to cure the chronic shortage of
men and the attendant problems of increased work load and low morale
that continued to plague the Steward's Branch throughout the 1950's.
Consequently, the corps still found it difficult to attract enough
black volunteers to the branch. In 1959, for example, the branch was
still 8 percent short of its 826-man goal.[18-30] The obvious
solution, to use white volunteers for messman duty, would be a radical
departure from tradition. True, before World War II white marines had
been used in the Marine Corps for duties now performed by black
stewards, but they had never been members of a branch organized
exclusively for that purpose. In 1956 tradition was broken when white
volunteers were quietly signed up for the branch. By March 1961 the
branch had eighty white men, 10 percent of its total. Reviewing the
situation later that year, the commandant decided to increase the
number of white stewards by setting a racial quota on steward
assignment. Henceforth, he ordered, half the volunteers accepted (p. 471)
for stewards duty would be white.[18-31]

[Footnote 18-30: Memo, J. J. Holicky, Detail Br, for
Dir of Pers, USMC, 3 Aug 59, sub: Inspection of
Occupational Field 36 (Stewards), Pers 1, MC
files.]

[Footnote 18-31: Memo, Asst Chief for Plans, BuPers
(Rear Adm B. J. Semmes, Jr.), for Chief of NavPers,
22 Jun 61.]

[Illustration: COLONEL PETERSEN (_1968 photograph_).]

The new policy made an immediate difference. In less than two months
the Steward's Branch was 20 percent white. In marked contrast to the
claims of Navy recruiters, the marines reported no difficulty in
attracting white volunteers for messman duties. Curiously, the
volunteers came mostly from the southeastern states. As the racial
composition of the Steward's Branch changed, the morale of its black
members seemed to improve. As one senior black warrant officer later
explained, simply opening stewards duty to whites made such duty
acceptable to many Negroes who had been prone to ask "if it [stewards
duty] was so good, why don't you have some of the whites in
it."[18-32] When transfer to general service assignments became easy
to obtain in the 1960's, the Marine Corps found that only a small
percentage of the black stewards now wished to make the change.

[Footnote 18-32: USMC O