sub: Service Reports of Equal Rights Activities,
and Paul Memo. Copies of all in CMH.]

But voluntary compliance had its limits. Its success depended in large
measure on the ability and will of local commanders, who, for the most
part, were unprepared by training or temperament to deal with the
complex and explosive problems of off-base discrimination. Even if the
commander could qualify as a civil rights reformer, he had little time
or incentive for a duty that would go unrecognized in terms of his
efficiency rating yet must compete for his attention with other
necessary duties that were so recognized. Finally, the successful use
of voluntary compliance techniques depended on the implied threat of
legal or economic pressures, yet, for a considerable period following
McNamara's 1963 directive, no legal strictures against some forms of
discrimination existed, and the use of economic sanctions had been so
carefully circumscribed by defense officials as to render the
possibility of their use extremely remote.

The decision to circumscribe the use of economic sanctions against
off-base discrimination made sense. Closing a base because of
discrimination in nearby communities was practically if not
politically impossible and might conceivably become a threat to
national security. As to sanctions aimed at specific businesses, the
secretary's civil rights assistants feared the possibility that the
abrupt or authoritarian imposition of sanctions by an insensitive or
unsympathetic commander might sabotage the department's whole equal
opportunity program in the community. They were determined to leave
the responsibility for sanctions in the hands of senior civilian
officials. In the end it was the most senior of these officials who
acted. When his attention turned to the problem of discrimination in
off-base housing for black servicemen in 1967, Secretary McNamara
quickly decided to use sanctions against a discriminatory practice
widely accepted and still legal under federal law.

The combination of voluntary compliance techniques and economic
sanctions, in tandem with the historic civil rights legislation of the
mid-1960's, succeeded in eliminating most of the off-base
discrimination faced by black servicemen. Ironically, in view of its
unquestioned control in the area, the Department of Defense failed to
achieve an equal success against discrimination within the military
establishment itself. Compla