Staff's Personnel and Administration Division
asked for the support of commanders.[7-45]

[Footnote 7-44: Memo, Brig Gen J. J. O'Hare, Dep Dir,
P&A, for SA, 9 Mar 48, sub: Implementation of WD
Cir 124, CSGPA 291.2.]

[Footnote 7-45: G-1 Memo for Rcd, 30 Sep 46, attached
to Ltr, TAG to CG, Each Army, et al., 2 Oct 46,
sub: Enlistment of Negroes, AGSE-P342.06 (30 Sep
46).]

Although these measures were helpful to the Army, they were frankly
discriminatory, and they immediately raised a storm of protest. During
the summer of 1946, for example, many black soldiers and airmen
complained about the Army's rejection of black enlistments for the
European theater. The NAACP, which received some of the soldiers'
complaints, suggested that the War Department honor its pledges or
immediately release all Negroes who were refused their choice of
location.[7-46] The Army did just that, offering to discharge honorably
those soldiers who, denied their theater of choice, rejected any
substitute offered.[7-47]

[Footnote 7-46: Ltr, Walter White to SW, 18 Jun 46;
Telg, White to SW, 24 Jun 46; both in SW 291.2
(Negro Troops).]

[Footnote 7-47: DF, OTIG to D/PA, 23 Jul 46, sub:
Assignment of Negro Enlistees Who Have Selected ETO
as Choice of Initial Assignment, WDSIG 220.3--Negro
Enlistees.]

Later in 1946 a young Negro sued the Secretary of War and a Pittsburgh
recruiting officer for refusing to enlist him. To make standards for
black applicants substantially higher than those for whites, he
alleged, violated the Preamble and Fifth Amendment of the
Constitution, while the inducements offered for enlistment, for
example the GI Bill of Rights, constituted a valuable property right
denied him because of race. The suit asked that all further
enlistments in the Army be stopped until Negroes were accepted on
equal terms with whites and all special enlistment requirements for
Negroes were abolished.[7-48] Commenting on the case, the chief of the
War Department's Public Relations Division, Maj. Gen. Floyd L. Parks,
defended the Gillem Board's 10 percent quota, but agreed that (p. 187)
"we are on weak ground [in] having a different standard for admission
between white and colo