Note (Back) — CHAPTER 14

If there was ever any question of what their programs should contain, the services had only to turn to the Fahy Committee for plenty of advice. The considerable attention paid by senior officials of the Department of Defense to racial matters in the spring of 1949 could be attributed in part to the commonly held belief that the Fahy Committee planned an integration crusade, using the power of the White House to transform the services' racial policies in a profound and dramatic way. Indeed, some members of the committee itself demanded that the chairman "lay down the law to the services."[14-31] But this approach, Charles Fahy decided, ignored both the personalities of the participants and the realities of the situation.