The Brass 13:
First of the First to Integrate the Navy’s Ranks

In 1941, Rear Admiral C.W. Nimitz, who was Chief of Naval Operations, re-defined the Navy’s policy: “After many years of experience,  the policy of enlisting men of the colored race for any branch of the naval service except the messman’s branch was adopted to meet the best interests of general ship efficiency.” The policy, he said, would not change.

Then came Pearl Harbor–and Dorie Miller–and the first Blacks to subsequently enter the Navy at a general rating, a band from North Carolina whose distinction as integration pioneers would be forgotten three times by the Navy, until its record finally was formally corrected, in 2019.

The first B-1 bandsmen were recruited from Bernard Mason‘s North Carolina A&T College band in Greensboro during the spring of 1942 and promised service for the duration of the war at Chapel Hill, less than an hour away. A Navy recruiteer was on campus in February, and by April, the Navy was negotiating civilian accommodations for the not-yet-organized band–where a Black man in its service might bunk will plague the Navy for much of the war. On May 10, the Navy announced that the first 13 of these recruits–they’re listed at the bottom of this page–had been accepted for service at Greensboro and approved for it by the Raleigh district recruiting station. The rest of what would become a 42-piece regimental band was assembled in time to bus together to Raleigh for their formal induction on May 27. Two brothers awaiting entrance to Tuskegee would join them in Chapel Hill: John and Walter Carlson are among the very few who served in the Navy without having gone through boot camp.

The Navy’s public record, however, reflected a different story, in 1942 and for decades afterwards. By June 1942, B-1 seems already to have been forgotten, as it announces that on June 2, a Washington, D.C. recruit had become  the “first Negro sailor to be accepted for enlistment in the Navy in a rank higher than messman.” William Baldwin was also selected for a Navy publicity photo with Secretary of Navy Frank Knox commemorating this milestone, with Knox “looking none too happy.” B-1 had been training in Norfolk for a week.

When Baldwin and the rest of the first 104 recruits completed their bootcamp at Camp Morrow in August, they were honored at a special exercise at which music “was supplied by the training station’s 50-piece colored band,” featuring “soloist Waynan Elmer Hathcock of Atlanta, musician 2nd class.” Hathcock was one of the organizers, along with Len Bowden, of the Great Lakes’ Black bands. This creates another situation that’s difficult to sort out: how could the station have a band of musician-rated Black men already in place for this event? Where and when had they enlisted? It’s possible, it seems, that the Navy recruited this band in Chicago to help further its recruiting process, allowing them service without bootcamp and to live among civilians. But it remains curious that in all the discussions at the time of general ranks being opened to Black servicemen, nothing is mentioned of musicians until early August, when the Navy begins its public campaign to recruit whole bands–and when B-1 had already completed its training and begun its formal service at Chapel Hill. 

The process of breaking this color barrier began much earlier: President Roosevelt had suggested in June 1941 that the Navy make a beginning towards integration by placing “a few good Negro bands” on battlehips. Under Navy Secretary Frank Knox, though, the Navy would remain stubbornly slow in moving towards integration and equal rights. 

But the forgetting continued: in 1981, the Navy recognized B-1 for its pioneering role; then in 2003 they were forgotten again, as the Navy honored a set of musicians who had come after B-1 for this distinction. Finally, in 2017, B-1 was honored again by the Navy, and it seems this last correcting of the historical record has taken hold.

• • • 

1942 Timeline

This  timeline demonstrates how the Navy publicly announced one track of recruiting African Americans at general ratings while actively planning and executing, with B-1, another track that gets to the goal first but outside the plan of the publicly announced one.

February 11: NC Gov. J. Melville Broughton telegrams Secretary of Navy Frank Knox offering “necessary facilities” at UNC for the Navy’s East Coast Aviation Cadets Induction Center, and “as we are so well fitted to do the job we urge the Navy to designate our University for this assignment.”

February 26: Navy approves establishing pre-flight schools at UNC and St. Mary’s, joining the University of Georgia and the University of Iowa, already announced as host institutions.

February 28: UNC is publicly named one of 4 locations for U.S. Navy pre-flight training sites to be established on select college campuses in four regions. The University of Georgia is named for the South, the University of Iowa for the Midwest, St. Mary’s College in Moraga for the West, and UNC for the East region.

