In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C h a p t e r 5 Truman’s Order The pressure on the president to make decisive changes mounted, as the chances of winning over the increasingly important black vote in the upcoming presidential election became more difficult. At the end of June 1948, an anonymous White House memorandum recommended that Truman ‘‘support the introduction of moderate [civil rights] legislation beating the Republicans to the punch’’ and garner ‘‘credit.’’1 The president felt it necessary to act, but followed a slightly different route. On July 26, he issued Executive Order 9981, which called for the ‘‘equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the Armed Services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.’’2 Since executive orders do not require the approval of the House or Senate, Truman circumvented painstaking discussions and the likely rejection of any such civil rights legislation in Congress.3 Contrary to numerous accounts and after-the-fact interpretations , the presidential order did not officially demand the immediate and complete desegregation or integration of the military. Instead, it established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, later known as the Fahy Committee, to ensure the order’s implementation and to force the armed services to change.4 Clark Clifford, special counsel to the president, maintained that the decision to issue an order had been a primarily moral issue with only, ‘‘some political flavor to the timing of those two events.’’ He claimed that Truman felt ‘‘it was outrageous that men could be asked to die for their country but not be allowed to fight in same units because of their color.’’5 It is certainly true that the executive order moved the armed forces and the country as a whole toward military desegregation, but Truman never unambiguously ‘‘ordered his military leaders . . . immediately to begin to Truman’s Order 113 integrate all service branches.’’6 Although he certainly proved to be more open to the black quest for civil rights than any president before him, the decision involved a great deal of political calculation. Philleo Nash, special assistant to the president for minority problems from 1946 to 1952, had a more pragmatic explanation. In an interview years later, Nash reflected on the importance of the order as a symbolic act. ‘‘What means something to the voter is something he can see and handle, such as an Executive order, even if the Executive order doesn’t change anything , the mere fact that it is an Executive order and is presidential, it gets it out where he can see it. Then he says, ‘Well, he does mean business after all.’’’7 Historian Brenda Gayle Plummer calls Truman’s move a ‘‘prompt, election-year action’’ that ‘‘earned him substantial Afro-American support for administration policies generally.’’8 Truman intended to lure African Americans away from supporting his opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, who many blacks believed had a strong civil rights record as New York governor. Former vice president Henry Wallace, the candidate of the newly founded Progressive Party, also challenged Truman with respect to civil rights.9 Additionally, it was a smart move in the ideological conflict with Soviet Russia, in which America’s flawed race relations played an essential role. The claim that the order eventually intended to desegregate the military was to help not only Truman nationally, but internationally as well.10 At no point did the executive order mention the words ‘‘segregation,’’ ‘‘desegregation,’’ or ‘‘integration.’’ Rather, it remained vague and refrained from giving clear instructions that would enforce immediate desegregation. Furthermore, it did not give a deadline for when the Committee on Equality and the armed forces would have to complete this process. The fear of completely putting off the Southern bloc and the segregationists also played a role in the cautious wording of the order. It was, after all, an election year; and despite the importance of the black vote, Truman could not afford and did not want an ultimate split in the Democratic Party and risk the loss of the undecided white citizen’s vote.11 Truman came under fire from all sides for the initiation of racial change, the vague wording of the order, as well as his failure to mention integration explicitly. At a press conference three days after passing the order, Truman ‘‘categorically’’ assured the audience that its purpose was to eliminate segregation in the armed forces.12 Ultimately , however, the end of segregation was not...

Share