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the only job qualification is ability. In a racial unit there is the additional qualification of color. If a first-rate Negro officer or specialist cannot be found for the job, then it must be filled by a second-, third-, or fourth-rate man, for the Table of Organization and Equipment requires that the job be filled and racial policy insists it must be filled by a Negro. The reverse side of the segregation coin was brought home to the Air Force most sharply when it formed the 477th Bombardment Group fairly late in the war. Since most of the more highly qualified Negroes were already in the services, the Air Force, in order to man the group, had to accept many men who did not come close to meeting Air Force standards.

In the two years following the war a number of memoranda were prepared by Air Force staff agencies, recommending that Negro airmen, like white, be used solely on the basis of their individual qualifications, and that no Air Force jobs carry a color bar. But these same memoranda were equally insistent that segregation must be maintained because of social custom and the possibility of difficulty if Negro and white airmen were placed in the same unit.

The authors of these memoranda had clearly recognized the waste of skilled Negro manpower. They had not yet arrived at a point where they saw that this waste could not be repaired within a framework of segregation.

The Air Force Adopts a New Policy

The Air Force remained impaled on the points of this dilemma until the President issued Executive Order 9981 in July 1948. Spurred by this order, the Air Force set to work to evolve a policy which would simultaneously improve the efficiency of the service and extend equality of treatment and opportunity to all personnel.

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