t with black leaders at the National Defense Conference on
Negro Affairs in April 1948, but his audience also showed little
interest in future intentions. Putting it bluntly, they wanted to know
why segregation was necessary in the Air Force. Zuckert could only
assure them that segregation was a "practical military expediency,"
not an "endorsement of belief in racial distribution."[11-57] But the
black leaders pressed the matter further. Why was it expedient in a
system dedicated to consideration of the individual, asked the
president of Howard University, to segregate a Negro of superior
mentality? At Yale or Harvard, Dr. Mordecai Johnson continued, he
would be kept on the team, but if he entered the Air Force he would be
"brigaded with all the people from Mississippi and Alabama who had had
education that costs $100 a year."[11-58]

[Footnote 11-57: Department of National Defense,
"National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs," 26
Apr 48 (morning session) p. 62. The conference,
convened by Secretary of Defense Forrestal,
provided an opportunity for a group of black
leaders to question major defense officials on the
department's racial policies. See ch. 13.]

[Footnote 11-58: Department of National Defense,
"National Defense Conference on Negro Affairs," 28
Apr 48, (morning session), p. 67.]

Answering for the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Idwal H. Edwards, the Deputy
Chief of Staff for Personnel, admitted segregation was unnecessary,
promised eventual integration, but stated firmly that for the present
segregation remained Air Force policy. As evidence of progress, (p. 286)
Edwards pointed to the peaceful integration of black officers in
training at Randolph Field. For one conferee this "progress" led to
another conclusion: resistance to integration had to emanate from the
policymakers, not from the fighting men. All Edwards could manage in
the way of a reply was that Air Force policy was considered "the best
way to make this thing work under present conditions."[11-59] Later
Edwards, who was not insensitive to the arguments of the black
leaders, told Secretary of the Air Force W. Stuart Symington that
perhaps some recommendation "looking toward the integration of whites
and negroes in the same units may be forthcoming" from the Air Boa