Note (Back) — CHAPTER 13

The manpower experts had decided that the social complications of such a policy would be negligible—"more imaginary than real." Edwards referred to the Navy's experience with limited integration, which, he judged, had relieved rather than multiplied social tensions between the races. Nevertheless he and his staff proposed "as a conservative but progressive step" toward the integration of living quarters that the Air Force arrange for separate sleeping quarters for blacks and whites. The so-called "barracks problem" was the principal point of discussion within the Air staff, Edwards admitted, and "perhaps the most critical point of the entire policy." He predicted that the trend toward more privacy in barracks, especially the separate cubicles provided in construction plans for new barracks, would help solve whatever problems might arise.[13-87]