64, sub: Defense Department Regulations to
Implement Title VI of the Civil Rights Act; see
also Ltr, Spec Asst to DASD (CR), to Gesell, 24 Jul
64; copies of both in Gesell Collection, J. F.
Kennedy Library.]

[Footnote 23-38: DASD (CP, IR, & CR), The Civil Rights
Policies of the Department of Defense, 4 May 65,
copy in CMH.]

The Department of Defense's voluntary compliance program in off-base
discrimination cases had its greatest success in the months following
the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Given the passage of the act and
other federal legislation, pronouncements of the federal courts, and
the broad advance of racial tolerance throughout the nation, the
Defense Department's civil rights officials came to expect that most
discrimination could be dealt with in a routine manner. As Robert E.
Jordan III, a staff assistant to the department's civil rights deputy,
put it, the use of sanctions would not "normally" be invoked when the
Civil Rights Act or other laws could provide a judicial remedy.[23-39]
Fitt predicted that only a "very tiny number" of requests by
servicemen for suits under the act would ever be processed all the way
through to the courts. He expected to see many voluntary settlements
achieved by commanders spurred to action by the filing of requests for
suit.[23-40]

[Footnote 23-39: Ltr, Jordan to William A. Smith, 21
Aug 64, ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-40: Memo, DASD (CR) for ASD (M), 10 Jul
64, sub: DOD Instruction on Processing of Requests
by Military Personnel for the Bringing of Civil
Rights Suits by the Attorney General, ASD (M)
291.2.]

By early 1965 local commanders had made "very good progress,"
according to one Defense Department survey, in securing voluntary
compliance with Title II of the act for public accommodations
frequented by servicemen. Each service had reported "really surprising
examples of progress" in obtaining integrated off-base housing in
neighborhoods adjoining military installations and heavily populated
by service families. The services also reported good progress in
obtaining integrated off-duty education for servicemen, as distinct
from their dependents in the public schools.[23-41] At the