Chapter 21: (p. 530) (2)

The Secretary of Defense promised the President to "eliminate the exceptions and guard the continuing reality" of racial equality in the services. In the light of the committee's conclusion that off-base discrimination reduced military effectiveness, he pledged that "the military departments will take a leadership role in combating discrimination wherever it affects the military effectiveness" of servicemen. McNamara admitted having reservations about some of (p. 548) the committee's recommendations, especially the closing of bases near communities that constantly practiced discrimination; such closings, he declared, were not feasible "at this time." Nevertheless he agreed with the committee that off-limits sanctions should be available to the services, for "certainly the damage to military effectiveness from off-base discrimination is not less than that caused by off-base vice, as to which the off-limits sanction is quite customary."[21-65] He failed to add that even though sanctions against vice were regularly applied by the local commander, sanctions against discrimination would be reserved to higher authority.

[Footnote 21-65: Idem for President, 24 Jul 63, copy
in CMH.]

The directive, in reality an outline of the Department of Defense's civil rights responsibilities and the prototype of subsequent secretarial orders dealing with race, was published on 26 July 1963, the fifteenth anniversary of Harry Truman's executive order. It read in part:

_II. Responsibilities._

A. Office of the Secretary of Defense:

1. Pursuant to the authority vested in the Secretary of Defense
and the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947, as
amended, the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower) is hereby
assigned responsibility and authority for promoting equal
opportunity for members of the Armed Forces.

In the performance of this function he shall (a) be the
representative of the Secretary of Defense in civil rights
matters, (b) give direction to programs that promote equal
opportunity for military personnel, (c) provide policy guidance
and review policies, regulations and manuals of the military
departments, and (d) monitor their performance through periodic
reports and visits to field installations.

2. In carrying out the functions enumerated above, the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (Manpower) is authorized to establish the
Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Civil Rights).

B. The Military Departments:

1. The military departments shall, with the approval of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower), issue appropriate
instructions, manuals and regulations in connection with the
leadership responsibility for equal opportunity, on and off base,
and containing guidance for its discharge.

2. The military departments shall institute in each service a
system for regularly reporting, monitoring and measuring progress
in achieving equal opportunity on and off base.

C. Military Commanders:

Every military commander has the responsibility to oppose
discriminatory practices affecting his men and their dependents
and to foster equal opportunity for them, not only in areas under
his immediate control, but also in nearby communities where they
may live or gather in off-duty hours. In discharging that
responsibility a commander shall not, except with the prior
approval of the Secretary of his military department, use the
off-limits sanction in discrimination cases arising within the
United States.[21-66]

[Footnote 21-66: DOD Dir 5120.36, 26 Jul 63.]

After some thirty months in office, Robert McNamara had made a (p. 549) most decisive move in race relations. In the name of fulfilling Harry Truman's pledge of equal treatment and opportunity he announced an aggressive new policy. Not only would the department work to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces, but when servicemen were affected it would work in the community as well. Even more ominous to the secretary's critics was the fact that the new policy revealed McNamara's willingness, under certain circumstances, to use the department's economic powers to force these changes. This directive marked the beginning of McNamara's most active period of participation in the civil rights revolution of the 1960's.

But the secretary's move did not escape strong criticism. The directive was denounced as infamous and shocking, as biased, impractical, undemocratic, brutally authoritarian, and un-American. If followed, critics warned, it would set the military establishment at war with society, inject the military into civilian political controversies in defiance of all traditions to the contrary, and burden military commanders with sociological tasks beyond their powers and to the detriment of their military mission.[21-67]

[Footnote 21-67: Alfred B. Fitt thus characterized the
opposition in his Remarks Before Civilian Aides
Conference of the Secretary of Army, 6 Mar 64, DASD
(CR) files.]

"It is hard to realize that your office would become so rotten and degraded," one critic wrote McNamara. "In my opinion you are using the tactics of a dictator.... It is a tragic event when the Federal Government is again trying to bring Reconstruction Days into the South. Again the military is being used to bring this about." Did businesses not have the right to choose their customers? Did local authorities not have the right to enforce the law in their communities? And surely the white soldier deserved the freedom to choose his associates.[21-68] Another correspondent reproached McNamara: "you have, without conscience and with total disregard for the honorable history of the Military of our Great Nation, signed our freedom away." And still another saw her white supremacy menaced: "We have a bunch of mad dogs in Washington and if you and others like you are not stopped, our children will curse us. We don't want black grandchildren and we won't have them. If you want to dance with them--you have two legs, start dancing."

