This day in history, September 16, 1940, The Burke-Wadsworth Act is passed by Congress, by wide margins in both houses, and the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States is imposed.
On this day, the Selective Service was born. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began one month later, as Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had been a key player in moving the Roosevelt administration away from a foreign policy of strict neutrality, began drawing draft numbers out of a glass bowl. The numbers were handed to the president, who read them aloud for public announcement.
There were roughly 20 million eligible young men-50 percent were rejected the first year, either for health reasons or illiteracy (20 percent of those who registered were illiterate). In November 1942, with the United States now a participant in the war, the draft ages expanded; men 18 to 37 were now eligible.
Blacks were passed over for the draft because of racist assumptions about their abilities and the viability of a mixed-race military. A change occurred in 1943, when a “quota” was imposed, meant to limit the numbers of blacks drafted to reflect their numbers in the overall population, roughly 10.6 percent of the whole. Initially, blacks were restricted to “labor units,” but this too ended as the war progressed, when they were finally used in combat.
“Conscientious objector” status was granted to those who could demonstrate “sincerity of belief in religious teachings combined with a profound moral aversion to war.” Quakers made up most of them, but 75 percent of those Quakers who were drafted fought. Conscientious objectors had to perform alternate service in Civilian Public Service Camps, which entailed long hours of hazardous work for no compensation.
About 5,000 to 6,000 men were imprisoned for failing to register or serve the nation in any form, most of them being Jehovah’s Witnesses. By the end of the war, approximately 34 million men had registered, and 10 million served with the military.
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