1948
INTEGRATION OF THE MILITARY:
Truman Opens the Door to the Civil Rights Movement
Beginning with the American Revolution, African Americans served in the United States military, but almost always separately from white soldiers—and usually in menial roles.
When President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, calling for the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, he repudiated 170 years of officially sanctioned discrimination. A major achievement of the post-war civil rights Movement and of Truman’s presidency, the signing marked the first time a U.S. commander in chief used an executive order to implement a civil rights policy. It became a crucial step in inspiring other parts of American society to accept desegregation.
When the beatings and murders of recently returned Black World War II veterans in the South captured national attention, Truman, who assumed the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, was moved to act.
“My stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten,” Truman said. “Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as president I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this.”
In response to the lynchings, and under pressure from Black civil rights groups, Truman formed the President’s Committee on Civil Rights in late 1946. 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.
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