CHAPTER 23 (p. 581)

From Voluntary Compliance to Sanctions

The Defense Department's attitude toward off-base discrimination

against servicemen underwent a significant change in the mid-1960's.

At first Secretary McNamara relied on his commanders to win from the

local communities a voluntary accommodation to his equal opportunity

policy. Only after a lengthy interval, during which the accumulated

evidence demonstrated that voluntary compliance would, in some cases,

not be forthcoming, did he take up the cudgel of sanctions. His use of

this powerful economic weapon proved to be circumscribed and of brief

duration, but its application against a few carefully selected targets

had a salubrious and widespread effect. At the same time developments

in the civil rights movement, especially the passage of strong new

legislation in 1964, permitted servicemen to depend with considerable

assurance upon judicial processes for the redress of their grievances.

Sanctions were distasteful, and almost everyone concerned was anxious

to avoid their use. The Gesell Committee wanted them reserved for

those recalcitrants who had withstood the informal but determined

efforts of local commanders to obtain voluntary compliance. McNamara

agreed. "There were plenty of things that the commanders could do in a

voluntary way," he said later, and he wanted to give them time "to get

to work on this problem."[23-1] His principal civil rights assistants

considered it inappropriate to declare businesses or local communities

off limits while the services were still in the process of developing

voluntary action programs and before the full impact of new federal

civil rights legislation on those programs could be tested. As for the

services themselves, each was on record as being opposed to any use of

sanctions in equal opportunity cases. The 1963 equal opportunity

directive of the Secretary of Defense reflected this general

reluctance. It authorized the use of sanctions, but in such a

carefully restricted manner that for three years agencies of the

Department of Defense never seriously contemplated using them.

[Footnote 23-1: Interv, author with McNamara, 11 May

72.]

_Development of Voluntary Action Programs_

Despite this obvious aversion to the use of sanctions in equal

opportunity cases, the public impression persisted that Secretary

McNamara was trying to use military commanders as instruments for

forcing the desegregation of civilian communities. Actually, the (p. 582)

Gesell Committee and the McNamara directive had demanded no such

thing, as the secretary's civil rights deputy was repeatedly forced to

point out. Military commanders, Fitt explained, were obligated to

protect their men from harm and to secure their just treatment.

Therefore, when "harmful civilian discrimination" was directed against

men in uniform, "the wise commander seeks to do something about it."

Commanders, he observed, did not issue threats or demand social

reforms; they merely sought better conditions for servicemen and their

families through cooperation and understanding. As for the general

problem of racial discrimination in the United States, that was a

responsibility of the civilian community, not the services.[23-2]

[Footnote 23-2: See Memo, DASD (CR) for ASD (M), 2 Jul

64; Fitt, "Remarks Before the Civilian Aides

Conference of the Secretary of the Army," 6 Mar 64;

copies of both in CMH. The quoted passage is from

the latter document.]

Exhibiting a similar concern for the sensibilities of congressional

critics, Secretary McNamara assured the Senate Armed Services

Committee that he had no plans "to utilize military personnel as a

method of social reform." At the same time he reiterated his belief

that troop efficiency was affected by segregation, and added that when

such a connection was found to exist "we should work with the

community involved." He would base such involvement, he emphasized, on

the commander's responsibility to maintain combat readiness and

effectiveness.[23-3] Similar reassurances had to be given the military

commanders, some of whom saw in the Gesell recommendations a demand

for preferential treatment for Negroes and a level of involvement in

community affairs that would interfere with their basic military

mission.[23-4] To counter this belief, Fitt and his successor hammered

away at the Gesell Committee's basic theme: discrimination affects

morale; morale affects military efficiency. The commander's activities

in behalf of equal opportunity for his men in the community is at

least as important as his interest in problems of gambling, vice, and

public health, and is in furtherance of his military mission.[23-5]

[Footnote 23-3: Robert S. McNamara, Testimony Before

Senate Armed Services Committee, 3 Oct 63, quoted

in New York _Times_, October 4, 1963.]

[Footnote 23-4: Memo, William C. Valdes, OASD (M), for

Alfred B. Fitt, 8 Jul 63, sub: Case Studies of

Minority Group Problems at Keesler AFB, Brookley

AFB, Greenville AFB, and Columbus AFB, copy in

CMH.]

[Footnote 23-5: See Shulman, "The Civil Rights

Policies of the Department of Defense," 4 May 65.]

McNamara's civil rights assistants tried to provide explicit guidance

on the extent to which it was proper for base commanders to become

involved in the community. Fitt organized conferences with base

commanders to develop techniques for dealing with off-base

discrimination, and his office provided commanders with legal advice

to counter the arguments of authorities in segregated communities.

Fitt also encouraged commanders to establish liaison with local civil

rights groups whose objectives and activities coincided with

departmental policy. At his request, Assistant Secretary of Defense

for Manpower Paul devised numerous special instructions and asked the

services to issue regulations supporting commanders in their attempts

to change community attitudes toward black servicemen. These

regulations, in turn, called on commanders to enlist community support

for equal treatment and opportunity measures, utilizing in the (p. 583)

cause their command-community relations committees. Consisting of base

officials and local business and community leaders, these committees

had originally been organized by the services to improve relations

between the base and town. Henceforth, they would become the means by

which the local commanders might introduce measures to secure equal

treatment for servicemen.[23-6]

[Footnote 23-6: Memos: DASD (CR) for White, Assoc Spec

Council to President, 9 Jul 64; Philip M. Timpane.

Staff Asst, ODASD (CP, IR, & CR), for DASD (CP, IR,

& CR), 11 Feb 65, sub: Service Reports on Equal

Rights Activities; DASD (CP, IR, & CR) for John G.

Stewart, 23 Dec 64, sub: Civil Rights

Responsibilities of the Department of Defense.

Copies of all in CMH. For a discussion of the

composition and activities of these

command-community relations committees and a

critical analysis of the command initiatives in the

local community in general, see David Sutton, "The

Military Mission Against Off-Base Discrimination,"

_Public Opinion and the Military Establishment_,

ed. Charles C. Moskos, Jr. (Beverly Hills,

California: Sage Publications, 1971), pp. 149-83.]

[Illustration: FIGHTER PILOTS ON THE LINE. _Col. Daniel (Chappie)

James, Jr., commander of an F-4 jet, and his pilot readying for

takeoff from a field in Thailand._]

Perhaps the most important, certainly most controversial, of Fitt's

moves[23-7] was the establishment of a system to measure the local

commanders' progress against off-base discrimination. His vehicle was

a series of off-base equal opportunity inventories, the first

comprehensive, statistical record of discrimination affecting

servicemen in the United States. Based on detailed reports from every

military installation to which 500 or more servicemen were (p. 584)

assigned, the first inventory covered some 305 bases in forty-eight

states and the District of Columbia and nearly 80 percent of the total

military population stationed in the United States. Along with

detailed surveys of public transportation, education, public

accommodations, and housing, the inventory reported on local racial

laws and customs, police treatment of black servicemen, the existence

of state and local agencies concerned with equal opportunity

enforcement, and the base commander's use of command-community

relations committees.[23-8]

[Footnote 23-7: See especially UPI Press Release,

October 4, 1963; New York _Times_, October 3, 1963;

Memo, Robert E. Jordan III, Staff Asst, ODASD (CR),

for ASD (M), 2 Oct 63, sub: Status of Defense

Department Implementation of DOD Directive 5120.36

("Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces," July 26,

1963), ASD (M) 291.2 (14 Jul 63).]

[Footnote 23-8: Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et al., 24

Sep 63, sub: Off-Base Equal Opportunity Inventory,

ASD (M) 291.2 (14 Jul 63); DASD (CR) "Summary of

Off-Base Equal Opportunity Inventory Responses"

(ca. Jan 64), copy inclosed with Ltr, DASD (CR) to

Gesell, 2 Apr 64, Gesell Collection, J. F. Kennedy

library. For examples of service responses, see

BuPers Instruction 5350.3, 3 Oct 63, and Marine

Corps Order 5350.2, 1 Oct 63. For details of a

service's experiences with conducting an off-base

inventory, see the many documents in CS 291.2 (23

Aug 63).]

The first inventory confirmed the widespread complaints of special

discrimination encountered by black servicemen. It also uncovered

interesting patterns in that discrimination. In matters of commercial

transportation, local schools, and publicly owned facilities such as

libraries and stadiums, the problem of discrimination against black

servicemen was confined almost exclusively to areas around

installations in the south. But segregated public accommodations such

as motels, restaurants, and amusements, a particularly virulent form

of discrimination for servicemen, who as transients had to rely on

such businesses, existed in all parts of the country including areas

as diverse as Iowa, Alaska, Arizona, and Illinois. Discrimination in

these states was especially flagrant since all except Arizona had

legislation prohibiting enforced segregation of public accommodations.

Discrimination in the sale and rental of houses showed a similar

pattern. Only thirty installations out of the 305 reporting were

located in states with equal housing opportunity statutes. These were

in northern states, stretching from Maine to California. At the same

time, some of these installations reported discrimination in housing

despite existing state legislation forbidding such practices. No

differences were reported in the treatment of black and white

servicemen with respect to civilian law enforcement except that in

some communities black servicemen were segregated when taken into

custody for criminal violations.

Generally, the practice of most forms of discrimination was more

intense in the south, but the record of other sections of the country

was no better than mixed, even where legislation forbade such separate

and unequal treatment. Obviously there was much room for progress, and

as indicated in the inventory much still could be done within the

armed forces themselves. The reports revealed that almost one-third of

the commands inventoried failed to form the command-community

relations committees recommended by the Gesell Committee and ordered

in the services' equal opportunity directives. Of the rest, only

sixty-one commands had invited local black leaders to participate in

what were supposed to be biracial groups.

