Although committed to a nationwide imposition of sanctions on housing if necessary, the Secretary of Defense hoped that the example of a few cases would be sufficient to break the intransigence of offending landlords; certainly a successful test case would strengthen the hand of the commanders in their negotiations with community leaders. Metropolitan Washington was the obvious area for the first test case, and the Maryland General Assembly further focused attention on that region when on 28 February 1967 it called on the Secretary of Defense to end housing discrimination for all military personnel in the state.[23-88] On the night of 21 June, Gerhard Gesell received an unexpected phone call: there would be something in tomorrow's paper, Robert McNamara told him, that should be especially interesting to the judge.[23-89] And there was, indeed, on the front page. As of 1 July, all military personnel would be forbidden to lease or rent housing in any segregated apartment building or trailer court within a three-and-a-half-mile radius of Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. Citing the special housing problems of servicemen returning from Vietnam, McNamara pointed out that in the Andrews area of Maryland less than 3 percent of some 22,000 local apartment units were open to black servicemen. The Andrews situation, he declared, was causing problems "detrimental to the morale and welfare of the majority of our Negro military families and thus to the operational effectiveness of the base."[23-90]
The secretary's rhetoric, skillfully justifying sanctions in terms of military efficiency and elementary fairness for returning combat veterans, might have explained the singular lack of adverse congressional reaction to the order. No less a personage than Chairman L. Mendel Rivers of the House Armed Services Committee admitted that he had no objection to the sanctions near Andrews. Asked about possible sanctions elsewhere, Rivers added that he would cross that bridge later.[23-91]
Rivers and his congressional allies would have little time for reflection, because McNamara quickly made it clear that the Andrews action was only a first step. Sanctions were imposed in rapid succession on areas surrounding four other military installations in Maryland, Fort George G. Meade, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood Arsenal, and Fort Holabird.[23-92] More pressure was placed on segregationists when McNamara announced on 8 September his intention to extend the sanctions nationwide. He singled out California, where the Defense Department census had shown black servicemen barred from a third of all rental units, for special attention. In fact, off-limits sanctions imposed on broad geographical areas were used only once more—in December 1967 against multiple rental properties in the northern Virginia area.[23-93] In the meantime, the Department of Defense had developed a less dramatic but equally effective method of exerting economic pressure on landlords. On 17 July 1967 McNamara ordered the establishment of housing referral offices at all installations where more than 500 men were assigned. All married servicemen seeking off-base housing were required to obtain prior clearance from these offices before entering into rental agreements with landlords.[23-94]
Finally, in the wake of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Supreme Court's ruling against housing discrimination in Jones v. Mayer, McNamara's successor, Clark M. Clifford, was able to combine economic threats with new legal sanctions against landlords who continued to discriminate. On 20 June 1968 Clifford ordered the services to provide advice and legal assistance to servicemen who encountered discrimination in housing. The services were also to coordinate their housing programs with the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Justice, provide assistance in locating nondiscriminatory rental units, and withhold authorization for servicemen to sign leases where discriminatory practices were evident. In a separate action the manpower assistant secretary also ordered that housing referral offices be established on all bases to which 100—as opposed to the earlier 500—military personnel were assigned.[23-95]
First Aid.
Soldier of the 23d Infantry gives water to heat stroke victim during "Operation Wahiawa," Vietnam.
The result of these directives was spectacular. By June 1968 the ratio of off-base housing units carried on military referral listings—that is, apartment and trailer court units with open housing policies assured in writing by the owner or certified by the local commander—rose to some 83 percent of all available off-base housing for a gain of 247,000 units over the 1967 inventory.[23-96] In the suburban Washington area alone, the number of housing units opened to all servicemen rose more than 300 percent in 120 days—from 15,000 to more than 50,000 units.[23-97] By the end of 1968 some 1.17 million rental units, 93 percent of all those identified in the 1967 survey, were open to all servicemen.[23-98] Still, these impressive gains did not signal the end of housing discrimination for black servicemen. The various Defense Department sanctions excluded dwellings for four families or less, and the evidence suggests that the original and hastily compiled off-base census on which all the open housing gains were measured had ignored some particularly intransigent landlords in larger apartment houses and operators of trailer courts on the grounds that their continued refusal to negotiate with commanders had made the likelihood of integrating their properties extremely remote.
The campaign for open housing is the most noteworthy chapter in the fight for equality of treatment and opportunity for servicemen. The efforts of the Department of Defense against other forms of off-base discrimination were to a great extent successful because they coincided with court rulings and powerful civil rights legislation. The campaign for open housing, on the other hand, was launched in advance of court and congressional action and in the face of much popular feeling against integrated housing. McNamara's fight for open housing demonstrates, as nothing had before, his determination to use, if necessary, the department's economic powers in the civilian community to secure equal treatment and opportunity for servicemen. In the name of fair housing, McNamara invested not only his own prestige but also the Defense Department's manpower and financial resources. In effect, this willingness to use the extreme weapon of off-limits sanctions revitalized the idea of using the Department of Defense as an instrument of social change in American society.
McNamara's willingness to push the department beyond the national consensus on civil rights (as represented by the contemporary civil rights laws) also signified a change in his attitude. Unlike Yarmolinsky and Robert Kennedy, McNamara limited his attention to discrimination's effect on the individual serviceman and, ultimately, on the military efficiency of the armed forces. Despite his interest in the cause of civil rights, he had, until the open housing campaign, always circumscribed the department's equal opportunity program to fit a more traditional definition of military mission. Seen in this light, McNamara's attack against segregated housing represented not only the substitution of a new and more powerful technique—sanctions—for one that had been found wanting—voluntary compliance, but also a substantial evolution in his own social philosophy. He later implied as much.