Hi Bennie: When "Ned" Almond arrived in Korea and found that several units in his command had already integrated, he immediately began to reverse the practice. Almond ordered that no additional blacks be assigned to white combat units and that those blacks already present not be replaced when rotated out of the units. MacArthur and Almond, (his chief of staff) still refused to integrate. In fact the two senoir commanders allowed untrained South Korean units to fill the gaps in the front lines commands, rather than allow the integration of blacks into white units. Combined with MacArthurs insubordination on integration and then his taking the war into China, President Truman relieved the General of his command on April 11,1951.
We were always fearful when the untested R.O.K. Divisions were in front of us.
Remember the Martinsville 7 ? Virgina's Attorney General, Lindsay Almond and the Virginia courts electrocuted seven black young men for rape. I believe Lindsay Almond was a cousin of "Ned" Almond.
As my grandmother used to say, "the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree".
On a positive note: General Mathew B. Ridgway who replaced MacArthur as commander of U.S. and U.N. forces in Korea, immediately began plans to integrate all American units. The Virginia born Ridgway, who opposed segregation on the moral groundthat it was both"un American and un Christian", paused only long enough, to wait for approval from the dept. of the Army . He started in the summer of 1951.