The purpose of the follow-up inventories--three were due from each

service at six-month intervals--was to determine the progress of local

commanders in achieving equal opportunity for their men. The (p. 585)

Defense Department showed considerable energy in extracting from

commanders comprehensive information on the state of equal opportunity

in their communities.[23-9] In fact, this rather public exposition

proved to be the major reporting system on equal opportunity progress,

the strongest inducement for service action, and the closest

endorsement by the department of the Gesell Committee's call for an

accountability system.

[Footnote 23-9: See, for example, the following Memos:

USAF Dep for Manpower, Personnel, and Organization

for ASD (M), 6 Feb 64, sub: Off-Base Equal

Opportunity Inventory Report, SecAF files; DASD

(CR) for Fridge, USAF Manpower Office, 14 May 64;

idem for Davenport et al., 3 Aug 64, sub: Off-Base

Equal Opportunity Inventory Follow-Up Reports. All

in ASD (M) 291.2.]

The first follow-up inventory revealed some progress in overcoming

discrimination near military installations, but progress was slight

everywhere and in some areas of concern nonexistent. Discrimination in

schooling for dependents off base, closely bound to the national

problem of school desegregation, remained a major difficulty.

Commanders reported that discrimination in public accommodations was

more susceptible to command efforts, but here, too, in some parts of

the country, communities were resisting change. A Marine Corps

commander, for example, reported the successful formation of a

command-community relations committee at his installation near Albany,

Georgia, but to inquiries concerning the achievements of this

committee the commander was forced to reply "absolutely none."[23-10]

[Footnote 23-10: OASD (CR), Summary of Follow-Up

Off-Base Equal Opportunity Inventory (ca. Jun 64),

DASD (CR) files.]

Some forms of discrimination seemed impervious to change. Open

housing, for one, was the exception rather than the rule throughout

the country. One survey noted the particular difficulty this created

for servicemen, especially the many enlisted men who lived in trailers

and could find no unsegregated place to park.[23-11] At times the

commanders' efforts to improve the situation seemed to compound the

problem. The stipulation that only open housing be listed with base

housing officers served more to reduce the number of listings than to

create opportunities for open housing. Small wonder then that

segregated housing, "the most pervasive and most intractable injustice

of all," in Alfred Fitt's words, was generally ignored while the

commanders and civil rights officials concentrated instead on the more

easily surmountable forms of discrimination.[23-12]

[Footnote 23-11: Memo, DASD (CP, IR, & CR) for

Stewart, 23 Dec 64, sub: Civil Rights

Responsibilities of the Department of Defense, copy

in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-12: Ltr, Fitt to author, 22 May 72.]

At least part of the reason for the continued existence of housing

discrimination against servicemen lay in the fact that the Department

of Defense continued to deny itself the use of its most potent equal

opportunity weapon. Well into 1964, Fitt could report that no service

had contemplated the use of sanctions in an equal opportunity

case.[23-13] Nor had housing discrimination ever figured prominently

in any decision to close a military base. At Fitt's suggestion,

Assistant Secretary Paul proposed that community discrimination

patterns be listed as one of the reasons for closing military (p. 586)

bases.[23-14] Although the Assistant Secretary for Installations and

Logistics, Thomas D. Morris, agreed to consult such information during

deliberations on closings, he pointed out that economics and

operational suitability were the major factors in determining a base's

value.[23-15] As late as December 1964, an official of the Office of

the Secretary of Defense was publicly explaining that "discrimination

in the community is certainly a consideration, but the military

effectiveness and justification of an installation must be

primary."[23-16]

[Footnote 23-13: Ltr, DASD (CR) to Congressman Charles

Diggs, 3 Feb 64, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-14: Memo, DASD (CR) for ASD (M), 24 Apr

64, sub: Base Closings; Memo, ASD (M) for ASD

(I&L), 29 Apr 64, sub: Base Closing Decisions; both

in ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-15: Memo, ASD (I&L) for ASD (M), 23 May

64, sub: Base Closing Decisions, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-16: Ltr, Principal Asst for CR, DASD (CP,

IR, & CR) to Stanley T. Gutman, 18 Dec 64, ASD (M)

291.2.]

Clearly, voluntary compliance had its limits, and Fitt said as much on

the occasion of his departure after a year's assignment as the civil

rights deputy. Reviewing the year's activities for Gesell, Fitt

concluded that "we have done everything we could think of" in

formulating civil rights policy and in establishing a monitoring

system for its enforcement. He was confident that the department's

campaign against discrimination had gained enough momentum to insure

continued progress. If, as he put it, the "off-base lot of the Negro

serviceman will not in my time be the same as that of his white

comrade-in-arms" he was nevertheless satisfied that the Department of

Defense was committed to equal opportunity and that commitment was

"bound to be beneficial."[23-17]

[Footnote 23-17: Ltr, DASD (CR) to Gesell, 28 Jul 64,

copy in CMH.]

Fitt's assessment was accurate, no doubt, but not exactly in keeping

with the optimistic spirit of the Gesell Committee and Secretary

McNamara's subsequent equal opportunity commitment to the President.

Obviously more could be achieved through voluntary compliance if the

threat of legal sanctions were available. In the summer of 1964,

therefore, the Defense Department's manpower officials turned to new

federal civil rights legislation for help.

_Civil Rights, 1964-1966_

The need for strong civil rights legislation had become increasingly

apparent in the wake of _Brown_ v. _Board of Education_.[23-18] With

that decision, the judicial branch finally lined up definitively with

the executive in opposition to segregation. But the effect of this

united opposition was blunted by the lack of a strong civil rights

law, something that President Kennedy had not been able to wrestle

from a reluctant legislative branch. The demands of the civil rights

movement only underscored the inability of court judgments and (p. 587)

executive orders alone to guarantee the civil rights of all Americans.

Such a profound social change in American society required the

concerted action of all three branches of government, and by 1963 the

drive for strong civil rights legislation had made such legislation

the paramount domestic political issue. Lyndon Johnson fully

understood its importance. "We have talked long enough in this country

about equal rights," he told his old colleagues in Congress, "we have

talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next

chapter, and to write it in the books of law."[23-19]

[Footnote 23-18: _Benjamin Muse, The American Negro

Revolution: From Nonviolence to Black Power,

1963-1967_ (Bloomington: University of Indiana

Press, 1968). The following survey is based on Muse

and on Robert D. Marcus and David Burner, eds.,

_America Since 1945_ (New York: St. Martin's,

1972), especially the chapter by James Sundquist,

"Building the Great Society: The Case of Equal

Rights, From Politics and Policy," and that by

Daniel Walker, "Violence in Chicago, 1968: The

Walker Report"; _Report of the National Advisory

Commission on Civil Disorders_; Otis L. Graham,

Jr., ed., _Perspectives on 20th Century America,

Readings and Commentary_ (New York: Dodd, Mead,

1973); Zinn, _Postwar America, 1945-1971_; Roger

Beaumont, "The Embryonic Revolution: Perspectives

on the 1967 Riots," in Robin Higham, ed., _Bayonets

in the Street: The Use of Troops in Civil

Disturbances_ (Lawrence: University Press of

Kansas, 1969); Woodward's _Strange Career of Jim

Crow_.]

[Footnote 23-19: Lyndon B. Johnson, "Address Before a

Joint Session of the Congress," 27 Nov 63, _Public

Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson,

1963-1964_ (Washington: Government Printing Office,

1965), I:9.]

He was peculiarly fitted for the task. A southerner in quest of

national support, Johnson was determined for very practical reasons to

carry out the civil rights program of his slain predecessor and to end

the long rule of Jim Crow in many areas of the country. He let it be

known that he would accept no watered-down law.

I made my position [on the civil rights bill] unmistakably clear:

We were not prepared to compromise in any way. "So far as this

administration is concerned," I told a press conference, "its

position is firm." I wanted absolutely no room for bargaining....

I knew that the slightest wavering on my part would give hope to

the opposition's strategy of amending the bill to death.[23-20]

[Footnote 23-20: Lyndon B. Johnson, _The Vantage

Point_ (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

1971), p. 157.]

Certainly this pronouncement was no empty rhetoric, coming as it did

from a consummate master of the legislative process who enjoyed old

and close ties with congressional leaders.

Johnson was also philosophically committed to change. "Civil rights

was really something that was, by this time, burning pretty strongly

in Johnson," Harris L. Wofford later noted.[23-21] The new President

exhorted his countrymen: "To the extent that Negroes were imprisoned,

so was I ... to the extent that Negroes were free, really free, so was

I. And so was my country."[23-22] Skillfully employing the wave of

sympathy for equal rights that swept the country after John Kennedy's

death, President Johnson procured a powerful civil rights act, which

he signed on 2 July 1964.[23-23]

[Footnote 23-21: Interv, Bernhard with Wofford, 29 Nov

65. Special Assistant to Presidents Kennedy and

Johnson, Wofford was later appointed to a senior

position in the Peace Corps.]

[Footnote 23-22: Johnson, _Vantage Point_, p. 160.]

[Footnote 23-23: PL 88-352, 78 _U.S. Stat._ 241.]

The object of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was no less than the

overthrow of segregation in America. Its major provisions outlawed

discrimination in places of amusement and public accommodation, in

public education, labor unions, employment, and housing. It called for

federal intervention in voting rights cases and established a

Community Relations Service in the Department of Commerce to arbitrate

racial disputes. The act also strengthened the Civil Rights Commission

and broadened its powers. It authorized the United States Attorney

General and private citizens to bring suit in discrimination cases,

outlining the procedures for such cases. Most significant were

the sweeping provisions of the law's Title VI that forbade (p. 588)

discrimination in any activity or program that received federal

financial assistance. This added the threat of economic sanctions

against any of those thousands of institutions, whether public or

private, which, while enjoying federal benefactions, discriminated

against citizens because of race. Accurately characterized as the

"most effective instrument yet found for the elimination of racial

discrimination,"[23-24] Title VI gave the federal government leave to

cut segregation and discrimination out of the body politic. In

Professor Woodward's words, "a national consensus was in the making

and a peaceful solution was in sight."[23-25]

[Footnote 23-24: Muse, _The American Negro

Revolution_, p. 183. For a detailed discussion of

the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see

Muse's book, pp. 181-91.]

