f housing continued to be the
most widespread and persistent form of racial injustice encountered by
black servicemen, and a most difficult one to fight. The chronic
shortage of on-base accommodations, the transient nature of a military
assignment, and the general reluctance of men in uniform to protest
publicly left the average serviceman at the mercy of local landlords
and real estate interests. Nor did he have recourse in law. No
significant federal legislation on the subject existed before 1969,
and state laws (by 1967 over half the states had some form of
prohibition against discrimination in public housing and twenty-one
states had open housing laws) were rather limited, excluding
owner-occupied dwellings, for example, from their provisions. Even
President Kennedy's 1962 housing order was restricted to future
building and to housing dependent on federal financing.

Both the Civil Rights Commission and the Gesell Committee studied the
problem in some detail and concluded that the President's directive to
all federal agencies to use their "good offices" to push for open
housing in federally supported housing had not been followed in the
Department of Defense. The Civil Rights Commission, in particular,
painted a picture of a Defense Department alternating between naivete
and indifference in connection with the special housing problems of
black servicemen.[23-69] White House staffer Wofford later decided (p. 600)
that the Secretary of Defense was dragging his feet on the subject of
off-base housing, although Wofford admitted that each federal agency
was a forceful advocate of action by other agencies.[23-70]

[Footnote 23-69: Memo, ASD (CR) for SecDef, 29 Oct 63,
sub: Family Housing and the Negro Serviceman, Civil
Rights Commission Staff Report; Memo, ASD (M) for
SecDef, 2 Nov 63, sub: Family Housing for Negro
Servicemen; both in ASD (M) 291.2.]

[Footnote 23-70: Interv, Bernhard with Wofford, 29 Nov
65, p. 60.]

[Illustration: SUBMARINE TENDER DUTY. _A senior chief boatswain mate
and master diver at his station on the USS Hunley._]

The Assistant Secretary for Manpower conceded in November 1963 that
little had been done, but, citing the widely misunderstood off-base
inventory, he pleaded the need to avoid retaliation by segregationist
forces in Congress both on future authorizatio