Introduction
MR. RAYMOND H. GESELBRACHT: Thank you all for coming out on a chilly night and for this program. If anyone hasn’t been to the Truman Library, please, feel guilty. So many people that come to the library -- or haven’t been to the library; my neighbors, people I meet say they’re guilty. They haven’t been to the Truman Library.
I never understand that, but feel guilty come to the Truman Library. You’d be very welcome. And you have no idea how much taxpayer money and how much hard work by all the Truman Library staff go in to making that a wonderful place for you to visit.
I -- I sometimes on days when there’s a foot of snow out in the courtyard, which happened this winter and there’s nobody there I think there -- there should be -- there should be hundreds of people here. It’s still a beautiful place. And it’s just for you. It’s -- the Truman Library together with other -- a good many other places in this country is part of the -- what would you call it? Part of the -- the civil religion that -- that helps to hold the country together.
It’s -- it’s a small part in Missouri of the same type of territory as the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial or other places of that kind that help us to understand that we’re all in this together.
Well, tonight I’m going to talk about one of the most important themes from Truman’s presidency. Many historians think it’s the most important theme in the domestic policy area; Truman, of course, known for many of his foreign policy accomplishments.
He had great vision in domestic policy. And I think of him often from day-to-day as I listen to the news because President Truman had a lot of ideas that he wanted to pass into law. And the Congress did not agree with very many of them. And with the result that most of Truman’s ideas remained what you would call on the agenda rather than accomplishments. One of those, by the way, was national health insurance. President Truman put before the Congress a proposal for national health insurance legislation. Congress did not pass it.
But in the civil rights area there was a combination and we’ll see -- as we’ll see of ideas that Congress rejected, but also considerable accomplishments that the President was able to do without Congress’s cooperation.
My introduction to President Truman’s civil rights legacy was in large part encountered at a conference in Key West, Florida. I encourage you to go there, too, if anyone hasn’t been there. It’s a wonderful place to go this time of year. Key West, Florida, was President Truman’s favorite vacation place.
And he went down there and the first time in 1947, when he was having a little bit of bad health and the doctor said find a nice warm place to go for a bit of vacation. He went to Key West, Florida. There’s a naval base there and he occupied the -- what had been the commandant’s house, which became known as the Little White House and it’s now a state of Florida historic site, a wonderful place to visit.
We had -- the Truman Library sponsored a conference there in 2004 on The Civil Rights Legacy of Harry S. Truman. Next slide, please. And next slide.
4:20 Truman’s Heritage
In 1991, there was an article published in the American Heritage magazine called the Conversion of Harry S. Truman and the -- the subtitle that you see on the cover here is The racist President who started modern civil rights. President Truman was from a state that was at least in good measure Southern. The parentage of his family was Southern. Now, the story I’m going to tell you tonight is of a man raised within a Southern heritage. That heritage included racism toward African Americans and as you’ll hear almost everybody else in this country that wasn’t just like the Trumans.
And he never -- Truman never completely rose above that heritage, which is just honestly a very human thing, I think, as you’ll see. But despite this, he became the President of the United States who for the first time since the Reconstruction Period immediately following the Civil War committed the government of the United States to the realization of civil rights for African Americans and for others as well, but primarily for African Americans. Next slide, please.
These -- these are Truman’s parents; Martha Ellen Young Truman and John Anderson Truman on their wedding day, December 28, 1881. Truman’s grandparents on both sides and they were Anderson Shippe Truman and Mary Janes -- Jane Holmes Truman on his father’s side and Solomon Young, Harriet Louisa Gregg Young were from Kentucky and they -- they all owned slaves.
His Young grandparents, his mother’s parents, suffered during the Civil War a raid by Unionist Guerrillas, several confiscations of property by Union soldiers. The Youngs were quite well-to-do. When Solomon Young died in 1892, he had a farm of about 1,700 acres. He had had more acreage than that from time-to-time. According to family lore, he owned all the land that the City of Sacramento, California, now sits on, at one time; a very prosperous person.
The Union Army visited his farm. He was -- he was off on one of his trading missions in California. Union Army took several of the -- quite a bit of the livestock and just tore everything up and -- and then eventually, as a result of General Order No. 11, the Youngs were made to move into a compound in Kansas City for a time.
Truman’s mother never forgot this. She retained strong and bitter memories of these things all of her life and impressed on her children, on her son, Harry, her animosity towards the North and toward Abraham Lincoln and all they stood for. And when Truman was president, he invited his mother to come and see him in the White House. She got off the plane and had all of her bags, came to the White House, all her bags were put down and Harry and Bess came out and Harry said, “Mother, I’m going to put you in the Lincoln Bedroom.” (Laughter.) And his mother turned to Bess and said, “Bess, get my bags together I’ll be leaving right a way.” (Laughter.) That’s the way it was.
