[Footnote 12-3: Quoted in James Peck, _Freedom Ride_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), pp. 154-55.]
[Footnote 12-4: Quoted in Daniels, _Man of Independence_, pp. 339-40.]
He would repeat these sentiments to other gatherings, including the a.s.sembled delegates of the NAACP"s 1946 convention.[12-5] The President"s civil rights program would be based, then, on a practical concern for the rights of the majority. Neither his social philosophy nor his political use of black demands should detract from his achievements in the field of civil rights.
[Footnote 12-5: Msg, HST to NAACP Convention, 29 Jun 47, _Public Papers of the President, 1947_ (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), pp.
311-13.]
It was probably just as well that Truman adopted a pragmatic approach to civil rights, for there was little social legislation a reform president could hope to get through the postwar Congresses. Dominated by a conservative coalition that included the Dixiecrats, a group of sometimes racially reactionary southerners, Congress showed little interest in civil rights. The creation of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, the one piece of legislation directly affecting Negroes and the only current test of congressional intent in civil rights, was floundering on Capitol Hill. Truman conspicuously supported the fair employment measure, but did little else specifically in the first year after the war to advance civil rights.
Instead he seemed content to carry on with the New Deal approach to the problem: improve the social condition of all Americans and the condition of the minorities will also improve. In this vein his first domestic program concentrated on national projects for housing, health, and veterans" benefits.
The conversion of Harry Truman into a forceful civil rights (p. 294) advocate seems to have come about, at least partially, from his exposure to what he later called the "anti-minority" incidents visited on black servicemen and civilians in 1946.[12-6] Although the lynchings, property destruction, and a.s.saults never matched the racial violence that followed World War I, they were enough to convince many civil rights leaders that the pattern of racial strife was being repeated.
Some of these men, along with a group of labor executives and clergymen, formed a National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence to warn the American public against the dangers of racial intolerance.
A delegation from this committee, with Walter White as spokesman, met with the President on 19 September 1946 to demand government action.
White described the scene:
The President sat quietly, elbows resting on the arms of his chair and his fingers interlocked against his stomach as he listened with a grim face to the story of the lynchings.... When I finished, the President exclaimed in his flat, midwestern accent, "My G.o.d! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We"ve got to do something!"[12-7]
[Footnote 12-6: Harry S. Truman, _Memoirs_ (New York: Doubleday, 1958), II:180-81; White, _A Man Called White_, pp. 330-31. Truman"s concept of civil rights is a.n.a.lyzed in considerable detail in Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, _Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration_ (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1973), Chapter III.]
[Footnote 12-7: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]
But the Truman administration had nearly exhausted the usual remedies open to it. The Attorney General had investigated the lynchings and Klan activities and the President had spoken out strongly and repeatedly against mob violence but without clear and pertinent civil rights legislation presidential exhortations and investigations counted for very little. Civil rights leaders like White understood this, and, given the mood of Congress, they were resigned to the lack of legislative support. Nevertheless, it was in this context that the President decided to create a committee to investigate and report on the status of civil rights in America.
The concept of a federal civil rights group had been circulating in the executive branch for some time. After the Detroit race riot in 1943, presidential a.s.sistant Jonathan Daniels had organized a committee to deal with racial troubles. Proposals to create a national organization to reduce racial tensions were advanced later in the war, princ.i.p.ally by Saul K. Padover, a minority specialist in the Interior Department, and David K. Niles of the White House staff. Little came of the committee idea, however, because Roosevelt was convinced that any steps a.s.sociated with integration would prove divisive and were unwise during wartime.[12-8] With the war over and a different political climate prevailing, Niles, now senior White House adviser on minority affairs, proposed the formation of a committee not only to investigate racial violence but also to explore the entire subject of civil rights.
[Footnote 12-8: Intervs, Nichols with Oscar Ewing, former federal security administrator and senior presidential adviser, and Jonathan Daniels, 1954, in Nichols Collection, CMH; see also McCoy and Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, p. 49.]
Walter White and his friends greeted the idea with some skepticism.
They had come demanding action, but were met instead with another promise of a committee and the probability of interminable (p. 295) congressional debate and unproductive hearings.[12-9] But this time, for several reasons, it would be different. In the first place the civil rights leaders underestimated the sincerity of Truman"s reaction to the racial violence. He had quickly agreed to create Niles"s committee by executive order to save it from possible pigeonholing at the hands of a hostile Congress. He had also given the group, called the President"s Committee on Civil Rights, a broad directive "to determine whether and in what respect current law enforcement measures and the authority and means possessed by Federal, State, and local governments may be strengthened and improved to safeguard the civil rights of the people."[12-10] The civil rights leaders also failed to gauge the effect Republican victories in the 1946 congressional elections would have on the administration. Finding it necessary to court the Negro and other minorities and hoping to confound congressional opposition, the administration sought a strong civil rights program to put before the Eightieth Congress. Thus, the committee"s recommendations would get respectful attention in the White House. Finally, neither the civil rights leaders nor the President could have foreseen the effectiveness of the committee members. Serving under Charles E. Wilson, president of the General Electric Company, the group included among its fifteen members distinguished church leaders, public service lawyers, the presidents of Dartmouth College and the University of North Carolina, and prominent labor executives. The committee had two black members, Sadie T. M. Alexander, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and Channing H. Tobias, director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Its members not only prepared a comprehensive survey of the condition of civil rights in America but also presented to the President on 29 October 1947 a far-reaching series of recommendations, in effect a program for corrective action that would serve as a bench mark for civil rights progress for many years.[12-11]
[Footnote 12-9: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]
[Footnote 12-10: Executive Order 9808, 5 Dec 46.]
[Footnote 12-11: In addition to Chairman Wilson, the following people served on the committee: Sadie T.
M. Alexander, James B. Carey, John S. d.i.c.key, Morris L. Ernst, Roland B. Gittelsohn, Frank P.
Graham, Francis J. Haas, Charles Luckman, Francis P. Matthews, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Knox Sherrill, Boris Shishkin, Dorothy Tilly, and Channing Tobias.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: WALTER WHITE.]
The group recommended the concentration of civil rights work in the Department of Justice, the establishment of a permanent civil rights commission, a federal antilynching act, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, and legislation to correct discrimination in voting and naturalization laws. It also examined the state of (p. 296) civil rights in the armed forces and incidentally publicized the long-ignored survey of black infantry platoons that had fought in Europe in 1945.[12-12] It concluded:
The injustice of calling men to fight for freedom while subjecting them to humiliating discrimination within the fighting forces is at once apparent. Furthermore, by preventing entire groups from making their maximum contribution to the national defense, we weaken our defense to that extent and impose heavier burdens on the remainder of the population.[12-13]
[Footnote 12-12: Parts of the survey of att.i.tudes of partic.i.p.ants in the World War II integration of platoons were included in remarks by Congresswoman Helen G. Douglas, published in the _Congressional Record_, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1 Feb 1946, Appendix, pp. 432-443.]
[Footnote 12-13: _To Secure These Rights_, p. 162.]
The committee called for sweeping change in the armed forces, recommending that Congress enact legislation, followed by appropriate administrative action, to end all discrimination and segregation in the services. Concluding that the recent service unification provided a timely opportunity for revision of existing policies and practices, the committee proposed a specific ban on discrimination and segregation in all phases of recruitment, a.s.signment, and training, including selection for service schools and academies, as well as in mess halls, quarters, recreational facilities, and post exchanges. It also wanted commissions and promotions awarded on merit alone and asked for new laws to protect servicemen from discrimination in communities adjacent to military bases.[12-14] The committee wanted the President to look beyond the integration of people working and living on military bases, and it introduced a concept that would gain considerable support in a future administration. The armed forces, it declared, _should_ be used as an instrument of social change. World War II had demonstrated that the services were a laboratory in which citizens could be educated on a broad range of social and political issues, and the administration was neglecting an effective technique for teaching the public the advantages of providing equal treatment and opportunity for all citizens.[12-15]
[Footnote 12-14: Ibid., pp. 162-63.]
