Front cover image for Harry Truman and civil rights : moral courage and political risks

Harry Truman and civil rights : moral courage and political risks

Given his background, President Truman was an unlikely champion of civil rights. Where he grew up--the border state of Missouri--segregation was accepted and largely unquestioned. Both his maternal and paternal grandparents had owned slaves, and his beloved mother, victimized by Yankee forces, railed against Abraham Lincoln for the remainder of her ninety-four years. When Truman assumed the presidency on April 12, 1945, Michael R. Gardner points out, Washington, DC, in many ways resembled Cape Town, South Africa, under apartheid rule circa 1985. Truman's background notwithstanding, Gardner shows that it was Harry Truman--not Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy--who energized the modern civil rights movement, a movement that basically had stalled since Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves. Gardner recounts Truman's public and private actions regarding black Americans. He analyzes speeches, private conversations with colleagues, the executive orders that shattered federal segregation policies, and the appointments of like-minded civil rights activists to important positions. Among those appointments was the first black federal judge in the continental United States. Gardner characterizes Truman's evolution from a man who grew up in a racist household into a president willing to put his political career at mortal risk by actively supporting the interests of black Americans
eBook, English, ©2002
Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, ©2002
History
1 online resource (xx, 276 pages, 20 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations
606803727
The Historical Background for Truman's Civil Rights Crusade
Truman's Committee on Civil Rights, December 5, 1946
Truman's Speech to the NAACP at the Lincoln Memorial, June 29, I947
The Report of Truman's Committee on Civil Rights, October 29, 1947
Truman's State of the Union Address, January 7, 1948
Truman's Special Message to Congress on Civil Rights, February 2, 1948
The 1948 Democratic Party Convention and the Civil Rights Plank, July I4-I5, 1948
The Turnip Day Congressional Session and Executive : Orders 9980 and 9981, July 26, 1948
The Great "Comeback" Campaign and Truman's Harlem Speech, October 29, 1948
Civil Rights Progress Despite a Recalcitrant Congress:, 1949-1952
Truman and the Vinson Court
Truman's Howard University Commencement Address, June 13, 1952
Truman's Final Civil Rights Address in Harlem, October 11, 1952
The Truman Civil Rights Legacy
Epilogue
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010