volved the civilian population.[8-8]

[Footnote 8-8: AFPAC Monograph, 2:176.]

The task of maintaining a biracial Army overseas in peacetime was
marked with embarrassing incidents and time-consuming investigations.
The Army was constantly hearing about its racial problems overseas and
getting no end of advice. For example, in May 1946 Louis Lautier,
chief of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association news service,
informed the Assistant Secretary of War that fifty-five of the seventy
American soldiers executed for crimes in the European theater were
black. Most were category IV and V men. "In light of this fact,"
Lautier charged, "the blame for the comparatively high rate of crime
among black soldiers belongs to the American educational system."[8-9]

[Footnote 8-9: Ltr, Louis R. Lautier to Howard C.
Petersen, 28 May 46. ASW 291.2 (NT).]

But when a delegation of publishers from Lautier's organization toured
European installations during the same period, the members took a more
comprehensive look at the Seventh Army's race problems. They told
Secretary Patterson that they found all American soldiers reacting
similarly to poor leadership, substandard living conditions, and
menial occupations whenever such conditions existed. Although they
professed to see no difference in the conduct of white and black
troops, they went on to list factors that contributed to the bad
conduct of some of the black troops including the dearth of black
officers, hostility of military police, inadequate recreation, and
poor camp location. They also pointed out that many soldiers in the
occupation had been shipped overseas without basic training, (p. 211)
scored low in the classification tests, and served under young and
inexperienced noncoms. Many black regulars, on the other hand, once
proud members of combat units, now found themselves performing menial
tasks in the backwaters of the occupation. Above all, the publishers
witnessed widespread racial discrimination, a condition that followed
inevitably, they believed, from the Army's segregation policy.
Conditions in the Army appeared to them to facilitate an immediate
shift to integration; conditions in Europe and elsewhere made such a
shift imperative. Yet they found most commanders in Europe still
unaware of the Gillem Board Report and its liberalizing provisions,
and little being done to encourage within the Army the sensiti