Answer:
The path to official integration began with the signing of Executive Order 8802 by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1941. It signaled the end of racial discrimination in the U.S. defense industry, but the armed forces generally hewed to a policy of segregation throughout the duration of World War II. The efforts of the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph spurred President Truman to extend the protections afforded to African Americans in the civilian Department of Defense to the uniformed military. In April 1946 a review board chaired by Gen. Alvan Gillem, Jr., advised that the U.S. Army’s policy should be to “eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race.” While the Gillem Board did not specifically endorse integration, it did note that the army had already desegregated its hospitals because of the unnecessary cost and inefficiency created by the maintenance of separate facilities for white and black patients
Later in 1946 Truman convened the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. That group’s landmark report, To Secure These Rights, was published in October 1947. It proposed “to end immediately all discrimination and segregation based on race, color, creed, or national origin, in the organization and activities of all branches of the Armed Services.” Facing resistance from Southern senators, Truman circumvented a threatened Senate filibuster by issuing Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, integrating the armed forces and establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, an advisory body tasked with determining the best possible way to implement the new policy.
