[Footnote 1-3: Estimates vary; exact racial statistics concerning the nineteenth century Navy are difficult to locate. See Enlistment of Men of Colored Race, 23 Jan 42, a note appended to Hearings Before the General Board of the Navy, 1942, Operational Archives, Department of the Navy (hereafter OpNavArchives). The following brief summary of the Negro in the pre-World War II Navy is based in part on Foner's _Blacks and the Military in American History_ as well as Harold D. Langley, "The Negro in the Navy and Merchant Service, 1798-1860," _Journal of Negro History_ 52 (October 1967):273-86; Langley's _Social Reform in the United States Navy 1798-1862_, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967) Peter Karsten, _The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism_ (New York: The Free Press, 1972); Frederick S. Harrod, _Manning the New Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, 1899-1940_ (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978).] [Footnote 1-4: Ltr, Rear Adm C. W. Nimitz, Actg Chief, Bureau of Navigation, to Rep. Hamilton Fish, 17 Jun 37, A9-10, General Records of the Department of the Navy (hereafter GenRecsNav).] [Illustration: BUFFALO SOLDIERS. (_Frederick Remington's 1888 sketch._)] When postwar enlistment was resumed in 1923, the Navy recruited Filipino stewards instead of Negroes, although a decade later it reopened the branch to black enlistment. Negroes quickly took advantage of this limited opportunity, their numbers rising from 441 in 1932 to 4,007 in June 1940, when they constituted 2.3 percent of the Navy's 170,000 total.[1-5] Curiously enough, because black (p. 006) reenlistment in combat or technical specialties had never been barred, a few black gunner's mates, torpedomen, machinist mates, and the like continued to serve in the 1930's. [Footnote 1-5: Memo, H. A. Badt, Bureau of Navigation, for Officer in Charge, Public Relations, 24 Jul 40, sub: Negroes in U.S. Navy, Nav-641, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel (hereafter BuPersRecs).]