Double V: The Civil Rights Struggle of the Tuskegee Airmen

5. The Negro Aviator and the Military

Chapter 5 The Negro Aviator and the Military B y 1937, the threatening Nazi movement displayed aggression by overtaking Austria, the Japanese invaded Manchuria and Indochina, the Italians occupied Ethiopia, and the Axis pact was signed by all three countries. The colonizing countries of Western Europe, particularly France and England, began to prepare for war.l Although the contiguous United States was not immediately vulnerable to attack from Axis members, it had a vested interest in its Negro "protectorates ," such as the Philippines, Hawaii, Midway Island, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Panama, and Liberia.2 In response to the aggression of the Axis powers, the War Department secretly devised a troop mobilization plan that could be implemented, if forced into war. In 1937, the U.S. regular army troop strength was at 165,000, and less than 2 percent, or about 3,000 troops, were Negro. All of the Negroes were concentrated in two cavalry regiments and two infantry regiments, with service units attached.3 By 1931, Negro troop strength within these four regiments had been reduced, as a result of a 1926 congressional allotment for the expansion of the Army Air Corps.4 The Air Corps allotment was acquired by extracting funds from other branches of the army. The reduction in allocation forced a downsizing of the four Negro regiments, causing a reduction in force. Therefore, Negro troops suffered a disproportionate reduction in force, when compared with white troops, because they had no other options in the regular army. In addition, Negro soldiers who were mustered out were barred from entering the Air Corps.5 According to the 1937 Mobilization Plan, the War Department called for an increase in the quota of African Americans in the regular army. According to Ulysses G. Lee's "Employment of Negro Troops in World 77 78 Double V War II," the plan recommended that Negroes and whites be mobilized in proportion to their respective populations. If there was a mobilization effort, Mrican Americans would be guaranteed at least 9.5 percent of the population that constituted the American troop strength.6 To accomplish this, the War Department would have to add more l\;egro units in order to have an army proportionately representative of the Negro population in the country. The army would have to recruit and enlist more Negroes than whites, initially, on the designation of an emergency mobilization, in order to have a racially representative quota of Negroes.7 African Americans would be assigned to Infantry, the Cavalry, Artillery, Harbor Defense, Service Battalions, and Overhead Battalions.s However, there were no plans for separate Negro combat units above the designation of regiment. Allegedly, the War Department feared that Negro combat battalions could be attached to white units where Negroes were not wanted by white officers who practiced bigotry or by those who benefited by itY Many officers in the army, the majority of whom were from the South, believed in the stereotypes perpetuated by the Army War College studies of the Negro soldier produced in the previous decade and the War College Reports of 1936. The War College studies and reports were, primarily, unscientific surveys and interviews of white officers who commanded Negro troops in World War 1.10 According to the studies, Mrican-American soldiers were "child-like," "careless," "shiftless ," "irresponsible," "secretive," "superstitious," "unmoral and untruthful ," and "more likely to be guilty of moral turpitude." The Negro soldier was also branded as "a comic," "emotionally unstable," "musically inclined, with good rhythm," and "if fed, loyal and compliant."ll The most damaging findings in the so-called studies were those that depicted the Negro soldier, especially the officer, as "lacking in physical courage and psychological characteristics" which made the Negro soldier "inherently inferior" and caused the Negro soldier to "lack confidence in his colored officer. "12 The study also concluded that the Negro was intellectually inferior to the white man because his brain weighed thirty-five ounces contrasted with forty-five ounces for whites. This particular finding provided the army with a convenient and "scientific" explanation for the poor scores on army intelligence tests given to Negro inductees. Since the majority of Negroes scored in the lower percentiles, the army believed that the Negro soldier could only perform labor duty.13 The studies simply reflected the ignorance of men purporting to be intelligent officers. Despite strong evidence and support of the gallant The Negro Aviator and the Military 79 service...