[Footnote 23-25: Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim

Crow_, p. 180.]

The 1964 presidential election was at hand to test this consensus.

Given the Republican candidate's vehement opposition to the Civil

Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson's overwhelming victory was among other

things widely interpreted as a national plebiscite for the new law.

The President, however, preferred a broader interpretation. Believing

that "great social change tends to come rapidly in periods of intense

activity before the impulse slows,"[23-26] he considered his victory a

mandate for further social reform. On the advice of the Justice

Department and the Civil Rights Commission, he called on Congress to

eliminate the "barriers to the right to vote."[23-27]

[Footnote 23-26: Johnson, "Remarks at the National

Urban League's Community Action Assembly," 10 Dec

64, as reproduced in _Public Papers of the

Presidents: Johnson, 1963-1964_, II:1653.]

[Footnote 23-27: Lyndon B. Johnson, "Annual Message to

Congress on the State of the Union," 4 Jan 65,

_Public Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B.

Johnson, 1965_ (Washington: Government Printing

Office, 1966), I:6.]

In common with its predecessors, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had only

touched lightly on the serious obstacles in the way of black voters.

Although some 450,000 Negroes were added to the voting rolls in the

southern states in the year following passage of the 1964 law, the

civil rights advocates were calling for stronger legislation. With

bipartisan support, the President introduced a measure aimed directly

at states that discriminated against black voters, providing for the

abolition of literacy tests, appointment of federal examiners to

register voters for all elections, and assignment of federal

supervisors for those elections. The Twenty-fourth Amendment, adopted

in February 1964, had eliminated the poll tax in federal elections,

and the President's new measure carried a strong condemnation of the

use of the poll tax in state elections as well.

In all of his efforts the President had the unwitting support of the

segregationists, who treated the nation to another sordid racial

spectacular. In February 1965 Alabama police jailed Martin Luther

King, Jr., and some 2,000 members of his voting rights drive, and a

generally outraged nation watched King's later clash with the police

over a voting rights march. This time he and his followers were

stopped at a bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers using tear

gas and clubs. The incident climaxed months of violence that saw the

murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi; the

harassment of the Mississippi Summer Project, a voting registration

campaign sponsored by several leading civil rights organizations; and

ended in the assassination of a white Unitarian minister, James (p. 589)

Reeb, of Washington, D.C., one of the hundreds of clergymen, students,

and other Americans who had joined in the King demonstrations.

Addressing a joint session of Congress on the voting rights bill, the

President alluded to the Selma incident, declaring: "Their cause must

be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all

of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome."[23-28]

[Footnote 23-28: Lyndon B. Johnson, "Speech Before

Joint Session of Congress," 15 Mar 65, _Public

Papers of the Presidents: Johnson, 1965_, I:284.]

[Illustration: MEDICAL EXAMINATION. _Navy doctor on duty, Yokosuka,

Japan._]

The President's bill passed easily with bipartisan support, and he

signed it on 6 August 1965. Two days later federal examiners were on

the job in three states. The act promised a tremendous difference in

the political complexion of significant portions of the country. In

less than a year federal examiners certified 124,000 new voters in

four states and almost half of all eligible Negroes were registered to

vote in the states and counties covered by the law. Another result of

the new legislation was that the Attorney General played an active

role in the 1966 defeat of the state poll tax laws in _Harper_ v.

_Virginia Board of Elections_.[23-29]

[Footnote 23-29: 383 U.S. 663 (1966).]

Useful against legalized discrimination, chiefly in the south, the

civil rights laws of the mid-1960's were conspicuously less successful

in those areas where discrimination operated outside the law. In the

great urban centers of the north and west, home of some 45 percent of

the black population, _de facto_ segregation in housing, employment,

and education had excluded millions of Negroes from the benefits of

economic progress. This ghettoization, this failure to meet human

needs, led to the alienation of many young Americans and a bitter

resentment against society that was dramatized just five days after

the signing of the 1965 voting rights act when the Watts section of

Los Angeles exploded in flames and violence. There had been racial

unrest before, especially during the two previous summers when

flare-ups occurred in Cambridge (Maryland), Philadelphia,

Jacksonville, Brooklyn, Cleveland, and elsewhere, but Watts was a

different matter. Before the California National Guard with some

logistical help from the Army quelled the riots, thirty-four people

were killed, some 4,000 arrested, and $35 million worth of property

damaged or destroyed. The greatest civil disturbance since the 1943

Detroit riot, Watts was but the first in a series of urban (p. 590)

disturbances which refuted the general belief that the race problem

had been largely solved in cities of the north and the west.[23-30]

[Footnote 23-30: For an account of the Watts riot and

its aftermath, see Robert Conot, _Rivers of Blood,

Years of Darkness_ (New York: Bantam Books, 1967),

and Anthony Platt, ed., _The Politics of Riot

Commissions_ (New York: Collin Books, 1971), ch.

vi.]

Discrimination in housing was a major cause of black urban unrest, and

housing was foremost among the areas of discrimination still untouched

by federal legislation. The housing provision of the 1964 Civil Rights

Act was severely limited, and Johnson rejected the idea of yet another

executive order proposed by his Committee on Equal Opportunity in

Housing. Like the order signed by Kennedy, it could cover only new

housing and even that with dubious legality. Johnson, relying on the

civil rights momentum developed over the previous years, decided

instead to press for a comprehensive civil rights bill that would

outlaw discrimination in the sale of all housing. The new measure was

also designed to attack several other residual areas of

discrimination, including jury selection and the physical protection

of Negroes and civil rights workers. Although he enjoyed a measure of

bipartisan support for these latter sections of the bill, the

President failed to overcome the widespread opposition to open

housing, and the 1966 civil rights bill died in the Senate, thereby

postponing an effective law on open housing until after the

assassination of Dr. King in 1968.

The spectacle of demonstrators and riots in northern cities and the

appearance in 1966 of the "black power" slogan considered ominous by

many citizens were blamed for the bill's failure. Another and more

likely cause was that in violating the sanctity of the all-white

neighborhood Johnson had gone beyond any national consensus on civil

rights. In August 1966, for example, a survey by the Louis Harris

organization revealed that some 46 percent of white America would

object to having a black family as next-door neighbors and 70 percent

believed that Negroes "were trying to move too fast." Of particular

importance to the Department of Defense, which would be taking some

equal opportunity steps in the housing field in the next months, was

the fact that this opposition was not translated into a general

rejection of the concept of equal opportunity. In fact, although the

bill failed to win enough votes to apply the Senate's cloture rule,

the President could boast that he won a clear majority in both houses.

His defeat slowed the pace of the civil rights movement and postponed

a solution to a major domestic problem; postponed, because, as Roy

Wilkins reminded his fellow citizens at the time, "the problem is not

going away ... the Negro is not going away."[23-31]

[Footnote 23-31: Both the Harris and Wilkins remarks

are quoted in Sundquist, "Building the Great

Society," pp. 205-06.]

_The Civil Rights Act and Voluntary Compliance_

The enactment of new civil rights legislation in 1964 had thrust the

armed forces into the heart of the civil rights movement in a special

way. As Secretary McNamara himself reminded his subordinates,

President Johnson was determined to have each federal department

develop programs and policies that would give meaning to the new (p. 591)

legislation. That legislation, he added, created "new opportunities"

to win full equality for all servicemen. The secretary made the usual

connection between discrimination and military efficiency, adding that

"this reason alone" compelled departmental action.[23-32] Obviously

other reasons existed, and when McNamara called on all commanders to

support their men in the "lawful assertion of the rights guaranteed"

by the act he was making his more than 300 local commanders agents of

the new federal legislation.

[Footnote 23-32: Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 10 Jul

64, copy in CMH; see also SecDef News Conference,

15 Jul 64, p. 13, OASD (PA).]

Defense officials quickly arranged for the publication of directives

and regulations applying the provisions of the new law to the whole

defense establishment. To insure, as McNamara put it, that military

commanders understood their responsibility for seeing that those in

uniform were accorded fair treatment as prescribed by the new law,

Assistant Secretary Paul had already ordered the services to advise

the rank and file of their rights and instruct commanders to seek

civilian cooperation for the orderly application of the act to

servicemen.[23-33] After considering the service comments solicited by

his civil rights deputy,[23-34] Paul issued a departmental instruction

on 24 July that prescribed specific policies and procedures for

processing the requests of uniformed men and women for legal action

under Titles II (Public Accommodations), III (Public Facilities), and

IV (Public Education) of the act. The instruction encouraged, but did

not compel, the use of command assistance by servicemen who wished to

request suit by the U.S. Attorney General.[23-35]

[Footnote 23-33: Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et al., 6

Jul 64, ASD (M) 291.2; see also SecDef News

Conference, 15 Jul 64, p. 13.]

[Footnote 23-34: Memo, DASD (CR) for Roy Davenport, et

al., 5 May 64, sub: Requests for Suit by Military

Personnel Under the Civil Rights Bill; idem for ASD

(M), 10 Jul 64, sub: DOD Instruction on Processing

of Requests by Military Personnel for the Bringing

of Civil Rights Suits by the Attorney General; both

in ASD (M) 291.2. For an example of a service

response, see Memo, Dep Under SA (Pers Management)

for DASD (CR), 9 Jul 64, same sub, ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-35: DOD Instr 5525.2, 24 Jul 64,

Processing of Requests by Military Personnel for

Action by the Attorney General Under the Civil

Rights Act; see also Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et

al., 24 Jul 64, same sub, ASD (M) 291.2.]

