Note (Back) — CHAPTER 23

Beyond these special reasons, the services could expect help from new legislation and new administration rulings. The Civil Rights Act of 1960, for example, had authorized the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to provide integrated education for military dependents in areas where public schools were discontinued. In March 1962 Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Abraham Ribicoff announced that racially segregated schools were no longer "suitable" institutions under the terms of Public Laws 815 and 879 and that beginning in September 1963 his department would "exercise sound discretion, take appropriate steps" to provide integrated education for military dependents. If the children were withdrawn from local school systems to achieve this, he warned, so too the federal aid.[23-55] Lending credence to Ribicoff's warning, his department undertook a survey in the fall of 1962 of selected military installations to determine the educational status of military dependents.[23-56] On 17 September 1962 Attorney General Kennedy filed suit in Richmond to bar the use of federal funds in the segregated schools of Prince George County, Virginia, the location of Fort Lee.[23-57] Finally, in January 1963, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare announced that unless state officials relented it would start a crash program of construction and operation of integrated schools for military dependents in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina.[23-58]