is, the
officer candidate program, or the Naval Reserve Officers' Training
Corps (NROTC) program. Ens. Wesley A. Brown would graduate in the
academy's class of 1949, the sixth Negro to attend and the first to
graduate in the academy's 104-year history. Only five other Negroes
were enrolled in the academy's student body in 1949, and there was
little indication that this number would rapidly increase. For the
most part the situation was beyond the control of the Bureau of Naval
Personnel. Competition was keen for acceptance at Annapolis. The
American Civil Liberties Union later asserted that the exclusion of
Negroes from many of the private prep schools, which so often produced
successful academy applicants, helped explain why there were so few
Negroes at the academy.[9-41]

[Footnote 9-41: Ltr. Exec Dir. ACLU, to SecNav, 26
Nov 57, GenRecsNav.]

Nor were many black officers forthcoming from the Navy's two other
sources. Officer candidate schools, severely reduced in size after the
war and a negligible source of career officers, had no Negroes in
attendance from 1946 through 1948. Perhaps most disturbing was the
fact that in 1947 just fourteen Negroes were enrolled among more than
5,600 students in the NROTC program, the usual avenue to a Regular
Navy commission.[9-42] The Holloway program, the basis for the Navy's
reserve officer training system, offered scholarships at fifty-two
colleges across the nation, but the number of these scholarships was
small, the competition intense, and black applicants, often burdened
by inferior schooling, did not fare well.

[Footnote 9-42: "BuPers Narrative," 1:295.]

Statistics pointed at least to the possibility that racial (p. 247)
discrimination existed in the NROTC system. Unlike the Army and Air
Force programs, reserve officer training in the Navy depended to a
great extent on state selection committees dominated by civilians.
These committees exercised considerable leeway in selecting candidates
to fill their state's annual NROTC quota, and their decisions were
final. Not one Negro served on any of the state committees. In fact,
fourteen of the fifty-two colleges selected for reserve officer
training barred Negroes from admission by law and others--the exact
number is difficult to ascertain--by policy. One black newspaper
charged that only thirteen of the participating institutions admitted
Negroes.[9-43] In all