Chapter 23: (p. 581) (1)

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.]

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.]

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.]

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]