s. It reviewed the services' efforts to eliminate
segregated housing, schooling, and public accommodations around the
military reservations and found them wanting. Local commanders, the
committee charged, were often naive about the existence of social
problems and generally did not keep abreast of departmental policy
specifying their obligations; they were especially ill-informed on the
McNamara-Gilpatric directives and memorandums on equal treatment.
Often quizzed on the subject, the commanders told the committee that
they enjoyed very fine community relationships. To this Whitney (p. 541)
Young would answer that fine community relationships and racial
injustice were not necessarily exclusive.[21-39]

[Footnote 21-39: Memo for Rcd, USAF Dep for Manpower,
Personnel, & Organization, 14 Nov 62, sub: Meeting
of the President's Committee on Equal Opportunity
in the Armed Forces, SecAF file 2426-62.]

[Illustration: THE GESELL COMMITTEE MEETS WITH THE PRESIDENT. _Left to
right_: _Laurence I. Hewes III_, _Executive Secretary_; _Nathaniel S.
Colley_; _Benjamin Muse_; _Gerhard A. Gesell_; _President Kennedy_;
_Whitney M. Young, Jr._; _John H. Sengstacke_; and _Abe Fortas_.]

This community-based discrimination, the committee found, had become a
greater trial for black servicemen and their families because of its
often startling contrast to their life in the services. There was even
evidence that some of the off-base segregation, especially overseas,
had been introduced through the efforts of white servicemen.
Particularly irritating to the committee were restrictions placed on
black participation in civil rights demonstrations protesting such
off-base conditions. The committee wanted the restrictions
removed.[21-40]

[Footnote 21-40: Memo, Dep for Manpower, Personnel, &
Organization, USAF, for SecAF, 25 Jan 63, sub:
Meeting With President's Committee on Equal
Opportunity in the Armed Forces, SecAF files. See
also Memo for Rcd, Marine Corps Aide to SecNav, 30
Jan 63, sub: Meeting With Navy-Marine Corps
Representatives on Equal Opportunity, SecNav file
5420 (1179), GenRecsNav.]

In the end the committee's reputation would rest not so much on its
carefully developed catalog of racial discrimination.