In the early 1960s, Truman was interviewed as part of a documentary project by Merle Miller and some of you may have read his well-known, best-selling book Plain Speaking. And he asked, President Truman, “Did any of your ancestors have slaves?” And Truman seemed kind of amused at this question and he said, “Yes, they all had -- they all had slaves,” he answered, “brought them out here from Kentucky, most of them were wedding presents.” Miller was surprised at this. He said, “You mean that that was one of the gifts?” Truman said, “That’s right.” And then he was asked how many slaves they would have. “Oh, about five or six; they’d have a cook and a nurse for the children and a maid of all work and then they’d have maybe a couple of field hands to go along with them.”
Now, when Truman first started courting Bess Wallace in 1910, he had a rather long journey to get from Grand- -- his farm where he was working with his family in Grandview up to Independence. It was about a 20 mile ride and he did not have a car, at first, and the telephone didn’t work very well. There were two telephone systems and they didn’t go together often times. So he started writing Bess letters in late 1910. On June 22, 1911, he wrote her a letter that’s become very famous for a couple reasons, one is, he proposed to her. And she turned him down.
But after that proposal, in this letter he said some things to her and, now, I’m going to now and again tonight use President Truman’s language. Some of this is not acceptable nowadays, but it’s an historic artifact and I’m going to read it as President Truman wrote it. And he said in this letter, after proposing to her and telling her how wonderful he thought he was then he went on just to another subject. And then he said after reflecting about the royalty in Britain, which he didn’t have a very high opinion of, he said, “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made the white man from dust, a nigger from mud, and he threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman.” He -- he does hate Chinese and Japs. Now, Truman admits that he’s prejudiced to Bess. And he says, “I’m strongly of the opinion that Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.”
Now, Bess turned him down, but not because he said those things. She probably shared those prejudices with him. There was something else in Truman’s heritage, too. Next slide, please.
I’m sorry that was the letter I just read from. Next slide.
There was something else in Truman’s heritage, too, and this was religion an inner, a strong inner-religion. Truman was not much of a church-goer. He believed that if -- he used to quote a story that his grandfather told him all the time that if someone starts telling you a great deal about their religion, go and lock up the smokehouse. Truman had a very deep and abiding religion, but it was very personal. And he was -- he was a reader of the Bible all of his life. He said he had read it three times through by the time he got to be 14. But he read it all of his life and when he took his oath of office in 1949 when he was able to organize things a bit, he used two Bibles. He had one open to the 20th chapter of Exodus and the other to the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel, The Sermon on the Mount and The Ten Commandments.
The Golden Rule was something that was deep, deep in Truman’s heart. And was -- as became evident as he confronted the -- his responsibilities as President. It was something that was in deep conflict with some of his inherited racial attitudes. Next slide, please.
12:29 Truman’s First Political Adventure
Truman’s first political adventure was into county politics in Jackson County, Missouri. In 1922, he was invited by the Pendergast organization to run for the county judge position for eastern Jackson County. That was like a county commissioner position. Eastern Jackson County was everything outside of Kansas City and Independence was the largest town.
Now, during the -- the campaign period when Truman was running for this office he was invited to lunch by a representative of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a power in Jackson County in -- at this time. It was part of the political landscape and Truman was perfectly willing to sit down with someone from the Klan and he was apparently, none of this will ever be known for -- for sure, there’s no written documentation, there’s some oral history interviews. He was apparently considering joining the Klan, just as a political thing to do. But when he sat down to this Klan person at lunch, he was told that the Klan had certain feelings about who was going to be hired by the county if Truman became county judge and they were particularly insistent that no Catholics be hired. Well, Truman, of course, besides being the politician was Captain Harry of Battery D and he loved all the guys in Battery D. Some of you may know something about that story. He brought them through the -- the war and kept them all alive and they -- he bonded with many of them for life.
Well, most of them were young Catholic kids from Rockhurst College. And he was not going to be put into position where he couldn’t hire any of those fellows on his payroll as county judge. And, also, of course, the Pendergast machine in Kansas City was a Roman Catholic organization. So he walked away from that lunch and for the rest of his life he was deeply opposed to the Klan. And he used to tell a story about driving down to some Klan rally some- -- I’ve forgotten where it was, somewhere in Missouri, and to break it up, and brought some of his friends with him. They were worried he was going to be killed, but he said, “Well, they were just going to break that meeting up, ‘cause that was a no-good organization where they all hid under sheets.”
15:01 Truman’s Interest in History
Truman had also a very firm belief in the equal rights ideas that he believed were the foundation on which the American nation had been built. From a very early time in his life, he had a strong interest in history. This was one of the most important elements, I think, in his character was this love of history. It also stayed with him all of his life. At the end of his life when he was very old and frail and could barely walk around the block anymore he used to sit in his study room, some of you have seen that in his home. He had a nice -- a small study room with a very comfortable chair and a table in front of the chair filled up with books. And those books were about American History and biography.
