Note (Back) — CHAPTER 17

The second problem, integration of units throughout the command, proved more difficult and time-consuming. Ridgway considered the need most urgent in the infantry units and wanted their integration to take precedence. The 3d Battalion of the 9th Infantry was reorganized first, many of its black members scattered throughout other infantry units in the 2d Division. But then things got out of phase. To speed the process the Army staff dropped its plan for inactivating all segregated units and decided simply to remove the designation "segregated" and assign white soldiers to formerly all-black units. Before this form of integration could take place in the 3d Battalion, 15th Infantry, the last major black infantry unit, the 64th Tank Battalion and the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion began the process of shifting their black troops to nearby white units. The 77th Engineer Combat Company was the last combat unit to lose the asterisk, the Army's way of designating a unit black.[17-57] The command was originally committed to an Army contingency plan that would transfer black combat troops found superfluous to the newly integrated units to service units, but this proved unnecessary. All segregated combat troops were eventually assigned to integrated combat units.[17-58]