Marches in Washington, New York Protest Lynching of Four African-Americans in Georgia
Hundreds of civil rights activists, both African-American and white, marched from the Union Station railroad station in Washington, DC, to the White House on this day to protest the lynching of African Americans in Georgia. A related protest also occurred in New York City on this day.
President Truman met with NAACP leaders in the White House on September 19, 1946 and heard their protests about lynchings in the south. He expressed surprise and shock at the violence, but this seems improbable, given his Missouri background, his brief membership in the Klan in the 1920s, and the enormous publicity surrounding the July 25 lynching of four African Americans in Georgia on July 25, 1946.
In response to the lynchings and the demands of the NAACP leaders, President Truman promised them he would “do something.” That something turned out to be creating the President’s Committee on Civil Rights on December 5, 1946, the first-ever presidential commission or committee on civil rights. The President’s Committee released its report, To Secure These Rights, on October 29, 1947. The report was a sweeping review of American race relations, with bold recommendations for ending race discrimination in employment, housing, and education. Notably, it took the bold step of addressing segregated schools in the south (a politically volatile subject) and recommended that segregation be ended.
Truman took other bold steps on behalf of civil rights while president and today stands as the first civil rights president in U. S. history
Read about the lynching: Anthony S. Pitch, The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town (2016)
And more about the lynching: Laura Wexler, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America (2003)
Learn more about the history of marching on Washington: Lucy Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (2002)
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here