Note (Back) — CHAPTER 22

These organizational problems had yet to appear in July 1963 when at Yarmolinsky's suggestion Secretary McNamara appointed Alfred B. Fitt the first civil rights deputy. Since 1961 the Army's Deputy Under Secretary for Manpower, Fitt had recently been on loan to the Office of the Secretary of Defense to coordinate the department's responses to the Gesell Committee. He was the author of the equal opportunity directive signed by McNamara, and his personal views on the subject, while consistent with those of Yarmolinsky and McNamara, were often expressed in more advanced terms. Going beyond the usual arguments for equal treatment based on morale and military efficiency, Fitt referred to the black servicemen's struggle as a moral issue. He was glad, he later confessed, to be on the right side of such an issue, and he felt indebted to the positive racial policies of Kennedy and Johnson and their Secretary of Defense.[22-17] He quickly gathered around him a staff of like-minded experts who proceeded to their first task, a review of the services' outline plans called for in the secretary's directive.[22-18]