Eyewitness to Desegregation
by Adam Durnford
Executive Order 9981: integration in the U.S. armed forces (source: Encyclopædia Britannica)
Elijah Burney
December 16, 1921 - May 18, 2004
Elijah Burney was born in Brundidge, Alabama in 1921. His generation was destined for the largest conflict in human history. Burney was a black man, and stories like his are often overlooked. Elijah Burney’s highest education was grammar school. He had work experience as a tinsmith, coppersmith, and sheet metal worker.[1] In 1940, Burney enlisted into the U.S. Army.[2] The same year, Congress—aware of an impending conflict—passed the Selective Service and Training Act. This was the first peacetime draft in US history. At the time of this draft, each branch of the military had an “unwritten but official Negro Policy.”[3] It limited the number of African Americans in the Armed Forces, and relegated them primarily to labor units. The quota in the Army was 9% black troops.[4] Additionally, all branches of the military were segregated. Pseudo-scientific theories on race promulgated stereotypes that blacks were unfit for combat. Black soldiers were thus to be led by white officers. While the Army had a limited number of black officers serving as chaplains and doctors, combat leadership roles were entrusted to whites.[5]
Burney was assigned to a unit based on race rather than qualifications. The segregated units fostered demoralization amongst black troops, in addition to racism from the white officers. Segregation also caused discontinuity within the purported mission of defeating fascism and preserving freedom and democracy. In other words, black troops were preserving a democracy that did not consider them full citizens. This inconsistency led to the adoption of the “Double V Campaign” amongst black America. World War II was seen as a two-front war: battling the Axis abroad and Jim Crow at home. This campaign was carried out by black troops and the black press. The mainstream white press by and large had a policy of whitewashing black soldiers from news stories because they might “alarm white readers.”[6] This lack of news coverage was used to confirm stereotypes that blacks were “unfit to fight.”[7] But black newspapers battled these stereotypes with illustrations of African American valor on the battlefield, and by providing photos of the soldiers fighting for their country. In 1942, President Roosevelt created the Office of War Information (OWI) in an Executive Order. The OWI was to be used as part of the propaganda wing, producing many iconic war time photographs. In an attempt to boost black morale, the OWI featured figures such as legendary boxer Joe Louis in military garb. The OWI did not, however, do anything more substantive to challenge segregation.[8] Army leadership reinforced the system and stereotypes that Elijah Burney contended with as even Secretary of War Henry Stimson proclaimed blacks incapable of mastering “the weapons of modern war” in addition to lacking “moral and mental qualifications” for combat.[9]
After his service in the Second World War, on December 25, 1945, Burney went on to reenlist at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. Records indicate that Burney went into the Quartermaster Corps of the regular Army, now bound for the “Hawaiian Department.” This command oversaw all U.S. actions in the Pacific at the time. The name would soon be changed to Army Forces Middle Pacific. As a member of the Quartermaster Corps, Burney would be involved in logistics, crucial to the development and maintenance of “Pipelines,” that is “the flow of personnel, ordinance, food and other commodities.”[10]
By 1948, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, meant to establish a plan to end segregation in all branches of the military. The order read: “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the president that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”[11] Army leadership and Southern newspapers alike condemned the proposition of desegregation. The Montgomery Advisor, for example, said the order was of “raw and repugnant character.”[12] Why Truman decided to issue this order is a complicated question. General Colin Powell gave a lecture on the subject in 1998. He explains that the early civil rights movement played a vital role. Wartime black migration from the south to the north brought with it new political and economic power to the African American community. Civil rights organizations like the NAACP and National Urban League started to hold protests and demonstrations. Great leaders such as Thurgood Marshall came forward, and “blacks began to apply political pressure.”[13] President Truman certainly saw the “political value” of a strong civil rights platform. His Republican opponents in the upcoming election ran on a platform “strictly opposed to racial segregation in the U.S. armed services.”[14] While endorsing civil rights alienated Southern “Dixiecrat” Democrats, Truman’s move paid off and he won the election. In addition to political pressure and political value, General Powell asserts that Truman, in spite of a past of racist views, “believed that every citizen of America should benefit from [the] Constitution or we were living a lie.”[15]
The Army proved more resistant to this new policy than the Navy and the newly established Airforce. By 1950, the Army did do away with the racial quotas used in World War II, but segregated units remained.[16] In June of that year, Soviet trained North Korean troops stormed through South Korean defenses. Among others, three segregated units—all garrisons from Japan—were scrambled to Korea. Concerning the quartermaster corps’ role, there were two major U.S. pipelines in the Korean War. The first was Japan to Korea. This route brought personnel and supplies to the warfront, and supplied the Navy and Airforce with what was necessary to carry out missions. The second pipeline was from the U.S. to Japan. This transported personnel and goods across the “enormous distance” of the Pacific.[17] It is very possible that Burney, a quartermaster corps private of the Pacific command, was involved in either of these pipelines.
Elijah Burney served in a segregated unit, evident by the timeline and branch of his service.He survived the war and witnessed the end of military segregation.High casualty rates demanded that depleted units be filled with whomever was available.Since 12.8% of all draftees from 1951-54 were black, a sizeable number of black servicemen were assigned to “all white units.”[18]This was the result of necessity rather than a philosophy of equality.Nevertheless, black troops would prove themselves to be gallant soldiers in the Korean War and conflicts that followed.Elijah Burney’s service ended on July 17th of 1952.[19] He eventually moved to Colorado and remained there until his death in 2004.
Footnotes ↓
[1] “U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946,” database, “Elijah Burney (b 16 Dec 1921),” Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005.
[2] “U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010,” database, “Elijah Burney (b 16 Dec 1921),” Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
[3] Kimberly Phillips, WAR! What is it Good For?: Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 22.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 23.
[6] Ibid., 25.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 27.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Max Hermanson, “United States Military Logistics in the First Part of the Korean War,” (Dissertation in History, University of Oslo, 2000,) Chapter 1: Introduction.
[11] Colin Powell, “President Truman and the Desegregation of the Armed Forces: A 50th Anniversary View of Executive Order 9981,” (Washington, D.C.: National Legal Center for the Public Interest, 1998), 10.
[12] Phillips, WAR! What is it Good For?, 121.
[13] Colin Powell, “President Truman and the Desegregation of the Armed Forces: A 50th Anniversary View of Executive Order 9981,” (Washington, D.C.: National Legal Center for the Public Interest, 1998), 10.
[14] Jeremy P. Maxwell, Brotherhood in Combat: How African Americans Found Equality in Korea and Vietnam (Norman: University Oklahoma Press, 2018), 45.
[15] Colin Powell, “President Truman and the Desegregation of the Armed Forces: A 50th Anniversary View of Executive Order 9981,” (Washington, D.C.: National Legal Center for the Public Interest, 1998), 15.
[16] Maxwell, Brotherhood in Combat, 50.
[17] Hermanson, “United States Military Logistics in the First Part of the Korean War.”
[18] Maxwell, Brotherhood in Combat, 63.
[19] “U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010,” database, “Elijah Burney (b 16 Dec 1921),” Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
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