[Footnote 21-68: Ltr to SecDef, 29 Jul 63. This letter
and the two following are typical of hundreds
received by the secretary and filed in the records
of ASD (M).]

Not all the correspondents were racist or hysterical. Some thoughtful citizens were concerned with what they considered extramilitary and illegal activities on the part of the services and took little comfort from the often repeated official statement that the Secretary of Defense had no present plans for the use of sanctions and hoped that they would never have to be used.[21-69]

[Footnote 21-69: Ltr, DASD (CR) to James Wilson,
Director, National Security Commission, American
Legion, 24 Sep 63, written when the legion had the
adoption of a resolution against the directive
under consideration. See also Ltrs, DASD (CR) to
Sen. Frank Moss, 16 Aug 63, and ASD (M) to
Congressman George Huddleston, 13 Aug 63; ASD (M),
"Straightening Out the Record," 19 Aug 63; Memo,
DASD (CR) for General Counsel, 4 Sep 63, sub: Use
of the Off-Limits Power. All in DASD (CR) files.]

Some defenders of the directive saw the whole controversy over (p. 550) sanctions as a red herring dragged across the path of a genuine equal treatment and opportunity program.[21-70] During congressional debate on the directive, the use of off-limits sanctions quickly became the respectable issue behind which those opposed to any reform could rally. The Senate debated the subject on 31 July; the House on 7 August. During lengthy sessions on those days, opponents cast the controversy in the familiar context of states' rights, arguing that constitutional and legal points were involved. As Congressman Durward G. Hall of Missouri put it: "The recommendations made in the report and in the directive indicate a narrowness of vision which, in seeing only the civil rights issue, has blinded itself to the question of whether it is proper to use the Armed Forces to enforce a moral or social, rather than a legal, issue in the civilian sector."[21-71]

[Footnote 21-70: Ltr, Fitt to author, 22 May 72.]

[Footnote 21-71: _Congressional Record_, 88th Cong.,
1st sess., vol. 109, p. 14350.]

Opponents argued generally that the directive represented government by fiat, an unprecedented extension of executive power that imposed the armed forces on civilian society in a new and illegal way. If the administration was already empowered to protect the civil rights of some citizens, why, they asked, was it pushing so hard for a civil rights bill? The fact was, several legislators argued, the Department of Defense was interfering with the civil rights of businessmen and practicing a crude form of economic blackmail.[21-72]

[Footnote 21-72: Ibid., pp. 13778-87, 14349-56.]

Critics also discussed the directive in terms of military efficiency. The secretary had given the commanders a new mission, Senator John Stennis of Mississippi noted, that "can only be detrimental to military tradition, discipline, and morale." Elaborating on this idea, Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina predicted that the new policy would destroy the merit promotion system. Henceforth, Rivers forecast, advancement would depend on acceptance of integration; henceforth, racial quotas would "take the place of competence for purposes of promotion." Others were alarmed at the prospect of civil rights advisers on duty at each base and outside the regular chain of command. This outrage, Congressman H. R. Gross of Iowa charged, "would create the biggest army of snoopers and informers that the military has ever heard of."

Some legislators saw sinister things afoot in the Pentagon. Senator Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia thought he recognized a return to the military districting of Reconstruction days, and Congressman F. Edward Hebert of Louisiana warned that "everybody should be prepared for the midnight knock on the door." Congressman Otto E. Passman of Louisiana thought it most likely that Attorney General Kennedy was behind the whole thing; "a tragic state of affairs," he said, if the Justice Department was directing "the missions of the Military Establishment." Congressman Hebert found yet another villain in the piece. Adam Yarmolinsky, whom he incorrectly identified as the author of the McNamara directive, had, Hebert accused, "one objective in mind--with an almost sataniclike zeal--the forced integration of every facet of the American way of life, using the full power of the Department of Defense to bring about this change."[21-73] In line with these (p. 551) suspicions, some legislators reported that the secretary's new civil rights deputy, Alfred B. Fitt, was circulating among southern segregationist businessmen with, in Senator Barry M. Goldwater's words, "a dossier gleaned from Internal Revenue reports." Senator Stennis suspected that the Secretary of Defense had come under the influence of "obscure men," and he warned against their revolutionary strategy: "It had been apparent for some time that the more extreme exponents of revolutionary civil rights action have wanted to use the military in a posture of leadership to bring about desegregation outside the boundaries of military bases."[21-74]

