rule of (p. 511)
morticians who dealt with the services came in for attention.

Yet if these investigations and directives bespoke a quickened tempo
in the fight for equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces,
they did not herald a substantive reinterpretation of policy. The
Defense Department continued to limit its actions to matters obviously
and directly within its purview. The same self-imposed restriction
that kept McNamara's immediate predecessors from dealing with the most
pressing demands for reforms by black servicemen and the civil rights
leaders continued to be observed. This fact was especially clear in
the case of the Defense Department's four major policy pronouncements
involving the complex problem of discrimination visited upon
servicemen and their dependents outside the gates of the military
reservation.

_Discrimination Off the Military Reservation_

In the first of these directives, which was derived from President
Kennedy's executive order on equal employment opportunity,[20-40]
Secretary McNamara laid down that no departmental facility could be
used by employee recreational organizations that practiced racial or
religious discrimination. Included were facilities financed from
nonappropriated funds as well as all organizations to which civilian
as well as military personnel belonged.[20-41] A straightforward
enough commitment to a necessary racial reform, the secretary's order
could by logical extension also be viewed as carrying the department's
fight against racial discrimination into the civilian community. Yet
precisely because of these implications, the directive was subjected
to later clarification. Official interpretation revealed that
secretarial rhetoric aside, the Department of Defense was not yet
ready to involve civilians in its equality crusade.

[Footnote 20-40: The Office of the Secretary of
Defense also issued several other statements
implementing sections of Executive Order 10925; see
DOD Dir 1125.4, 2 Jan 62, and OSD Admin Instr No.
31, 13 July 62, both in SD files.]

[Footnote 20-41: Memo, SecDef for Secys of Military
Departments et al., 28 Apr 61, sub: Military and
Civilian Employee Recreational Organizations, copy
in ASD (M) 291.2.]

The problem emerged when the commander of Maxwell Air F