Note (Back) — CHAPTER 19

On 30 October 1954 the Secretary of Defense announced that the last racially segregated unit in the armed forces of the United States had been abolished.[19-1] Considering the department's very conservative definition of a segregated unit—one at least 50 percent black—the announcement celebrated a momentous change in policy. In the little more than six years since President Truman's order, all black servicemen, some quarter of a million in 1954, had been intermingled with whites in the nation's military units throughout the world. For the services the turbulent era of integration had begun.