When President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 called upon the U.S. The decision to train black Naval officers was the culmination of a four-year campaign that began alongside the country’s preparations for war. Americans may have fought against racism abroad during World War II, but one of the most consequential battles in the war for equality took place 35 miles north of Chicago, in a Spartan barracks that held 16 cots, 16 chairs and one long table. But their success, both as candidates and as officers, forever changed what was possible for African American sailors and anticipated the coming civil rights movement.

The story of the Navy’s first black officers-told in full for the first time in my book The Golden Thirteen: How Black Men Won the Right to Wear Navy Gold, drawing from Stillwell’s oral histories, original interviews, archival records and news clippings-remains little known, overshadowed by the heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen and Patton’s Panthers. These men, who before the war had been metalsmiths, teachers, lawyers and college students-the children and grandchildren of slaves who had seen a family member lynched and been denied jobs because of their skin color-would have to prove that black men had the temperament for command and the leadership qualities necessary to wear the gold stripes. If any of them were ever to wear an officer’s uniform, if any were ever to command a ship or graduate from the Naval Academy, if any were ever to lead white men in battle, then these 16 would have to succeed. There were nearly 100,000 black men in the Navy. They were going to attempt to integrate the officer corps.įor the 16 men, the stakes could not have been higher. Navy had previously been off limits to black men, and these 16 enlistees had been summoned from training schools and shore installations across the United States to break that color barrier. And yet his simple sentence marked one of the most radical decisions the Navy had ever made. Armstrong did not congratulate he did not encourage he made no comment about historical significance. The statement was matter-of-fact, unemotional.

Black navy wars 2