This 2-part POD concerning the US armed forces and segregation or integration is based on either of the 2 situations:
-post-ARW: could the US Army and Marines after 1783 feasibly have allowed the recruitment of blacks into their ranks either in segregated all-black units (as with the Buffalo soldiers post-ACW) or on an integrated basis as had been the case with the Continental Army and Northern militia units during the war ? How much would race relations in the antebellum US have improved had the new Republic's armed forces not excluded nonwhites (including Indians, who were also OTL barred from serving in the Army and USMC) ?
OR
-Korean War- could the US armed forces have feasibly remained at least de facto segregated after 1950/51, despite Truman's 1948 desegregation order ? Granted, by 1951 all branches of the armed forces had fully desegregated, including the USAF having already admitted blacks in all capacities from 1948, the USMC accepting and assigning blacks on an individual basis (approx. 1000 black Marines served at Pusan and Inchon). the Army disbanding the last all-black units (esp. the 24th Inf Regt, who were [unjustly] viewed as the 8th Army's worst outfit) and integrating African-American soldiers into white outfits, and the USN opening up all branches to blacks, thereby releasing them from exclusively serving in the stewards' branch. However, for the Army specifically, WI there'd been some POD such as the 24th giving a better account of itself in combat than OTL, together with the examples of other outstanding black combat outfits such as the 2nd Ranger Coy, and the 3rd bns of the 9th and 15th Inf Regts ? Could better overall all-black units' combat performance in the Korean War's early stages have (ironically) cemented segregation in at least the US Army ?
-post-ARW: could the US Army and Marines after 1783 feasibly have allowed the recruitment of blacks into their ranks either in segregated all-black units (as with the Buffalo soldiers post-ACW) or on an integrated basis as had been the case with the Continental Army and Northern militia units during the war ? How much would race relations in the antebellum US have improved had the new Republic's armed forces not excluded nonwhites (including Indians, who were also OTL barred from serving in the Army and USMC) ?
OR
-Korean War- could the US armed forces have feasibly remained at least de facto segregated after 1950/51, despite Truman's 1948 desegregation order ? Granted, by 1951 all branches of the armed forces had fully desegregated, including the USAF having already admitted blacks in all capacities from 1948, the USMC accepting and assigning blacks on an individual basis (approx. 1000 black Marines served at Pusan and Inchon). the Army disbanding the last all-black units (esp. the 24th Inf Regt, who were [unjustly] viewed as the 8th Army's worst outfit) and integrating African-American soldiers into white outfits, and the USN opening up all branches to blacks, thereby releasing them from exclusively serving in the stewards' branch. However, for the Army specifically, WI there'd been some POD such as the 24th giving a better account of itself in combat than OTL, together with the examples of other outstanding black combat outfits such as the 2nd Ranger Coy, and the 3rd bns of the 9th and 15th Inf Regts ? Could better overall all-black units' combat performance in the Korean War's early stages have (ironically) cemented segregation in at least the US Army ?