ing
Memos: Dep Under SA (Manpower) for ASD (M), 30 Mar
62, sub: Servicemen's Complaints of Discrimination
in the U.S. Military; AF Dep for Manpower, Pers,
and Organization for ASD (M), 29 Mar 62, sub:
Alleged Racial Discrimination Within the Air Force;
Under SecNav for ASD (M), 16 Mar 62, sub:
Discrimination in the U.S. Military Services. All
in ASD (M) 291.2 (12 Feb 62).]

[Footnote 20-83: Ginzberg, _The Negro Potential_, p.
90.]

[Footnote 20-84: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
_Civil Rights '63_, pp. 210-11.]

Integration of black servicemen and general political and economic
gains of the black population had combined in the last decade to
create a ground swell for reform that resulted in ever more frequent
and pressing attacks on the community policies of the Department (p. 529)
of Defense. Some members of the administration rode with the reform
movement. Although he was speaking particularly of increased black
enrollment at the military academies, Special White House Assistant
Wofford betrayed the reformer's attitude toward the whole problem of
equal opportunity when he told James Evans "I am sure that much work
has been done, but there is, of course, still a long way to
go."[20-85] But by 1962 the services had just about exhausted the
traditional reform methods available to them. To go further, as
Wofford and the civil rights advocates demanded, meant a fundamental
change in the department's commitment to equal treatment and
opportunity. The decision to make such a change was clearly up to
Secretary McNamara and the Kennedy administration.

[Footnote 20-85: Memo, Wofford for Evans, 2 Feb 62,
Wofford Collection, J. F. Kennedy Library.]

CHAPTER 21 (p. 530)

Equal Treatment and Opportunity Redefined

By 1962 the civil rights leaders and their allies in the Kennedy
administration were pressing the Secretary of Defense to end
segregation in the reserve components and in housing, schools, and
public accommodations in communities adjacent to military
installations. Such an extension of policy, certainly the most
important to be contemplated since President Truman's executive order
in