April 7: Navy announces it will begin accepting Blacks at general service rating, once appropriate (segregated) housing is found. Also included in the order is the Marine Corps and Coast Guard. 

April 13: Navy orders that the four new pre-flight training schools will each have a 45-piece band consisting of personnel “enlisted as musicians second class, from men of the Negro race only.” [Only UNC and St. Mary’s in Moraga,, California would actually get these band; the University of Georgia and the University of Iowa got all-White bands].

April 17: NC Gov. Broughton calls four Black leaders to his office this day at 10 a.m. “for a conference on a matter of importance.” The four–F.D. Bluford, President of NC A&T; J.W. Seabrooke, President of Fayetteville State; James E. Shepard, President of North Carolina College in Durham, and the insurance company and community leader C.C. Spaulding, also of Durham–were no doubt tasked with the question of housing for the band being organized for UNC.

April 18: Chapel Hill Black leaders send a telegram to Gov. Broughton, okaying use of an unfinished community center for the band’s accommodations. The center’s construction had been halted several months prior.
   • Lt. Lt. John P. Graff, in charge of organizing the school, requests of Navy to send to Chapel Hill “a bandmaster to assist in the procurement and training of a negro band. . . as early as possible.” He notes that the cooperation of the “leading negro college presidents of the State” is already assured in selecting the personnel for the band, and that the recruiting station in Raleigh is prepared to proceed with enlistments “as soon as we have a bandmaster to pass upon applicants.”

April 21: Lt. Graff writes to the Town of Chapel Hill, proposing to house “a U.S. Navy Band composed entirely of colored musicians” at the Community Center, which the Navy will finish building so as to “give these musicians quarters comparable with anything on the campus of the University.”
     • Navy announces bases with accommodations for Black recruits will be built in Chicago. 

April 22: Navy Bureau of Personnel orders “Charles Edward Dudrow, Bandmaster, USN, retired,” to report to Chapel Hill to secure the 45-piece band for that station, and to be their bandmaster in Chapel Hill once they have completed 4-weeks training at Naval Training Station Norfolk.

May 9: Lt. Graff requests the full complement of instruments for the pre-flight school’s 45-piece band

May 10: Enlistment of the first 13 bandsmen “to join the band to be stationed at the pre-flight school at UNC.” and to be”housed at the Negro Community Center there.”

May 16: Enlistment announced of six additional A&T students for the pre-flight school band

May 22: Enlistment announced of another seven A&T students for the pre-flight school band

May 27:  B-1 bandsmen sworn in to service at Raleigh, NC

May 28: B-1, “The first and thus far only all-Negro band in the Navy” begins basic training at NTS Norfolk, VA, where messmen and stewards were trained, apart from regular Navy.

May 30: Navy announces it will begin recruiting Blacks for its newly opened ranks, with a goal of enlisting 1,000 in June and July

June 1: Navy begins accepting Blacks at general rating, although it had accepted B-1 bandsmen by May 10.
   • Original date on which B-1 was supposed to arrive in Chapel Hill, but renovation delays at the Chapel Hill community center left them stranded in Norfolk awaiting word that their new home had been completed.

July 31: B-1 arrives in Chapel Hill, its first duty station, attached to the Navy’s pre-flight training school

August 13: Navy announces that its first recruits at general rating have completed training at Camp Morrow in Chicago. 
By this date, by this date, B-1 had completed training and was two weeks into work at its first duty station, its members all rated Musicians ranging from 1st to 3rd class.

after 1942,  some dates of note

March 17, 1945:: Navy accepts “First Negro Nurse in Service,” Phyllis Mae Daley of New York.

July 7, 1945: Navy ends Jim Crow bases, opening up its Great Lakes stations to integration. Separate barracks for Blacks are maintained.

1981: In a ceremonial program at Hampton Institute, the.Navy remembers B-1 as integration pioneers and apologizes for forgetting them and for barring them and all Blacks from its School of Music, until after World War II.

January 2003: Having forgotten B-1 again, the Navy and US Congress recognize a group of bandsmen who trained at Great Lakes, all of whom were enlisted after B-1, as the first to integrate its ranks.