Finally in December, McNamara issued a directive spelling out his

department's obligations under the act's controversial Title VI,

Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs.[23-36] This

directive was one of a series requested by the White House from

various governmental agencies and reviewed by the Justice Department

and the Bureau of the Budget in an attempt to coordinate the federal

government's activities under the far-reaching Title VI

provision.[23-37] After arranging for the circulation of the directive

throughout the services, Secretary McNamara explained in considerable

detail how grants and loans of federal funds, transfer, sale, or lease

of military property, and in fact any federal assistance would be

denied in cases where discrimination could be found. Although this

directive would affect the Department of Defense chiefly through the

National Guard and various civil defense programs, it was (p. 592)

nevertheless a potential source of economic leverage for use by the

armed forces in the fight against discrimination.[23-38] Furthermore,

this directive, unlike McNamara's equal opportunity directive of the

previous year, was supported by federal legislation and thus escaped

the usual criticism suffered by his earlier directives on

discrimination.

[Footnote 23-36: DOD Directive 5500.11, 28 Dec 64.]

[Footnote 23-37: Memo, ASD (M) for Dir, BOB, 15 Jul

64, sub: Defense Department Regulations to

Implement Title VI of the Civil Rights Act; see

also Ltr, Spec Asst to DASD (CR), to Gesell, 24 Jul

64; copies of both in Gesell Collection, J. F.

Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 23-38: DASD (CP, IR, & CR), The Civil Rights

Policies of the Department of Defense, 4 May 65,

copy in CMH.]

The Department of Defense's voluntary compliance program in off-base

discrimination cases had its greatest success in the months following

the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Given the passage of the act and

other federal legislation, pronouncements of the federal courts, and

the broad advance of racial tolerance throughout the nation, the

Defense Department's civil rights officials came to expect that most

discrimination could be dealt with in a routine manner. As Robert E.

Jordan III, a staff assistant to the department's civil rights deputy,

put it, the use of sanctions would not "normally" be invoked when the

Civil Rights Act or other laws could provide a judicial remedy.[23-39]

Fitt predicted that only a "very tiny number" of requests by

servicemen for suits under the act would ever be processed all the way

through to the courts. He expected to see many voluntary settlements

achieved by commanders spurred to action by the filing of requests for

suit.[23-40]

[Footnote 23-39: Ltr, Jordan to William A. Smith, 21

Aug 64, ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-40: Memo, DASD (CR) for ASD (M), 10 Jul

64, sub: DOD Instruction on Processing of Requests

by Military Personnel for the Bringing of Civil

Rights Suits by the Attorney General, ASD (M)

291.2.]

By early 1965 local commanders had made "very good progress,"

according to one Defense Department survey, in securing voluntary

compliance with Title II of the act for public accommodations

frequented by servicemen. Each service had reported "really surprising

examples of progress" in obtaining integrated off-base housing in

neighborhoods adjoining military installations and heavily populated

by service families. The services also reported good progress in

obtaining integrated off-duty education for servicemen, as distinct

from their dependents in the public schools.[23-41] At the same time

lesser but noticeable progress was reported in Titles II and III

cases. In the first off-base inventory some 145 installations in

twenty states had reported widespread discrimination in nearby

restaurants, hotels, bars, bowling alleys, and other Title II

businesses; forty installations in nine states reported similar

discrimination in libraries, city parks, and stadiums (Title III

categories). Each succeeding inventory reported impressive reductions

in these figures.

[Footnote 23-41: Memo, Timpane (Staff Asst) for

Shulman, DASD (CP, IR, & CR), 11 Feb 65, sub:

Service Reports on Equal Rights Activities, ASD (M)

291.2.]

Defense Department officials observed that the amount of progress

depended considerably on the size of the base, its proximity to the

local community, and the relationship between the commander and local

leaders. Progress was most notable at large bases near towns. The

influence of the Civil Rights Act on cases involving servicemen was

also readily apparent. But above all, these officials pointed to the

personal efforts of the local commander as the vital factor. Many

commanders were able to use the off-base inventory itself as a weapon

to fight discrimination, especially when the philosophy of "if (p. 593)

everybody else desegregates I will" was so prevalent. Nor could the

effect of commanders' achievements be measured merely in terms of

hotels and restaurants open to black servicemen. The knowledge that

his commander was fighting for his rights in the community gave a

tremendous boost to the black serviceman's morale. It followed that

when a commander successfully forced a change in the practices of a

business establishment, even one only rarely frequented by servicemen,

he stirred a new pride and self-respect in his men.[23-42]

[Footnote 23-42: For discussion of command initiatives

and black morale, see Memo, DASD (CR) for Under SA

et al., 25 May 64, sub: Off-Base Equal Opportunity

Inventories; Fitt, "Remarks Before Civilian Aides

Conference of the Secretary of the Army," 6 Mar 64;

Memo, DASD (CR) for Burke Marshall, Dept of

Justice, 20 Mar 64, sub: The Civil Rights of Negro

Servicemen. Copies of all in CMH.]

_The Limits of Voluntary Compliance_

If the Civil Rights Act strengthened the hands of the commander, it

also quickly revealed the ultimate limits of voluntary compliance

itself. The campaign against Titles II and III discrimination was only

one facet of the Department of Defense's battle against off-base

discrimination, which also included major attacks against

discrimination in the National Guard, in the public schools, and,

finally, in housing. It was in these areas that the limits of

voluntary compliance were reached, and the technique was abandoned in

favor of economic sanctions.

Because of its intimate connection with the Department of Defense, the

National Guard appeared to be an easy target in the attack against

off-base discrimination. Although Secretary McNamara had accepted his

department's traditional voluntary approach toward ending

discrimination in this major reserve component,[23-43] the possibility

of using sanctions against the guard had been under discussion for

some time. As early as 1949 the legal counsel of the National Guard

Bureau had concluded that the federal government had the right to

compel integration.[23-44] Essentially the same stand was taken in

1961 by the Defense Department's Assistant General Counsel for

Manpower.[23-45]

[Footnote 23-43: For the discussion of McNamara's

initial dealings with the National Guard on the

subject of race, see Chapter 20.]

[Footnote 23-44: "Opinion of the Legal Adviser of the

National Guard Bureau, April 1949," reproduced in

Special Board to Study Negro Participation in the

Army National Guard (ARNG) and the United States

Army Reserve (USAR), "Participation of Negroes in

the Reserve Components of the Army," 3 vols. (1967)

(hereafter cited as Williams Board Rpt), II:

20-21.]

[Footnote 23-45: Memo, Asst Gen Counsel (Manpower) for

ASD (M), 17 Jul 61, sub: Integration of National

Guard, ASD (M) 291.2.]

These opinions, along with the 1947 staff study on the guard and the

1948 New Jersey case,[23-46] provided support extending over more than

a decade for the argument that the federal government could establish

racial policies for the National Guard. Indeed, there is no evidence

of opposition to this position in the 1940's, and southern guard

leaders openly accepted federal supremacy during the period when the

Army and Air Force were segregated. But in the 1960's, long after (p. 594)

the services had integrated their active forces and seemed to be

moving toward a similar policy for the guard, doubts about federal

authority over a peacetime guard appeared. The National Guard Bureau

disputed the 1949 opinion of its legal counsel and the more recent one

from the Defense Department and stressed the political implications of

forcing integration; a bureau spokesman asserted that "an ultimatum to

a governor that he must commit political suicide in order to obtain

federal support for his National Guard will be rejected." Moreover, if

federal officials insisted on integration, the bureau foresaw a

deterioration of guard units to the detriment of national

security.[23-47]

[Footnote 23-46: For a discussion of earlier efforts

to integrate the New Jersey National Guard and the

attitude of individual states toward Defense

Department requests, see Chapter 12.]

[Footnote 23-47: Memo, Legal Adviser, NGB, for Bruce

Docherty, Office of the General Counsel, DA, 19 Jul

63, sub: Authority to Require Integration in the

National Guard, copy in CMH.]

[Illustration: AUTO PILOT SHOP. _Airmen check out equipment, Biggs Air

Force Base, Texas._]

The National Guard Bureau supported voluntary integration, and its

chiefs tried in 1962 and 1963 to prod state adjutants general into

taking action on their own account. Citing the success some states,

notably Texas, enjoyed in continuing the integration their units first

experienced during federalized service in the Berlin call-up, Maj.

Gen. D. W. McGowan warned other state organizations that outright

defiance of federal authorities could not be maintained indefinitely

and would eventually lead to integration enforced by Washington.[23-48]

Replies from the state adjutants varied, but in some cases it (p. 595)

became clear that the combination of persuasion and quiet pressure

might bring change. The Louisiana adjutant general, for example,

reported that considering the feelings in his state's legislature any

move toward integration would require "a selling job." At the same

time, he carefully admitted, "some of these days, the thing

[integration] is probably inevitable."[23-49] The administration,

however, continued to take the view that integration of the National

Guard was a special problem because the leverage available to

implement it was in no way comparable to the federal government's

control over the active forces or the organized reserves.

[Footnote 23-48: Ltrs, Chief, NGB, to AG's of Alabama

et al., 3 Mar 62, 3 Jul 63, and 9 Dec 63; see also

Williams Board Rpt, II: 36.]

[Footnote 23-49: Ltr, Maj Gen Raymond H. Fleming,

Adjutant General, Louisiana National Guard, to

Chief, NGB, 16 Jul 63, copy in CMH.]

Progress toward total integration continued through 1963 and 1964,

although slowly.[23-50] Near the end of 1964, the National Guard

Bureau announced that every state National Guard was integrated,

though only in token numbers in some cases.[23-51] Even this slight

victory could not be claimed by the Department of Defense or its

National Guard Bureau, but was the result of the pressure exerted on

states by the Gesell Committee.

[Footnote 23-50: See Memos: Chief, NGB, for Gen

Counsel, DA, 22 Oct 63, sub: Current Status of

Integration of National Guard in Ten Southern

States; idem for DASD (CR), 30 Dec 63, sub:

Year-End Report on Integration of Negroes in the

National Guard; idem for Dep Under SA (Manpower and

Res Forces), 9 Jan 64, sub: Meeting With National

Chairman of the American Veterans Committee. Copies

of all in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-51: "Statement by Maj. Gen. Winston C.

Wilson, Chief, National Guard Bureau Concerning

Integration of the National Guard," 28 Dec 64, copy

in CMH; see also New York _Times_, December 30,

1964, and Williams Board Rpt, II:38.]

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 altered the Defense Department's attitude

toward the National Guard. Title VI of the act undercut all arguments

against federal supremacy over the guard, for it no longer mattered

who had technical responsibility for units in peacetime. In practical

terms, the power to integrate clearly rested now with the federal

government, which in a complete reversal of its earlier policy showed

a disposition to use it. On 15 February 1965 Deputy Secretary of

Defense Vance ordered the Army and Air Force to amend National Guard

regulations to eliminate any trace of racial discrimination and "to

ensure that the policy of equal opportunity and treatment is clearly

stated."[23-52] Vance's order produced a speedy change in the states,

so much so that later in 1965 the Department of Defense was finally

able to oppose New York Congressman Abraham J. Multer's biannual bill

to withhold federal aid from segregated guard units on the grounds

that there were no longer any such units.[23-53]

[Footnote 23-52: Memo, Dep SecDef for SA and SecAF, 15

Feb 65, sub: Equality of Opportunity in the

National Guard, SD 291.2; see also Memo, Chief,

NGB, for Chief, Office of Reserve Components, 27

Jan 65. For examples of how Vance's order was

transmitted to the individual states, see Texas Air

National Guard Regulation 35-1, 17 March 1965, and

State of Michigan General Order No. 34, 2 July

1965. In March 1966 the Army and Air Force

published a joint regulation outlining procedures

to assure compliance with Title VI in the Army and

Air National Guard and designating the Chief of the

National Guard Bureau as the responsible official

to implement departmental directives regarding all

federally assisted activities of the National

Guard. See National Guard Regulation 24, 30 Mar

66.]

[Footnote 23-53: Congressman Multer first introduced

such a bill on 13 January 1949 and pressed,

unsuccessfully, for similar measures in each

succeeding Congress; see Williams Board Rpt, II:

47-48.]

Lack of equal opportunity in the National Guard might have been

resented by civil rights groups, but black servicemen themselves

suffered more generally and more deeply from discrimination (p. 596)

visited on their children. Alfred Fitt summarized these feelings in

1964:

The imposition of unconstitutionally segregated schooling on

their children is particularly galling for the Negro servicemen.

As comparative transients--and as military men accustomed to

avoiding controversy with civilian authorities--they cannot

effectively sue for the constitutional rights of their sons and

daughters. Yet they see their children, fresh from the integrated

environment which is the rule on military installations,

condemned to schools which are frequently two, even three grades

behind the integrated schools these same children had attended

on-base or at their fathers' previous duty stations.[23-54]

[Footnote 23-54: Memo, DASD (CR) for Burke Marshall,

20 Mar 64, sub: The Civil Rights of Negro

Servicemen, copy in CMH.]

There was much to be said for the Defense Department's theory that an

appeal for voluntary compliance would produce much integration in

off-base schools attended by military dependents. That these children

were the offspring of men serving in defense of their country was

likely to have considerable impact in the south, especially, with its

strong military traditions. That the children had in most cases

already attended integrated schools, competing and learning with

children of another race, was likely to make their integration more

acceptable to educators.

Beyond these special reasons, the services could expect help from new

legislation and new administration rulings. The Civil Rights Act of

1960, for example, had authorized the Department of Health, Education,

and Welfare to provide integrated education for military dependents in

areas where public schools were discontinued. In March 1962 Secretary

of Health, Education, and Welfare Abraham Ribicoff announced that

racially segregated schools were no longer "suitable" institutions

under the terms of Public Laws 815 and 879 and that beginning in

September 1963 his department would "exercise sound discretion, take

appropriate steps" to provide integrated education for military

dependents. If the children were withdrawn from local school systems

to achieve this, he warned, so too the federal aid.[23-55] Lending

credence to Ribicoff's warning, his department undertook a survey in

the fall of 1962 of selected military installations to determine the

educational status of military dependents.[23-56] On 17 September 1962

Attorney General Kennedy filed suit in Richmond to bar the use of

federal funds in the segregated schools of Prince George County,

Virginia, the location of Fort Lee.[23-57] Finally, in January 1963,

the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare announced that unless

state officials relented it would start a crash program of

construction and operation of integrated schools for military

dependents in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina.[23-58]

[Footnote 23-55: Ltr, Actg U.S. Comm of Ed to

Superintendent of Public Instruction, Fla., et al.,

6 Nov 62, with incls; see also Memo for Rcd, Evans,

20 Nov 62, sub: Schools for Dependents, copies of

both in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-56: AFNS, Release No. 2851, 17 Aug 62.]

[Footnote 23-57: Four similar suits were filed in

January 1963 regarding segregation in Huntsville

and Mobile, Alabama; Gulfport and Biloxi,

Mississippi; and Bossier Parish, Louisiana. Ltr,

Atty Gen to President, 24 Jan 63 (released by White

House on 26 Jan 63), copy in CMH. See New York

_Times_, September 18, 1962.]

[Footnote 23-58: Washington _Post_, January 17, 1963.]

Some local commanders took immediate advantage of these emotional (p. 597)

appeals and administration pressures. The commandant of the Marine

Corps Schools, Quantico, for example, won an agreement from Stafford

County, Virginia, authorities that the county would open its high

school and two elementary schools to Marine Corps dependents without

regard to race. The commandant also announced that schools in Albany,

Georgia, had agreed to take military dependents on an integrated

basis.[23-59] The Air Force announced that schools near Eglin,

Whiting, and MacDill Air Force Bases in Florida as well as those near

six bases in Texas, including Sheppard and Connally, would integrate.

The Under Secretary of the Navy reported similar successes in school

districts in Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. And the commander of Fort

Belvoir started discussions with the Fairfax County, Virginia, school

board looking toward the speedy desegregation of schools near the

fort.

[Footnote 23-59: Both the Marine Corps and the Navy

operated installations in the vicinity of Albany,

Georgia.]

Lest any commander hesitate, the Department of Defense issued a new

policy in regard to the education of military dependents. On 15 July

1963 Assistant Secretary Paul directed all local commanders in areas

where public education was still segregated--large parts of some

fifteen states--to counsel parents on the procedures available for the

transfer of their children to integrated schools, on how to appeal

assignment to segregated schools, and on legal action as an

alternative to accepting local school board decisions to bar their

children.[23-60] In December 1963 Fitt drew up contingency plans for

the education of dependent children in the event of local school

closings.[23-61] In April of 1964 Fitt reminded the services that

Defense Department policy called for the placement of military

dependents in integrated schools and that commanders were expected to

make "appropriate efforts" on behalf of the children to eliminate any

deviation from that policy.[23-62] In effect, base commanders were

being given a specific role in the fight to secure for black and white

dependents equal access to public schools.

[Footnote 23-60: Memo, ASD (M) for SA et al., 15 Jul

63, sub: Assignment of Dependents of Military

Personnel to Public Schools, ASD(M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-61: Memo, DASD (CR) for Under SecNav, 4

Dec 63, sub: Dependent Schooling in Closed School

Districts; Memo, Asst SecNav for DASD (CR), 20 Dec

63, same sub; both in SecNav files, GenRecsNav. See

also Memo, DASD (CR) for Burke Marshall et al., 9

Mar 64, sub: Possible September 1964 School

Closings Affecting Military Dependents, copy in

CMH.]

[Footnote 23-62: Memo, DASD (CR) for Under SA et al.,

17 Apr 64, sub: Assignment of Dependents of

Military Personnel to Public Schools; see also idem

for ASD (M), 2 Apr 64, sub: Segregated Schools and

Military Dependents. For an example of how this new

responsibility was conveyed to local commanders,

see BuPers Notice 5350.5, 26 Jul 63, "Assignment of

Dependents of Military Personnel to Public

Schools." Copies of all in CMH.]

The action taken by base commanders under this responsibility might

alter patterns of segregated education in some areas, but in the long

run any attempt to integrate schools through a program of voluntary

compliance appeared futile. At the end of the 1964 school year more

than 76,300 military dependents, including 6,177 black children, at

forty-nine installations attended segregated schools. Another 14,390

children on these same bases attended integrated schools, usually (p. 598)

grade school, on the military base itself.[23-63] Because of the

restrictions against base closings and off-limits sanctions, there was

little hope that base commanders could produce any substantial

improvement in this record. Fitt admitted that the Department of

Defense could not compel the integration of a school district. He

recognized that it was impossible to establish an accredited

twelve-grade system at the forty-nine installations, yet at the same

time he considered it "incompatible with military requirements" to

assign black servicemen with children to areas where only integrated

schools were available. Even the threat to deny impacted-area aid was

limited because in many communities the services' contracts with local

school districts to educate dependent children was contingent on

continuous federal aid. If the aid was stopped the schools would be

closed, leaving service children with no schools to attend.[23-64]

[Footnote 23-63: Memo, DASD (CR) for Under SA et al.,

25 May 64, sub: Off-Base Equal Opportunity

Inventories, copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-64: For an example of how these contracts

for the education of dependents were tied to

federal aid, see the case concerning Columbus Air

Force Base, Mississippi, as discussed in Ltr, DASD

(CR) to J. Francis Pohlhous, NAACP, 5 Nov 63. For

the views of the secretary's race counselor on the

Fitt assessment, see Ltr, Evans to Mrs. Frank C.

