Note (Back) — CHAPTER 3

The Bureau of Navigation, which was charged with primary responsibility for all personnel matters, was opposed to change in the racial composition of the Navy. Less than two weeks after Knox's appointment, it prepared for his signature a letter to Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti of New York defending the Navy's policy. The bureau reasoned that since segregation was impractical, exclusion was necessary. Experience had proved, the bureau claimed, that when given supervisory responsibility the Negro was unable to maintain discipline among white subordinates with the result that teamwork, harmony, and ship's efficiency suffered. The Negro, therefore, had to be segregated from the white sailor. All-black units were impossible, the bureau argued, because the service's training and distribution system demanded that a man in any particular rating be available for any duty required of that rating in any ship or activity in the Navy. The Navy had experimented with segregated crews after World War I, manning one ship with an all-Filipino crew and another with an all-Samoan crew, but the bureau was not satisfied with the result and reasoned that ships with black crews would be no more satisfactory.[3-6]