August 30-31, 2007: UNC-Chapel Hill honors B-1, its chancellor recognizing that, for the first time, its members were being welcomed on a campus that during the war would not allow them to eat or bunk on it, thus requiring their 1.5 mile twice-daily march from their civilian “barracks,” in Chapel Hill’s Black community, to their job on campus and then home again for lunch. Bandsmen became honorary members of the Marching Tar Heels during a half-time ceremony at UNC’s game against James Madison on August 31.

May 27, 2017: State of North Carolina installs an historical marker commemorating B-1 in Chapel hill, near the community center that the bandsmen called home. 

2019: Navy recognizes B-1’s distinction again, in its official documentary.

• • •

The Brass 13

The”Golden Thirteen” in the Navy’s integration history refers to the first African-Americans who, in February 1944, became officers. I like thinking of these A&T bandsmen as the “Brass Thirteen” in recognition of their marching band roots.

The first 13–the first of the first–whose enlistment was announced on May 10, 1942: 

Warmouth T. Gibbs, Jr. 
Robert E. Brower
W. Filmore Haith
J. Clarence Yourse
Roger F. Holt
Charles L. Woods
Alton V. Butler, Jr. 
James D. Morgan, Jr.
Willie E. Currie, Jr.
John D. Clay
William E. Skinner
Jwwitt L. White
Thomas J. Gavin, Jr. 

They are listed above in the order in which the Navy announced their enlistment; which was the first of these first to actually sign is not known.

• • •

20th Century Backgrounds

During the Spanish-American War, the Navy “continued its policy of enlisting Negroes into ranks on a fully integrated basis,” wrote Dennis Nelson in 1951. He searched for and found no prior instances of racial distinctions in ranks and policies, although Blacks remained as before ineligible for officer rating. At the start of World War I , the Navy still had mixed crews aboard its ships and Blacks remained eligible for all ranks. Segregation was becoming “a part of the Navy’s policy–in practice if not on paper.” Nelson gives up on explaining how this was happening: The reasons for this regression are “complex and are outside the scope of this book.” Nevertheless, he cites two causes: these were attitudes reflective of a national social pattern, an issue exacerbated by the mass movement north of Blacks anxious to flee an increasingly hostile Southern “homeland.”  President Woodrow Wilson’s segregationist policies are not mentioned, nor his heavy reliance on Southern segregationists like Josephus Daniels, his Secretary of Navy who was also an architect of the Wilmington massacre and coup of 1898.

After the war, Blacks were limited for the first time to the messman’s branch. In 1939, Black messmen were enlisted but in limited quotas. Morris MacGregor calls the years 1919-39 “the nadir of the Navy’s relations with Black America,” In 1932, 441 Blacks were enlisted, and quotas remaind at 50 Blacks per month until September 1939, when the quota was raised to 250, “to be enlisted as messmen only” within the stewards department. By 1940, 4,007 Blacks comprised 2.3 percent of the Navy’s total force. The few exceptions, such as bandmaster Alton Augustus Adams, had been in the Navy prior to 1919. Everyone else served as messman or steward’s mate, what the Black press called “seagoing bellhops.”  The Selective Service Law passed in September 1940 codified the Navy’s policy.

After Pearl Harbor, the need for more servicemen increased dramatically enough to force changes in policy, and it became a matter of figuring out how best to proceed. In that “figuring” are all the starts and stops along a way fraught with troubles even as small, prorgressive steps were made. But how the Navy got from his stubborn segregationist policies still in tact on December 7, 1941 to calling retired bandmaster Dudrow out of retirement to begin recruiting for B-1 in January 1942 remains a mystery, Access to Chief C.E. Dudrow’s personnel files would be a good beginning towards such understanding,

–July 31, 2025

Sources

The primary sources for establishing the enlistment dates for B-1 bandsmen are the Notice of Separation from the U.S. Naval Service documents for John Gilmer, Calvin Morrow, Simeon Holloway, Huey Lawrence, Wray Herring and James Parsons, who enlisted in Greensboro during May and inducted into the Navy at Raleigh on May 27, 1942.

Brooks, Deton J., Jr. “New Naval Policy Needed to Put Negro Sailors on Equal Footing on Warships.” Chicago Defender 26 Sept. 1942: sec. 2: 3, 17, 26.