Eubanks, 10 Jun 64. Copies of both in CMH.]

The only practical recourse for parents of military dependents, Fitt

believed, was to follow the slow process of judicial redress under

Title IV of the civil rights bill then moving through Congress.

Anticipating the new law, Fitt asked the services to provide him with

pertinent data on all school districts where military dependents

attended segregated schools. He planned to use this information in

cooperation with the Departments of Justice and Health, Education, and

Welfare for use in federal suits. He also requested reports on the

efforts made by local commanders to integrate schools used by

dependent children and the responses of local school officials to such

efforts.[23-65] Later, after the new law had been signed by the

President, Norman Paul outlined for the services the procedures to be

used for lodging complaints under Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights

Act and directed that local commanders inform all parents under their

command of the remedies afforded them under the new legislation.[23-66]

[Footnote 23-65: Memo, DASD (CR) for Spec Asst to

SecAF for Manpower, Personnel, and Reserve Forces,

23 Jun 64, SecAF files. Similar memos were sent to

the Army and Navy the same day. For an example of

how these reports were used, see Memo, Spec Asst to

DASD (CR) for St. John Barrett, Civil Rights Div,

Dept of Justice, 20 Aug 64, sub: Desegregation of

Schools Serving Children of Shaw AFB, South

Carolina, Personnel. Copies of all in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-66: Memo, ASD (M) for Under SA et al., 9

Aug 65, sub: Assignment of Dependents of Military

Personnel to Public Schools, ASD (M) 291.2.]

With no prospect in sight for speedy integration of schools attended

by military dependents, the Department of Defense summarily ended the

attendance of uniformed personnel at all segregated educational

institutions. With the close of the 1964 spring semester, Paul

announced, no Defense Department funds would be spent to pay tuition

for such schooling.[23-67] The economic pressure implicit in this

ruling, which for some time had been applied to the education of (p. 599)

civilian employees of the department, allowed many base commanders to

negotiate an end to segregation in off-base schools.[23-68]

[Footnote 23-67: Memo, ASD (M) for SA et al., 25 Mar

64, sub: Non-Discrimination in Civil Schooling of

Military Personnel; Ltr, DASD (CR) to Congressman

John Bell Williams of Mississippi, 18 Mar 64; Ltr,

DASD (M) to Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, 8 Jul

64; Memo, DASD (CR) for Roy Davenport et al., 20

Apr 64. Copies of all in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-68: Memo, Timpane for DASD (CP, IR, &

CR), 11 Feb 65, sub: Service Reports on Equal

Rights Activities. In a related action the

department made military facilities available for

the use of the College Entrance Examination Board

when that body was confronted with segregated

facilities in which to administer its tests; see

Memos, Dep Chief, Pers Services Div, USAF, for AFLC

et al., 8 Mar 63, sub: College Entrance

Examinations, and Evans for DASD (M), 15 Jan 63,

sub: College Entrance Examination Board

Communication. Fitt opposed this policy on the

grounds that it removed a wholesome pressure on the

segregated private facilities; see Memo, DASD (CR)

for ASD (M), 2 Mar 64, sub: College Entrance

Examinations at Military Installations. Fitt was

overruled, and the military facilities were

provided for the college entrance examinations; see

Ltr, Regional Dir, College Entrance Examination Bd,

to Evans, 13 Apr 64. Copies of all in CMH.]

The effort of the Department of Defense to secure education for its

military dependents in integrated schools was, on the whole,

unsuccessful. Integration, when it finally came to most of these

institutions later in the 1960's, came principally through the efforts

of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to enforce Title

VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet the role of local military

commanders in the effort to secure integrated schools cannot be

ignored, for with the development of a new policy toward off-base

facilities in 1963 the commander became a permanent and significant

partner in the administration's fight to desegregate the nation's

schools. In contrast to earlier times when the Department of Defense

depended on moral suasion to desegregate schools used by servicemen's

children, its commanders now educated parents on their legal rights,

collected data to support class action suits, and negotiated with

school boards. If the primary impetus for this activity was the Civil

Rights Act of 1964, the philosophy of the Gesell Committee and the

Secretary of Defense's directive were also implicit.

Discrimination in the sale and lease of housing continued to be the

most widespread and persistent form of racial injustice encountered by

black servicemen, and a most difficult one to fight. The chronic

shortage of on-base accommodations, the transient nature of a military

assignment, and the general reluctance of men in uniform to protest

publicly left the average serviceman at the mercy of local landlords

and real estate interests. Nor did he have recourse in law. No

significant federal legislation on the subject existed before 1969,

and state laws (by 1967 over half the states had some form of

prohibition against discrimination in public housing and twenty-one

states had open housing laws) were rather limited, excluding

owner-occupied dwellings, for example, from their provisions. Even

President Kennedy's 1962 housing order was restricted to future

building and to housing dependent on federal financing.

Both the Civil Rights Commission and the Gesell Committee studied the

problem in some detail and concluded that the President's directive to

all federal agencies to use their "good offices" to push for open

housing in federally supported housing had not been followed in the

Department of Defense. The Civil Rights Commission, in particular,

painted a picture of a Defense Department alternating between naivete

and indifference in connection with the special housing problems of

black servicemen.[23-69] White House staffer Wofford later decided (p. 600)

that the Secretary of Defense was dragging his feet on the subject of

off-base housing, although Wofford admitted that each federal agency

was a forceful advocate of action by other agencies.[23-70]

[Footnote 23-69: Memo, ASD (CR) for SecDef, 29 Oct 63,

sub: Family Housing and the Negro Serviceman, Civil

Rights Commission Staff Report; Memo, ASD (M) for

SecDef, 2 Nov 63, sub: Family Housing for Negro

Servicemen; both in ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-70: Interv, Bernhard with Wofford, 29 Nov

65, p. 60.]

[Illustration: SUBMARINE TENDER DUTY. _A senior chief boatswain mate

and master diver at his station on the USS Hunley._]

The Assistant Secretary for Manpower conceded in November 1963 that

little had been done, but, citing the widely misunderstood off-base

inventory, he pleaded the need to avoid retaliation by segregationist

forces in Congress both on future authorizations for housing and on

the current civil rights legislation. He recommended that the

Department of Defense complete and disseminate to local commanders

information packets containing relevant directives, statistics, and

legal procedures available in the local housing field.[23-71]

[Footnote 23-71: Memo, ASD (M) for SecDef, 2 Nov 63,

sub: Family Housing for Negro Servicemen, ASD (M)

291-2.]

McNamara approved this procedure, again investing local commanders

with responsibility for combating a pervasive form of discrimination

with a voluntary compliance program. Specifically, local commanders

were directed to promote open housing near their bases, expanding

their open housing lists and pressing the problem of local housing (p. 601)

discrimination on their biracial community committees for solution.

They were helped by the secretary's assistants. His civil rights and

housing deputies became active participants in the President's housing

committee, transmitting to local military commanders the information

and techniques developed in the executive body. McNamara's civil

rights staff inaugurated cooperative programs with state and municipal

equal opportunity commissions and other local open housing bodies,

making these community resources available to local commanders.

Finally, in February 1965, the Department of Defense entered into a

formal arrangement with the Federal Housing Administration to provide

commanders with lists of all housing in their area covered by the

President's housing order and to arrange for the lease of foreclosed

Federal Housing Authority properties to military personnel.[23-72]

[Footnote 23-72: Ltr, DASD (CR) to Chmn, President's

Cmte on Equal Opportunity in Housing, 19 Sep 63,

copy in CMH; see also Paul Memo.]

These activities had little effect on the military housing situation.

An occasional apartment complex or trailer court got integrated, but

no substantial progress could be reported in the four years following

Secretary McNamara's 1963 equal opportunity directive. On the

contrary, the record suggests that many commanders, discouraged

perhaps by the overwhelming difficulties encountered in the fair

housing field, might agree with Fitt: "I have no doubt that I did

nothing about it [housing discrimination] in 1963-4 because I was

working on forms of discrimination at once more blatant and easier to

overcome. I did not fully understand the impact of housing

discrimination, and I did not know what to do about it."[23-73]

[Footnote 23-73: Ltr, Fitt to author, 22 May 72.]

A special Defense Department housing survey of thirteen representative

communities, including a study of service families in the Washington,

D.C., area, documented this failure. The survey described a housing

situation as of early 1967 in which progress toward open off-base

housing for servicemen was minimal. Despite the active off-base

programs sponsored by local commanders, discrimination in housing

remained widespread,[23-74] and based on four years' experience the

Department of Defense had to conclude that appeals to the community

for voluntary compliance would not produce integrated housing for

military families on a large scale. Still, defense officials were

reluctant to substitute more drastic measures. Deputy Secretary Vance,

for one, argued in early 1967 that nationwide application of

off-limits sanctions would raise significant legal issues, create

chaotic conditions in the residential status of all military

personnel, downgrade rather than enhance the responsibility of local

commanders to achieve their equal opportunity goals, and, above all,

fail to produce more integrated housing. Writing to the chairman of

the Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs

(ACCESS),[23-75] he asserted that open housing for servicemen (p. 602)

would be achieved only through the "full commitment at every level of

command to the proposition of equal treatment."[23-76]

[Footnote 23-74: Ltr, Dep SecDef to J. Charles Jones,

Chairman, ACCESS, 21 Feb 67, copy in CMH; see also

the detailed account of the Department of Defense's

housing campaign in Bahr, "The Expanding Role of

the Department of Defense," p. 105.]

[Footnote 23-75: ACCESS was one of the several local,

biracial open-housing groups that sprang up to

fight discrimination in housing during the

mid-1960's. The center of this particular group's

concern was in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.]

[Footnote 23-76: Ltr, Dep SecDef to Jones, 21 Feb 67,

copy in CMH.]

