Arriving in Vietnam.
101st Airborne Division troops aboard the USNS General Le Roy Eltinge.
Although merely outlines of proposed service programs, the three plans submitted in July and August nevertheless reflected the emphasis on off-base discrimination preached by the Gesell Committee and endorsed by the Secretary of Defense.[22-19] The plans also revealed the services' essential satisfaction with their current on-base programs, although each outlined further reforms within the military community. The Navy, for example, announced reforms in recruitment methods, and the Army planned the development of more racially equitable training programs and job assignments. All three services discussed new provisions for monitoring their equal opportunity programs, with the Army including explicit provisions for the processing of servicemen's racial complaints. And to insure the coordination of equal opportunity matters in future staff decisions, each service also announced (the Navy in a separate staff action) the formation of an equal opportunity organization in its military staff: an Equal Rights Branch in the office of the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, an Equal Opportunity Group in the Air Force's Directorate of Personnel Planning to work in conjunction with its Secretary's Committee on Equal Opportunity, and an Ad Hoc Committee in the Navy's Bureau of Personnel.
The outline plans revealed that the services entertained differing interpretations of the McNamara call for command responsibility in equal opportunity matters. The Gesell Committee had considered this responsibility of fundamental importance and wanted the local commander held accountable and his activities in this area made part of his performance rating. There was some disagreement among manpower experts on this point. How, one critic asked, could the services set up standards against which a commander's performance might be fairly judged? How could they insure that an overzealous commander might not, in the interest of a higher efficiency report, upset anti-discrimination programs that called for subtle negotiation?[22-20] But to Chairman Gesell the equal opportunity situation demanded action, and how could this demand be better impressed on the commander than by the knowledge that his performance was being measured?[22-21] The point of this argument, which the committee accepted, was that unless personal responsibility was fixed, policies and directives on equal opportunity were just so much rhetoric.
Only the Army's outline plan explicitly adopted the committee's controversial recommendation that "the effective performance of commanders in this area will be considered along with other responsibilities in determining his overall manner of duty performance." The Navy equivocated. Commanders would "monitor continually racial matters with a goal toward improvement." The Inspectors General of the Navy and Marine Corps were "instructed to appraise" all command procedures. The Air Force expected base base commanders to concern themselves with the welfare nondiscriminatory treatment of its servicemen when they were away from the base, but it left them considerable freedom in the matter. "The military mission is predominant," the Air Force announced, and the local commander must be given wide latitude in dealing with discrimination cases since "each community presented a different situation for which local solutions must be developed."
The decision by the Navy and Air Force to exempt commanders from explicit responsibility in equal opportunity matters came after some six months of soul-searching. Under Secretary of the Navy Fay agreed with his superior that the Navy's equal opportunity "image" suffered in comparison to the other services and the percentage of Negroes in the Navy and Marine Corps left much to be desired. But when ordered by Secretary Fred Korth to develop a realistic approach to equal opportunity in consultation with the Gesell Committee, Fay's response tended to ignore service shortcomings and, most significantly, failed to fix responsibility for equal opportunity matters. He proposed to revise Navy instructions to provide for increased liaison between local commanders and community leaders and monitor civil rights cases involving naval personnel, but his response neither discussed new ways to increase job opportunities for Negroes nor mentioned making equal opportunity performance a part of the military efficiency rating system.[22-22] His elaborate provisions for monitoring and reporting notwithstanding, his efforts appeared primarily cosmetic.
Digging In.
Men of M Company, 7th Marines, construct a defense bunker during "Operation Desoto," Vietnam.
Undoubtedly, the Navy's image in the black community needed some refurbishing. Despite substantial changes in the racial composition of the Steward's Branch in recent years, Negroes continued to avoid naval service, as a special Navy investigation later found, because "they have little desire to become stewards or cooks."[22-23] Fay believed that the shortage of Negroes was part of a general problem shared by all the services. His public relations proposals were designed to overcome the difficulty of attracting volunteers. His recommendations were approved by Secretary Korth in February 1963 and disseminated throughout the Navy and Marine Corps for execution.[22-24] With only minor modification they were also later submitted to the Secretary of Defense as the Navy's outline plan.
Even as Fay settled on these modest changes, signs pointed to the possibility that the department's military leaders would be amenable to more substantial reform. The Chief of Naval Personnel admitted that the Gesell Committee's charges against the service were "to some extent" justified and warned naval commanders that if they failed to take a more positive approach to equal opportunity they would be ordered to take actions difficult for both the Navy and the community. Better "palatable evolutionary progress," he counseled, than "bitter revolutionary change."[22-25]