[Footnote 21-73: Quotes are from ibid., pp. 13778,
13780, 14345-46, 14349, 14351, 14352.]

[Footnote 21-74: Ibid., Senate, 31 Jul 63, pp. 13779,
13783.]

The congressional critics had a strategy of their own. They would try to persuade McNamara to rescind or modify his directive, and, failing that, they would try to change the new defense policy by law. Senators Goldwater, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, along with some of their constituents, debated with McNamara while no less than the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Carl Vinson of Georgia, introduced a bill aimed at outlawing all integration activity by military officers.[21-75] Their campaign came to naught because the new policy had its own supporters in Congress,[21-76] and the great public outcry against the directive, so ardently courted by its congressional opponents, failed to materialize. Judging by the press, the public showed little interest in the Gesell Committee's report and comment on the secretary's directive was regional, with much of it coming from the southern press. Certainly the effect of the directive could not compare with the furor set off by the Truman order in 1948.

[Footnote 21-75: Congressional letters critical of the
directive can be found in DASD (CR) and SD files,
1963. See, for example, Ltrs, Fulbright to SecDef,
22 Aug 63, R. C. Byrd to SecDef, 13 Aug 63,
Goldwater to SecNav, 17 Jul 63, Rivers to ASD (M),
3 Oct 63, Gillis Long to SecDef, 8 Aug 63, Bob
Sikes to SecDef, 15 Jul 63. Intense discussion of
the constitutionality of the directive and of
Vinson's bill took place among department officials
during September and October 1963. See the
following Memos: DASD (CR) for ASD (M), 25 Oct 63,
sub: Vinson Bill Comment With Inclosures; ASD (M)
for Under SA et al., 24 Sep 63, sub: H.R. 8460;
Asst Gen Counsel (Manpower) for ASD (M), 4 Sep 63.
All in ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 21-76: Letters in support of the DOD
Directive can be found in ASD (CR) (68A1006) files,
1963.]

The attitude of the press merely underscored a fact already obvious to many politicians on Capitol Hill in 1963--equal opportunity in the armed forces had dwindled to the status of a minor issue in the greater civil rights struggle engulfing the nation. The media reaction also suggested that prolonged attacks against the committee and the directive were for hometown consumption and not a serious effort to reverse policy. In effect a last hurrah for the congressional opponents of integration in the armed forces, the attacks failed to budge the Secretary of Defense and marked the end of serious congressional attempts to influence armed forces racial policy.[21-77] The threat of congressional opposition, at times real and sometimes imagined, had discouraged progressive racial policies in the Department of Defense for over a quarter of a century. Its abrupt and public demise robbed the traditionalists in the Department of (p. 552) Defense of a cherished excuse for inaction.

[Footnote 21-77: A late victim of the anticivil rights
forces in Congress was Adam Yarmolinsky. His
appointment as deputy director of the Office of
Economic Opportunity was withdrawn as a result of
criticism in the House. One cause of this criticism
was his connection with the Gesell Committee. See
Mary McGrory, "A Southern Hatchet Fell," Washington
_Star_, August 10, 1964.]