[Footnote 12-15: Ibid., p. 47.]
President Truman deleted the recommendations on civil rights in the services when he transmitted the committee"s recommendations to Congress in the form of a special message on 2 February 1948. Arguing that the services" race practices were matters of executive interest and pointing to recent progress toward better race relations in the armed forces, the President 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. He also promised that the personnel policies and practices of all the services would be made uniform.[12-16]
[Footnote 12-16: Truman, Special Message to the Congress on Civil Rights, 2 Feb 48, _Public Papers of the President, 1948_, pp. 121-26.]
To press for civil rights legislation for the armed forces or even to mention segregation was politically imprudent. Truman had two pieces of military legislation to get through Congress: a new draft law and a provision for universal military training. These he considered (p. 297) too vital to the nation"s defense to risk grounding on the shoals of racial controversy. For the time being at least, integration of the armed forces would have to be played down, and any civil rights progress in the Department of Defense would have to depend on the persuasiveness of James Forrestal.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TRUMAN"S CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGN _as seen by Washington Star cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, March 14, 1948_.]
_Civil Rights and the Department of Defense_
The basic postwar reorganization of the National Military Establishment, the National Security Act of 1947, created the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a separate Department of the Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. It also reconst.i.tuted the War Department as the Department of the Army and gave legal recognition as a permanent agency to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The principle of military unification that underlay the reorganization plan was muted in the legislation that finally emerged from Congress. Although the Secretary of Defense was given authority to establish general policies and to exercise general direction (p. 298) and control of the services, the services themselves retained a large measure of autonomy in their internal administration and individual service secretaries retained cabinet rank. In effect, the act created a secretary without a department, a reorganization that largely reflected the viewpoint of the Navy. The Army had fought for a much greater degree of unification, which would not be achieved until the pa.s.sage of the National Security Act amendments of 1949. This legislation redesignated the unified department the Department of Defense, strengthened the powers of the Secretary of Defense, and provided for uniform budgetary procedures. Although the services were to be "separately administered," their respective secretaries henceforward headed "military departments" without cabinet status.
The first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, was a man of exceptional administrative talents, yet even before taking office he expressed strong reservations on the wisdom of a unified military department. As early as 30 July 1945, at breakfast with President Truman during the Potsdam Conference, Forrestal questioned whether any one man "was good enough to run the combined Army, Navy, and Air Departments." What kind of men could the president get in peacetime, he asked, to be under secretaries of War, Navy, and Air if they were subordinate to a single defense secretary?[12-17] Speaking to Lester Granger that same year on the power of the Secretary of the Navy to order the Marine Corps to accept Negroes, Forrestal expressed uncertainty about a cabinet officer"s place in the scheme of things.
"Some people think the Secretary is G.o.d-almighty, but he"s just a G.o.d-d.a.m.n civilian."[12-18] Even after his appointment as defense secretary doubts lingered: "My chief misgivings about unification derived from my fear that there would be a tendency toward overconcentration and reliance on one man or one-group direction. In other words, too much central control."[12-19]
[Footnote 12-17: Quoted in Walter Millis, ed., _The Forrestal Diaries_ (New York: Viking Press, 1951), p. 88.]
[Footnote 12-18: Quoted by Granger in the interview he gave Nichols in 1954.]
[Footnote 12-19: Quoted in Millis, _Forrestal Diaries_, p. 301.]
