Negro 4th Infantry Platoon

Try this; good ol HyperWar.

Employment of Negro Troops

"Preface

Recognizing that the story of Negro participation in military service during World War II was of national interest as well as of great value for future military planning, the Assistant Secretary of War in February 1944 recommended preparation of a book on this subject. The opportunity to undertake it came two years later with the assignment to the Army's Historical Division of the author, then a captain and a man highly qualified by training and experience to write such a work. After careful examination of the sources and reflection Captain Lee concluded that it would be impracticable to write a comprehensive and balanced history about Negro soldiers in a single volume. His plan, formally approved in August 1946, was to focus his own work on the development of Army policies in the use of Negroes in military service and on the problems associated with the execution of these policies at home and abroad, leaving to the authors of other volumes in the Army's World War II series, then taking shape, the responsibility for covering activities of Negroes in particular topical areas.

This definition of the author's objective is needed in order to understand why he has described his work "in no sense a history of Negro troops in World War II." Writing some years ago, he explained: "The purpose of the present volume is to bring together the significant experience of the Army in dealing with an important national question: the full use of the human resources represented by that 10 percent of national population that is Negro. It does not attempt to follow, in narrative form, the participation of Negro troops in the many branches, commands, and units of the Army . . . . A fully descriptive title for the present volume, in the nineteenth century manner, would read: `The U.S. Army and Its Use of Negro Troops in World War II: Problems in the Development and Application of Policy with Some Attention to the Results, Public and Military.' " Thus, in accordance with his objective, the author gives considerably more attention to the employment of Negroes as combat soldiers than to their use as service troops overseas. Even though a large majority of the Negroes sent overseas saw duty in service rather than in combat units, their employment in service forces did not present the same number or degree of problems.

The volume opens with background chapters recalling the experience of Negroes in the Army in World War I, the position of Negroes in the Army between wars, and Army planning for their use in another great war, as well

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as the clash of public and private views over employment of Negroes as soldiers. It continues with chapters on the particular problems associated with absorbing large numbers of Negroes into the Army-the provision of separate facilities for them, their leadership and training difficulties, their physical fitness for service, morale factors influencing their eagerness to serve, and the disorders that attracted so much attention to the problems of their, service. The concluding eight chapters are concerned principally with the employment of Negro soldiers overseas, in ground and air combat units and in service units.

The author wrote most of this volume between 1947 and 1951, and the University of Chicago accepted its opening chapters as a doctoral dissertation. After Dr. Lee left the Army to return to teaching, he revised his work in the light of comments and criticisms received from the many reviewers of his original draft. As revised by Dr. Lee, the work was still too long for publication as a single volume; and in my capacity of General Editor I have reduced the revised manuscript considerably in length and reorganized and consolidated certain of the original chapters. The changes made by me were along lines agreed to in conferences with Dr. Lee and in consonance with his expressed wishes, or at least with my interpretation of them.

Certain other volumes of this series, as planned in 1946, gave particular I attention to the Army's use of Negroes, notably The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops, by Robert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley, and William R. Keast; The Women's Army Cords, by Mattie E. Treadwell; and The Army and Industrial Manpower, by Byron Fairchild and Jonathan Grossman. Bell I. Whey's Army Ground Forces Study No. 36, "The Training of Negro Troops," offers an interesting comparative treatment of that topic. Dennis D. Nelson's study, "The Integration of the Negro into the United States Navy, 1776-1947," deals mostly with the Navy's policies and practices during World War II, and the monograph by Jean Byers, "A Study of the Negro in Military Service," describes policies and practices in both services during the war. The volume by Charles E. Francis, Tuskegee Airmen: The Story of the Negro in the U.S. Air Force (Boston, 1956), and the one by Lee Nichols, Breakthrough on the Color Front (New York, 1954) , offer useful insight into the military service of Negroes during and after the war. The reader is also referred, for more detailed maps of the p, many theaters of war in which Negroes served, to the theater volumes of the Army's World War II series."

Considerably more at the link to HyperWar.

 

This bibliography is pretty substantial. Unfortunately, reading the full article for each item requires a subscription to the service, which only applies to academics. However, I think these titles might be available electronically.
World War II - African American Studies - Oxford Bibliographies