ep
in a continuing process that stretched from the Air staff's study of
black manpower in 1948 to the disappearance of the last black unit two
years later.

CHAPTER 14 (p. 343)

The Fahy Committee Versus the Department of Defense

Given James Forrestal's sympathy for integration, considerable
cooperation could be expected between members of his department and
the Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed
Services, better known as the Fahy Committee. In the wake of the
committee's establishment, Forrestal proposed that the service
secretaries assign an assistant secretary to coordinate his
department's dealings with the group and a ranking black officer from
each service be assigned to advise the assistant secretaries.[14-1] His
own office promised to supply the committee with vital documentation,
and his manpower experts offered to testify. The service secretaries
agreed to follow suit.

[Footnote 14-1: Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 21 Oct 48,
copy in Fahy Committee file, CMH [hereafter cited
as FC file]. The Center of Military History has
retained an extensive collection of significant
primary materials pertaining to the Fahy Committee
and its dealings with the Department of Defense.
While most of the original documents are in the
Charles Fahy Papers and the Papers of the
President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and
Opportunity in the Armed Services at the Harry S.
Truman Library or in the National Archives, this
study will cite the CMH collection when possible.]

Willing to cooperate, Forrestal still wanted to chart his own course.
Both he and his successor, Louis A. Johnson, made it quite clear that
as a senior cabinet officer the Secretary of Defense was accountable
in all matters to the President alone. The Fahy Committee might report
on the department's racial practices and suggest changes, but the
development of policy was his prerogative. Both men dealt directly
with the committee from time to time, but their directives to the
services on the formulation of race policy were developed
independently of the White House group.[14-2] Underscoring this
independent attitude, Marx Leva reminded the ser