Well, one of the things he learned was the -- the content of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And those documents said everybody had equal rights. Next slide, please.
16:10 Truman Runs for the Senate
After ten years as county judge, Truman ran for the Senate. Much to his surprise, Tom Pendergast told him, “No, you can’t be a member of Congress. No, we’re not going to make you the county collector you’re going to run for Senate.” Truman was terrified. He didn’t think he was up to the job. But that was his job, so he ran for the Senate.
By 1934, when he was campaigning for Senate, African Americans had become an important constituency for the Democratic Party. Now, it’s hard to remember, now, but -- but it makes sense; after the Civil War, African Americans, when they were allowed to vote, when they got to vote, when they were able to vote they voted for Republicans. They voted for the party of Abraham Lincoln. That was true until 1932, when most African Americans voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt. And so -- and this was a new phenomenon. So President Truman throughout his presidency, throughout his political career was always aware that this was a new group of voters. That he had an opportunity to appeal to. That’s part of the story we’re telling tonight.
17:22 Important Speeches as Senator
Truman gave a couple of important speeches as senator that reflected his views. And it’s hard to jump from what I read you earlier in the letter he wrote to Bess, to this speech that he gave in Sedalia, Missouri, June 15, 1940. He said, “I believe in the brotherhood of man; not merely the brotherhood of white men; but the brotherhood of all men before the law. I believe in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In giving to the Negroes the rights that are theirs, we are only acting in accord with ideas of a true democracy.”
He made another speech in 1940, this one in Chicago, July 14. He said, “I wish to make it clear that I am not appealing for social equality of the Negro …… We all know the Negro is here to stay and in no way can be removed from our political and economic life and we should recognize his inalienable rights as specified in our Constitution.” But he makes a distinction there, which he always made between equal rights under the law and social equality, which in his day did not exist and he didn’t know if it ever would. But it didn’t at the time.
While he was senator, President Truman supported legislation to finance the temporary Fair Employment Practices Commission. You’ll hear more about that tonight. That essentially was an organization established by the federal government, which would police the -- the fair -- fair hiring practices so there would be no discrimination on account of race or other things.
President Roosevelt only set up a temporary one that would last during World War II. President Truman supported that. He also supported the -- a bill -- voted for a bill, he introduced the bill to give African American General Benjamin O. Davis a combat command. He voted to end a filibuster which opposed legislation to end the poll tax. He supported a resolution to investigate the effects of segregation in the military on African Americans.
19:40 Truman Becomes President
All these he -- things he did while still United States senator. When he became a vice-presidential candidate in the summer of 1944 he gave a speech saying, “I have always been for the equality of opportunity to work, working conditions and political rights. I think the Negro in the armed forces ought to have the same treatment and opportunities as every other member of the armed forces …… I have a record of fair play toward my Negro fellow citizens that will stand examination.” Well, then, of course, April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt dies. Harry S. Truman suddenly was President of the United States. What was this new president with the heritage that we’ve examined, but with the beliefs expressed in his speeches while senator? What was he going to do, if anything, about civil rights? President Roosevelt had done almost nothing about civil rights. What was this new president going to do? Next slide, please.
Just a look back for a moment at his heritage -- oh, that’s right. Let’s see. Yes. A southern senator said this to the new president not long after he took office, “Everything is really going to be all right. The new president knows how to handle the n______.” We’ll see. Next slide. And next slide, please.
21:14 The Isaac Woodard Incident
On the night of February 12, 1946, Isaac Woodard, whom you see here, was discharged from Camp Gordon, Georgia. He was a sergeant in the United States Army. He boarded a bus for home in Winnsboro, South Carolina. He had served for 15 months -- he had served for 15 months in the war in the Pacific. He had earned a battle star. Now, an hour into the trip; the bus stopped. Woodard asked if he could get off and use the restroom. The driver, according to testimony he gave, cursed him and said there wasn’t any time for a trip to the restroom. Woodard cursed him back. The driver told him, “Oh, all right, get off.” Woodard got off the bus, went to the bathroom, got back on; when the bus stopped in Batesburg, South Carolina, the driver called for a police officer, ordered Woodard off the bus.
Woodard tried to explain what had happened. The policeman hit him with a club, took him to the police station. The policeman then, once they got to the station, started hitting Woodward in the eyes with the end of his club until he was barely conscious and in the morning he’d learned he was blind.
He was taken to court, he was fined $50, which he couldn’t pay because he couldn’t see to sign his -- the check he had from the Army for $650. So he was taken back to jail, but the next day he was taken to a veteran’s hospital where he stayed for three months. This episode, one of the most notorious in the post World War II episodes of racism, there were many in this country at that time, became gradually, widely known and had an important role in Truman’s civil rights efforts.
Truman was affected very strongly by the Woodard incident. He read about it in the newspapers. One of his aides -- White House aides later said that, “It was the Woodard incident that finally pushed Truman to act in the area of civil rights.” He was very upset about it. The aide said it was partly because President Truman always had a very strong feeling for people who had served their country and whatever color.
Now, the blinding of Isaac Woodard was one of a wave of episodes including lynching, horrible acts of violence against African Americans in the months following the end of World War II. The -- many of these acts of violence were directed against African American veterans who were returning home from overseas. They had learned other ways in the service and out of the country or in other parts of the country and they were impatient with the Jim Crow racism that existed in the South. And they were aware that the United States had just spent its blood and its treasure to defeat racism in Europe and, yet, it still existed at home.
24:25 Other Racist Incidents
There was an episode in Alabama where an African American veteran, an ex-marine removed the Jim Crow sign on a trolley. The streetcar conductor then shot him. And the -- the man was -- the veteran was able to crawl away from the streetcar, but the chief of police then went after him and shot him in the head.
There was another instance in Louisiana. A black veteran refused to give a war memento that he had brought back to a white man who had asked for it and he was punished for that by being partly dismembered, castrated and seared with a blow torch.
There was a famous episode in Monroe, Georgia, where two African American couples included -- one of them was a man who had recently stabbed a white man who had approached his wife and another man who was a returned veteran; they were gunned down so brutally with so much fire power that the mortician had difficulty filling the holes in their faces with plaster of Paris, so they can be recognized by their friends and relatives. These were horrible things and I mention them because President Truman knew of them and they affected him deeply.
25:55 The National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence
On September 19, 1946, he had a meeting with an organization called the National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence. Walter White who is the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Color People was one of the people at this meeting. He told Truman about these things that were happening. Truman had already read about them. He knew, White reminded him. White reminded him of what had happened to Isaac Woodard and Truman according to White’s memoirs said, “My God, I had no idea it was as terrible as that. We’ve got to do something.” Next slide, please.
On September 20, the next day, he wrote a memorandum to David Niles who was his White House assistant who took charge of -- of -- of minority issues. And he said -- gave him a copy of a letter he had sent to the attorney general that same day. The letter to Niles, Truman says he wants to set up a presidential commission to recommend what should be done about these problems; these acts of violence and the violations of civil rights in the country. And he said to Niles, “I’m very much in earnest on this thing and I’d like very much to have you push it with everything you have. I’ve been very much alarmed at the increased racial feeling all over the country.”
27:25 Executive Order 9808
On December 5, 1946, President Truman issued Executive Order 9808, which established the President’s Commission on Civil Rights. And in that executive order, he said that these acts of racial violence threatened the country’s national security. It was a curious thing to say, but we’ll see that there’s more to come in that line. He said, in the order, “The preservation of civil rights is guaranteed -- as guaranteed by the Constitution is essential to domestic tranquility, national security, the general welfare and the continued existence of our free institutions.” The President’s Committee on Civil Rights met for the first time on January 15, 1947. Next slide, please.
And we have at the Truman Library the first page of a transcription of the remarks that Truman made to that committee. And a press release was issued, but the -- the White House clerk didn’t include all the parts that you see that are crossed out. Which when I looked at it, well, these are some of the most interesting parts in this document. And, basically, the American people were never told about these things that Truman said. And historians, who probably are all using the public papers of the President rather than the original documents, probably have never seen these things.
So Truman says here in one of the crossed out things, crossed out areas, he says, “In my opinion our government is the only one in the whole world today that absolutely by constitutional right puts the rights of the individual above the right of any group or any state to oppress them.” Another deleted segment concerns his belief that the federal government shouldn’t dictate to local authorities, but should protect constitutional rights that are not being enforced by the local -- on the local level. “I want to find out,” he said, “just how far we can go to enforce civil rights when they’re not being enforced at the state and local level.” Next slide, please. And next slide.
Truman was going to face a lot of grief as a result of his position on civil rights. The Congress was dominated by senior figures from the South. Many of the chairs of the congressional committees were Southerners so he was going to have -- and, of course, his own party was in large measure Southern. So he was going to have a tough time in this area, but as you can see that expresses a very positive view of what he was going to do. Next slide, please.
30:19 Truman Addresses the 38th Annual NAACP Meeting
While Truman was waiting for his commission on civil rights to put their report together and give it to him, he was invited to address the 38th Annual Meeting of the NAACP. No president had ever addressed an annual meeting of the NAACP. President Truman did so, June 29, 1947, in very grand surroundings. Have you-all stood in this spot?
(No response.)
MR. RAYMOND H. GESELBRACHT: Anyone stood at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and you look down that grand view toward the Washington Monument, you see the reflecting pool? And that’s where they are.
(No response.)
MR. RAYMOND H. GESELBRACHT: “It is my deep conviction,” President Truman said, “that we reached a turning point in the long history of our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to our citizens. Every man should have the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share of making public decisions through the ballot, and the right to a fair trial in a fair court. We must insure that these rights-on equal terms-that they are enjoyed by every citizen. We can no longer afford the luxury of a leisurely attack on prejudice and discrimination.” So he made this speech and he went -- returned to his seat and Walter White, who was sitting next to him, again, the head of the NAACP, he turned to him. Truman looked at him and said, “I mean every word of it-and I’m going to prove that I do mean it.”
