Note (Back) — CHAPTER 20

These were minor incidents, yet Kennedy's interest was bound to make a difference. As Evans wryly put it in regard to the survey of blacks in the honor guard: "Pending any further instructions it is submitted that the alert which has been given in person and by telephone in connection with the securing of the above data may be adequate for accomplishing the objectives contemplated in the [McNamara] memorandum."[20-35] If not conducive to substantive change in the lot of the black serviceman, the President's intervention signaled in a way clearly understood by Washington bureaucrats that a new style in executive politics was at hand and a new awareness of the racial implications of their actions was expected of them.[20-36]