1947 October 29

“To Secure These Rights:” Truman’s Civil Rights Committee Delivers Historic Report

 

President Harry Truman’s Civil Rights Committee, created on December 5, 1946, released its report, To Secure These Rights, on this day.

The report was a historic event as the first-ever presidential committee or commission on civil rights. The report identified race discrimination in virtually every area of American life — education, employment, voting, military service, and so on — and its recommendations charted the course of the civil rights movement for the next 20 years.

Truman had promised to create the committee on September 19, 1946 in a meeting with NAACP leaders, who provided him with graphic evidence of the lynching of African American veterans who had returned after serving in World War II.

Truman followed up on the report by sending Congress the first civil rights legislative program in the twentieth century on February 2, 1948. Congress, dominated by conservatives, refused to act on it. Truman then took the bold step of desegregating the U.S. armed forces by executive order on July 26, 1948.

Although his actions were overshadowed by the subsequent dramatic events of the civil rights movement –the sit-ins, the Freedom Ride, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act— Truman was the first civil rights president in modern times and his pioneering efforts paved the way for later successes.

The report: “This concept of equality which is so vital a part of the American heritage knows no kinship with notions of human uniformity or regimentation. We abhor the totalitarian arrogance which makes one man say that he will respect another man as his equal only if he has ‘my race, my religion, my political views, my social position.’ In our land men are equal, but they are free to be different. From these very differences among our people has come the great human and national strength of America.”

Read the entire historic report: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/civilrights/srights1.htm

Read: Steven F. Lawson, To Secure These Rights: The Report of Harry S Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights (2004)

Learn more: Michael Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks (2002)

Learn more about President Truman and civil rights at the Truman Libraryhttp://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/desegregation/large/index.php

Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here

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