And Truman made a number of other speeches during his presidency with rhetoric just like I presented to you. And I’m not going to go through all those speeches tonight. There are another three, four or five important speeches. And -- and we’ll talk a little bit later about some of the criticisms made of President Truman’s efforts in the era of civil rights. But Truman made, I think, a very good rhetorical record and it’s easy for someone to say he didn’t always match it up with deeds. And we’ll talk more about that. But, I think, the rhetorical record itself in this case has an importance.
32:40 To Secure These Rights
On October 29, about three or four months later, 1947, President Truman received from his Committee on Civil Rights their report. It was entitled: To Secure These Rights. Next slide, please.
There he is. You see him reading the report from the committee. Now, one of the important things about any presidential committee is who the President puts on the committee. It’s very easy. And some of you in managerial positions may have done things like this. It’s very easy to set up a committee and then you put people on the committee that you know won’t do anything too troubling. President Truman put on this committee people that he knew would make some trouble. People that believed in civil rights and that would give him a report with a lot of punch in it. To Secure These Rights is a very powerful document that is, I think, I’m going to say universally recognized knowing that nothing is ever universally recognized, but I’m going to say that anyway for the -- for the moment.
As having set the agenda for the modern civil rights movement, To Secure These Rights advocated passage of laws to end lynching, to end the poll tax, to establish a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, to bring home rule to the District of Columbia, to achieve the de-segregation of the armed forces, to create a permanent civil rights division within the justice department, to eliminate grants and aid from the federal government to segregated institutions and support for a legal assault on segregation and education housing and interstate transportation. When Truman received the report from his committee he called it, An American Charter of Freedom. Next slide, please.
I just pulled a couple of illustrations out of the -- To Secure These Rights. It began by identifying four rights that were essential as it said, to the citizen in a free society. The four rights and they’re here: Right to safety and security of the person, the right to citizenship and its privileges, the right to freedom of conscience and expression and the right to equality of opportunity. And the report said, the committee members said, “We believe that each of these rights is essential to the well-being of the individual and to the progress of society.” Next slide, please.
And I -- I pulled -- this is only one area of concern in this report, the poll tax. But the poll tax has always been a bit strange to me, I mean, I‘ve never lived in the midst of a poll tax regime and -- but -- but this slide shows the affect of the poll tax had on voting. And you can see 18 percent of people in states of poll tax actually voted as opposed to 68 percent in states without the poll tax.
Poll taxes, I mentioned that President Truman didn’t get the legislation from Congress that he wanted; poll taxes were not outlawed until the 24th Amendment was passed in 1964, which outlawed them on the federal -- in federal elections and then in 1966 the Supreme Court outlawed them in state elections.
36:18 1948 Re-election Campaign
Now, at the time Truman received this report of his president’s committee he was starting to think about the upcoming election in November 1948. And he knew he was going to have a hard re-election campaign. Already everyone thought he was going to lose and probably even Mrs. Truman, but he -- he didn’t see it that way.
His special counsel Clark Clifford brought to him in November of 1947 a famous -- a famous memorandum. Famous, at least, amongst political historians and it outlined a strategy for winning in 1948. And it put forward a few principles that were in -- that had importance for President Truman’s civil rights program. One, was Truman was advised by this memorandum that the South was inherently Democratic and would vote the Democratic Party no matter what. Of course, that proved to be wrong -- proved to be wrong in 1948. This memorandum also advised Truman that he could pursue his civil rights program without fear of alienating the South. Where else were they going to go?
It also told him that the African Americans had been moving North -- moving to northern cities in large numbers and that their vote would be important in 1948. Not only had African Americans changed from being Republicans to being Democrats in recent memory, now, they were moving out of the South where they hadn’t been allowed to vote and they were moving to the northern cities where they could be an important factor in the close election. So Truman knew these things.
38:06 Civil Rights Message to Congress
On December 9, Truman asked Clark Clifford who had brought that report to him a couple weeks earlier to draw up some recommendations for a civil rights program. The result was that on February 2, 1948, President Truman sent a civil rights message to Congress. This is the first civil rights message that any president had ever sent to Congress. And he used a term in this -- this address or this message when talking about civil rights that he didn’t often use. He said it was important for the welfare of the people that the country secures fully our essential human rights. Human rights? Civil rights? They’re not really quite the same thing.
And there was -- at some times there’s been some confusion about what it was Truman was fighting to achieve and what he wasn’t willing to consider. And we’ll talk more about this later, but for the moment just remember that distinction.
