1945):193.]

Other black journals took a more detached view of the situation,
asserting that Gibson's remarks revealed nothing new and that the
problem was segregation, of which the 92d was a notable victim. Gibson
took this tack in his own defense, pointing to the irony of a
situation in which "some people can, on the one hand, argue that
segregation is wrong, and on the other ... blindly defend the product
of that segregation."[5-28]

[Footnote 5-28: Washington _Afro-American_, April 15,
1945, quoted in Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
p. 579. For details of the Gibson controversy, see
Lee, pp. 575-79.]

Gibson had defenders in the Army whose comments might well apply to
all the large black units in the war. At one extreme stood the Allied
commander in Italy, General Mark W. Clark, who attributed the 92d's
shortcomings to "our handling of minority problems at home." Most of
all, General Clark thought, black soldiers needed the incentive of
feeling that they were fighting for home and country as equals. But
his conclusion--"only the proper environment in his own country can
provide such an incentive"--neatly played down Army responsibility for
the division's problems.[5-29]

[Footnote 5-29: Mark W. Clark, _A Calculated Risk_
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), pp. 414-15.]

Another officer, who as commander of a divisional artillery unit was
intimately acquainted with the division's shortcomings, delineated an
entirely different set of causes. The division was doomed to
mediocrity and worse, Lt. Col. Marcus H. Ray concluded, from the
moment of its activation. Undercurrents of racial antipathy as well as
distrust and prejudice, he believed, infected the organization from
the outset and created an unhealthy beginning. The practice of
withholding promotion from deserving black officers along with
preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. The
basic misconception was that southern white officers understood
Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern
stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those
who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect--necessary attributes of
leadership--were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "I
was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who
preceded us to place