taff, and as of 1960 the Inspector General was still keeping a list
of stations to which Negroes would not be assigned. But the picture
quickly changed in the next year, and by June 1962 all restrictions on
the assignment of black marines had been dropped with the exception of
several installations in the United States where off-base housing was
unavailable and some posts overseas where the use of black marines was
limited because of the attitudes of foreign governments.[18-25]

[Footnote 18-25: Draft Memo, Head of Assignment and
Classification Br for Dir, Pers (ca. 1961), sub:
Restricted Assignments; Memo, IG for Dir, Pers, 31
Aug 62; Ltr, Lt Col A. W. Snell to Col R. S.
Johnson, CO, MB, Port Lyautey, 28 Jun 62. See also
Memo, Maj E. W. Snelling, MB, NAD, Charleston,
S.C., for Maj Duncan, 27 Nov 62; and the following
Ltrs: Col S. L. Stephan, CO, MB, Norfolk Nav
Shipyard, to Dir, Pers, 7 Dec 62; K. A. Jorgensen,
CO, MB, Nav Base, Charleston, S.C., to Duncan, 7
Dec 62; Col R. J. Picardi, CO, MB, Lake Mead Base,
to Duncan, 30 Nov 62.]

The perennial problem of an all-black Steward's Branch persisted into
the 1960's. Stewards served a necessary though unglamorous function
in the Marine Corps, and education standards for such duty were (p. 469)
considerably lower than those for the rest of the service. Everyone
understood this, and beyond the stigma many young people felt was
attached to such duties, many Negroes particularly resented the fact
that while the branch was officially open to all, somehow none of the
less gifted whites ever joined. Stewards were acquired either by
recruiting new marines with stewards-duty-only contracts or by
accepting volunteers from the general service. The evidence suggests
that there was truth in the commonly held assumption among stewards
that when a need for more stewards arose, "volunteers" were secured by
tampering with the classification test scores of men in the general
service.[18-26]

[Footnote 18-26: Shaw and Donnelly, _Blacks in the
Marine Corps_, pp. 64-65.]

[Illustration: TRAINING EXERCISES _on Iwo Jima, March 1954_.]

The commandant seemed less concerned with methods than results when
stewards were needed. In