Truman Civil Rights Movement Analysis

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Although the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in theory guaranteed equal protection and voting rights to every US citizen, regardless of race, in practice American society remained racially segregated both economically and socially throughout the early 1900s (Henretta 870). Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud, coercive tactics, and "white primaries" in southern states eroded the Fifteenth Amendment's promise of equal democratic participation, leaving many African Americans without a political voice despite constituting a sizable portion of the population (Henretta 871). Similarly, Jim Crow segregation in the South-consisting of segregated public facilities, including bathrooms, restaurants, and transportation-condemned African Americans to …show more content…

Although President Truman did not personally believe in racial equality for African Americans, growing pressure from a collective of civil rights activists (including Asa Philip Randolph and Adam Clayton Powell), combined with his desire to maintain the black vote, incentivized him to organize the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights to investigate civil rights reforms. Pursuant to the committee's recommendations, Truman enacted executive orders to desegregate the armed forces and federal agencies, and sent the rest of the recommendations to Congress for approval (Henretta 875). Truman's bold and unprecedented calls for racial equality stemmed, in part, from the committee's admonishment that racial inequality posed a threat to national security. Advocating for democracy and human rights improvements abroad, the commission argued, could appear hypocritcal if America failed to address civil rights domestically. In a world increasingly torn apart by ideology-the Cold War largely remained a series of proxy conflicts between the Soviet Union, advocating communism, and the United States, advocating democratic capitalism-the committee and Truman believed America's global image would play a major role in international stability (Henretta 875). Similar to the television, however, Cold War fears …show more content…

Although the majority of historical literature documenting the Civil Rights era focuses on the African Americans' plight, Mexican and Japanese Americans also mobilized and pushed for reforms. Specifically, during the 1940s Mexican Americans remained segrgeated from the rest of the Southwestern population. They were forced to take the lowest-wage jobs and live in run-down "barrios," which often lacked water or modern infrastructure (Henretta 875). As the Mexican American middle class grew, after soldiers returned to the United States, they formed organizations such as the American GI Forum and Community Service Organization to protest the injustices in their communities (Henretta 877). These efforts ultimately culminated in the Ninth Circuit case Mendez v. Westminster School District, which ruled segregated schools for Mexican Americans unconstitutional (Henretta 877). Similarly, the Japanese American Citizens League also fought against racist policies, such as California's Alien Land Law, which barred Japanese Americans from obtaining land or citizenship (Henretta 877). One of the most significant legal activists of the period, however, was NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall. He advanced the legal principle of rights liberalism through his role in several crucial

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