rces. The Selective Service Acts
of 1940 and 1948, for example, provided an important reason for
integrating when, as interpreted by the executive branch, their racial
provisions required each service to accept a quota of Negroes among
its draftees. The services could evade the provisions of the acts for
only so long before the influx of black draftees in conjunction with
other pressures led to alterations in the old racial policies.
Truman's order calling for equality of treatment and opportunity in
the services was also a major factor in the racial changes that took
place in the Army in the early 1950's. To a great extent the dictates
of the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965 exerted similar pressure on
the services and account for the success of the Defense Department's
comprehensive response during the mid-1960's to the discrimination
faced by servicemen in the local community.

[Footnote 24-2: For an extended discussion of the
moral basis of racial reform, see O'Connor's
interview with Hesburgh, 27 Mar 66.]

Questions concerning the effect of law on social custom, and
particularly the issue of whether government should force social
change or await the popular will, are of continuing interest to the
sociologist and the political scientist. In the case of the armed
forces, a sector of society that habitually recognizes the primacy of
authority and law, the answer was clear. Ordered to integrate, the
members of both races adjusted, though sometimes reluctantly, to a new
social relationship. The traditionalists' genuine fear that racial
unrest would follow racial mixing proved unfounded. The performance of
individual Negroes in the integrated units demonstrated that changed
social relationships could also produce rapid improvement in
individual and group achievement and thus increase military
efficiency. Furthermore, the successful integration of military units
in the 1950's so raised expectations in the black community that the
civil rights leaders would use that success to support their
successful campaign in the 1960's to convince the government that it
must impose social change on the community at large.[24-3]

[Footnote 24-3: For an extended discussion of the law
and racial change, see Greenberg, _Race Relations
and American Law_; Charles C. Moskos, Jr., "Racial
Integration in the