Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 81

Yarmolinsky was convinced that the initiative for such a change had to come from outside the department. Certain that any outside investigation would quickly reveal the connection between racial discrimination in the community and military efficiency, he wanted the Secretary of Defense to appoint a committee of independent (p. 535) citizens to investigate and report on the situation.[21-7] The idea of a citizens' committee was not new. The Fahy Committee provided a recent precedent, and in August 1961 Congressman Diggs had asked the Secretary of Defense to consider the appointment of such a group, a suggestion rejected at the time by a.s.sistant Secretary Runge.[21-8]

But Yarmolinsky enjoyed opportunities unavailable to the Michigan congressman; he had the attention and the support of Robert McNamara.

In the latter's words: "Adam suggested another broad review of the place of the Negro in the Department. The committee was necessary because the other sources--the DOD manpower reports and so forth--were inadequate. They didn't provide the exact information I needed. This is what Adam and I decided."[21-9] This decision launched the Department of Defense into one of the most important civil rights battles of the 1960's.

[Footnote 21-7: Not everyone supporting the idea of an investigatory committee was necessarily an advocate of Yarmolinsky's theories. Roy K. Davenport, soon to be appointed a deputy under secretary of the Army for personnel management, decided that an a.s.sessment of the status of black servicemen was timely after a decade of integration. His professional curiosity, like that of some of the other manpower experts in the services, was piqued more by a concern for the fate of current regulations than an interest in the development of new ones. See Interv, author with Davenport, 31 Oct 71.]

[Footnote 21-8: Ltr, Diggs to McNamara, 24 Aug 61; Ltr, ASD (M) to Diggs, 5 Sep 61; Memo, ASD (M) for a.s.st Legal Counsel to President, 7 Nov 61, sub: Racial Discrimination in the Armed Services. All in ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 21-9: Interv, author with McNamara, 11 May 72.]

_The Gesell Committee_

On 24 June 1962 John F. Kennedy announced the formation of the President's Committee on Equality of Opportunity in the Armed Forces, popularly designated the Gesell Committee after its chairman, Gerhard A. Gesell.[21-10] It was inevitable that the Gesell Committee should be compared to the Fahy Committee, given the similarity of interests, but in fact the two groups had little in common and served different purposes. The Fahy Committee had been created to carry out President Truman's equal treatment and opportunity policy. The Gesell Committee, on the other hand, was less concerned with carrying out existing policy than with developing a new policy for the Department of Defense. The Fahy Committee operated under an executive order and sought an acceptable integration program from each service. The Gesell Committee enjoyed no such advantage, although the Truman order was technically still in effect and could have been used to support it.

(The Kennedy administration ignored this possibility, and Yarmolinsky warned one presidential aide that the Truman order should be quietly revoked lest someone question why the Gesell Committee had not been afforded similar stature.)[21-11]

[Footnote 21-10: Ltr, Kennedy to Gesell, 22 Jun 62, as reproduced in White House Press Release, 24 Jun 62, copy in CMH. For an example of the attention the new committee received in the press, see Was.h.i.+ngton _Post_, June 24, 1962.]

[Footnote 21-11: Memo, Yarmolinsky for Lee C. White, 26 Jul 62, sub: Revocation of Executive Order 9981, SD 291.2.]

Again unlike the Fahy Committee, which forced its attention upon a generally reluctant Defense Department at the behest of the President, the Gesell Committee was created by the Secretary of Defense; the presidential appointment of its members bestowed an aura of special authority on a group that lacked the power of its predecessor to (p. 536) make and review policy. McNamara later put it quite bluntly: "The committee was the creature of the Secretary of Defense. Calling it a President's committee was just windowdressing. The civil rights people didn't have a d.a.m.n thing to do with it. We wanted information, and that's just what the Gesell people gave us."[21-12] In fact, Yarmolinsky conceived the project, named it, nominated its members, and drew up its directives. Only when it was well along was the project pa.s.sed to the White House for review of the committee's makeup and guidelines.[21-13]

[Footnote 21-12: Interv, author with McNamara, 11 May 72; see also Ltr, Yarmolinsky to author, 30 May 72.

