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<p>In 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 calling for complete integration of the military and creating the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces. Not until President Eisenhower’s administration, however, did Black military families and local civil rights organizations begin to address the issue of military children attending segregated schools. Education falls under states’ jurisdiction, so the schools serving military students were the responsibility of local education agencies and subject to state practices, including segregation. Using language found in Public Laws 815 and 874, US Commissioner of Education Earl J. McGrath created what were termed “Section&#xa0;6 schools”—schools on military installations expressly serving military-connected children residing on federal property. These schools were often the first integrated schools in their states. I use contemporary measures of segregation to determine whether the presence of a local military installation affects the racial composition of school districts in the American South today. Previewing the results, I find that a military presence in a community is significantly correlated—albeit in opposite directions—with indices measuring both schools’ Black–white dissimilarity and Black students’ exposure to white students. Taken together, my results show that military presence is inversely correlated with segregation in local education agencies. This paper adds to our understanding of the forces that contributed to school desegregation in the American South.</p>

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Desegregation and Military Installations: Does Military Presence Influence School Racial Composition?

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年8月2日

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  • Chantal D. Smith

摘要

In 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 calling for complete integration of the military and creating the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces. Not until President Eisenhower’s administration, however, did Black military families and local civil rights organizations begin to address the issue of military children attending segregated schools. Education falls under states’ jurisdiction, so the schools serving military students were the responsibility of local education agencies and subject to state practices, including segregation. Using language found in Public Laws 815 and 874, US Commissioner of Education Earl J. McGrath created what were termed “Section 6 schools”—schools on military installations expressly serving military-connected children residing on federal property. These schools were often the first integrated schools in their states. I use contemporary measures of segregation to determine whether the presence of a local military installation affects the racial composition of school districts in the American South today. Previewing the results, I find that a military presence in a community is significantly correlated—albeit in opposite directions—with indices measuring both schools’ Black–white dissimilarity and Black students’ exposure to white students. Taken together, my results show that military presence is inversely correlated with segregation in local education agencies. This paper adds to our understanding of the forces that contributed to school desegregation in the American South.