Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

By 1947, the President’s Committee on Civil Rights issued a report titled To Secure These Rights. It laid out three reasons for civil rights reform: racial discrimination was immoral; it damaged the economy; and it hurt the United States’ relationships with other nations (79-80). For these reasons, the US State Department under President Truman became involved in advocating for civil rights reform. Truman himself “repeatedly emphasized the importance of civil rights to U.S. foreign affairs” (82). Nonetheless, Truman could not get Congress to pass any significant civil rights legislation like laws against lynching or segregation. Instead, Truman had to focus on issues that he could affect using his presidential powers.

One area Truman intervened in was the military. The activist A. Philip Randolph threatened to encourage African Americans to protest and resist enlistment if segregation in the army was not ended. In response to such protests, in 1948 Truman used Executive Order 9981 to ensure “equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed service without regard to race, color, religion or national origin” (86). Although Truman had refrained from often speaking out in public about civil rights, such actions may have won him the 1948 presidential election. During the Korean War, American military officials also supported efforts to end segregation in the military, finding that segregation was “interfering with military objectives” (88).