Note (Back) — CHAPTER 14

Specifically, the committee wanted no enlistment to be decided by race. The Army would open all enlistments to anyone who scored ninety or above, limiting the number of blacks and whites scoring between eighty and eighty-nine to 13.4 percent of the total Army strength, a percentage based on World War II strengths. With rare exception it would close enlistment to anyone who scored less than eighty. Applying this formula to the current Army, 611,400 men on 31 March 1949, and assessing the number of men from seventeen to thirty-four years old in the national population, the committee projected a total of 65,565 Negroes in the Army, almost exactly 10 percent of the Army's strength. In a related statistical report prepared by Davenport, the committee offered figures demonstrating that the higher black reenlistment rates would not increase the number of black soldiers.[14-123]