erracial social
activities: with due regard for sex and rank all Air Force facilities
were available for the unrestricted use of all its members;
troublemakers would get into trouble. Under these inflexible rules,
the Fahy Committee later reported, there was a steady movement in the
direction of shared facilities. "Here again, mutual respect engendered
on the job or in the school seemed to translate itself into friendly
association."[16-47] Whether it liked it or not, the Air Force was in
the business of social change.

[Footnote 16-47: _Freedom to Serve_, p. 41.]

Typical of most unit reports was one from the commander of the 1701st
Air Transport Wing, Great Falls Air Force Base, Montana, who wrote
Secretary Symington that the unit's eighty-three Negroes, serving in
ten different organizations, lived and worked with white airmen "on an
apparently equal and friendly basis."[16-48] The commander had been
unable to persuade local community leaders, however, to promote
equality of treatment outside the base, and beyond its movie theaters
Great Falls had very few places that allowed black airmen. The
commander was touching upon a problem that would eventually trouble
all the services: airmen, he reported to Secretary Symington, although
they have good food and entertainment on the base, sooner or later
want to go to town, sit at a table, and order what they want. The Air
Force was now coming into conflict with local custom which it could
see no way to control. As the _Air Force Times_ put it, "The Air
Force, like the other services, feels circumspect policy in this
regard is the only advisable one on the grounds that off-base
segregation is a matter for civilian rather than military
decision."[16-49]

[Footnote 16-48: Ltr, Col Paul H. Prentiss, Cmdr,
1701st AT Wing, to SecAF, 27 Dec 49, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 16-49: _Air Force Times_, 10 February 1951.]

But this problem could not detract from what had been accomplished on
the bases. Judged by the standards it set for itself before the Fahy
Committee, the Air Force had achieved its goals. Further, they (p. 412)
were achieved in the period between 1949 and 1956 when the percentage
of blacks in the service doubled, an increase resulting from the
Defense Department's qualitative distribution of manpower rather than
the removal of the racial quota.[16-50] During these years the number
of bla