t
all Negroes favored integration). In 1946, just as the Gillem Board
policy was being enunciated, the Army staff found enlisted men in
substantial agreement on segregation. Although most of those surveyed
supported the expanded use of Negroes in the Army, an overwhelming
majority voted for the principle of having racially separate working
and living arrangements. Yet the pollsters found much less opposition
to integration when they put their questions on a personal basis--"How
do _you_ feel about...?" Only southerners as a group registered a
clear majority for segregated working conditions. The survey also (p. 230)
revealed another encouraging portent: most of the opposition to
integration existed among older and less educated men.[8-67]

[Footnote 8-67: The 1946 survey is contained in
CINFO, "Supplementary Rpt on Attitudes of Whites
Toward Serving With Negro EM," Incl to Memo, Col
Charles S. Johnson, Exec Off, CofS, for DCofS, 24
May 49, sub: Segregation in the Army, CSUSA 291.2
Negroes (24 May 48).]

[Illustration: GENERAL DAVIS.]

Three years later the Secretary of Defense sponsored another survey of
enlisted opinion on segregation. This time less than a third of those
questioned were opposed to integrated working conditions and some 40
percent were not "definitely opposed" to complete integration of both
working and living arrangements. Again men from all areas tended to
endorse integration as their educational level rose; opposition, on
the other hand, centered in 1949 among the chronic complainers and
those who had never worked with Negroes.[8-68]

[Footnote 8-68: Armed Forces I&E Div, OSD, Rpt No.
101, "Morale Attitudes of Enlisted Men, May-June
1949," pt. II, Attitude Toward Integration of Negro
Soldiers in the Army, copy in CMH.]

In discussing prejudice and discrimination it is necessary to compare
the Army with the rest of American society. Examining the question of
race relations in the Army runs the risk of distorting the importance
given the subject by the nation as a whole in the postwar period.
While resistance to segregation was undoubtedly growing in the black
community and among an increasing number of progressives in the white
community, there was as yet no widespread awareness of the problem and
certainly