The Kennedy Administration and Civil Rights
The strong connection between black morale and military efficiency made it likely that the new Secretary of Defense would be intimately concerned with problems of discrimination. Highly trained in modern managerial techniques, Robert S. McNamara came to the Pentagon with the idea of instituting a series of fundamental changes in the management of the armed forces through manpower reorganization and what was becoming known as systems analysis. Whatever his attitude toward racial justice, his initial interest in the Defense Department's black employees, military and civilian, was closely linked to his concern for military efficiency. Less than a week on the job, he called for information on the status of Negroes in the department. He had heard that some services were better integrated than others, and he wanted his Assistant Secretary for Manpower to investigate. He wanted to know if there was a "fair" proportion of Negroes in the higher civilian grades. If not, he asked, "what do you recommend be done about it?"[20-12] These questions, and indeed all action on civil rights matters originating in his office in the months to come, indicated that McNamara, like his predecessors, would limit his reforms to discrimination within the services themselves. But as time passed, McNamara, like President Kennedy, would warm to the civil rights cause and eventually both would become firmly committed.
The Kennedy administration has been closely identified with civil rights, yet the President's major biographers and several of his assistants agree that his commitment to civil rights reform did not emerge full-blown on inauguration day. It was only in the last months of his administration that Kennedy, subjected to civil rights demands and sharing the interests and experiences of his brother Robert, the Attorney General, threw himself wholeheartedly into the civil rights fray.[20-13] As senator and later as President, Kennedy was sympathetic to the aspirations of the black minority, appreciated its support in his campaign, but regarded civil rights as one, and not the most pressing, problem facing the Chief Executive. Even his administrations's use of federal marshals during the freedom rides in 1961 and its use of both marshals and troops at Oxford, Mississippi, in 1962 and troops again in Alabama in 1963 were justified in the name of enforcement of federal judicial processes. Well into 1963 he studiously downplayed the civil rights issues involved.
Kennedy was convinced that the only answer to the injustices suffered by Negroes was a series of strong laws, but he was also certain that such legislation was impossible to achieve in 1961. To urge it on an unwilling Congress would only jeopardize his legislative program, increase the black minority's feeling of frustration, and divide the nation in a period of national crisis. Discussing the Civil Rights Commission's "non-negotiable" demands concerning the organized reserves, for example, commission member Father Theodore Hesburgh remembered the President saying:
Look, I have a serious problem in West Berlin, and I do not think this is the proper time to start monkeying around with the Army.... I have no problem with the principle of this, and we'll certainly be doing it, but at this precise moment I have to keep uppermost in mind that I may need these units ... and I can't have them in the midst of a social revolution while I'm trying to do this.[20-14]
Kennedy temporized. He would promptly and positively endorse the principle of equal rights and enforce the civil rights decisions of the Supreme Court through negotiation, moral suasion, executive order, and, when necessary, through the use of federal marshals.[20-15] The Justice Department meanwhile would pursue a vigorous course of litigation to insure the franchise for Negroes from which, he believed, all civil blessings flowed.
Civil rights was not mentioned in Kennedy's first State of the Union message. With the exception of a measure to outlaw literacy and poll tax requirements for voting, no civil rights bills were sent to the Eighty-seventh Congress. Yet at one of his first press conferences, the President told newsmen that a plan to withhold federal funds in certain segregation cases would be included in a general study "of where the Federal Government might usefully place its power and influence to expand civil rights."[20-16] On 6 March 1961 he signed Executive Order 10925, which combined the committees on government contracts and employment policy into a single Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity chaired by the Vice President.[20-17] His order, he believed, specified sanctions "sweeping enough to ensure compliance."[20-18] Finally, in November 1962, after numerous and increasingly pointed reminders from civil rights advocates, the President issued Executive Order 11063, directing executive agencies to take action against discrimination in the sale or lease of federal housing or any housing bought with loans from or insured by the federal government.[20-19]
Besides executive orders, the White House had other ways, less formal but perhaps more efficient, of getting the federal bureaucracy to move on civil rights. Upon the recommendation of Special Assistant Frederick G. Dutton, the President created the Civil Rights Subcabinet Group in March 1961 to coordinate the administration's civil rights actions. Under Dutton's chairmanship, this group included the assistant secretaries responsible for racial matters in their respective agencies, with White House Special Civil Rights Assistant Harris Wofford serving as executive secretary.[20-20] The group regularly scrutinized the racial programs of the various departments, demanding reports and investigations of racial matters and insuring that the interests and criticisms of the administration were quickly disseminated at the operations level of the federal agencies affected.[20-21]
There is evidence that the subcabinet group was responsible for considerable cross-fertilization of civil rights programs among the departments. For example, it appears to have used the experience of black servicemen in interstate travel to move the Department of Justice and, with the assistance of Attorney General Kennedy, the Interstate Commerce Commission toward eliminating such discrimination.[20-22] And it was through the subcabinet group that the Attorney General's interest in minority voting rights was translated into a voting registration campaign among servicemen.[20-23]
The existence of this group, with its surveys, questions, and investigations, put constant pressure on the armed services. They were not singled out for special treatment, but they obviously attracted the attention of both the White House and the civil rights organizations because their commitment to equal treatment and opportunity affected so many people and their past successes and remaining problems were having a decided impact on American society. In the words of presidential assistant Wofford, the Defense Department was "a world within itself," a world which by its magnitude could make a "significant contribution by its example" to the solution of the nation's racial problems.[20-24]