Now, among the human rights, Truman said, there were basic human -- basic civil rights, and those were these: equal justice under the law, freedom of thought of expression and to worship as one pleases, equal opportunities for jobs, for homes, for good health and education, a voice in their government which must be a government which protects not just usurps the rights of people. This sounds, very much like To Secure These Rights. “We cannot be satisfied,” Truman said in this message, “until all our people have equal opportunities for jobs, for homes, for education, for health and for political expression and until all our people have equal protection under the law.”
Truman recognized when he was saying these words that there was a serious gap between the ideals of the United States and practice in the United States. He recommended that the Congress enact legislation that would close this gap. He promised, also, that he would take executive action to end discrimination in federal employment and in the armed forces besides rectifying all the things through legislation that he asked the Congress to do.
All of this was being put forward -- was being conceived in the context of the time and that was -- it was a time of what we call today Cold War, which was just being given a name in late 1947. “The position of the United States and the world today,” Truman said, “makes it especially urgent that we adopt these measures to secure for all our people their essential rights. The peoples of the world are faced with a choice of freedom or enslavement.” In other words, United States or the Soviet Union.
“A choice between a form of government which harnesses the state and the service of the individual in a form of government which chains the -- chains the individual to the needs of the state. If we wish to inspire the peoples of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy, if we wish to restore hope to those who have already lost their civil liberties, if we wish to fulfill the promise that is ours, we must correct the remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy.”
Civil rights existed -- it was a foreign -- part of a foreign policy agenda. It was viewed globally. Now, Truman, as I mentioned, left the framing of civil rights legislation to Congress. Congress did not pass any civil rights legislation. He also delayed the promised executive action to desegregate the armed forces and he did not make civil rights much of an issue in the 1948 campaign.
But once the Democratic National Convention was over and you might remember much of the Southern delegation walked out. The entire delegation from Mississippi or Alabama, half the delegation from the other state; there was a separate states’ rights Democratic Party set up with its own candidate, Strom Thurmond, and Thurmond carried four states in the South. After this happened, after the Democratic Party was already breaking up, Truman felt he was in a position to issue the executive orders he had promised. These were 9980 and the much more famous 9981. Next slide, please.
43:09 Executive Order 9981
Probably one of the most important documents in American history, maybe the most important executive order ever issued by a president. I’m sure there are other candidates for that honor, but this is certainly one of them. It is declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. The desegregation of the armed services, now, this document did not say from this day it is illegal for there to be segregation in the armed services. Truman didn’t do that. He said, “It is the policy of the government of the United States that the armed services be desegregated.” And then he set up a commission, The President’s Commission on Equality and Treatment in the Armed Services to try, together with the White House, to try to make it happen. And it wasn’t easy. It took six years to fully desegregate the armed forces. The big problem was the Army. The Marine Corps wasn’t much better. The Air Force desegregated rather quickly. The Navy a little more slowly, but fairly readily, but the Army fought hard against desegregation.
The same day that Truman issued Executive Order 9981, some army staff officers said anonymously to the press that the order did not specifically forbid segregation in the Army. The next day Army Chief of Staff, General Omar Bradley said that desegregation would come to the Army only when it became a fact in the rest of American society. Two days after this on July 29th, Truman felt it necessary to announce at a press conference that the real intent of this executive order was to desegregate the armed forces. He -- he meant it.
By the end of 1948, the Navy and the Air Force had said they would desegregate their units, not the Army. There were hearings in Congress on the desegregation -- I’m sorry -- hearings before Truman’s desegregation committee and the Marine Corps in those hearings that only one of its 8,200 officers was African American. In the Navy, five of its 45,000 officers were African American. In testimony before the committee, the Secretary of the Army argued in favor of maintaining segregation saying the Army was not an instrument for social evolution.
By the end of 1948, the Navy and the Air Force had said they would desegregate their units, not the Army. There were hearings in Congress on the desegregation -- I’m sorry -- hearings before Truman’s desegregation committee and the Marine Corps in those hearings that only one of its 8,200 officers was African American. In the Navy, five of its 45,000 officers were African American. In testimony before the committee, the Secretary of the Army argued in favor of maintaining segregation saying the Army was not an instrument for social evolution.
The Army had a 10 percent recruiting quota that provided that if the number of recruits ever reached –of African Americans
MR. RAYMOND H. GESELBRACHT: -- ever reached 10 percent, there would be no more African Americans recruited until the number dropped again. They gave that up. Now, next thing that happened was the Korean War. Africans -- African Americans are by and large still being kept out of combat, being kept in service units, so that means that the white people are being sent into the war and are being killed. And it just happened that without the 10 percent recruiting quota African American -- African American enlistees started to increase in number and to be -- they’re -- in other words, there were many African Americans who wanted to serve and fight in the Korean War. And the Army was not letting them get into the combat units.
By early 1951, after the Chinese had come into the war fighting was very fierce, the casualties were very heavy and the unit commanders began to say, “Get us some replacements. We don’t care what color they are.” And this -- the segregation in the Army began under the pressure of combat to break down.
