| |
President Truman announces the end of the Second World War,
1945
|
|
A machine-gunner in an M-4 tank near Nancy, France, 1944
|
|
Though A. Philip Randolph
had won a significant victory when he persuaded Franklin Roosevelt
to desegregate defense industries, the armed forces serving in World
War II were very much two separate armies, black and white. That
goal of Randolph’s 1941 March on Washington Movement was still
very much unmet. Not only were blacks segregated, but they were
often denied combat roles. No doubt they had performed valuable
service, but often at the rear of the army–driving trucks through
sleet and snow, delivering food and medical supplies, building roads.
Civil rights leaders, including Randolph, had protested the War
Department’s policy throughout the war. All told, there were
only three black combat divisions, and only the 92d,
fighting in Italy, had seen significant front-line action.1 Yet
toward the end of the war, an unusual circumstance arose.
In the Battle of the Bulge, British and U.S. troops were being badly
mauled by a ferocious, last-ditch counteroffensive by Hitler’s
army. The American army, desperate for replacements, sent out a
call to black service divisions, asking them to volunteer as infantrymen.
They would fight side by side with white troops on the front lines.
It was a matter of the "necessity being the mother of
integration." The response to the call was overwhelming. As
Doris Kearns Goodwin states in No Ordinary Time, "Negro
soldiers recognized that they were being presented with an opportunity
to affirm their competence and courage on the battlefield and to
prove that whites and blacks could work together."2 By the
time the German offensive had been stopped, prejudices had broken
down among the racially mixed units. When white troops had first
heard about the plan for integrated troops, 64 percent admitted
they were skeptical; however, after fighting with black soldiers,
77 percent had said their attitude toward integration was "highly
favorable." Furthermore, blacks as combat soldiers had "fared
brilliantly."3 When the victory was won, blacks were returned
to their service units. But, as Goodwin writes, "The excellent
performance of the integrated platoons demonstrated once again the
waste and impracticality of segregation."4
Equal Opportunity Segregation
A. Philip Randolph was determined that this wasteful
and impractical policy would come to an end. The civil rights leader
had made several attempts to form a new organization dedicated to
pressuring the government to desegregate the armed forces but had
never quite gotten the necessary funding and support. A new impetus,
though, came in April 1946 when the Gillem Board, which had
been formed by the army to investigate armed forces’ policies
toward blacks, released its report. Though the directive recommended
"eliminating any special consideration based on race,"
it in fact did nothing to question or change the underlying policy
of separateness. Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall described
the recommendations as "equality of opportunity on the basis
of segregation."5
Beginnings
Meanwhile,
in December 1946 President Harry S. Truman, who was beginning to
take bold steps on civil rights issues, appointed the President’s
Committee on Civil Rights. In October 1947 the committee
issued its report, condemning segregation, particularly in the armed
forces. It recommended that segregation be ended in all branches.
By early 1948, Truman was formulating a civil rights policy based
on the findings of this Committee. He put that policy into a message
he sent to Congress on February 2, 1948. It seemed very liberal
in tone. The president condemned lynching in the strongest possible
terms and asked for a federal law to protect against it.
He called for federal statutory protection for the right
to vote, the elimination of poll taxes, and the desegregation of
interstate travel by bus, train, or air. He also instructed the
secretary of defense to look into alleged discrimination in the
military and to see that it was stopped as soon as possible. It
was, as David McCullough states in Truman, "a brave,
revolutionary declaration, given the reality of entrenched discrimination
and the prevailing attitudes of white Americans nearly everywhere
in the country."6 Southern members of Congress were outraged.
Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina refused to attend a Jefferson-Jackson
Day dinner where Truman was to be the guest speaker, explaining
to reporters that "he and his wife might be seated beside a
‘Nigra.’"7 A friend from Missouri, appealing to Truman
as a fellow southerner, told him to "go easy on civil rights."
