Separate and Unequal This page intentionally left blank Separate and Unequal Black Americans and the US Federal Government Desmond King CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX26DP Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Desmond King 1995 First published 1995 First issued as paperback 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographcs rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data King, Desmond S. Separate and unequal: Black Americans and the US federal government / Desmond King. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Afro-Americans in the civil service. 2. Afro-Americans— Segregation. 3. United States—Armed Forces—Afro-Americans. 4. United States—Race relations. I. Title. JK723.A34K56 1995 331.6′396073—dc20 95-5865 ISBN 0-19-828016-5 ISBN 0-19-829249-X (Pbk.) To the Memory of Kieran Hickey 1936–1993 Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful to the following institutions for providing grants without which the research for this study could not have been undertaken: the British Academy; the Mellon Fund at the University of Oxford; and St John's College, Oxford. I wish to thank the many archivists and librarians in those American and British archives and libraries listed at the end of the book for their assistance in locating material for this study. I should like also to thank the staff at Rhodes House Library, Oxford, for their courteous and professional assistance in locating material. Eric Foner and an anonymous reader read the manuscript for Oxford University Press. They provided encouraging and valuable responses. I am especially grateful to Eric Foner for his detailed observations and unfailingly constructive comments. At Oxford University Press, Tim Barton and his staff have been impressively professional and supportive in overseeing the production of the book. I am grateful to the following colleagues and friends in the United States and Britain for taking the time to discuss, comment upon, or read material for this project in various drafts (and none of whom can of course be held responsible for misjudgements or errors which remain): Nigel Bowles, Michael Burleigh, Carolyn Cowey, Jonah Edelman, David Goldey, Ira Katznelson, Daniel Kryder, Ross McKibbin, Byron Shafer, Robert Singh, Alan Ware, Margaret Weir, Gavin Williams, and Stewart Wood. In addition to reading portions of the manuscript, Carolyn Cowey has provided invaluable moral support during its drafting. The book is dedicated to the late Kieran Hickey. Kieran, a professional film-maker and historian, was an old and deeply lamented friend. I learned of Kieran's tragically premature death while in Washington working on this project, after a day spent researching in the National Archives and about to visit the cinema. My appreciation of, and engagement in, both activities owe much to Kieran's friendship and the dedication is a small token of that gratitude. Preface This book was prompted by my earlier project on Federal welfare and training programmes in the United States. While researching for that book I became aware of the disparities in the opportunities available to White citizens in the US Federal government compared to those offered to comparably qualified Black Americans. Black Americans were, for example, effectively excluded from federally funded apprenticeship programmes, and few Black Americans achieved senior positions in the Federal civil service before the 1960s. Not only were Black employees in the Federal civil service likely to have been relegated to lower positions and to have been disadvantaged by recruitment procedures and consignment to segregated units, but for many of their fellow citizens outside public employment, the US government constituted a powerful institution upholding arrangements privileging Whites and discriminating against Blacks. In the eight decades before 1964, the Federal government used its power and authority to support segregated race relations. Historically, the segregation of Black American citizens in the Federal bureaucracy is a major but neglected aspect of the US Federal government, with implications for both the position of these citizens in the United States and the character of the state. In Chapter 1, post-Reconstruction race relations are discussed, segregation is defined, and the legal and political factors permitting its dissemination outlined. The major themes advanced in the study are specified: first, segregated race relations were inherently unequal in their treatment of Black Americans both in the Federal government and through Federal programmes in society. Second, the Federal government played a role in sustaining and fostering segregated race relations to an extent little acknowledged by scholars. Third, the universality of segregated race relations in the Federal government is often overlooked by a disproportionate emphasis upon their presence in the South. Chapter 2 then analyses the difficulties facing Black Americans attempting to join the civil service and the inadequacy of the US Civil Service Commission's monitoring of both recruitment and promotion. In Chapter 3, I present an occupational profile of the almost universally lowly positions attained by Black employees in government, and use hearings from the FEPC (and its successor bodies) to examine how discrimination flourished within the ‘separate but equal’ framework. By examining Federal government departments and programmes, it is possible to establish how far more fully national was the accommodation with segregation. Chapter 4 examines segregation in the military and resistance to its abolition. Chapter 5 analyses segregation in Federal prisons, institutions which reproduced viii PREFACE segregationist pressures, even in those penitentiaries located in parts of the country outside the South. In Chapter 6, I examine how the intervention of the American Federal government in society reproduced the inequalities associated with segregation, taking as examples Federal housing programmes and employment exchange services. Both Federal mortgage assistance programmes and public housing dwellings mirrored the segregationist order in which they were installed, consolidating, not threatening, residential separation by race. The USES's field offices were, notoriously, segregated in the facilities provided for Black American and White job-seekers, and in the staff hired to administer them. In the concluding chapter, I report the transformation in the position of Black Americans in the Federal government since the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Black employees now occupy a different occupational profile in Federal agencies. The United States has a remarkable capacity, demonstrated by its history, to absorb and transcend social and political problems. In part, this ability reflects the principles and values bequeathed Americans by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution of 1787. Although this document has been exploited by proponents of segregation and discrimination, it has also provided a set of entrenched rights to which Black Americans have turned, and subsequently successfully mobilized, to advance their interests and to establish their equality. Citizens of other countries can rightly look with envy to these entrenched rights afforded American citizens. This study demonstrates also how Americans are prepared to consider their history critically and are willing to provide uncensored access to the documents mandatory for such appraisals. The archival material, reported in the ensuing chapters, provides diverse and rich sources with which to study Black American employees' role in, and relationship to, the Federal government. It includes the papers of Racial Relations Advisers in Federal departments, the records and annual reports of government departments such as the Federal and Public Housing Authorities and the US Bureau of Prisons; the records of the US Civil Service Commission; President's Franklin Roosevelt's FEPC, the FEB, and its successor bodies—the President's Committee on Government Employment Policy (1955–61) and the President's Committee on Equal Opportunity Policy (1961–4); the proceedings of President Truman's investigatory committees on civil rights, the Armed Services, and government contracts; and the studies of interest groups working in behalf of Black Americans, such as the NAACP and the NUL.1 This sort of material imposes two limits on the study: first, I do not attempt a comprehensive survey of Black American employment in, and experience of, all Federal government agencies but concentrate on a selected sample. Second, the scope of the study is affected by the fact that much of the archival material relates to the years between 1933 and the