the
Gillem Board's reforms as a way to make more efficient a segregation
policy that neither they nor, they believed, society in general was
willing to change. Thus, despite some real progress on the periphery
of its racial problem, the Army would have to face the enemy in Korea
with an inefficient organization of its men.

The Army's postwar policy was based on a false premise. The Gillem
Board decided that since Negroes had fought poorly in segregated
divisions in two world wars, they might fight better in smaller
segregated organizations within larger white units. Few officers
really believed this, for it was commonly accepted throughout the Army
that Negroes generally made poor combat soldiers. It followed then
that the size of a unit was immaterial, and indeed, given the manpower
that the Army received from reenlistments and Selective Service, any
black unit, no matter its size, would almost assuredly be an
inefficient, spiritless group of predominately Class IV and V men. For
in addition to its educational limitations, the typical black unit
suffered a further handicap in the vital matter of motivation. The
Gillem Board disregarded this fact, but it was rarely overlooked by
the black soldier: he was called upon to serve as a second-class (p. 233)
soldier to defend what he often regarded as his second-class
citizenship. In place of unsatisfactory black divisions, Circular 124
made the Army substitute three unsatisfactorily mixed divisions whose
black elements were of questionable efficiency and a focus of
complaint among civil rights advocates. Commanders at all levels faced
a dilemma implicit in the existence of white and black armies side by
side. Overwhelmed by regulations and policies that tried to preserve
the fiction of separate but equal opportunity, these officers wasted
their time and energy and, most often in the case of black officers,
lost their self-confidence.

In calling for the integration of small black units rather than
individuals, the Gillem Board obviously had in mind the remarkably
effective black platoons in Europe in the last months of World War II.
But even this type of organization was impossible in the postwar Army
because it demanded a degree of integration that key commanders,
especially the major Army component commanders, were unwilling to
accept.

These real problems were intensified by the normal human failings of
prejudice, vested interest, well-meaning ignorance, conditione