iew
with author, 13 May 72.]

[Footnote 21-23: Memo, White for Dep Atty Gen, 23 Jan
63, copy in Lee C. White Collection, J. F. Kennedy
Library. (Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach was a
member of the White House's civil rights
subcabinet.) According to Yarmolinsky, the White
suggestion might have originated with Secretary
McNamara.]

In the end the committee's operations owed something to all these
suggestions. The group worked out of a small office near the White
House and pointedly distant from the Pentagon. Its formal meetings
were rare--only seven in all--and were used primarily to hear the
presentations of service officials and consider the committee's
findings. At a meeting in November 1962, for instance, Gesell arranged
for five Air Force base commanders to discuss the application of the
equal opportunity policy in their commands and in neighboring
communities and describe their own duties as they saw them.[21-24]

[Footnote 21-24: Ltr, Gesell to SecAF, 25 Oct 62,
SecAF files.]

The chairman explained that the infrequent meetings were used mostly
for "needling people and asking for statistics." Some black members at
first opposed asking the services for statistical data on the grounds
that such requests would reinforce the tendency to identify servicemen
by race, thus encouraging racial assignments and, ultimately, racial
quotas. The majority, however, was convinced of the need for
statistical material, and in the end the requests for such information
enjoyed the committee's unanimous support.[21-25]

[Footnote 21-25: Interv, author with Gesell, 3 Nov
74.]

Most of the committee's work was done in a "shirt sleeve" atmosphere,
as its chairman described it, with a staff of four people.[21-26]
Members, alone and in groups, studied the mountains of racial
statistics, some prepared by the staff of the Civil Rights Commission,
and the lengthy answers to committee questionnaires prepared by the
services. The services also arranged for on-site inspections by
committee members.[21-27] The field trips proved to be of paramount
importance, not only in ascertaining the conditions of black
servicemen and their dependents but also in fixing the extent of the
local commander's responsibility for