sions, promoted efficiency, and placated regional
prejudices both in the Army and Congress. Integration must be
postponed until the number of Negroes in the Army was carefully
regulated and the quality of black troops improved. Both, the staff
thought, were goals of a future so distant that segregated units were
not threatened.

But the staff's views ran contrary to the Gillem Board policy and the
public utterances of the Secretary of War. Robert Patterson had
consistently supported the policy in public and before his advisers.
Besides, it was unthinkable that he would so quickly abandon a policy
developed at the cost of so much effort and negotiation and announced
with such fanfare. He had insisted that the quota be maintained, most
recently in the case of the European Command.[8-19] In sum, he believed
that the policy provided guidelines, practical and expedient, albeit
temporary, that would lead to the integration of the Army.

[Footnote 8-19: Geis Monograph, pp. 143-44.]

In face of this impasse between the secretary and the Army staff there
slowly evolved what proved to be a new racial policy. Never clearly
formulated--Circular 124 continued in effect with only minor changes
until 1950--the new policy was based on the substantially different
proposition that segregation would continue indefinitely while the
staff concentrated on weeding out poorly qualified Negroes, upgrading
the rest, and removing vestiges of discrimination, which it saw as
quite distinct from segregation. At the same time the Army would
continue to operate under a strict 10 percent quota of Negroes, though
not necessarily within every occupation or specialty. The staff
overlooked the increasingly evident connection between segregation and
racial unrest, thereby assuring the continuation of both. From 1947
on, integration, the stated goal of the Gillem Board policy, was
ignored, while segregation, which the board saw as an expedient to be
tolerated, became for the Army staff a way of life to be treasured. It
was from this period in 1947 that Circular 124 and the Gillem Board
Report began to gain their reputations as regressive documents.

_Improving the Status of the Segregated Soldier_

In 1947 the Army accelerated its long-range program to discharge
soldiers who scored less than seventy on the Army General
Classification Test. Often a subject of public controversy, the
program formed a major part of the Army's effort to