_The Gesell Committee: Final Report_

While the argument over the McNamara directive raged, the Gesell Committee worked quietly if intermittently on the final segment of its investigation, the status of blacks stationed overseas and in the National Guard. President Kennedy's death in November 1963 introduced an element of uncertainty in a group serving at the pleasure of the Chief Executive. Special Presidential Counsel Lee C. White arranged for Gesell to meet with President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Gesell offered to disband the committee if Johnson wished. The President left it in being. As Gesell later observed: "The committee felt that Johnson understood us and our work in a way better than Kennedy who had no clear idea on how to go with the race issue. We had no trouble with Johnson who could have stopped us if he wanted."[21-78]

[Footnote 21-78: The quote is from author's interview
with Gesell on 13 May 1972. See also Ltr, White to
Gesell, 8 Jan 64, and Memo, Gesell for Members of
the Committee, 26 Feb 64, both in Gesell
Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

The committee's operations became even more informal in this final stage. Its investigations completed, its staff dissolved, and its members (now one man short with the resignation of Nathaniel Colley) scattered, the committee operated out of Gesell's law office. He was almost exclusively responsible for its final report.[21-79] This informality masked the protracted negotiations that the committee conducted with the National Guard Bureau over the persistent exclusion of Negroes. It also masked the solid investigation by individual committee members and the voluminous evidence gathered by the staff in support of the group's final report.

[Footnote 21-79: Memo, Gesell for Members of the
Committee, 26 Feb 64.]

These investigations and the documentary evidence again confirmed the findings of the Civil Rights Commission, although the Gesell Committee's emphasis was different. It dismissed the problem of assignment of Negroes to overseas stations. The percentage of Negroes, both officers and men, sent overseas approximated their percentage in the continental United States, and with rare and "understandable" exceptions--it cited South Africa--overseas assignments in the armed forces were made routinely without regard for race.[21-80] The committee also quickly dismissed the problem of discrimination on overseas bases, which it considered "minimal," and as in the United States chiefly the result of poor communication between commanders and men. The group concentrated instead on discrimination off base, especially in Germany. Back from a firsthand look in April 1964, Benjamin Muse reported that local American commanders seemed unwilling to take the matter seriously, but he considered it delicate and complex, principally because prejudice had been most often introduced by American servicemen. He suggested that off-limits sanctions should also be imposed in Germany but "only after consultation and on a (p. 553) basis of mutual understanding with German municipal authorities."[21-81]

[Footnote 21-80: The President's Committee on Equal
Opportunity in the Armed Forces, "Final Report:
Military Personnel Stationed Overseas and
Membership and Participation in the National Guard,
November 1964" (hereafter cited as "Final Report"),
copy in CMH.]

[Footnote 21-81: Ltr, Muse to Gesell, 23 Apr 64,
Gesell Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

The committee wanted the recommendations on off-base discrimination contained in its initial report also applied overseas. Ignoring the oft made distinction about the guest status of overseas service, it wanted the Department of State enlisted in a campaign against discrimination in public accommodations, including the use of off-limits sanctions when necessary. The committee also called for a continuing review to insure equal opportunity in assignments to attache and mission positions.

The committee devoted the largest portion of its final report to the National Guard, "the only branch of the Armed Forces," it told President Johnson, "which has not been fully integrated."[21-82] Chairman Gesell later reported that when the segregated state guards were pressured they "resisted like hell."[21-83] This resistance had a political dimension, but when Attorney General Kennedy chided that "you are killing us with the Guard," Gesell replied that the committee took orders from the President and would ignore the political problems involved. Nevertheless, before the committee issued its report Gesell sent the portions on the National Guard to the Justice Department for comment, as one justice official noted, "apparently ... in the hope that its recommendation will not prove embarrassing to the administration."[21-84]

[Footnote 21-82: "Final Report," p. 12.]

[Footnote 21-83: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov
74.]

[Footnote 21-84: The Kennedy quote is from the
author's interview with Gesell on 13 May 1972. The
Justice Department quote is from Memo, Gordon A.
Martin (Dept of Justice) for Burke Marshall, 26 Jul
63, sub: Proposed Gesell Cmte Rpt on the National
Guard, Marshall Papers, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

The committee admitted that its investigation of the National Guard was incomplete because of the variation in state systems and the absence of statistical data on recruitment, assignment, and promotion in some state guards. It had no doubt, however, of the central premise that discrimination existed. For example, until 1963 ten states with large black populations had no black guardsmen at all. Membership in the guard, the committee concluded, was a distinct advantage for some individuals, providing the chance to perform their military obligation without a lengthy time away from home or work. Because of the peculiar relationship between the reserve and regular systems, National Guard service had important advantages in retirement benefits for others. These advantages and benefits should, in simple fairness, be open to all, but beyond the basic constitutional rights involved there were practical reasons for federal insistence on integration. The committee accepted the National Guard Bureau's conclusion that, since guard units were subject to integration when federalized, their morale and combat efficiency would be improved if their members were accustomed to service with Negroes in all ranks during training.[21-85]

[Footnote 21-85: "Final Report," pp. 19-20.]