Yarmolinsky called the presidential appointment an example of the Defense Department's borrowing the prestige of the White House.]

[Footnote 21-13: Memo, ASD (M) for a.s.st Legal Counsel to President, 7 Nov 61, sub: Racial Discrimination in the Armed Services, ASD (M) 291.2.]

This special connection between the Department of Defense and the Gesell Committee influenced the course of the investigation. True to his concept of the committee as a fact-finding team, McNamara personally remained aloof from its proceedings, never trying to influence its investigation or findings. Ironically, Gesell would later complain about this remoteness, regretting the secretary's failure to intervene in the case of the recalcitrant National Guard.[21-14] He could harbor no complaint, however, against the secretary's special a.s.sistant, Yarmolinsky, who carefully guided the committee's investigation to the explosive subject of off-base discrimination. Even while expressing the committee's independence, Gesell recognized Yarmolinsky's influence. "It was perfectly clear,"

Gesell later noted, "that Yarmolinsky was interested in the off-base housing and discrimination situation, but he had no solution to suggest. He wanted the committee to come up with one."[21-15]

Yarmolinsky formally spelled out this interest when he devised the group's presidential directive. The committee, he informed Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson during March 1962, would devote itself to those measures that should be taken to improve the effectiveness of current policies and procedures in the services and to the methods whereby the Department of Defense could improve equality of opportunity for members of the armed forces and their dependents in the civilian community.[21-16]

[Footnote 21-14: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov 74, CMH files. The Secretary of Defense met with the committee but once for an informal chat.]

[Footnote 21-15: Interv, author with Gesell, 13 May 72.]

[Footnote 21-16: Memo, Yarmolinsky for Vice President, 13 Mar 62, SD 291.2.]

The citizens chosen for this delicate task, "integrationists all,"[21-17] were men with backgrounds in the law and the civil rights movement, their nearest common denominators being Yale University and acquaintance with Yarmolinsky, a graduate of Yale Law School.[21-18]

Chairman Gesell was a Was.h.i.+ngton lawyer, educated at Yale, an acquaintance of Yarmolinsky's with whom he shared a close mutual (p. 537) friend, Burke Marshall, also from Yale and the head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. Gesell always a.s.sumed that this friends.h.i.+p with Marshall explained his selection by the Kennedy administration for such a sensitive task.[21-19] Black committeemen were Nathaniel S. Colley, a California lawyer, civil rights advocate a.s.sociated with the NAACP, and former law school cla.s.smate of Yarmolinsky's; John H. Sengstacke, publisher of the Chicago _Defender_ and a member of the Fahy Committee; and Whitney M. Young, Jr., of the National Urban League. The other members were Abe Fortas, a prominent Was.h.i.+ngton attorney and former Yale professor; Benjamin Muse, a leader of the Southern Regional Council and a noted student of the civil rights movement; and Louis Hector, also a Yale-educated lawyer, who was called in to replace ailing Dean Joseph O'Meara of the Notre Dame Law School. Gesell arranged for the appointment of Laurence I. Hewes III, of Yale College and Law School, as the committee's counsel.

[Footnote 21-17: Memo, ASD (M) for Lee C. White, a.s.st Spec Counsel to President, 7 Jun 62, sub: Establishment of Committee on Equality of Opportunity in the Armed Forces, ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 21-18: In discussing the Yale connection in the Gesell Committee, it is interesting to note that at least three other officials intimately connected with the question of equal treatment and opportunity, Alfred B. Fitt, the first Deputy a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense (Civil Rights), Cyrus R. Vance, Secretary of the Army, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric, were Yale men. Of course, Secretary McNamara was not a Yale graduate; his undergraduate degree is from the University of California at Berkeley, his graduate degree from Harvard.]

[Footnote 21-19: Interv, author with Gesell, 13 May 72.]

Some of the members had definite ideas on how the committee should operate. Warning of a new mood in the black community where "impatience and expectations" were far different from what they were at the time of the Fahy Committee, Whitney Young wanted the committee to prepare a frank and honest report free of the "taint of whitewash."

