The fourth major memorandum on racial matters outlined the department's application of Executive Order 11063 on housing. Racial discrimination in off-base housing had become perhaps the chief complaint of black servicemen who were further incensed by many local commanders who maintained lists of segregated houses in their base housing offices. In some cases commanders referred their black servicemen to the Urban League or similar organizations for help in finding suitable housing.[20-64] Demands that the services do something about the situation were rebuffed. As the Assistant Secretary of Defense explained to a White House official, the Department of Defense had "virtually no direct involvement" in off-base housing, the segregation of which was "not readily susceptible to change by actions that are within the control of the military departments."[20-65]
Several of McNamara's assistants disagreed. They drafted a housing order for the secretary but not without opposition at first from some of their colleagues. An Army representative, for example, suggested a counterproposal that commanders be ordered to work through the federal agencies established in various geographical areas of the country by Executive Order 11063. An Air Force spokesman recommended the creation of special regional and local community committees, chaired by representatives of the Housing and Home Finance Agency and including members from all major federal agencies. For his part, Stephen S. Jackson, a special assistant in the manpower office, thought these service proposals had merit, and he wanted to postpone action until they had been discussed with other interested federal agencies.[20-66]
McNamara, however, "readily agreed" with his housing experts that a letter on nondiscrimination in family housing was necessary. On 8 March 1963 he informed the service secretaries that effective immediately all military leases for family housing, that is, contracts for private housing rented by the services for servicemen, would contain a nondiscrimination clause in accordance with the President's executive order. He also ordered military bases to maintain listings only on nonsegregated private housing.[20-67] Again an attempt to bring about a needed change was severely limited in effectiveness by the department's concern for the scope of the commander's authority in the local community. The application of the President's order would end segregation in leased housing, but only a small percentage of black servicemen lived in such housing. The majority of service families lived off base in private housing, which the new order, except for banning the listing of segregated properties by base housing offices, ignored. Barring the use of segregated private housing to all servicemen, a more direct method of changing the racial pattern surrounding military installations, would have to wait for a substantive change in departmental thinking.
Reserves and Regulars: A Comparison
While the interest of both civil rights advocates and defense officials was focused on off-base concerns during the early 1960's, discrimination continued to linger in the armed forces. A particularly sensitive issue to the services, which in the public mind had complete jurisdiction over all men in uniform, was the position of the Negro in the reserve components. To generalize on the racial policies of the fifty-four National Guard organizations is difficult, but whereas some state guards had been a progressive force in the integration of the services in the early postwar period, others had become symbols of racism by 1961. Some fourteen years after the Truman order, ten states with large black populations and understaffed guard units still had no Negroes in the guard. The Kennedy administration was not the first to wrestle with the problem of applying a single racial policy to both the regulars and the guard. It was aware that too much tampering with the politically influential and volatile guard could produce an explosion. At the same time any appearance of timidity courted antagonism from another quarter.
From the beginning the new administration found itself criticized by civil rights organizations, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, for not moving quickly against segregated National Guard units.[20-68] A delegation from the NAACP's 1961 convention visited Assistant Secretary Runge in July and criticized—to the exclusion of all other subjects—discrimination in the National Guard. This group wanted the federal government to withhold funds from states that continued to bar black participation. Repeating the old claim that special federal-state relationships precluded direct action by the Secretary of Defense, Runge nevertheless promised the delegates a renewed effort to provide equal opportunity. He also made a somewhat irrelevant reference to the recent experience of a black citizen in Oklahoma who had secured admission to the state guard by a direct appeal to the governor.[20-69] How futile such appeals would be in some states was demonstrated a week later when the Adjutant General of Florida declared that since the guard was a volunteer organization and his state had always drawn its members from among white citizens, Florida was under no obligation to enlist black men.[20-70]
That the new administration had quietly adopted different policies toward the guard and the regular forces was confirmed when Runge responded to a report prepared by the American Veterans Committee on the lack of racial progress in the guard. The veterans group called on the administration to use the threat of withdrawal of federal recognition to alter guard practices.[20-71] The administration refused. A policy of force might be acceptable for the active armed forces, but voluntary persuasion seemed more appropriate for the National Guard. Enunciating what would become the Defense Department's position on the National Guard through 1963, Runge declared that the federal government had no legal authority to force integration on the guard when it was not serving in a federal status. Furthermore, withdrawal of federal recognition or withholding federal funds as a means of bringing about integration, though legally sound, would cause some states to reject federal support and inactivate their units, thereby stripping the country of a portion of its military reserve and damaging national security. Citing the progress being made by persuasion, Runge predicted that some recalcitrant states might in time voluntarily move toward integration.[20-72] Noting instances of recent progress and citing legal restrictions against forcing state compliance, McNamara endorsed the policy of encouraging voluntary compliance.[20-73]
Although unauthorized, similar patterns of discrimination persisted in parts of the organized reserves. Reserve units had links with both the regular forces and the guard. Like the regulars, the reserve was legally a creature of the federal government and subject to policies established by the Secretary of Defense. Moreover, the reserve drew much of its manpower from the pool of soldiers separating from active duty with a reserve obligation still to fulfill, and within some limits the Defense Department could assign such men to units in a manner that could influence the reserve's racial composition. But like the guard, the reserve also had a distinct local flavor, serving almost as a social club in some parts of the country. This characteristic was often an important factor in maintaining a unit at satisfactory strength. Since segregation sometimes went hand in hand with the clublike atmosphere, the services feared that a strong stand on integration might cause a severe decline in the strength of some units.[20-74] When the Army staff reviewed the situation in 1956, therefore, it had not pressed for integration of all units, settling instead for merely "encouraging" commanders to open their units to Negroes.[20-75]
The move toward complete integration of the reserves was slow. In 1956, for example, more than 75 percent of the Army's reserve units in southern states were still segregated. The other services followed a similar pattern; in 1962 more than 40 percent of all reserve units in the country were white; the Army retained six all-black reserve units as well. Racial exclusion persisted in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps also, although here the fault was probably not so much a matter of reserve policy as the lingering segregation pattern in some state school systems. At the same time, the reserves had more blacks in nondrill status than in drill status. In other words, more blacks were in reserve pools where, unassigned to specific units, they did not participate in active duty training. In 1962, some 75 percent of the black reservists in the Army and Air Force, 85 percent in the Navy, and 38 percent in the Marine Corps were assigned to such pools. For many reservists, paid drill status was desirable; apart from the money received for such active duty, they had the opportunity to gain credit toward retirement and pensions.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric reminded the services in April 1962 that the Truman order applied to the reserves and called on the under secretaries to integrate the all-black and all-white units "as rapidly as is consistent with military effectiveness."[20-76] He also wanted a review of black assignments for the purpose of removing the disproportionate number of Negroes in pools "consistent with the military requirements and the skills of the personnel involved."