But even as Vance wrote, the department's housing policy was

undergoing substantial revision. And, ironically, it was the very

group to which Vance was writing that precipitated the change. It was

the members of ACCESS who climaxed their campaign against segregated

apartment complexes in the Washington suburbs with a sit-down

demonstration in McNamara's reception room in the Pentagon on 1

February, bringing the problem to the personal attention of a

Secretary of Defense burdened with Vietnam.[23-77] Although strongly

committed to the principle of equal opportunity and always ready to

support the initiatives of his civil rights assistants,[23-78]

McNamara had largely ignored the housing problem. Later he castigated

himself for allowing the problem to drift for four years.

I get charged with the TFX. It's nothing compared to the Bay of

Pigs or my failure for four years to integrate off-base military

housing. I don't want you to misunderstand me when I say this,

but the TFX was only money. We're talking about blood, the moral

foundation of our future, the life of the nation when we talk

about these things.[23-79]

[Footnote 23-77: Ltr, Fitt to author, 22 May 72; see

also New York _Times_ and Washington _Post_,

February 2, 1967.]

[Footnote 23-78: Robert E. Jordan, former DASD (CR)

assistant, described the secretary's eagerness to

support civil rights initiatives: "He would hardly

wait for an explanation, but start murmuring,

'Where do I sign, where do I sign?'" Interv, author

with Jordan, 7 Jun 72.]

[Footnote 23-79: Quoted by Brower, "McNamara Seen Now,

Full Length," p. 78. The TFX mentioned by McNamara

was an allusion to the heated and lengthy

controversy that arose during his administration

over fighter aircraft for the Navy and Air Force.]

McNamara was being unnecessarily harsh with himself. There were

several reasons, quite unrelated to either the Secretary of Defense or

his assistants, that explain the failure of voluntarism to integrate

housing used by servicemen. A major cause--witness the failure of

President Johnson's proposed civil rights bill in 1966--was that open

housing lacked a national consensus or widespread public support.

Voluntary compliance was successful in other areas, such as public

accommodation, transportation, and to some extent even in dependent

schooling, precisely because the requests of local commanders were

supported by a growing national consensus and the force of national

legislation. In dealing with housing discrimination, however, these

same commanders faced public indifference or open hostility without

the comforting support of federal law. Even with the commander's

wholehearted commitment to open housing, a commitment that equal

opportunity directives from the services could by no means insure, his

effectiveness against such widespread discrimination was questionable.

Nothing in his training prepared him for the delicate negotiations

involved in obtaining integrated housing. Moreover, it was extremely

difficult if not impossible to isolate the black serviceman's housing

plight from that of other black citizens; thus, an open housing

campaign really demanded comprehensive action by the whole federal

government. The White House had never launched a national open housing

campaign; it was not, indeed, until 16 February 1967 that President

Johnson submitted a compulsory national open housing bill to

Congress.[23-80]

[Footnote 23-80: A weakened version of this bill

eventually emerged as the Civil Rights Act of

1968.]

Whatever the factors contributing to the lack of progress, (p. 603)

McNamara admitted that "the voluntary program had failed and failed

miserably."[23-81] Philosophically, Robert McNamara found this

situation intolerable. He had become interested in the "unused

potential" of his department to change American society as it affected

the welfare of servicemen. As Fitt explained, the secretary believed

any department which administers 10% of the gross national

product, with influence over the lives of 10 million people, is

bound to have an impact. The question is whether it's going to be

a dumb, blind impact, or a marshaled and ordered impact.

McNamara wanted to marshal that impact by committing defense

resources to social goals that were still compatible with the

primary mission of security.[23-82]

[Footnote 23-81: McNamara, _The Essence of Security_,

p. 124.]

[Footnote 23-82: Quoted by Brower, "McNamara Seen Now,

Full Length," p. 89.]

Clearly, the Secretary of Defense considered open housing for service

families one of these goals, and when his attention was drawn to the

immediacy of the problem by the ACCESS demonstration he acted quickly.

At his instigation Vance ordered the local commanders of all services

to conduct a nationwide census of all apartment houses, housing

developments, and mobile home courts consisting of five or more rental

units within normal commuting distance of all installations having at

least 500 servicemen. He also ordered the commanders to talk to the

owners or operators of these properties personally and to urge them to

open their properties to all servicemen. He organized an Off-base

Equal Opportunity Board, consisting of the open housing coordinators

of each service and his office to monitor the census. Finally, he

announced the establishment of a special action program under the

direction of Thomas D. Morris, now the Assistant Secretary for

Manpower. Aimed at the Washington, D.C., area specifically, the

program was designed to serve as a model for the rest of the

country.[23-83]

[Footnote 23-83: Memo, Dep SecDef for Secys of

Military Departments, 11 Apr 67, sub: Equal

Opportunity for Military Personnel in Rental of

Off-Base Housing. Vance's instructions were spelled

out in great detail, replete with charts and forms,

in Memo, ASD (M) for Dep Under Secys of Military

Departments (Manpower), 22 Apr 67, same sub. Copies

of both in CMH.]

Vance also notified the service secretaries that subsequent to the

census all local commanders would be asked to discuss the census

findings with local community leaders in an effort to mobilize support

for open housing. Later Assistant Secretary Morris, with the help of

the acting civil rights deputy, L. Howard Bennett, spelled out a

program for "aggressive" negotiation with community leaders and

cooperation with other government agencies, in effect a last-ditch

attempt to achieve open housing for servicemen through voluntary

compliance. Underscoring the urgency of the housing campaign, the

department demanded a monthly report from all commanders on their open

housing activities,[23-84] and Morris promptly launched a

proselytizing effort of his own in the metropolitan Washington area.

Described simply by McNamara as "a decent man," Morris spoke

indefatigably before civil leaders and realtors on behalf of open

housing.[23-85]

[Footnote 23-84: Memos, ASD (M) for Dep Under Secys of

Military Departments, 22 Apr and 17 Jul 67, sub:

Equal Opportunity for Military Personnel in Rental

of Off-Base Housing. For the effect of this order

on an individual commander, see article by Charles

Hunter in Charleston, South Carolina, _Post_,

August 30, 1967. See also Interv, author with

Bennett, 13 Dec 73.]

[Footnote 23-85: Intervs, author with McNamara, 11 May

72, and Jordan, 7 Jan 72.]

The department's national housing census confirmed the gloomy (p. 604)

statistics projected from earlier studies indicating that housing

discrimination was widespread and intractable and damaging to

servicemen's morale.[23-86] McNamara decided that local commanders

"were not going to involve themselves," and for the first time since

sanctions were mentioned in his equal opportunity directive some four

years before, he decided to use them in a discrimination case. The

Secretary of Defense himself, not the local commander nor the service

secretaries, made the decision: housing not opened to _all_ servicemen

would be closed to _all_ servicemen.[23-87] Aware of the controversy

accompanying such action, the secretary's legal counsel prepared a

justification. Predictably, the department's lawyer argued that

sanctions against discrimination in off-base housing were an extension

of the commander's traditional right to forbid commerce with

establishments whose policies adversely affected the health or morals

of his men. Acutely conscious of the lack of federal legislation

barring housing discrimination, Vance and his legal associates were

careful to distinguish between an owner's legal right to choose his

tenants and the commander's power to impose a military order on his

men.

[Footnote 23-86: McNamara, _The Essence of Security_,

p. 126.]

[Footnote 23-87: Interv, author with McNamara, 11 May

72.]

Although committed to a nationwide imposition of sanctions on housing

if necessary, the Secretary of Defense hoped that the example of a few

cases would be sufficient to break the intransigence of offending

landlords; certainly a successful test case would strengthen the hand

of the commanders in their negotiations with community leaders.

Metropolitan Washington was the obvious area for the first test case,

and the Maryland General Assembly further focused attention on that

region when on 28 February 1967 it called on the Secretary of Defense

to end housing discrimination for all military personnel in the

state.[23-88] On the night of 21 June, Gerhard Gesell received an

unexpected phone call: there would be something in tomorrow's paper,

Robert McNamara told him, that should be especially interesting to the

judge.[23-89] And there was, indeed, on the front page. As of 1 July,

all military personnel would be forbidden to lease or rent housing in

any segregated apartment building or trailer court within a

three-and-a-half-mile radius of Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

Citing the special housing problems of servicemen returning from

Vietnam, McNamara pointed out that in the Andrews area of Maryland

less than 3 percent of some 22,000 local apartment units were open to

black servicemen. The Andrews situation, he declared, was causing

problems "detrimental to the morale and welfare of the majority of our

Negro military families and thus to the operational effectiveness of

the base."[23-90]

[Footnote 23-88: Joint Resolution 47 of the Maryland

General Assembly as cited in Memo, SecDef for

Secretaries of Military Departments, 22 Jun 67,

sub: Unsatisfactory Housing of Negro Military

Families Living Off-Post in the Andrews Air Force

Base Area, copy in CMH. See also New York _Times_,

May 26, 1967, and Yarmolinsky, _The Military

Establishment_, p. 352.]

[Footnote 23-89: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov

74.]

[Footnote 23-90: Memo, SecDef for Secretaries of

Military Departments, 22 Jun 67, sub:

Unsatisfactory Housing of Negro Military Families

Living Off-Post in the Andrews Air Force Base Area,

SD files. The quotation is from McNamara's News

Conference, 22 June 1967, as quoted in the New York

_Times_, June 23, 1967.]

The secretary's rhetoric, skillfully justifying sanctions in (p. 605)

terms of military efficiency and elementary fairness for returning

combat veterans, might have explained the singular lack of adverse

congressional reaction to the order. No less a personage than Chairman

L. Mendel Rivers of the House Armed Services Committee admitted that

he had no objection to the sanctions near Andrews. Asked about

possible sanctions elsewhere, Rivers added that he would cross that

bridge later.[23-91]

[Footnote 23-91: New York _Times_, June 23, 1967.