The committee stressed executive initiatives. It wanted the President to declare the integration of the National Guard in the national interest. It wanted the Department of Defense to demand pertinent (p. 554) racial statistics from the states. For psychological advantages, it wanted the recent liberalization of guard policies toward Negroes widely publicized. Again suggesting voluntary methods as a first step, the committee called for the use of economic sanctions if voluntary methods failed. The President should lose no time in applying the provisions of the new Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade the use of federal funds in discriminatory activities, to offending states. As it had been in the case of discrimination in local communities, the committee was optimistic about the success of voluntary compliance. Citing its own efforts and those of the National Guard Bureau,[21-86] the committee reported that the last ten states to hold out had now begun to integrate their guard units at least on a token basis. In fact, the committee's report had to be revised at the last minute because Alabama and Mississippi enrolled Negroes in their enlisted ranks.

[Footnote 21-86: The National Guard Bureau is a joint
agency of the Departments of the Army and Air Force
which acts as adviser to the service staffs on
National Guard matters and as the channel of
communication between the two departments and the
state guards. The chief of the bureau is always a
National Guard officer.]

Chairman Gesell circulated a draft report containing these findings and recommendations among committee members in September 1964.[21-87] His colleagues suggested only minor revisions, although Whitney Young thought that some of the space spent on complimenting the services could be better used to emphasize the committee's recommendations for further reform. He did not press the point but noted wryly: "if we were as sensitive about the feelings of the victims of discrimination as we are of the perpetuators, we wouldn't have most of these problems to begin with."[21-88] Maj. Gen. Winston P. Wilson, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, also reviewed the draft and found it "entirely fair, temperate and well-founded."[21-89] The committee's final report was sent to the President on 20 November 1964. A month later Johnson sent it along to McNamara with the request that he be kept informed on progress of the negotiations between the secretary and the governors on integration of the National Guard.[21-90]

[Footnote 21-87: The draft was also sent for comment
to the National Guard Bureau; see Ltr, Chief, NGB,
to Gesell, 13 Nov 64, Gesell Collection, J. F.
Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 21-88: Memo, Gesell for Members of the
President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the
Armed Forces, 20 Nov 64. The quotation is from Ltr,
Young to Gesell, 23 Sep 64. For the reaction of
other members see, for example, Ltrs, Sengstacke to
Gesell, 9 Oct 64, Muse to Gesell, 16 Sep 64, Fortas
to Gesell, 29 Sep 64. All in Gesell Collection, J.
F. Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 21-89: Ltr, Gen Wilson, NGB, to Gesell, 13
Nov 64, Gesell Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 21-90: Ltr, President to SecDef, 26 Dec 64,
copy in CMH.]

The radical change in the civil rights orientation of the Department of Defense demanded by the administration's civil rights supporters was obviously a task too controversial for the department to assume in 1963 on its own initiative. It was, as a member of the Gesell Committee later remarked, a task that only a group of independent citizens reporting to the President could effectively suggest.[21-91] In the end the committee did all that its sponsors could have wanted. It confirmed the persistence of discrimination against black servicemen both on and off the military base and effectively tied that discrimination to troop morale and military efficiency. The (p. 555) committee's conclusions, logically derived from the connection between morale and efficiency, introduced a radically expanded concept of racial responsibility for the armed forces.

[Footnote 21-91: Interv, author with Muse, 2 Mar 73.]

Although many people strongly associate the Gesell Committee with the use of economic coercion against race discrimination in the community, the committee's emphasis was always on the local commander's role in achieving voluntary compliance with the department's equal opportunity policies. Economic sanction was conceived of as a last resort. The directive of the Secretary of Defense that endorsed these recommendations was also denounced for embracing sanctions, although here the charges were even less appropriate because the use of sanctions was severely circumscribed. It remained to be seen how far command initiative and voluntary compliance could be translated by the services into concrete gains.