Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks (review)

According to Michael Gardner, Harry S. Truman's civil rights initiatives were acts of "moral courage and political recklessness" (3). Gardner finds in Truman an unlikely candidate for civil rights advocacy. The bias of family background and his hailing from a border state meant that "Harry Truman was conditioned to be a racist" (4). Gardner's book offers a credible, often enlightening account of race relations in the United States in the post-World War II, pre-Brown v. Board of Education era. Even the nation's capital's racist practices and segregated policies were the thorny and recalcitrant norm. It was in the context of this apartheid society, Gardner argues, that Truman, under no immediate pressure or crisis, unlike Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, undertook a campaign "to do what he felt was morally right"—to place the federal government at the forefront of the attack on segregation and discrimination in the United States. An insistence on equality of opportunity and justice for all Americans was a primary motivation in the president's stance. Gardner argues that politics was a secondary concern.

After introductory and background material, Gardner's subsequent chapters are arranged chronologically, focusing on the president's: (1) Committee on Civil Rights; (2) June 29, 1947, speech to the NAACP; (3) civil rights committee's final report, To Secure These Rights; (4) January 7, 1948, State of the Union Address; (5) February 2, 1948, Special Message to Congress on Civil Rights; (6) relation to the 1948 Democratic Party convention and its civil rights plank; (7) Turnip Day special session of Congress and Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 issued July 26, 1948; (8) 1948 campaign and the October 29, 1948, speech in Harlem; (9) progress in civil rights despite his inability pass legislation through Congress; (10) contribution through the legacy of the Vinson Court; (11) two addresses on civil rights late in his presidency; and finally (12) civil rights legacy. The topic choices are wise, useful, and comprehensive. The chosen chronology adds to the specific argument that Truman never wavered from the cause of civil rights.

A few key items deserve further commentary. The President's Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR) was established on December 5, 1946, just weeks after the Democrats were handed a resounding defeat in the mid-term elections. Gardner terms such a convening "politically fearless" and a "controversial unilateral action" (15). While this was certainly true, it is also the case that Truman needed the African American vote for the 1948 election, and he needed a thriving economy that included housing and a better standard of living for the returning veterans, including African American veterans. In seeking more protections for African American rights, Truman could not help but sustain a better political future for himself and for his party. Certainly the injustices experienced by returning African American veterans were anathema to Truman—and they certainly were cause for revulsion and his resolve to prevent the serious abuses, especially the egregious instances in the South. But the complexity of Truman's decision seems underplayed in Gardner's account. While Truman can be credited for inspiring and guiding the committee, we get very little regarding the committee's actual deliberations and how they developed a consensus. Nor do we get a sense of how complicated those deliberations became when the president established his Loyalty Review Board. The loyalty tests for federal employees seemed inconsistent with, if not deleterious to, the president's objectives. In fact, Executive Order 9835 created serious problems for the president's committee because activities undertaken on its behalf were responsible for abrogating free speech and civil rights. The PCCR in fact had to call for greater safeguards for federal workers who felt the fire of what often turned out to be a Communist witch hunt.

As Gardner makes clear, the...