"We Should Live Like One World": White Children Write About Race and Brotherhood in Letters to Harry S. Truman

After President Harry S. Truman spoke to Congress on February 2, 1948, regarding his civil rights agenda, American children saw the president as someone with whom they could speak candidly about race. This essay focuses on letters to Truman from White children who professed a nominal support for racial equality. When White students wrote to the president on the issue of race, they presented arguments about why they supported integration, explaining why popular racial stereotypes of the era were wrong. As such, these letters reveal racial ideologies circulating among White children during these years. Their letters demonstrate that in postwar classrooms across the nation, many White children learned that all prejudice was wrong, a message that stemmed in part from the devastation of the recent war. Interactions in lessons about brotherhood between White teachers and students who expressed a belief in racial equality in the late 1940s and early 1950s were key sites for the expansion of "colorblindness" as an ideology, which emphasized "sameness" in order to combat racism. This essay uses children's letters to explore examples of "colorblind" rhetoric as well as to discuss the broader relationship of White children with the development of racial ideology during this time.