Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces

A series of policies were formerly issued by the U.S. military which entailed the separation of white and non-white American soldiers, prohibitions on the recruitment of people of color and restrictions of ethnic minorities to supporting roles.

Since the American Revolutionary War, each branch of the United States Armed Forces implemented differing policies surrounding racial segregation.

[5] This order was short lived; due to a shortage in manpower, as well as the recruitment of fugitive slaves by British forces, Washington relented and allowed Black men to serve in the Continental Army.

Enslaved Black soldiers in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which contained a large number of African Americans, were freed at the end of the conflict.

After the passage of the Militia Acts of 1792, the U.S. Army refused to enlist black men, and, with very few exceptions, the prohibition remained in effect until the second year of the Civil War.

At the start of the war, a Louisiana Confederate militia unit composed of free black soldiers from the extensive New Orleans Creoles of color was raised, but the Confederacy refused their service.

[12] During the Spanish–American War (1898), the Illinois 8th Infantry National Guard was federalized, and made history when its all-African-American officer corps led the unit in the combat zone.

The Philippine Scouts were known as highly proficient soldiers with low desertion rates; their regiment lasted until the end of World War II, in which they were compelled to surrender to Japanese troops due to a dearth of resources and numbers.

Despite expressed opposition to military training for black Americans by white supremacist politicians such as Sen. James K. Vardaman (D-MS) and Sen. Benjamin Tillman (D-SC), Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May 1917.

[15] Draft board officials were instructed to tear off the lower left corner of the Selective Service forms filled out by black registrants to mark these for segregated units.

[24] Because of this resistance to the Army's treatment of its black soldiers, military leadership began to attempt to address the issue beginning in 1943, but segregation in the armed forces remained official policy until 1948.

A military board was convened in June 1942 to address the issue, but their final report opposed forming a Nisei unit, citing "the universal distrust in which they [Japanese Americans] are held.

He ordered: "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.

[37] The Army was especially resistant to the order, and only cooperated when a shortage of troops in the Korean War required that black soldiers serve alongside their white counterparts.

One scholar argued that, in being forced to actively root out institutional racial tensions, "the military radically revised the moral contract governing relations between it and its members.

[40] Throughout the Vietnam War, African American soldiers were more likely to be drafted, maintained higher casualty rates, and went for the most part unsung and underrepresented in popular culture.

[44] During World War II, the Army Air Service needed more people, and recruited black men to train as pilots in the Tuskegee Airmen program.

[47] Though their white counterparts had been sent overseas after comparably less training (some as little as five weeks), African American pilots had been given extensive instruction on radio communication, radar, combat, night flying, forced marches, and much more.

Michael Shiner, a black man who worked in the Washington DC Navy yard in the early to mid 19th century, chronicled the War of 1812, as well as the racial tension of the era, in his diary.

The fortuitous discovery of a remarkable letter from Commodore Lewis Warrington, dated 17 September 1839, gives a better picture of the recruitment of African Americans during this period.

The ranking and status of black crew members depended on whether they had come on board as free or formerly enslaved, with the latter classified as "Boys" and given lower pay and rating.

Martin served with the Marine platoon on the Reprisal for a year and a half, involved in hard ship-to-ship fighting, but was lost with the rest of his unit when the brig sank in October 1777.

Unlike the United States Army which had separate regiments that a soldier could remain in for his entire military career, Marines were individually transferred to various ship's detachments and naval bases.

In June 1940, the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, published a declaration that the fighting around the world was certainly bad, "but the hysterical cries of the preachers of democracy for Europe leave us cold.

"[87] In 1941, civil rights activists Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and A. J. Muste pushed Roosevelt to order fair employment for blacks in the federal government.

After the activists threatened to march on Washington D.C. in July 1941, Roosevelt - faced with a public relations disaster for his presidency and wanting to unite all Americans in striving towards defeating fascism - issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941, which ordered the elimination of racial discrimination from federal departments, agencies, the military, and private defense contractors, after which the planned march was cancelled.

To make this battalion self-supporting, Holcomb determined that it would contain a rifle company, special weapons platoons, and a light tank platoon—all manned by black Marines.

The Field Depot Marines are recorded as again having humped ammunition, to the front lines on the stretchers they brought the wounded back on and picked up rifles to become infantrymen.

In January 1949, the Fahy Committee (nicknamed after its chairman) met to hear concerns by armed forces' leaders about the new executive order, and both the Army and the Marine Corps leadership defended their practices of segregation.

[84] By 1960, full integration of the races had been completed by the USMC, but racial tensions flared up through the next decade, a period of civil rights activism in the larger society.