xperiment was illuminating in several respects. The fact
that so late in the war thousands of Negroes volunteered to trade the
safety of the rear for duty at the front said something about black
patriotism and perhaps something about the Negro's passion for equality.
It also demonstrated that, when properly trained and motivated and (p. 056)
treated with fairness, blacks, like whites, performed with bravery and
distinction in combat. Finally, the experiment successfully attacked
one of the traditionalists' shibboleths, that close association of the
races in Army units would cause social dissension.

[Illustration: ROAD REPAIRMEN, _Company A, 279th Engineer Battalion,
near Rimberg, Germany, December 1944_.]

It is now apparent that World War II had little immediate effect on
the quest for racial equality in the Army. The Double V campaign
against fascism abroad and racism at home achieved considerably less
than the activists had hoped. Although Negroes shared in the
prosperity brought by war industries and some 800,000 of them served
in uniform, segregation remained the policy of the Army throughout the
war, just as Jim Crow still ruled in large areas of the country.
Probably the campaign's most important achievement was that during the
war the civil rights groups, in organizing for the fight against
discrimination, began to gather strength and develop techniques that
would be useful in the decades to come. The Army's experience with
black units also convinced many that segregation was a questionable
policy when the country needed to mobilize fully.

For its part the Army defended the separation of the races in the name
of military efficiency and claimed that it had achieved a victory over
racial discrimination by providing equal treatment and job opportunity
for black soldiers. But the Army's campaign had also been less than
completely successful. True, the Army had provided specialist training
and opened job opportunities heretofore denied to thousands of
Negroes, and it had a cadre of potential leaders in the hundreds of
experienced black officers. For the times, the Army was a progressive
minority employer. Even so, as an institution it had defended the
separate but equal doctrine and had failed to come to grips with
segregation. Under segregation the Army was compelled to combine large
numbers of undereducated and undertrained black soldiers in units that
were often inefficient and sometimes surplus to its needs.