Table Of ContentUNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
Special Studies
THE EMPLOYMENT OF
NEGRO TROOPS
by
Ulysses Lee
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON D. c., 2001
Foreword
To the First Paperback Edition
As in the case of some other titles in the United States Army in
World War II series, Ulysses Lee's The Employment of Negro Troops has
been long and widely recognized as a standard work on its subject. Al-
though revised and consolidated before publication, the study was writ-
ten largely between 1947 and 1951. If the now much-cited title has an
echo of an earlier period, that very echo testifies to the book's rather
remarkable twofold achievement: that Lee wrote it when he did, well
before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and that its reputa-
tion—for authority and objectivity—has endured so well.
The U.S. Army Center of Military History thus takes pleasure in
publishing this first paperback edition of a landmark study in military
and social history. As a key source for understanding the integration of
the Army, Dr. Lee's work eminently deserves a continuing readership.
Washington, D.C. HAROLD W. NELSON
14 April 1994 Brigadier General, USA
Chief of Military History
The Author
Ulysses Lee, now Professor of English at Morgan State College, Balti-
more, was a member of the Office of the Chief of Military History from
1946 to 1952, concluding a decade of active Army officer service in ranks
from first lieutenant to major. In World War II he served as an Education
Officer and Editorial Analyst in the field and in the headquarters of Army
Service Forces; for seven years thereafter he was the military history
specialist on Negroes in the Army and prepared this volume.
A graduate of Howard University, Dr. Lee taught at Lincoln University,
Pennsylvania, and attended the University of Chicago as a Rosenwald Fel-
low between 1936 and his entry into military service in 1942. He received
his doctorate in the history of culture from the University of Chicago in
1953, and from then until going to Morgan in 1956 he taught at Lincoln
University, Missouri. Co-editor of The Negro Caravan, an anthology of
writings by American Negroes published in 1941, he was author-editor of
the Army Service Forces manual, Leadership and the Negro Soldier,
published in 1944, and has been the author of many reviews and articles
published before and since. Dr. Lee has also been associate editor of The
Midwest Journal of the College Language Association and a member of the
editorial board of The Journal of Negro History.
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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 Histori-
cal 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 im-
practcable 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 ex-
ecution 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 under-
stand 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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