Note (Back) — CHAPTER 21

Some defenders of the directive saw the whole controversy over sanctions as a red herring dragged across the path of a genuine equal treatment and opportunity program.[21-70] During congressional debate on the directive, the use of off-limits sanctions quickly became the respectable issue behind which those opposed to any reform could rally. The Senate debated the subject on 31 July; the House on 7 August. During lengthy sessions on those days, opponents cast the controversy in the familiar context of states' rights, arguing that constitutional and legal points were involved. As Congressman Durward G. Hall of Missouri put it: "The recommendations made in the report and in the directive indicate a narrowness of vision which, in seeing only the civil rights issue, has blinded itself to the question of whether it is proper to use the Armed Forces to enforce a moral or social, rather than a legal, issue in the civilian sector."[21-71]