Note (Back) — CHAPTER 19

The Department of Defense experienced few problems at first as it integrated its own schools. Its overseas schools, especially in Germany and Japan, had always been integrated, and its schools in the United States now quickly followed suit. Eleven in number, they were paid for and operated by the U.S. Commissioner of Education because the states in which they were located prohibited the use of state funds for schools on federal property. With only minimal public attention, all but one of these schools was operating on an integrated basis by 1953. The exception was the elementary school at Fort Benning, Georgia, which at the request of the local school board remained a white-only school. On 20 March 1953 the new Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, informed the White House that this school had been ordered to commence integrated operations in the fall.[19-64]