Forrestal"s philosophy of management reinforced the limitations placed on the Secretary of Defense by the National Security Act. He sought a middle way in which the efficiency of a unified system could be obtained without sacrificing what he considered to be the real advantages of service autonomy. Thus, he supported a 1945 report of the defense study group under Ferdinand Eberstadt that argued for a "coordinated" rather than a "unitary" defense establishment.[12-20]
Practical experience modified his fears somewhat, and by October 1948, convinced he needed greater power to control the defense establishment, Forrestal urged that the language of the National Security Act, which limited the Secretary of Defense to "general"
authority only over the military departments, be amended to eliminate the word _general_. Yet he always retained his basic distrust of (p. 299) dictation, preferring to understand and adjust rather than to conclude and order.[12-21]
[Footnote 12-20: Ibid., pp. 117, 147. Timothy Stanley describes the Eberstadt report as the Navy"s "constructive alternative" to unification. See Stanley"s _American Defense and National Security_, p. 75; see also Hewes, _From Root to McNamara_, pp.
276-77. For a detailed a.n.a.lysis of defense unification, see Lawrence Legere, Jr., "Unification of the Armed Forces," Chapter VI, in CMH.]
[Footnote 12-21: Millis, _Forrestal Diaries_, pp. 301, 497.]
Nowhere was Forrestal"s philosophy of government more evident than in his approach to the problem of integration. His office would be concerned with equal opportunity, he promised Walter White soon after his elevation to the new post, but "the job of Secretary of Defense,"
he warned, "is one which will have to develop in an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary manner." Further dashing hopes of sudden reform, Forrestal added that specific racial problems, as distinct from general policy matters, would remain the province of the individual services.[12-22] He retained this att.i.tude throughout his tenure. He considered the President"s instructions to end remaining instances of discrimination in the services "in accord with my own conception of my responsibilities under unification," and he was in wholehearted agreement with a presidential wish that the National Military Establishment work out the answer to its racial problems through administrative action. He wanted to see a "more nearly uniform approach to interracial problems by the three Services," but experience had demonstrated, he believed, that racial problems could not be solved simply by publishing an executive order or pa.s.sing a law. Racial progress would come from education. Such had been his observation in the wartime Navy, and he was ready to promise that "even greater progress will be made in the future." But, he added, "progress must be made administratively and should not be put into effect by fiat."[12-23]
[Footnote 12-22: Ltr, Forrestal to White, 21 Oct 47, Day file, Forrestal Papers, Princeton University Library.]
[Footnote 12-23: Remarks by James Forrestal at Dinner Meeting of the National Urban League, 12 Feb 48, copy in Misc file, Forrestal Papers; see also Ltr, Forrestal to John N. Brown, 27 Oct 47, Day file, ibid.]
Executive fiat was just what some of Forrestal"s advisers wanted. For example, his executive a.s.sistant, John H. Ohly, his civilian aide, James C. Evans,[12-24] and Truman Gibson urged the secretary to consider establishing an interservice committee along the lines of the old McCloy committee to prepare a uniform racial policy that he could apply to all the services. They wanted the committee to examine past and current practices as well as the recent reports of the President"s Advisory Commission on Universal Training and the Committee on Civil Rights and to make specific recommendations for carrying out and policing department policy. Truman Gibson went to the heart of the matter: the formulation of such an interservice committee would signal to the black community better than anything else the defense establishment"s determination to change the racial situation. More and more, he warned, the discrepancies among the services" racial practices were attracting public attention. Most important to the administration was the fact that these discrepancies were strengthening opposition to universal military training and the draft.[12-25]
[Footnote 12-24: In addition to his duties as Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army, Evans was made aide to the Secretary of Defense on 29 October 1947. (See Memo, SecDef for SA et al., 29 Oct 47, D70-1-5, files of Historian, OSD.) Evans was subsequently appointed "civilian a.s.sistant" to the Secretary of Defense by Secretary Louis Johnson on 28 Apr 49. (See NME Press Release, 17-49-A.)]