Broughton, J.M., Telegram to Frank Knox. 11 Feb. 1942. Raleigh, NC State Archives. Broughton file.

Davis, John W. “The Negro in the United States Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.” Journal of Negro Education 12.3 Summer 1943: 345-349.

Denfield, L.E. Letter to Frank Knox. TLS. 26 Feb. 1942. Raleigh, NC State Archives. Broughton file.

—. Memo to Chief of Bureau of Aeronautics.. 13 Apr. 1942. Raleigh, NC State Archives. Broughton file

“First Negro Troops Graduate at Great Lakes.” Chicago Defender 15 Aug. 1942: 4.

“First Sailors End Basic Navy Training,” Pittsburgh Courier 15 Aug. 1942: 4.

Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. The Great Lakes Experience, 1942-1945. Carbondale, IL: Black American Studies Program, 1974,

Graff, John P. Letter to the Recreation Commission, Town of Chapel Hill. 21 apr. 1942. VP & Controller Files, University Archives, Manuscripts Dept., UNC Library, Chapel Hill.

—. Memo to Bureau of Navigation Chief. 18 Ap.l 1942. College Park, MD. Natioinal Archives. Finished General File RG 24, Bx 1179.

Holmes, Harold M., Albert Register, Kenneth Jones, O.D. Clark, Telegram to J.M. Broughton.. 20 Apr. 1942.  Raleigh, NC State Archives. Broughton file

Jacobs, Randall Memo to Commandant, Sixth Naval District. 14 Apr. 1942. Raleigh, NC State Archives. Broughton file.

—. Memo to Officer in Charge, Navy Recruiting Station, Raleigh. 22 Apr. 1942. College Park, MD. National Archives. RG 24, Bx 1179. 

“A Little Known Legacy: The Great Lakes Experience: A Salute to African American Bandsmen at the Great Lakes Naval Base, 1942-1945, a Week of Nostalgia, Feb. 28 – Mar. 2, 2003. Program. Chicago. 1973.

MacGregor, Morris. J. Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965. Washington DC: Center of Military Historym U.S. Army, 1985.

Moesser, James. Remarks. Chapel Hill, NC. Wilson Lib., UNC-CH. 31 Aug. 2007.

“Navy Band Is about Set with Name Aces.” Chicago Defender 15 Aug. 1942: 23.

“Navy Band Reports. Pittsburgh Courier. 22 Aug. 1942: 20.

“Navy blames Blood Ban on Red Cross.” Chicago Defender. 24 Jan. 1942: 1,2.

“Navy Calls for Top Musicians in New York Band Campaign” Pittsburgh Courier 1 Aug. 1942: 20.

“Navy Confirms End of Great Lakes Jim Crow.” Chicago Defender. 7 July 1945: 1.

“Navy Takes over a Tailor-Made Band” Pittsburgh Courier, 8 Aug. 1942: 2.

“Navy’s Colored Commandos Complete Tough Routine.” Pittsburgh Courier 8 Aug. 1942: 14.

“Navy’s Negro Band Coming to Town Today.” Chapel Hill Weekly, 31 July 1942: 1.

Nelson, Dennis D. The Integration of the Negro into the U.S. Navy. New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951.

Neely, C.B. Memo to Officer in Charge, Bureau of Navigation. 9 May 1942. College Park, MD. National Archives. Finished General File. RG 24, Bx 1179. 

Parsons, James B. Personal interviews. Chicago. 10-12 Aug. 1985.

“New York Girl Accepted by Navy as First Negro Nurse in Service.” Chicago Defender. 17 Mar. 1945: 2.

Rondeau, AE. Letter to the First U.S. Navy African American Musicians. 28 Feb. 2003. Insert. in “A Little Known Legacy.”

Sandler, Stanley. Segregated Skies: All-Black Combat Squadrons of World War II. Washington, DC. Smithsonian Inst. P, 1992.

Stillwell, Paul. Introduction. in The Golden Thirteen: Recollections of the First Black Naval Officers, ed. by Paul Stillwell. Annapolis, MD: Naval Inst. P., 1993: xv-xxvii.

“To Increase Navy Enlistment of Negroes. Durham, NC. Carolina Times, 23 Sept 1939: 5.

Wynn, Neil A. The Afro-American and the Second World War. Revised ed. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1993.

–July 31, 2025