te
stewards and allowing qualified stewards to transfer to general
service.

The committee wanted the Judge Advocate General to assign legal
advisers to all major trials, especially those involving minorities,
to prevent errors in courts-martial that might be construed as
discrimination. It further recommended that Negroes be represented in
the secretary's public relations office; that news items concerning
Negroes be more widely disseminated through bureau bulletins; and,
finally, that all bureaus as well as the Coast Guard and Marine Corps
be encouraged to enroll commanders in special indoctrination programs
before they were assigned to units with substantial numbers of (p. 146)
Negroes.[5-60]

[Footnote 5-60: Memo, Cmte on Personnel for Under
SecNav, 22 May 45, sub: Report and Recommendations
of Committee on Negro Personnel, P. 16-3,
GenRecsNav.]

[Illustration: GRANGER INTERVIEWING SAILORS _on inspection tour in the
Pacific_.]

The committee's recommendations, submitted to Under Secretary Bard on
22 May 1945, were far more than an attempt to unify the racial
practices of the various subdivisions of the Navy Department. For the
first time, senior representatives of the department's often
independent branches accepted the contention of the Special Programs
Unit that segregation was militarily inefficient and a gradual but
complete integration of the Navy's general service was the solution to
racial problems.

Yet as a formula for equal treatment and opportunity in the Navy, the
committee's recommendations had serious omissions. Besides overlooking
the dearth of black officers and the Marine Corps' continued strict
segregation, the committee had ignored Granger's key proposal that
Negroes be guaranteed a place in the Regular Navy. Almost without
exception, Negroes in the Navy's general service were reservists,
products of wartime volunteer enlistment or the draft. All but a few
of the black regulars were stewards. Without assurance that many of
these general service reservists would be converted to regulars or
that provision would be made for enlistment of black regulars, (p. 147)
the committee's integration recommendations lacked substance.
Secretary Forrestal must have been aware of these omissions, but he
ignored them. Perhaps the problem of the Negro in the postwar Navy
seemed remote during this last, climactic summer of the