page_title: Lesley J. McNair
section_title: African-American soldiers
hierarchical_section_title: Lesley J. McNair / World War II / Army Ground Forces / Personnel recruiting and training / African-American soldiers
caption_attribution_description: English: Crews of U.S. M5 Stuart light tanks from Company D, 761st Tank Battalion, stand by awaiting call to clean out scattered Nazi machine gun nests in Coburg, Germany. Deutsch: US-Panzer M5 Stuart Ende April 1945 auf dem Marktplatz von Coburg.
context_page_description: Lesley James McNair was a senior United States Army officer who served during World War I and World War II. He attained the rank of lieutenant general during his life; he was killed in action during World War II, and received a posthumous promotion to general.
  A Minnesota native and 1904 graduate of the United States Military Academy, McNair was a Field Artillery officer with a background in the Ordnance Department. A veteran of the Veracruz occupation and Pancho Villa Expedition, during World War I he served as assistant chief of staff for training with the 1st Division, and then chief of artillery training on the staff at the American Expeditionary Forces headquarters. His outstanding performance resulted in his promotion to temporary brigadier general; at age 35, he was the Army's youngest general officer.
  McNair's experience of more than 30 years with equipment and weapons design and testing, his administrative skills, and his success in the areas of military education and training led to his World War II assignment as commander of Army Ground Forces. In this position, McNair became the "unsung architect of the U.S.
context_section_description: During World War II, War Department regulations for African Americans required that they be admitted into the Army in numbers proportionate to their share of the population.  In addition, the Army was required to establish segregated African American units in each major branch of the service, and give qualified African Americans the opportunity to earn officer commissions.  The AGF worked to reconcile these requirements with its mission of producing trained soldiers and units that were capable of meeting and defeating the enemy in battle.  To that end, the AGF activated and trained African American units in all major branches of the ground forces, and black soldiers who graduated from officer candidate schools (OCS) were assigned to African American units as they received their commissions.  At the peak of the Army's expansion in June 1943, there were nearly 170,000 African Americans training at AGF facilities, or about 10.5 percent of its personnel strength.  These figures were in line with the War Department requirements; at the time, African Americans accounted for between 10 and 11 percent of the U.S. population.
  Beginning with a small number of African American units in the Regular Army and National Guard, the AGF organized and trained many more, including the African-American 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions, and the 2nd Cavalry Division.  By 1943, the AGF had created nearly 300 African American units, including the 452nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, and the 761st Tank Battalion.
  The War Department General Staff initially suggested incorporating African Americans into units with white soldiers at a ratio of 1 black to 10.6 whites.  Based on difficulties with completing training, in large part because the abilities of the recruits were lagging as a result of having grown up in the segregated education system and culture then prevalent in the United States, McNair advocated for separate battalions of African American soldiers, arguing that they could be more effectively employed in this manner.  In McNair's construct, such units could be deployed for functions including guarding lines of communication in rear areas and near front lines, or maintained as a reserve by division and corps commanders and committed where they were most needed during combat.  The proposal that was adopted was closer to what McNair had advocated, and the AGF lengthened the initial training period. African American officers generally filled company grade positions as they completed OCS, with white officers holding the field grade and senior command positions.  In cases where there were not enough African Americans, white officers filled the company grade positions as well.
caption: Tank and crew of the 761st Tank Battalion, an African American armor unit organized and trained by the AGF
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