4
percent, the percentage of Negroes in the services remained relatively
stationary between 1962 and 1968 (_Table 24_). In 1968, when Negroes
accounted for 11 percent of the American population, their share of
the enlisted service population remained at 8.2, with significant
differences among the services. Nor did there seem much chance of
increasing the number of black servicemen since the percentage of
Negroes among draftees and first-time enlistees was rising very (p. 569)
slowly while black reenlistment rates, for some twenty years a major
factor in holding black strength steady, began to decline (_Table 25_).
Actually, enlistment figures for both whites and blacks declined, a
circumstance usually attributed to the unpopularity of the Vietnam
War, although in the midst of the war, in 1967, black first-term
reenlistment rates continued to exceed white rates 2 to 1.

Table 24--Black Percentages, 1962-1968

| Army | Navy | Marine Corps | Air Force
Year| Enlisted| Enlisted| Enlisted| Enlisted
|Officers| Men |Officers| Men |Officers| Men |Officers| Men
1962 3.2 12.2 .2 5.2 .2 7.6 1.2 9.2
1964 3.4 13.4 .3 5.8 .4 8.7 1.5 10.0
1965 3.5 13.9 .3 5.8 .4 9.0 1.6 10.7
1967 3.4 12.1 .3 4.7 .7 10.3 1.8 10.4
1968 3.3 12.6 .4 5.0 .9 11.5 1.8 10.2

_Source_: Records of ASD (M) 291.2.

Table 25--Rates for Reenlistments, 1964-1967

Army Navy Marine Corps Air Force
Year | White | Black | White | Black | White | Black | White | Black
1964 18.5 49.3 21.6 41.3 12.9 25.1 27.4 50.3
1965 13.7 49.3 24.2 44.8 18.9 38.9 19.1 39.2
1966 20.0 66.5 17.6 24.7 10.5 19.5 16.0 30.1
1967 12.9 31.7 16.7 22.5 10.7 17.4 17.3 26.9

_Source_: Records of ASD (M) 291.2; see especially Paul Memo.

The low percentage of black officers, a matter of special concern to
the Civil Rights Commission and the Gesell Committee as well as the
civil rights organizations, remained relatively unchanged in the
1960's (_see Table 24_). Nor could any dramatic rise in the number of
black officers be expected. Between 1963 and 1968 the three service
academies graduated just fifty-one black