quota--even when the quota for the corps meant maintaining a minimum
number of Negroes in the service--in a period of shrinking manpower
resources necessitated the creation of new billets for Negroes. At the
same time it was obviously inefficient to assign combat-trained
Negroes, now surplus with the inactivation of the black defense
battalions, to black service and supply units when the Fleet Marine
Force battalions were so seriously understrength. Thus the strictures
against integration notwithstanding, the corps was forced to begin (p. 269)
attaching black units to the depleted Fleet Marine Force units.
In January 1947, for example, members of Headquarters Unit, Montford
Point Camp, and men of the inactivated 3d Antiaircraft Artillery
Battalion were transferred to Camp Geiger, North Carolina, and
assigned to the all-black 2d Medium Depot Company, which, along with
eight white units, was organized into the racially composite 2d Combat
Service Group in the 2d Marine Division.[10-57] Although the units of the
group ate in separate mess halls and slept in separate barracks,
inevitably the men of all units used some facilities in common. After
Negroes were assigned to Camp Geiger, for instance, recreational
facilities were open to all. In some isolated cases, black
noncommissioned officers were assigned to lead racially mixed details
in the composite group.[10-58]

[Footnote 10-57: USMC Muster Rolls, 1947.]

[Footnote 10-58: Interv, Martin Blumenson with 1st Sgt
Jerome Pressley, 21 Feb 66, CMH files.]

[Illustration: TRAINING EXERCISES. _Black Marine unit boards ship at
Morehead City, North Carolina, 1949._]

But these reforms, which did very little for a very few men, scarcely
dented the Marine Corps' racial policy. Corps officials were still
firmly committed to strict segregation in 1948, and change seemed very
distant. Any substantial modification in racial policy would require a
revolution against Marine tradition, a movement dictated by higher
civilian authority or touched off by an overwhelming military need.

CHAPTER 11 (p. 270)

The Postwar Air Force

The Air Force was a new service in 1947, but it was also heir to a
long tradition of segregation. Most of its senior officers, trained in
the Army, firmly supported the Army's policy of racially separate
units and racial quotas. And despite