To that end he wanted the group's directive interpreted in its broadest sense as leading to a wide-ranging examination of off-base housing, recreation, and educational opportunity, among other subjects. He wanted an investigation at the gra.s.s roots level, and he offered specific suggestions about the size and duties of the staff to achieve this. Young also recommended commissioning "additional citizen teams" to a.s.sist in some of the numerous and necessary field trips and wanted the committee to use Congressman Diggs and his files.[21-20]

[Footnote 21-20: Ltr, Young to Gesell, 27 Aug 62, Gesell Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

Benjamin Muse, on the other hand, considered direct, personal investigation of specific grievances too time-consuming. He wanted the group to concentrate instead on the command level, holding formal conferences with key staff officials. The best way to impress upon the services that the White House was serious, he told Gesell, was to learn the opinions of these officials and to elicit, "subject to our private a.n.a.lysis and discount," a great deal of helpful information.[21-21]

[Footnote 21-21: Ltr, Muse to Gesell, 26 Jan 63, Gesell Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

Chairman Gesell compromised. He wanted the group to develop some broad recommendations on the basis of a limited examination of specific complaints. President Kennedy agreed. He told Gesell: "don't go overboard and try to visit every base, but unless you see at least some bases you will never understand the situation."[21-22] White House a.s.sistant Lee C. White suggested that while the committee had no deadline it should be advised that a report would be needed in June if any legislative proposals were to be submitted to Congress. At the (p. 538) same time he wanted the White House to make clear that the members, "and particularly the Negro members," would be left free to act as they chose.[21-23]

[Footnote 21-22: Quoted by Gesell during interview with author, 13 May 72.]

[Footnote 21-23: Memo, White for Dep Atty Gen, 23 Jan 63, copy in Lee C. White Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library. (Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach was a member of the White House's civil rights subcabinet.) According to Yarmolinsky, the White suggestion might have originated with Secretary McNamara.]

In the end the committee's operations owed something to all these suggestions. The group worked out of a small office near the White House and pointedly distant from the Pentagon. Its formal meetings were rare--only seven in all--and were used primarily to hear the presentations of service officials and consider the committee's findings. At a meeting in November 1962, for instance, Gesell arranged for five Air Force base commanders to discuss the application of the equal opportunity policy in their commands and in neighboring communities and describe their own duties as they saw them.[21-24]

[Footnote 21-24: Ltr, Gesell to SecAF, 25 Oct 62, SecAF files.]

The chairman explained that the infrequent meetings were used mostly for "needling people and asking for statistics." Some black members at first opposed asking the services for statistical data on the grounds that such requests would reinforce the tendency to identify servicemen by race, thus encouraging racial a.s.signments and, ultimately, racial quotas. The majority, however, was convinced of the need for statistical material, and in the end the requests for such information enjoyed the committee's unanimous support.[21-25]

[Footnote 21-25: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov 74.]

Most of the committee's work was done in a "s.h.i.+rt sleeve" atmosphere, as its chairman described it, with a staff of four people.[21-26]

Members, alone and in groups, studied the mountains of racial statistics, some prepared by the staff of the Civil Rights Commission, and the lengthy answers to committee questionnaires prepared by the services. The services also arranged for on-site inspections by committee members.[21-27] The field trips proved to be of paramount importance, not only in ascertaining the conditions of black servicemen and their dependents but also in fixing the extent of the local commander's responsibility for race relations. Operating usually in two-man biracial teams, the committee members would separate to interview the commander, local businessmen, and the men themselves.

The firsthand information thus gathered had a profound influence on the committee's thinking, an influence readily discernible in its recommendations to the President.

[Footnote 21-26: Memo, Gesell for Cmte Members, 20 Nov 64, Gesell Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 21-27: The committee's considerable probings were reflected in the Defense Department's files.

