, Timpane for DASD (CP, IR, &
CR), 11 Feb 65, sub: Service Reports on Equal
Rights Activities. In a related action the
department made military facilities available for
the use of the College Entrance Examination Board
when that body was confronted with segregated
facilities in which to administer its tests; see
Memos, Dep Chief, Pers Services Div, USAF, for AFLC
et al., 8 Mar 63, sub: College Entrance
Examinations, and Evans for DASD (M), 15 Jan 63,
sub: College Entrance Examination Board
Communication. Fitt opposed this policy on the
grounds that it removed a wholesome pressure on the
segregated private facilities; see Memo, DASD (CR)
for ASD (M), 2 Mar 64, sub: College Entrance
Examinations at Military Installations. Fitt was
overruled, and the military facilities were
provided for the college entrance examinations; see
Ltr, Regional Dir, College Entrance Examination Bd,
to Evans, 13 Apr 64. Copies of all in CMH.]

The effort of the Department of Defense to secure education for its
military dependents in integrated schools was, on the whole,
unsuccessful. Integration, when it finally came to most of these
institutions later in the 1960's, came principally through the efforts
of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to enforce Title
VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet the role of local military
commanders in the effort to secure integrated schools cannot be
ignored, for with the development of a new policy toward off-base
facilities in 1963 the commander became a permanent and significant
partner in the administration's fight to desegregate the nation's
schools. In contrast to earlier times when the Department of Defense
depended on moral suasion to desegregate schools used by servicemen's
children, its commanders now educated parents on their legal rights,
collected data to support class action suits, and negotiated with
school boards. If the primary impetus for this activity was the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, the philosophy of the Gesell Committee and the
Secretary of Defense's directive were also implicit.

Discrimination in the sale and lease o