Three-Way Standoff: Implementation of Racial Integration in the Army as a Case Study of Civil-Military Relations

On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, mandating “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”  President Truman also established the Committee for Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services to review and recommend changes to military regulations and policies in order to implement Executive Order 9981 as quickly as possible while not impairing efficiency or morale.  The Committee for Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, commonly referred to as the Fahy Committee, held its first hearings in January 1949 and issued its final written report, Freedom to Serve, in May 1950.  For those sixteen months, the United States Army offered sharp resistance to the Fahy Committee’s effort to integrate African Americans on a wide-scale.  The Army viewed maintaining maximum levels of combat effectiveness as the most important objective and that forced integration of African American and white soldiers would lead to poor morale, loss of unit capability and racial discord.  The Secretary of Defense, Louis A. Johnson, viewed his primary objective as balancing implementation of the President’s Executive Order with maintaining the Army’s support for contentious large-scale reductions in defense budget, troop levels, and capabilities underway in the aftermath of World War II.  This paper examines how the intersection of the competing interests of the Fahy Committee, the US Army, and the Secretary of Defense illustrates the tensions inherent with our system of civilian control over the military.