Rivers did criticize later applications of the

housing sanctions; see Washington _Post_, December

28, 1977.]

Rivers and his congressional allies would have little time for

reflection, because McNamara quickly made it clear that the Andrews

action was only a first step. Sanctions were imposed in rapid

succession on areas surrounding four other military installations in

Maryland, Fort George G. Meade, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood

Arsenal, and Fort Holabird.[23-92] More pressure was placed on

segregationists when McNamara announced on 8 September his intention

to extend the sanctions nationwide. He singled out California, where

the Defense Department census had shown black servicemen barred from a

third of all rental units, for special attention. In fact, off-limits

sanctions imposed on broad geographical areas were used only once

more--in December 1967 against multiple rental properties in the

northern Virginia area.[23-93] In the meantime, the Department of

Defense had developed a less dramatic but equally effective method of

exerting economic pressure on landlords. On 17 July 1967 McNamara

ordered the establishment of housing referral offices at all

installations where more than 500 men were assigned. All married

servicemen seeking off-base housing were required to obtain prior

clearance from these offices before entering into rental agreements

with landlords.[23-94]

[Footnote 23-92: Actually, McNamara imposed the

sanctions in the first two instances, the Secretary

of the Army in the other two.]

[Footnote 23-93: DOD News Release No. 1209-67, 26 Dec

67.]

[Footnote 23-94: Memo, SecDef for Service Secys et

al., 17 Jul 67, sub: Off-Base Housing Referral

Services, SD files.]

Finally, in the wake of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968

and the Supreme Court's ruling against housing discrimination in

_Jones_ v. _Mayer_, McNamara's successor, Clark M. Clifford, was able

to combine economic threats with new legal sanctions against landlords

who continued to discriminate. On 20 June 1968 Clifford ordered the

services to provide advice and legal assistance to servicemen who

encountered discrimination in housing. The services were also to

coordinate their housing programs with the Departments of Housing and

Urban Development and Justice, provide assistance in locating

nondiscriminatory rental units, and withhold authorization for

servicemen to sign leases where discriminatory practices were evident.

In a separate action the manpower assistant secretary also ordered

that housing referral offices be established on all bases to which

100--as opposed to the earlier 500--military personnel were

assigned.[23-95]

[Footnote 23-95: In _Jones_ v. _Mayer_ (392 U.S.

409, 421 [1968]) the Supreme Court held that the

Civil Rights Act of 1968 "bars all racial

discrimination, private as well as public, in the

sale or rental of property." For Clifford's

response, see Memo, SecDef for Secys of Military

Departments, et al., 20 Jun 68; Clark Clifford,

News Conference, 20 Jun 68; Memo, ASD (M&RA) for

Secys of Military Departments, et al., 25 Nov 68.

For instructions concerning legal assistance to

servicemen and civilian employees of the Department

of Defense under the 1968 Civil Rights Act, see DOD

Instr 1338.12, 8 Aug 68. Copy of all in CMH.]

[Illustration: FIRST AID. _Soldier of the 23d Infantry gives water to

heat stroke victim during "Operation Wahiawa," Vietnam._]

The result of these directives was spectacular. By June 1968 the (p. 606)

ratio of off-base housing units carried on military referral

listings--that is, apartment and trailer court units with open housing

policies assured in writing by the owner or certified by the local

commander--rose to some 83 percent of all available off-base housing

for a gain of 247,000 units over the 1967 inventory.[23-96] In the

suburban Washington area alone, the number of housing units opened to

all servicemen rose more than 300 percent in 120 days--from 15,000 to

more than 50,000 units.[23-97] By the end of 1968 some 1.17 million

rental units, 93 percent of all those identified in the 1967 survey,

were open to all servicemen.[23-98] Still, these impressive gains did

not signal the end of housing discrimination for black servicemen. The

various Defense Department sanctions excluded dwellings for four

families or less, and the evidence suggests that the original and

hastily compiled off-base census on which all the open housing gains

were measured had ignored some particularly intransigent landlords in

larger apartment houses and operators of trailer courts on the grounds

that their continued refusal to negotiate with commanders had made (p. 607)

the likelihood of integrating their properties extremely remote.

[Footnote 23-96: SecDef News Conference, 29 Jun 68,

transcript in CMH.]

[Footnote 23-97: McNamara, _The Essence of Security_,

p. 127.]

[Footnote 23-98: Bahr, "_The Expanding Role of the

Department of Defense_," p. 123.]

The campaign for open housing is the most noteworthy chapter in the

fight for equality of treatment and opportunity for servicemen. The

efforts of the Department of Defense against other forms of off-base

discrimination were to a great extent successful because they

coincided with court rulings and powerful civil rights legislation.

The campaign for open housing, on the other hand, was launched in

advance of court and congressional action and in the face of much

popular feeling against integrated housing. McNamara's fight for open

housing demonstrates, as nothing had before, his determination to use,

if necessary, the department's economic powers in the civilian

community to secure equal treatment and opportunity for servicemen. In

the name of fair housing, McNamara invested not only his own prestige

but also the Defense Department's manpower and financial resources. In

effect, this willingness to use the extreme weapon of off-limits

sanctions revitalized the idea of using the Department of Defense as

an instrument of social change in American society.

McNamara's willingness to push the department beyond the national

consensus on civil rights (as represented by the contemporary civil

rights laws) also signified a change in his attitude. Unlike

Yarmolinsky and Robert Kennedy, McNamara limited his attention to

discrimination's effect on the individual serviceman and, ultimately,

on the military efficiency of the armed forces. Despite his interest

in the cause of civil rights, he had, until the open housing campaign,

always circumscribed the department's equal opportunity program to fit

a more traditional definition of military mission. Seen in this light,

McNamara's attack against segregated housing represented not only the

substitution of a new and more powerful technique--sanctions--for one

that had been found wanting--voluntary compliance, but also a

substantial evolution in his own social philosophy. He later implied

as much.

We request cooperation and seek voluntary compliance [in

obtaining open housing].... I am fully aware that the Defense

Department is not a philanthropic foundation or a social-welfare

institution. But the Department does not intend to let our Negro

servicemen and their families continue to suffer the injustices

and indignities they have in the past. I am certain my successors

will pursue the same policy.[23-99]

[Footnote 23-99: McNamara, _The Essence of Security_,

p. 127.]

By 1967 the major programs derived from Secretary McNamara's equal

opportunity policy had been defined, and the Department of Defense

could look back with pride on the substantial and permanent changes it

had achieved in the treatment of black servicemen in communities near

military bases.[23-100] Emphasizing voluntary compliance with its

policy, the department had proved to be quite successful in its

campaign against discrimination in off-base recreation, public

transportation and accommodation, in the organized reserves, and even,

to a limited extent, in off-base schools. It was logical that the

services should seek voluntary compliance before resorting to more

drastic methods. As the Gesell Committee had pointed out, base (p. 608)

commanders had vast influence in their local communities, influence

that might be used in countless ways to alter the patterns of off-base

discrimination. For the first time the armed forces had fought

discrimination by making the local commander responsible for a

systematic program of negotiations in the community.

[Footnote 23-100: This analysis owes much to the

author's correspondence with Alfred Fitt and the

interviews with McNamara, Gesell, and Jordan. See

also Memo, Timpane tor Stephen Schulman, 11 Feb 65,

sub: Service Reports of Equal Rights Activities,

and Paul Memo. Copies of all in CMH.]

But voluntary compliance had its limits. Its success depended in large

measure on the ability and will of local commanders, who, for the most

part, were unprepared by training or temperament to deal with the

complex and explosive problems of off-base discrimination. Even if the

commander could qualify as a civil rights reformer, he had little time

or incentive for a duty that would go unrecognized in terms of his

efficiency rating yet must compete for his attention with other

necessary duties that were so recognized. Finally, the successful use

of voluntary compliance techniques depended on the implied threat of

legal or economic pressures, yet, for a considerable period following

McNamara's 1963 directive, no legal strictures against some forms of

discrimination existed, and the use of economic sanctions had been so

carefully circumscribed by defense officials as to render the

possibility of their use extremely remote.

The decision to circumscribe the use of economic sanctions against

off-base discrimination made sense. Closing a base because of

discrimination in nearby communities was practically if not

politically impossible and might conceivably become a threat to

national security. As to sanctions aimed at specific businesses, the

secretary's civil rights assistants feared the possibility that the

abrupt or authoritarian imposition of sanctions by an insensitive or

unsympathetic commander might sabotage the department's whole equal

opportunity program in the community. They were determined to leave

the responsibility for sanctions in the hands of senior civilian

officials. In the end it was the most senior of these officials who

acted. When his attention turned to the problem of discrimination in

off-base housing for black servicemen in 1967, Secretary McNamara

quickly decided to use sanctions against a discriminatory practice

widely accepted and still legal under federal law.

The combination of voluntary compliance techniques and economic

sanctions, in tandem with the historic civil rights legislation of the

mid-1960's, succeeded in eliminating most of the off-base

discrimination faced by black servicemen. Ironically, in view of its

unquestioned control in the area, the Department of Defense failed to

achieve an equal success against discrimination within the military

establishment itself. Complaints concerning the number, promotion,

assignment, and punishment of black servicemen, a limited problem in

the mid-1960's, went mostly unrecognized. Relatively speaking, they

were ignored by the Gesell Committee and the civil rights

organizations in the face of the more pressing off-base problems and

only summarily treated by the services, which remained largely silent

about on-base and in-house discrimination. Long after off-base

discrimination had disappeared as a specific military problem, this

neglected on-base discrimination would rise up again to trouble the

armed forces in more militant times.[23-101]

[Footnote 23-101: Interv, author with Bennett, 13 Dec

73.]