Leuchtenburg, a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in The arrest, beating and blinding of African American veteran Isaac Woodard by Batesburg, South Carolina police on February 12, — hours after he was honorably discharged from the United States Army, and while still in uniform—caused a national furor and helped inspire Harry Truman's move to desegregate the military.
Yet when the beatings and murders of recently returned African American World War II veterans in the South captured national attention, Truman, who assumed the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, , was moved to act. I shall fight to end evils like this. It produced a report, To Secure These Rights , which condemned all forms of segregation and asked for an immediate end to discrimination and segregation in all branches of the armed services.
Throughout his life, Truman made racist statements to his intimates and in private correspondence and likely never fully abandoned the attitudes of his youth. But he was an astute politician who understood the importance of the Black vote to his political fortunes.
In , as a U. In the last days of the election, Truman made a campaign appearance in Harlem, marking the first time a U. On March 22, , Truman met with Black leaders to discuss segregation. On that September morning in , Japanese officials signed a Over her year career, Joyner trained thousands of students and helped write the first cosmetology laws in Russian soldiers discovered thousands of sick, dying, and dead prisoners when they entered the complex of concentration camps, forced labor camps, and a killing center abandoned by the Read more 50th Anniversary of Apollo Visit the National Archives to see exclusive, featured documents from the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
From transcripts to flight plans, the museum will highlight some of the most important pieces of the monumental occasion. In many instances, these units were assigned menial tasks in the rear and rarely saw combat. Before the order was given, President Truman had mixed views on integration and racial relations. There is little evidence in his background to suggest his support for social changes in America. He was raised in the former border state of Missouri in a family dedicated to the Confederate cause and had little interest in the aspirations of black people.
However, this all changed in the postwar era when the United States was quickly becoming embroiled in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Although integration of the armed forces seemed a miniscule issue within the larger international scene, the large number of African Americans in the military gave them a new importance in national defense. Black threats to boycott the segregated armed forces could not be ignored, and civil rights demands had to be considered in developing laws relating to Selective Service and Universal Military Training.
He also told Congress that he had already instructed the Secretary of Defense to take steps to eliminate remaining instances of discrimination in the services as rapidly as possible.
Truman also promised that the personnel policies and practices of all the services would be made uniform. Although politics was only one of several factors that led to Executive Order , the order came into fruition during a presidential election campaign and its content and timing reflect that fact. Having made what could be justified as a military decision in the interest of a more effective use of manpower in the armed forces, the President and his advisers sought to capitalize on the political benefits that might result from it, such as the crucial black vote in the urban centers of the South.
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