Truman wrote back,
The main difficulty
with the South is that they are living eighty years behind the
times and the sooner they come out of it the better it will be
for the country and themselves. I am not asking for social equality,
because no such things exist, but I am asking for equality of
opportunity for all human beings, and, as long as I stay here,
I am going to continue that fight. 8
Coming Out of It
A. Philip Randolph was ready for the fight as well.
He was determined that southerners and others were going to "come
out of it," at least in the arena of the armed services.
By late September 1947, almost four months before Truman’s
message, Randolph, along with black New York Republican, Grant
Reynolds, had formed the Committee Against Jimcrow in Military
Service and Training.9 This was in response to the realization
that new legislation bearing on the armed forces was about to
be considered by Congress. In late summer 1947, the president
had requested passage of a program called Universal Military Training,
a preparedness approach that would require every young man between
the ages of eighteen and twenty to be trained for one year as
part of a reserve force. These units would be called to active
duty in the event the cold war turned "hot." Though
it was unlikely that Congress would enact this plan, it seemed
certain that some kind of draft legislation would be forthcoming.
Despite Truman’s forward steps in civil rights, Randolph
had criticized the president for not backing his words with action.
It concerned Randolph that despite the recommendation of the Committee
on Civil Rights, by late 1947 draft legislation and a Universal
Military Training bill were before Congress with "Jim Crow"
still very much in place. In December 1947 Randolph asked the
president for a meeting to discuss the bill. He and his committee
had received a polite reply from the president’s secretary:
"While I appreciate your desire to talk over this matter
with the President in person, it is not going to be possible to
arrange an interview in the near future."10 By January, Randolph
was writing again, this time telling the president that he could
not imagine what could have greater urgency on his schedule than
the "just concern and long-accumulated grievances of one-tenth
of the population."11 By this time, the president’s
administrative assistant, David Niles, suggested that Randolph’s
group be received, saying in an internal White House memo: "Phil
Randolph, the signer of this letter, is an important Negro. He
is the head of the Negro Pullman Porters Union, and is not a left-winger."
However, the memo also noted that the meeting was not to be scheduled
until the president’s civil rights message had been "sent
up to the hill." Niles added, "In that message there
will be some mention of Jimcrow [sic] in military service,
and those people [Randolph’s group] will not be able to say
that the message is a result of their visit."12
Applying
Pressure
A. Philip Randolph letter to President Truman
|
|
On March 17, 1948,
over a month after Truman’s civil rights message had been
sent to Congress, A. Philip Randolph received a telegram from
the White House: the president would see him and other black leaders
on March 22. The gathering could not have been friendlier until
Randolph began to speak bluntly about the armed services issue.
He reminded Truman of the recommendations of the Committee on
Civil Rights that the proposed draft law banish segregation,
then told him how disturbed he was to see that the desegregation
clause had been deleted from the bill at the request of
the army. Further, Randolph told Truman, "Negroes are in
no mood to shoulder a gun for democracy aboard so long as they
are denied democracy here at home."13 Then Randolph homed
in on the main point: those gathered for the meeting were calling
for an executive order abolishing segregation in the armed services.
Truman gave no direct answer, but thanked his guests for coming
and rather abruptly ended the session.14 Randolph left behind
a three-page memorandum to the president making specific requests:
1) send a supplemental message to Congress asking for an anti-segregation
amendment and civil rights safeguards in any Universal Military
Training bill or Selective Service bill and 2) end segregation
by executive order immediately. Finally, the memo stated: "Use
your administrative diligence to prevent a repetition of the wartime
abuses, indignities and humiliations suffered by Negro soldiers."15
They
Won’t Take It Lying Down
Though
they felt they had made their positions clear in the memorandum,
Randolph and Grant Reynolds were not convinced that Truman would
push desegregation. Only nine days later the two were testifying
before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Randolph, though
always composed and dignified, had strong words for the committee.
