In 1942, a group of African American sailors were chosen to integrate the Naval Officer Corps, forever changing what was possible in the U.S. Navy
Sam Barnes racked his brain one chilly morning in January 1944, wondering what he might have done wrong. Barnes, a popular African American petty officer working at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois, had been in the Navy for 15 months and had never been disciplined.
Even America’s war enemies, the Japanese, claimed that the so-called freedoms America espoused were for white men only. It was an idea that the NAACP, civil rights leaders and black columnists said was necessary if the United States was truly to stand on the side of democracy. And it was an idea that the Navy’s top brass considered a definite step backward. Major General Thomas Holcomb, commandant of the Marine Corps, called the enlistment of black men “absolutely tragic,” and told the General Board that African Americans had every opportunity “to satisfy their aspiration to serve in the Army.
From right: Nathaniel O. Dyson, Richard Hubbard, and John W. Reagan, three electrician’s mates, listen as Chief Electrician’s Mate John E. Taylor explains the workings of the power system that they would be working with when serving aboard the USS Mason. Reagan would be diverted to officer candidate school shortly after this photo was taken. | National Archives
Many in this first group recalled in interviews and oral histories that their white instructors weren’t all that interested in whether the men passed, failed or learned anything at all. Some instructors, it seemed to the officer candidates, acted as if this whole exercise was a waste of time. Lt. Paul Richmond, who designed the curriculum, was particularly hard on the men, they later said. Richmond, in his own oral history, said he had no malicious intent.
Once, the officer candidates were lined up for a medical exam. “All right, you boys, strip down,” someone yelled. “Everything off. Strip down.” “Stand over there,” came another order. “Stand at attention.” Nothing more than a snicker escaped his peers’ lips, and the white men, furious that they could not get a rise out of the officer candidates, stormed off.
When Arbor walked into Armstrong’s office, he remembered the commander looking him over. “Now, in the event that you would be in a position where there was a colored sailor and a white sailor in a fight, whose side would you take,” Armstrong asked, according to Arbor.“The first thing I would think of to do is as an officer, as has been taught to me,” Arbor continued. “It’s the only thing I could rely on. My personal judgment would not enter into the case.
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