Note (Back) — CHAPTER 21

The attitude of the press merely underscored a fact already obvious to many politicians on Capitol Hill in 1963—equal opportunity in the armed forces had dwindled to the status of a minor issue in the greater civil rights struggle engulfing the nation. The media reaction also suggested that prolonged attacks against the committee and the directive were for hometown consumption and not a serious effort to reverse policy. In effect a last hurrah for the congressional opponents of integration in the armed forces, the attacks failed to budge the Secretary of Defense and marked the end of serious congressional attempts to influence armed forces racial policy.[21-77] The threat of congressional opposition, at times real and sometimes imagined, had discouraged progressive racial policies in the Department of Defense for over a quarter of a century. Its abrupt and public demise robbed the traditionalists in the Department of Defense of a cherished excuse for inaction.