"This time Negroes will not take the Jim Crow laws lying
down. The conscience of the world will be shaken as by nothing
else when thousands and thousands of us second-class Americans
choose imprisonment in preference to permanent military slavery."16
Then he dropped the bombshell. Unless all forms of discrimination
were prohibited in the proposed Universal Military Training bill,
he would advise young men to resist induction. He painted a picture
for the senators of a mass civil disobedience movement along the
lines of the one against British imperialism.17 Then he added,
"I personally pledge myself to openly counsel, aid and abet
youth, both white and Negro, to quarantine any jimcrow conscription
system."18 Senator Wayne Morse interrupted to ask a question:
"But you will expect . . . that there would not be any other
course of action of our Government to follow but indictments for
treason?"19 Randolph was undeterred by the implications:
"We would be willing to absorb the violence, absorb the terrorism,
to face the music and to take whatever comes, and we, as a matter
of fact, consider that we are more loyal to our country than the
people who perpetrate segregation and discrimination upon Negroes
because of color or race."20 A line had been drawn in the
sand.
Noncooperation
Meanwhile,
in April, Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, realizing that
the issue of blacks in the military was heating up, called black
leaders to Washington to participate in a National Defense Conference
on Negro Affairs. Their task was to offer advice to the Defense
Department on how Americans could "utilize Negroes in the
Armed Forces." Neither Randolph nor Reynolds was included,
perhaps due to other commitments. From Forrestal’s point
of view the conference was a failure. The black leaders did not
feel it was useful to talk about how to best use the services
of blacks in the armed forces as long as the military was still
segregated. Furthermore, though many black leaders did not agree
with the militancy of Randolph, they would not denounce the statements
he and Grant Reynolds had made before Congress. While falling
short of actively supporting his proposed movement, they were
glad he had taken his civil disobedience stand.21 The wall of
segregationist thinking that still met black leaders when they
spoke to government officials, whether it was Forrestal or others,
pushed them closer to political activism. Moreover, as these leaders
became more politically visisible, the military began to realize
this force of black Americans must be taken into account; even
Forrestal’s calling of the conference indicated that. By
May 7, 1948, A. Philip Randolph was quite visible, as he and eight
others marched in front of the White House. This dignified regal
man carried a sign with his slogan: "If we must die for our
country let us die as free men–not as Jim Crow slaves."
The demonstrators distributed buttons inscribed, "Don’t
Join a Jim Crow Army."22
Discouragement
The debate over the draft bill continued. When Senator William
Langer of North Dakota tried to introduce amendments into the
bill that were lifted directly from the Civil Rights Commission
report, not a single liberal senator supported him during the
four days of debate. Senator Wayne Morse, considered a liberal,
had risen to state "neither Congress nor the country is ready
for a complete anti-segregation body."23 It was very discouraging
to Randolph. As he continued to develop strategies for organizing
the continuing protest, he wasn’t even sure young blacks
would actually support a massive civil disobedience action. After
all, for many of them born in the rural South or in northern big
city ghettos, the military still offered a better way of life
than they had at home. Nevertheless, when the Youth Division of
the NAACP took a poll of draft-age college men, it found that
50 percent said they would serve their country in an emergency
only if segregation was abolished!24 Randolph would press
on. When the draft act became law in June 1948, without protection
for civil rights, Randolph promptly organized the League for Non-Violent
Civil Disobedience and planned protest marches in Chicago, Harlem,
and other cities.25
Another
Letter
Once
more a letter, dated June 29, arrived at the White House from
the Committee Against Jimcrow. Randolph once again requested a
conference with President Truman to discuss the fact that he had
signed a Selective Service bill "devoid of any safeguards
for Negro youth."26 He told the president that he was "morally
obligated" to issue an order. Ending with a veiled threat,
Randolph promised that "unless this is done, Negro youth
will have no alternative but to resist a law, the inevitable consequences
of which would be to expose them to the un-American brutality
so familiar during the last war."27
A
Special Session
In a
picket line in front of the Democratic National Convention in
Philadelphia that July, Randolph carried a sign that read, "Prison
Is Better Than Jim Crow Service."28 Inside, in the early
morning hours of July 15, 1948, Truman gave his nomination acceptance
speech to sweaty, tired convention delegates. Though he had recommended
only a mild civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform,
he had something to say on that subject: "Everybody knows
that I recommended to the Congress the civil rights program. I
believed it to be my duty under the Constitution." He noted
that some of his own Democratic Party members had disagreed with
him, but at least they had done so openly. Taking on the opposition
party, he said that even though the Republicans had professed
to be for these measures, their Congress had failed to act."
