Note (Back) — CHAPTER 9

Of lesser moment because of the small size of the WAVES and the Nurse Corps, the role of black women in the postwar Navy nevertheless concerned several civil rights leaders. Roy Wilkins, for one, concluded that the Navy's new policy which "hasn't worked out on the officer level ... hadn't worked on the women's level" either.[9-47] The Navy's statistics seemed to proved his contention. The service had 68 black enlisted women and 6 officers (including 4 nurses) on V-J day; a year later the number had been reduced to 5 black WAVES and 1 nurse. The Navy sought to defend these statistics against charges of discrimination. A spokesman explained that the paucity of black WAVES resulted from the fact that Negroes were barred from the WAVES until December 1944, just months before the Navy stopped recruiting all WAVES. Black WAVES who had remained in the postwar Navy had been integrated and were being employed without discrimination.[9-48]