True Left

In the 1950s-1960s, Iceland wanted US troops stationed in it, but not any "black" troops. After repeated pressure by US Presidents and Generals, Iceland eventually agreed to allow literally "three or four" "blacks". It was not until the late 1970s that this policy had ended and the percent of "black" US soldiers stationed Iceland were roughly equal to the overall percent of "blacks" in the military.

The 1951 U.S.-Icelandic Defense Agreement paved the way for a permanent U.S. military presence at the Keflavik base in Iceland, an outpost that played a crucial role in U.S. strategy during the Cold War. The article explores two gender-related aspects of the U.S.-Icelandic Cold War relationship: the restrictions on off-base movements of U.S. soldiers, and the secret ban imposed by the Icelandic government on the stationing of black U.S. troops in Iceland. These practices were meant to “protect” Icelandic women and to preserve a homogeneous “national body.” Although U.S. officials repeatedly tried to have the restrictions lifted, the Icelandic government refused to modify them until the racial ban was publicly disclosed in late 1959. Even after the practice came to light, it took another several years before the ban was gradually eliminated. Misguided though the Icelandic restrictions may have been, they did, paradoxically, help to defuse domestic opposition to Iceland's pro-American foreign policy course and thus preserved the country's role in the Western alliance.
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In no other European country hosting U.S. military facilities did the Americans face harsher restrictions. The United States also reluctantly went along with a secret demand by the Icelandic government to ban the stationing of black soldiers in Iceland—a policy that contravened President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 desegregation order in the U.S. military. After World War II, Greenland (under Danish jurisdiction), Canada, Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the British possessions in the Caribbean were also on a U.S. list of overseas basing areas in which black soldiers were deemed not to be welcome. But all these places except Iceland were removed from the list in the 1950s, although assignments of black troops were sporadically cancelled to countries such as Turkey because of domestic political considerations.
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The article shows that gender was at the heart of Iceland’s exclusionary practices against U.S. soldiers—that the underlying reason for sealing off the Keflavik military base was a patriarchal need to protect Icelandic women from having sexual relations with foreigners. Women’s organizations generally supported this policy. What is more, the Icelandic government was able to dictate the terms of its relationship with the United States throughout the Cold War. The U.S. government had practically no say in the matter.
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In March 1971 the Nixon administration formally handed the Icelandic government a memorandum detailing its complaints and asking for changes. The document noted that “nowhere in the world [were] U.S. troops subjected to such stringent restrictions as in Iceland, neither in democratic nor [in] authoritarian states.”
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During World War II the U.S. military was still segregated, but some influential military officials who favored racial integration tried to resist foreign requests for whites-only deployments. U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson rejected such demands by the Australian government and several Central and South American governments. But in the case of Iceland, Stimson, perhaps betraying his ambivalence about race, was far less principled. He claimed that blacks would find it “a bit cold” to stay in Iceland and expressed no qualms about the Icelandic demand to exclude blacks from serving on the island. The U.S. government, it turned out, strictly enforced the ban throughout World War II. In one instance, a plan to send black soldiers to Iceland for a special technical mission was scuttled at the last minute. By mistake, several black troops were briefly sent to Iceland to work in kitchens of the U.S. Navy, but they were withdrawn as soon as the Department of War realized that their presence violated the Icelandic government’s racial policy. Icelandic women who had relationships with white soldiers were ostracized and branded as ****, but when it was revealed that some of the black soldiers had attempted to fraternize with Icelandic women, this was deemed an unpardonable offense.
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After World War II, and particularly after Truman’s desegregation order in 1948, the U.S. military encountered far greater difficulty in acceding to foreign demands for the exclusion of black troops. But when the United States and Iceland negotiated the 1951 Defense Agreement, Icelandic officials used the same arguments they had cited a decade earlier. Icelandic Foreign Minister Bjarni Benediktsson wanted to make sure that “none of our black friends” would be part of the U.S. troops stationed in Iceland, at least not among the first contingent. ... The Keflavik base, which from 1952 to 1961 was under U.S. Air Force command, was the only foreign site at which this discriminatory policy was enforced. Although this policy was officially secret, white troops who came to Iceland in the 1950s were informed of it.
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U.S. Navy in 1961, increased pressure was brought to bear on the Icelandic government. The Kennedy administration even contemplated making a public announcement that the Icelandic government was fully responsible for the policy. Only under this pressure did the Icelandic government agree to a new informal policy, which was conveyed to the U.S. government as follows:

The Icelandic government will not oppose the inclusion of three or four colored soldiers in the Defense Force, [...]
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the government said it was prepared to make the same concession it offered two years earlier: “to allow three or four carefully selected married blacks”
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The Craighill report proved to be the first step toward ending the ban. At the outset, only a few black soldiers were chosen to serve in Iceland—consistent with the Icelandic government’s wishes. Their number increased slowly, and in the 1970s and 1980s all restrictions apparently were removed, probably unofficially.
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The Icelandic policy of preventing sexual relationships between Icelandic women and black soldiers did not change from World War II until the mid-1960s. Yet, interestingly enough, the ban did not apply to other “colored” people. Filipinos, for example, could stay in Iceland without restrictions.

https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article/6/4/65/12687/Immunizing-against-the-American-Other-Racism