ace reduced fighting
potential in a way that never could be justified. The Air Force should
open to its Negroes a wide variety of training, experience, and
opportunity to acquire versatility and proficiency.[11-62]

[Footnote 11-62: Memo, Evans for SecAF, 7 Jun 48, sub:
Negro Air Units, D54-1-12. SecDef files.]

If followed, this program would fundamentally alter Air Force (p. 287)
racial practices. General Edwards recommended that the reply to Evans
should state that certain policy changes would be forthcoming,
although they would have to await the outcome of a departmental
reevaluation currently under way. The suggestions had been solicited
by Symington, and Edwards was anxious for Evans to understand the
delay was not a device to defer action.[11-63]

[Footnote 11-63: DCofS/P Summary Sheet for CofS, 15
Jul 48, sub: Negro Air Units, Negro Affairs 1948,
SecAF files.]

[Illustration: GENERAL EDWARDS.]

Edwards was in a position to make such assurances. He was an
influential member of the Air staff with considerable experience in
the field of race relations. As a member of the Army staff during
World War II he had worked closely with the old McCloy committee on
black troops and had strongly advocated wartime experiments with the
integration of small-scale units.[11-64] His background, along with his
observations as chief personnel officer in the new Air Force, had
taught him to avoid abstract appeals to justice and to make
suggestions in terms of military efficiency. Concern with efficiency
led him, soon after the Air Force became a separate service, to order
Lt. Col. Jack F. Marr, a member of his staff, to study the Air Force's
racial policy and practices. Testifying to Edwards's pragmatic
approach, Marr later said of his own introduction to the subject:
"There was no sociology involved. It was merely a routine staff action
along with a bunch of other staff actions that were taking place."[11-65]

[Footnote 11-64: During World War II, Edwards served
as the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3. For a
discussion of his opposition at that time to the
concentration of large groups of men in categories
IV and V, see Edwin W. Kenworthy, "The Case Against
Army Segregation," _The Annals of the American