And by the -- by the end of the Korean War about 95 percent of African American soldiers were serving in integrated units. And the Pentagon announced in the fall of 1954, about a year after the Korean War ended, that the Army was integrated. Segregation had ended. Next slide, please.
Just back for a moment to the 1948 campaign; I -- this item just interested me, I found it in the file and I read over it. It’s a very racist, open letter to -- to -- you can just see from the -- to -- from the -- the beginning what it’s all about. Urges -- caused some Southern political leaders to lead a rebellion within the Democratic Party. And Truman -- Truman was sent this document not by some virulent white racist, but by four African Americans.
And they covered it with a statement that said the -- it was titled: The Black South Speaks. And it said they would fight against such bigotry and for their just rights. The American Negro is going to continue to fight on all fronts they told Truman. His goal is complete equality without reservation. Next slide, please.
Again a 1948 campaign photo; Truman meeting with African American leaders on his campaign car, this is in Des Moines, Iowa. Next slide, please.
49:39 Ernie Roberts Correspondence
Again from the 1948 campaign period, President Truman received a letter from a good friend of his in Kansas City, Ernie Roberts, who warned Truman that what Roberts called the equal rights bill, which is Truman’s civil rights program would cause -- cause Truman to lose the South in the upcoming election. And Robert said this, to his old friend Harry S. Truman, “You, Bess and Margaret and, shall I say myself, are all Southerners and we have been raised with Negroes and we know the term equal rights. Harry, let us let the South take care of the niggers which they have done. And if the niggers do not like the Southern treatment, let them come to Mrs. Roosevelt.”
And then he says, at the end, he says, “You put equal rights in Independence and Bess will not live with you; will you, Bess?” So Truman wrote this letter to Roberts and he said, “I’m not asking for social equality because no such thing exists, but I am asking for equality of opportunity for all human beings and as long as I stay here I’m going to continue that fight.” And he -- he reminds Roberts about the violence that African Americans had suffered in recent times. And he says he’s going to do everything he can to remedy the situation and he says, “And if that ends up in my failure to be reelected that failure will be in a good cause.” Next slide.
51:15 Civil Rights Supreme Court Cases
A lesser known part of Truman’s civil rights record had to do with some important Supreme Court cases. Some historians give Truman a lot of credit and say, well, Truman put -- Fred Vinson, he’s the Chief Justice there, in place. Three of the other justices were Truman appointees and there was some important civil rights cases. And some historians say, “Well, Truman put these people on the court and they voted in favor of these cases so Truman deserves the credit.” Maybe it’s hard to say that. Next slide.
But there was some very important cases. Now, there are four mentioned here and every one is kind of a step towards Brown v. The Board of Education in 1954, particularly the last two; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, and the little photograph there is -- refers to that case. It struck down segregated classrooms in graduate schools. I think this was a law class and this African American was allowed to be a member of the class, but not to sit in the same room. So you get things like that happened.
And then Sweatt v. Painter, the last one, struck down the idea of a separate law school at the University of Texas. Brown v. The Board of Education, not yet named, was actually submitted to the Court during Truman’s administration. One thing that is happening during the Truman administration is that the justice department is submitting friend of the court briefs in favor of the plaintiffs arguing against these segregation practices.
Brown v. Board did not come to the Court during Truman’s presidency because the Court wanted to combine more cases. They eventually -- the eventual Brown v. Board case, I think, combined five different suits. And the one that ended up being the namesake for the case was the -- from Kansas, from Topeka School District. But there were also -- there was one from Delaware, one from -- oh, I’ve forgotten the other states, but there were five different jurisdictions. Next slide, please.
Now, I just found this slide in my research. And this is Chief Justice Vinson who oversaw the decision, the enlightened decisions on those cases that we just talked about. And when I saw this photograph I thought, maybe, maybe the problem wasn’t quite yet solved. The -- the African American is helping put on the chief justice’s robe. So there’s still -- there’s still some more work to be done. Next slide.
54:07 Truman and the Service Staff
This is on a personal side. This is December 31, 1950, and this Sam Jackson who was on the White House staff, service staff, he was retiring and President Truman is obviously presenting him with some kind of memento of his service in the White House. But Truman genuinely liked the service staff of the White House, most of whom, I believe, all that I’ve seen in photographs were African Americans. And he became friendly with him. This is part of the personal story of Truman and civil rights. And he wrote in his diary one time, “I wonder why nearly everyone makes a father confessor out of me?” He was talking about the White House service staff and he wrote this the day that a White House butler had come to him, as he wrote, “Scared stiff and almost crying and asked how to deal with a personal problem.” So Truman helped him. And he said, he wrote in his diary, “The rule around here is that no one may speak to the President. I break it every day and make ‘em speak to me.” Next slide, please.
