Note (Back) — CHAPTER 7

Despite the relaxation in the distinction between attached and assigned status in the case of large black units, the Army staff remained adamantly opposed to the combination of small black with small white units. The Personnel and Administration Division jealously guarded the orthodoxy of this interpretation. Commenting on one proposal to combine small units in April 1948, General Paul noted that while grouping units of company size or greater was permissible, the Army had not yet reached the stage where two white companies and two black companies could be organized into a single battalion. Until the process of forming racially composite units developed to this extent, he told the Under Secretary of the Army, William H. Draper, Jr., the experimental mixing of small black and white units had no place in the program to expand the use of Negroes in the Army.[7-77] He did not say when such a process would become appropriate or possible. Several months later Paul flatly told the Chief of Staff that integration of black and white platoons in a company was precluded by stated Army policy.[7-78]