Memorandum from Philleo Nash to Clark Clifford

THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON September 2, 1948. MEMORANDUM FOR THE HONORABLE CLARK M. CLIFFORD: TRUMAN NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECERDS SERVICE Ks The attached report to the Secretary of the Army from his Civilian Aide, summarizing the status of Negro troops in the Department of the Army as the draft begins, is fundamentally a good idea which has been carelessly executed. Both from the Army's standpoint and our own, it has several deficiencies. The most serious one is that it takes no cognizance whatsoever of the existence of the Executive Order on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. Strictly from the Army's standpoint, it is a combination of some old documents such as the 1944 Army circular covering non-segregation in recreation facilities, some rather old statistics, such as the distribution of Negro soldiers in types of units as of the 3lst of May 1948, and a number of new items which are alive and up-to-date. The report also has included in it some items which are not very appropriate to the format of a report to the Secretary of the Army. These are principally some long lists giving names, birthplaces, ages and types of service of Negro Regular Army officers, Negro West Point Cadets, and other publicity materials which are loosely hung on the peg of a report to the Secretary. It is hard to see the point of such a careless job at this time. However, both the Department of the Army and National Defense are pressing to have this report released immediately. The reason given is that a group of Negroes who met at the one-day conference to advise the Defense Establishment on their Negro troop policies, are going to submit their report and recommendations in a very short time. Royall wants to get out this report in advance of the Negro group's recommenda- tions. I think it would be better if the attached report were not made public at all. If the Defense Establishment insists strongly on it, the President's position should be protected at least by some insistance on our part that the report should at least take judicial notice of the President's recent Executive Order. This could be done in one of two ways. We could ask that the report be released simultaneously with the