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[[image - black & white photograph of people playing bingo in crowded service club]]
[[caption]] Bingo night at Benning's No. 4 Service Club is a favorite with GI's and gals. Since Columbus has little recreation for Negroes, clubs are very popular. [[/caption]]

What are the issues in the Army? How far can a commanding general take integration on a post?

● There is still a wide gap between Army policy and Army performance. Separate infantry and artillery battalions of Negro troops, with separate quarters and only token integration of Negro and white officers, remain the rule at many Army posts. In auxiliary units integration on an individual level has begun. And it is the trend begun in these auxiliaries which seems certain to establish a pattern for all.

Some Army commanders have time and again raised the old fears that mixing the Negro and white soldiers indiscriminately in the same units will "impair fighting morale." They have claimed that integration of "so large a mass of Negroes as are in the Army" is more difficult than in the Navy and Air Force with their fewer numbers. These are old dodges without foundation in fact. The facts are that the Air Force has integrated fully 25 thousand Negro airmen on an individual level without a single serious incident. The reason for Air Force success can be found in such blunt and forthright comment as that made by Air Force Major General Laurence S. Kuter who wrote every officer in his command as follows: "Selected and qualified Negro officers and men will be assigned to duty throughout the Air Force without regard to race . . . Commanders who cannot cope with the integration of Negroes into formerly white units or activities will have no place in the Air Force structure."

Within the month after this story is published the Fahy Committee, established by President Truman, is expected to report on execution of the integration policy. The firm attitude of the President, his Secretary of Defense, and the work of this Committee are factors which face recalcitrant Army Commanders unable to cope with the problem of complete integration. Dynamic public opinion inside (two out of three white soldiers do not oppose integration) and outside also faces them across their "Maginot Line" of prejudice. And these are factors which make it possible to predict that within a matter of months (possibly at Ft. Lewis) we will have the first completely racially mixed battalion.

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OUR WORLD June   PAGE 21