Then, as McCullough says in Truman, came the bombshell:
I am, therefore,
calling this Congress back into session July 26. On the 26th
of July, which out in Missouri we call "Turnip Day,"
I am going to call Congress back and ask them to pass laws to
halt rising prices, to meet the housing crisis, which they [Republicans]
say they are for in their platform . . . I shall ask them to act
upon . . . aid to education which they say they are for . . .
civil rights legislation, which they say they are for. 29
Unrelenting
That
very day, July 15, Randolph sent another letter to the president.
"We are indeed happy," he said, "that you decided
to call Congress back into special session in order to act on
civil rights legislation." Yet he was relentless for what
must be accomplished, adding to the praise, "We trust that
in your message to Congress on July 26 you will specifically ask
for legislative approval of anti-lynching and other safeguards
for Negro draftees."30 The executive order was still on Randolph’s
mind: "May we take this opportunity to renew our request
for a conference with you in the immediate future to discuss such
an Executive Order." Then came the final plea. He beseeched
the president to take this step so that Negro youth would not
face "imprisonment for following the dictates of self-respect."31
Victory–Almost
In fact,
immediately following his speech before the Democratic Convention,
Truman had instructed his staff to draft an executive order that
would end segregation in the armed forces. Finally, on July 26,
1948, the president signed Executive Order 9981. According to
the language of the order, "It is hereby declared to be the
policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment
and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without
regard to race, color, religion, or national origin. This policy
shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard
to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without
impairing efficiency or morale."32 It also established the
President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity
in the Armed Services, which was to determine that the rules,
procedures, and practices of the armed services matched the new
policy.
Though many in the
black community were happy with the order and hopeful that the
issue of civil disobedience would not be forced, Randolph still
was not satisfied. He found the language of the order ambiguous.
Soon he penned another letter to the White House asking for a
meeting to clarify the exact meaning of the executive order, and
seeking assurances that the integration of the armed forces would
take place in a timely fashion. Finally, Truman sent his spokesman,
Senator J. Howard McGrath, to talk through these points with Randolph
and Reynolds, allaying their fears. Then Randolph saw the list
of members who would head up the President’s Committee on
Equality and felt it was a "strong body." Finally, on
August 18, 1948, A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds called
off their campaign of civil disobedience.33
Grant Reynolds and A. Philip Randolph to President Truman
|
|
Truman's executive order desegregating the armed services
|
|
Not
Such Strange Bedfellows
The
historian William Berman said of Truman’s issuance of Executive
Order 9981 that it "was not simply an exercise in good will,
but rather the product of political pressure applied by A. Philip
Randolph, Walter White, and others at a time when a presidential
incumbent needed all the support he could muster in states with
the greatest votes in the electoral college."34 Yet there
was also good will. Though Truman did not support Randolph’s
tactic of civil disobedience, he had a strong sense of fairness,
a firm belief that it was the fundamental right of American citizens
to live and work where they pleased and to improve their condition
by their own efforts. As the chief executive who ordered the desegregation
of the armed services and the civil service, Truman had done more
than any president since Abraham Lincoln to awaken America’s
conscience to civil rights.35
At the end of his
term in office, Truman told the nation from the Oval Office, "A
short time after the new President takes office, I will be on
the train going back home to Independence, Missouri. I will once
again be a plain, private citizen of this great Republic. That
is as it should be."36 But Randolph still had work to do
for the republic. As Grant Reynolds said, blacks "would cast
their eyes around" to find other areas of segregation where
a program of noncompliance might be feasible.37 They would not
look far for the next battle, and when they found it, A. Philip
Randolph would be with them.
|
