Ceiling Strengths
as of 1 Jul 46 (less AAF), WDCSA 320.2 (1946).]

These changes proved ill-advised, for the effort to curb the number of
Negroes in the Regular Army was largely unsuccessful. The staff had
overlooked the ineffectiveness of the Army's testing measures and the
zeal of its recruiters who, pressed to fill their quotas, accepted
enlistees without concern for the new standards. By mid-June the
effect was readily apparent. The European theater, for example,
reported some 19,000 Negroes in excess of billets in black units and
some 2,000 men above the theater's current allotment of black troops.
Assignment of Negroes to Europe had been stopped, but the number of
black regulars waiting for overseas assignment stood at 5,000, a
figure expected to double by the end of the summer. Some of this
excess could be absorbed in eight newly created black units, but that
still left black units worldwide 18 to 40 percent overstrength.[7-35]

[Footnote 7-35: G-1 Memo for Rcd (signed Col E. L.
Heyduck, Enl Div), 18 Jun 46, WDGAP 291.2; see also
EUCOM Hist Div (prepared by Margaret L. Geis),
"Negro Personnel in the European Command, 1 January
1946-30 June 1950," Occupation Forces in Europe
Series (Historical Division, European Command,
1952) (hereafter Geis Monograph), pp. 14-18, copy
in CMH.]

Notice that Negroes totaled 16 percent of the Regular Army on 1 July
1946 with the personnel staff's projections running to a 24 percent
level for the next year precipitated action in the War Department. (p. 184)
On 15 July Marcus Ray and Dean Rusk, Special Assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of War, met with representatives of the Army staff
to discuss black strength. Basing his decision on the consensus of
that meeting, the Secretary of War on 17 July suspended enlistment of
Negroes in the Regular Army. He excepted two categories of men from
this ruling. Men who qualified and had actually served for six months
in any of forty-eight unusual military occupational specialties in
which there were chronic manpower shortages would be enlisted without
promise of specific assignment to branch or station. At the same time,
because of manpower shortages, the Army would continue to accept
Negroes, already regulars, who wanted to reenlist.[7-36]

[Footnote