Note (Back) — CHAPTER 23

Sanctions were distasteful, and almost everyone concerned was anxious to avoid their use. The Gesell Committee wanted them reserved for those recalcitrants who had withstood the informal but determined efforts of local commanders to obtain voluntary compliance. McNamara agreed. "There were plenty of things that the commanders could do in a voluntary way," he said later, and he wanted to give them time "to get to work on this problem."[23-1] His principal civil rights assistants considered it inappropriate to declare businesses or local communities off limits while the services were still in the process of developing voluntary action programs and before the full impact of new federal civil rights legislation on those programs could be tested. As for the services themselves, each was on record as being opposed to any use of sanctions in equal opportunity cases. The 1963 equal opportunity directive of the Secretary of Defense reflected this general reluctance. It authorized the use of sanctions, but in such a carefully restricted manner that for three years agencies of the Department of Defense never seriously contemplated using them.