55:17 Executive Order 10210
Coming into the -- toward the end of our story here. Truman in here is meeting with African American leaders who are arguing for, again, a strong fair employment practices commission. Which they never got, but Truman did issue a number of executive orders, one, was Executive Order 10,210 in early 1951. Just about the time this meeting occurred. And it was an incremental step toward achieving fair employment practices and that is contractors working with the government in defense industries couldn’t discriminate on account of race. Next slide, please.
And then just something, although, I think that most of the civil rights stories during Truman’s presidency concerns African Americans. The country was different than it is now. I think it was much more white and black than it is now. Other minorities were considered, but most of the focus, almost all the focus during Truman’s presidency was on African Americans, but not all of it.
56:32 The Burial of Sergeant John Rice
This photograph shows the burial of Sergeant John Rice at Arlington National Cemetery in September 1951. Does anybody know this story?
(No response.)
MR. RAYMOND H. GESELBRACHT: One.
Well, President Truman read a story in the newspaper in, well, I guess, 1951. It disturbed him and he asked that it be looked into right a way. And this is what he learned; that Sergeant John Rice who had been killed in action in Korea was brought home to Sioux City, Iowa, to be buried. The funeral ceremony occurred; the widow grieved; the mourners were present; it concluded; everyone left, but the casket was not yet lowered into the gravesite and an official of the Sioux City Memorial Park Cemetery asked a question. He said, “Was that boy an Indian?”
Sergeant Rice was in fact a Winnebago Indian. So the cemetery officials looked in the rules of the cemetery and they said, “No Indians can be buried in this cemetery.” They would not allow the casket to be lowered into the ground. So Truman read about this and he immediately picked up the telephone and made arrangements that Sergeant Rice would be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. And he sent a telegram to Sergeant Rice’s widow and this is what it said -- or I should say his staff sent the telegram, “Please, advise the family of Sergeant John R. Rice that arrangements for burial in Arlington Cemetery have been authorized. The President feels that the national appreciation of patriotic sacrifice should not be limited by race, color or creed.” Next slide.
58:32 Roy Wilkins Letter
Well, in the last days of Truman’s presidency, President Truman received a letter from Roy Wilkins the deputy head of the NAACP. And it thanked Truman for all he had done to realize civil rights for all Americans. “As you leave the White House,” Wilkins said, “you carry with you the gratitude and affectionate regard of millions of your Negro fellow citizens who in less than a decade of your leadership, inspiration and determination, have seen the old order change right before their eyes.” Truman thanked Wilkins in this letter for confirming his belief that there is a new climate of opinion on civil rights. And Truman said that respect for civil rights must come from the mind and the heart. As a government, we feel we must take the steps that improve human rights. As a people, we must feel deeply about them. Next slide. And another push on that button. Just a look back -- here we are. The next -- the next -- one more push on that button.
Just a look back, Truman probably thinking about his mother, he always did, as he left the presidency, “She would have disinherited me.” All right. Next slide. I’ll go through this end part quickly.
1:00:02 Truman Back Home
This just has to do with Truman back home. And next slide.
He made a statement in 1957 in which he stated, I won’t read all this, but he -- he had great optimism that the American people when they’re given the facts, when the American people know the facts they will always make the right decision. Next slide.
Now, this was a little more difficult. Truman made some very cranky statements about different tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. And when the -- in the late 1950s when the sit down strikes were going on to oppose lunch counter segregation, Truman, was reported in the press to say, “If anyone came in to my store and tried to stop business I’d throw him out. The Negro should behave himself and show he’s a good citizen.”
And two NAACP officials sent Truman a telegram and they wanted to meet with him and talk about this and he sent -- he sent a message back and he said, “Your telegram about what I said is correct. I would do exactly what I said I would.” That was part of the old Harry S. Truman.
And you have to think he did a lot of remarkable things. And one of the most remarkable things about what he did is who he was. I don’t know how many people with his background and his heritage could have done all those things. Well, at least personally, I don’t expect that he changed completely. He was always Harry S. Truman. Next slide.
But to give it a little happier ending; Roy Wilkins wrote a -- deputy head of the NAACP wrote a newspaper article on -- in 1965 and he -- he talks about Truman’s remarks. He said on the “sit-ins” Truman spat out that if they came in to a store he owned he’d throw ‘em out. On the Selma march, he offered that it was silly. And the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King he snapped was a troublemaker. Now, these are reckless statements, Wilkins says. But the -- but one should remember what Harry Truman did to realize civil rights for all Americans during the years he was President.
These civil rights decisions of the ‘40s, Wilkins wrote; spell C-O-U-R-A-G-E. Let him have his breakfast rolls and his freewheeling quips; he can’t stop the civil rights clock and his record entitles him to a few errors; however, irritating in his retirement years. Now, Truman saw this article and he sent Wilkins a letter and he said, “My concern for the welfare of all mankind is as broad and I hope as deep now as when it was my duty to act.”
Thank you very much we’ll stop there.
(Applause.)