Jacksonville Public Library

Harry Truman and civil rights, moral courage and political risks, Michael R. Gardner ; with forewords by George M. Elsey and Kweisi Mfume

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-268) and index

individual biography

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

Harry Truman and civil rights

bibliography

47182140

Michael R. Gardner ; with forewords by George M. Elsey and Kweisi Mfume

moral courage and political risks

Given his background, President Truman was an unlikely champion of civil rights. Where he grew up--the border state of Missouri--segregation was accepted and largely unquestioned. Both his maternal and paternal grandparents had owned slaves, and his beloved mother, victimized by Yankee forces, railed against Abraham Lincoln for the remainder of her ninety-four years. When Truman assumed the presidency on April 12, 1945, Michael R. Gardner points out, Washington, DC, in many ways resembled Cape Town, South Africa, under apartheid rule circa 1985. Truman's background notwithstanding, Gardner shows that it was Harry Truman--not Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy--who energized the modern civil rights movement, a movement that basically had stalled since Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves. Gardner recounts Truman's public and private actions regarding black Americans. He analyzes speeches, private conversations with colleagues, the executive orders that shattered federal segregation policies, and the appointments of like-minded civil rights acti s to important positions. Among those appointments was the first black federal judge in the continental United States. Gardner characterizes Truman's evolution from a man who grew up in a racist household into a president willing to put his political career at mortal risk by actively supporting the interests of black Americans