Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 Part 89

_Public Opinion and the Military Establishment_, ed. Charles C. Moskos, Jr. (Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications, 1971), pp. 149-83.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGHTER PILOTS ON THE LINE. _Col. Daniel (Chappie) James, Jr., commander of an F-4 jet, and his pilot readying for takeoff from a field in Thailand._]

Perhaps the most important, certainly most controversial, of Fitt's moves[23-7] was the establishment of a system to measure the local commanders' progress against off-base discrimination. His vehicle was a series of off-base equal opportunity inventories, the first comprehensive, statistical record of discrimination affecting servicemen in the United States. Based on detailed reports from every military installation to which 500 or more servicemen were (p. 584) a.s.signed, 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 a.s.st, 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 doc.u.ments 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 amus.e.m.e.nts, 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 endors.e.m.e.nt 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, a.s.sistant Secretary Paul proposed that community discrimination patterns be listed as one of the reasons for closing military (p. 586) bases.[23-14] Although the a.s.sistant 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, Princ.i.p.al a.s.st 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 a.s.signment 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sessment 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_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: 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 p.r.o.nouncement 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 a.s.sistant 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 t.i.tle VI that forbade (p. 588) discrimination in any activity or program that received federal financial a.s.sistance. This added the threat of economic sanctions against any of those thousands of inst.i.tutions, 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] t.i.tle 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 a.s.sembly," 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_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.signment 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 hara.s.sment of the Mississippi Summer Project, a voting registration campaign sponsored by several leading civil rights organizations; and ended in the a.s.sa.s.sination of a white Unitarian minister, James (p. 589) Reeb, of Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEDICAL EXAMINATION. _Navy doctor on duty, Yokosuka, j.a.pan._]