Blacks in military: A 75-year uphill slog

Seventy-five years ago this summer, President Harry Truman ordered integration of the armed services. Historic Executive Order 9981 stemmed from Black Americans’ valorous service during the wars and Truman’s drive to do the right thing. Integration would not occur overnight.

On Guam a year later, 9-year-old me asked my father, Army Maj. Carl Elsea, “Daddy, all the officers in your outfit are white, but all the men who aren’t officers are Black. How come?”

Because the officers went to college while enlisted men didn’t, he said. He might have mentioned the force of tradition and privilege. He might have noted that the new G.I. Bill of Rights was sending some Blacks to college. He might have added that one officer in his outfit, the chaplain, was Black. But sophisticated talk would have sailed right over my head. I did know officers made more money and had better housing. And I wished all the best for my 20-some heroes — players on the all-Black Avengers, the 811th Engineer Aviation Battalion baseball team. I was the team’s proud batboy (appointed by the manager, who was white).

My heroes might have been mediocre on the field, but I knew they were good at their regular Army jobs. Especially Tucker the pitcher. When I went to the dispensary to get penicillin shots for an infected hand, there was white-frocked Tucker, waiting with the needle. It didn’t hurt so much with my hero’s gentle touch. I wondered if Tucker could be a doctor.

A year later my dad and the 811th shipped off to Korea for stressful work on airstrips and bridges, just as it and other all-Black outfits had done in World War II. My Central Pacific baseball thrills were over, but a lifelong fascination with Blacks’ progress in the military remained.

By 1948, word of Black Americans’ part in the war effort had grown so compelling that President Truman signed that integration order. He was outraged at the postwar spectacle in the North and South: People who had fought fascism overseas returning home to encounter violent racism.

Truman said, “My stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten. Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as president I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this.”

Intense as his ordering might have been, Truman left it to commanders to carry it out. They took their time, in some cases reflecting an ages-old mindset.

A 1925 guidance for military officers said “black service members were a class from which we cannot expect to draw leadership material.”

That was four decades after the U.S. Military Academy’s first Black graduate, Henry Flipper, had served as leader of the Buffalo Soldiers, which were historically led by white officers.

As debate over equal opportunity for Black service members heated up, legendary air flight pioneer and war hero Gen. Jimmy Doolittle said, “I am convinced that the solution to the situation is to forget that they are colored.” Noting that industry already was integrating, Doolittle said it would be forced upon the military. “You are merely postponing the inevitable and you might as well take it gracefully.”

Take the ascension of minorities gracefully. Advice for the ages.

Not coincidentally in light of Doolittle’s advice, the Air Force was quicker to integrate than other branches. If the Army had an explanation for keeping outfits such as the 811th segregated during the Korean War, the Navy could merely plead force of tradition in keeping Blacks consigned to steward duties as late as the 1960s. Tradition worked in reverse. A Navy veteran told me that on the ship he served circa 1960, white personnel were not allowed to be stewards.

The last 50 years have seen gains and setbacks. On one hand, the rise of African American Gen. Colin Powell to Joint Chiefs of Staff chair (later secretary of state) and the Gen. Lloyd Austin to first Black secretary of defense. On the other hand, no Black World War II Medal of Honor recipient was named until 1993.

Powell, who never made much of racism encountered in the early days, was annoyed when a white ranking officer made a clumsy attempt at praise, “Damn! You are the best black lieutenant I ever met.”

Today 43 percent of the men and women on active duty are people of color, but the people making crucial decisions as when and where to wage war are overwhelmingly white and male.

And the last several years have seen a rise of racism in the ranks. It parallels a nationwide increase in intolerance and a faltering on the path to a multiracial democracy. A 2018 survey of 1,630 active subscribers of the Military Times found that 36 percent of those polled and 53 percent of minority service members have seen instances of white nationalism or ideologically driven racism among their fellow troops.

That is the reality of Truman’s 1948 integration order. While calling for equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, true equity would prove often elusive. In baseball parlance, an uneven playing field. In infantry terms, a 20-mile march — uphill for people of color.

The equity imbalance returns my thoughts to Tucker the pitcher who worked in the dispensary and stuck needles in my 9-year-old behind. His faded name is on a prized souvenir on my desk — a baseball autographed by members of the 811th Avengers. It has moved around with me 74 years. Was Tucker shooting for a position as field medic or higher?

I like to think Tucker thrived in the military and his descendants, if they also served, found the experience rewarding.

Jerry Elsea is retired after 40 years at The Gazette, the last 15 as opinion page editor.