Note (Back) — CHAPTER 14

If efficiency was to be the keynote of the committee's investigation, Davenport explained, it would be a simple thing to prove that the Army was acting inefficiently. In a morning of complex testimony replete with statistical analysis of the Army's manpower management, he and Maj. James D. Fowler, a black West Point graduate and personnel officer, provided the committee with the needed breakthrough. Step by step they led Fahy and his associates through the complex workings of the Army's career guidance program, showing them how segregation caused the inefficient use of manpower on several counts.[14-48] The Army, for example, as part of a continuing effort to find men who could be trained for specialties in which it had a shortage of men, published a monthly list, the so-called "40 Report," of its authorized and actual strength in each of its 490 military occupational specialties. Each of these specialties was further broken down by race. The committee learned that no authorization existed at all for Negroes in 198 of these specialties, despite the fact that in many of them the Army was under its authorized strength. Furthermore, for many of the specialties in which there were no authorizations for Negroes no great skill was needed. In short, it was the policy of segregated service that allowed the Army, which had thousands of jobs unfilled for lack of trained specialists, to continue to deny training and assignment to thousands of Negroes whose aptitude test scores showed them at least minimally suited for those jobs. How could the Army claim that it was operating efficiently when a shortage existed and potentially capable persons were being ignored?