Nearly fifty years ago, during his reelection campaign, President
Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 ordering the “equality of
treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services.”
In the years since, the military has gone from being viciously
segregated to being widely regarded as the best integrated institution
in the United States. As a result, Truman’s decision to integrate the
army has become, arguably, one of the most important decisions of his
presidency.
And yet why he made the decision is not entirely clear. His
opponent, Republican Thomas Dewey, had not made civil rights a
particularly key issue in his campaign. Socialist Party candidate
Norman Thomas and Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace had, but
they could be dismissed as fringe candidates.
In his 1994 book Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before
the Civil Rights Movement in the South, John Egerton analyzed the
situation as follows:
“[Truman] was accused of playing politics on the military
desegregation order – and as far as his timing was concerned, there can
be little doubt that he acted with an eye on the campaign. But who saw
any political advantage in taking the initiative on such a
controversial issue? A 1946 national opinion survey had found that
two-thirds of all [W]hite Americans believed [B]lacks were already
being treated fairly in the society at large. Congress passed a new
Selective Service Act in June 1948 that left segregation in place, and
Truman signed it into law. Southerners in both houses were fighting
tooth and nail against any modification in the racial rules of the
armed forces, and most of the military top brass were also dragging
their feet on the issue. Just about the only person pressing Truman to
take action was A. Philip Randolph – a forceful and persuasive man, to
be sure, but not one who wielded great power. Some of the President’s
advisers did see political capital to be made from a liberal stance on
race, but prudence might have led them to suggest waiting until after
the election to take Jim Crow out of uniform.”
Egerton goes on to say that Truman agreed entirely with the
substance of desegregating the military, but for “a man who was looking
like a double-digit loser in the polls, it was a bold decision.”
Egerton dismisses the efforts of Randolph. Nevertheless, a case can
be made that Randolph’s efforts played a significant role in Truman’s
decision – particularly after considering Randolph’s influence with
President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