See for example, Memo, SecDef for Secys of Mil Depts et al., 28 Sep 62, sub: President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, SD 291.2 (12 Feb 62); Memo, ASD (M) for SA et al., 18 Dec 62, same sub, ASD (M) 291.2; Ltr, SecNav to Gesell, 1 Apr 63; Memo, Under SecNav for SecNav, 9 Apr 63, sub: Meeting With the President's Cmte on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces; Ltrs, Under SecNav to Chmn Gesell, 1 Apr and 3 May 63; last four in SecNav file 5350, GenRecsNav, also Marine Corps Bulletin 5050, 28 Jan 63, Hist Div. HQMC. See also Ltrs, Chmn, President's Cmte, to SecAF, 8 Oct 62, USAF, Report for President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, 4 Dec 62, and James P. Goode, AF Dep for Manpower, Personnel, & Organization, to Chmn Gesell, 4 Apr 63, both in 2426-62, SecAF files; "Visit of Mr. Nathaniel Colley and Mr. John Sengstacke to 3d Marine Division," copy in CMH. Additionally, see also Ltr, Berl I. Bernhard, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to Gesell, 29 Jun 62, Gesell Collection, J. F.

Kennedy Library.]

The committee concluded from its investigations that serious discrimination against black servicemen and their families existed at home and abroad within the services and in the civilian community, (p. 539) and that this discrimination affected black morale and military efficiency. Regarding evidence of discrimination within the services, the committee isolated a series of problems existing "both service-wide and at particular bases."[21-28] Specifically, the group was not convinced by official reasons for the disproportionately small number of Negroes in some services, especially among the noncommissioned officers and in the officer corps. Chairman Gesell called the dearth of black officers a "shocking condition."[21-29] His group was particularly concerned with the absence of black officers on promotion boards and the possibility of unfairness in the promotion process where photos and racial and religious information were included in the selection files made available to these boards. It also noted the failure of the services to increase the number of black ROTC graduates. The committee considered and rejected the idea of providing preferential treatment for Negroes to achieve better representation in the services and in the higher grades.[21-30]

[Footnote 21-28: The President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, "Initial Report: Equality of Treatment and Opportunity for Negro Military Personnel Stationed Within the United States, June 13, 1963" (hereafter cited as "Initial Rpt"), p. 10. The following discussion of the committee cannot carry the eloquence or force of the group's report, which was reproduced in the _Congressional Record_, 88th Cong., 1st sess., vol.

109, pp. 14359-69.]

[Footnote 21-29: Ltr, Gesell to Under SecNav, 6 Feb 63, SecNav file 5420 (1179), GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 21-30: Intervs, author with Gesell, 13 May 72 and 3 Nov 74.]

Overrepresentation of black enlisted men in certain supply and food services was obvious.[21-31] Here the committee was particularly critical of the Navy and the Marine Corps. On another score, the Chief of Naval Personnel noted that the committee "considers the Navy and Marines far behind the Army and Air Force, particularly in the area of community relations," a criticism, he admitted, "to some extent"

justified.[21-32] So apparent was the justification that, at the suggestion of the Secretary of the Navy, Gesell discussed with Under Secretary Paul B. Fay, Jr., ways to better the Navy's record in its "areas of least progress."[21-33] Gesell later concluded that the close social contact necessary aboard s.h.i.+p had been a factor in the Navy's slower progress.[21-34] Whatever the reason, the Navy and Marine Corps fell statistically short of the other services in every category measured by the Gesell group.

[Footnote 21-31: Memo, Dep for Manpower, Personnel, & Organization, USAF, for SecAF, 25 Jan 63, sub: Meeting With President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 21-32: Ltr, Chief of NavPers to CONUS District Cmdrs et al., 22 Apr 63, attached to Memo, Chief of NavPers for Distribution List, 24 Apr 63, sub: President's Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, GenRecsNav 5420.]

[Footnote 21-33: Ltr, Under SecNav to Gesell, 8 Feb 63, SecNav file 5420 (1179), GenRecsNav. For examples of this exchange between the committee and the Navy, see Ltrs, Gesell to Fay, 6 Feb 63, and Fay to Gesell, 3 May and 5 Jun 63, all in SecNav file 5350, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 21-34: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov 74.]