Side by Side

"It has been demonstrated that in combat in Korea, Negro soldiers serve more effectively in integrated units." With this terse announcement by the Army, Supreme Commander General Matt Ridgway last week broke up the Army's famous all-Negro 24th Infantry Regiment. Within six months, by his order, all segregated units in the Far East Command, both combat and service, will be abolished, and their men will be moved into units side by side with white troops.

The battle history of the 24th gave solid proof of the military wisdom of Ridgway's order. The 24th, all-Negro (except for officers) since its creation in 1869, stormed up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. In Korea, under a mixture of white and Negro officers, it produced individual heroes (including a Medal of Honor winner), and it routed the North Koreans at Yechon in the first days of the war. But its Korea battle record was spotty; Negro troops in mixed units did better in combat.

Outside Ridgway's command, the services' program to abolish segregated units is moving more slowly: P: The Army, with 180,000 Negroes (12% of its strength), has abolished all segregation in basic training, but carefully divides the troops thereafter into white and Negro units. P: The Navy has about 20,000 Negroes--3.3% of its strength; more than half of them are assigned to the Stewards' branch (cooks, messmen) in which there are only six whites; there are but 27 Negro officers in the Navy, including one lone Annapolis graduate.* P: The Air Force, which has the best record on abolishing segregation, has broken up its all-Negro fighter squadrons, but it still segregates troops at such big Southern fields as Alabama's Maxwell Air Force Base.

*And one naval aviator. Ensign Jesse Leroy Brown, the first of his race, was shot down and killed while flying from the carrier S.S. Leyte in Korea.

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