a decade later, critics would be asking how the
white majority would react to an army 30 or even 50 percent black.

These considerations were clearly beyond the ken of the men who
integrated the Army in the early 1950's. They concentrated instead on
the perplexities of enlisting and assigning vast numbers of segregated
black soldiers during wartime and closely watched the combat
performance of black units in Korea. Integration provided the Army
with a way to fill its depleted combat units quickly. The shortage of
white troops forced local commanders to turn to the growing surplus of
black soldiers awaiting assignment to a limited number of black units.
Manpower restrictions did not permit the formation of new black units
merely to accommodate the excess, and in any case experience with the
24th Infantry had strengthened the Army staff's conviction that black
combat units did not perform well. However commanders may have felt
about the social implications of integration, and whatever they
thought of the fighting ability of black units, the only choice left
to them was integration. When the Chief of Staff ordered the
integration of the Far East Command in 1951, what had begun as a
battlefield expedient became official policy.

Segregation became unworkable when the Army lost its power to limit
the number of black soldiers. Abandonment of the quota on enlistments,
pressed on the Army by the Fahy Committee, proved compatible with
segregated units only so long as the need for fightin