Note (Back) — CHAPTER 14

The Army's reply was based on the premise that "the Negro strength of the Army must be restricted and that the population ratio is the most equitable method [of] limitation." In fact, the only method of controlling black strength was a numerical quota of original enlistments. The personnel staff argued that enlistment specifically unrestricted by race, as the high rate of unrestricted black reenlistment had demonstrated, would inevitably produce a "very high percentage of Negroes in the Army." A quota based on the classification test scores could not limit sufficiently the number of black enlistments if, as the committee insisted, it required that identical enlistment standards be maintained for both blacks and whites. Looking at the census figure another way, the Army had its own statistics to prove its point. Basing its figures on the number of Negroes who became eighteen each month (11,000), the personnel staff estimated that black enlistments would total from 15 to 20 percent of the Army's monthly strength if an entrance quota was imposed with the cut-off score set at ninety or from 19 to 31 percent if the enlistment standards were lowered to eighty. It also pointed to the experience of the Air Force where with no quotas in the third quarter of 1949 black enlistments accounted for 16.4 percent of the total; even when a GCT quota of 100 was imposed in October and November, 10 percent of all Air Force enlistees were black.[14-124]