The committee believed that some of what appeared discriminatory was in reality the working of such factors as the black serviceman's lack of seniority, deficiencies in education, and lack of interest in specific fields and assignments. Looking beyond these, the fruits of institutional racism, the committee concluded that much of the substantiated discrimination disclosed in its investigations had proved to be limited in scope. But whether limited or widespread, discrimination had to be eliminated. Prompt attention to even minor incidents of discrimination would contribute substantially to morale and serve to keep before all servicemen the standard of conduct decreed by executive policy.[21-38]
The committee was considerably less sanguine over conditions encountered by black servicemen off military bases. In eloquent paragraphs it outlined for the President the injustices suffered by these men and their families in some American communities, the effect of these practices on morale, and the consequent danger to the mission of the armed forces. It reviewed the services' efforts to eliminate segregated housing, schooling, and public accommodations around the military reservations and found them wanting. Local commanders, the committee charged, were often naive about the existence of social problems and generally did not keep abreast of departmental policy specifying their obligations; they were especially ill-informed on the McNamara-Gilpatric directives and memorandums on equal treatment. Often quizzed on the subject, the commanders told the committee that they enjoyed very fine community relationships. To this Whitney Young would answer that fine community relationships and racial injustice were not necessarily exclusive.[21-39]
The Gesell Committee Meets With the President.
Left to right: Laurence I. Hewes III, Executive Secretary; Nathaniel S. Colley; Benjamin Muse; Gerhard A. Gesell; President Kennedy; Whitney M. Young, Jr.; John H. Sengstacke; and Abe Fortas.
This community-based discrimination, the committee found, had become a greater trial for black servicemen and their families because of its often startling contrast to their life in the services. There was even evidence that some of the off-base segregation, especially overseas, had been introduced through the efforts of white servicemen. Particularly irritating to the committee were restrictions placed on black participation in civil rights demonstrations protesting such off-base conditions. The committee wanted the restrictions removed.[21-40]
In the end the committee's reputation would rest not so much on its carefully developed catalog of racial discrimination. After all, others, most notably the Civil Rights Commission, had recently documented the problems encountered by black servicemen, although not in the detail offered by the Gesell group, and had convincingly tied this discrimination to black morale and military efficiency. The committee's major contribution lay rather in its establishment of a new concept in command responsibility that directly attacked the traditional parochialism of the services' social concerns:
It should be the policy of the Department of Defense and part of the mission of the chain of command from the Secretaries of the Services to the local base commander not only to remove discrimination within the Armed Forces, but also to make every effort to eliminate discriminatory practices as they affect members of the Armed Forces and their dependents within the neighboring civilian communities.[21-41]
In effect the committee proposed a new racial policy for the Department of Defense, one that would translate the services' promise of equality of treatment and opportunity into a declaration of civil liberties. To that end it recommended the adoption of a set of techniques radically new to the thinking of the military commanders, one that grew out of the committee's own experiences in the field.
Chairman Gesell later recollected how this recommendation developed: