Harry Truman and Civil Rights Moral Courage and Political Risks

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About This Book

Given his background, President Truman was an unlikely champion of civil rights. Where he grew up?the border state of Missouri?segregation was accepted and largely unquestioned. Both his maternal and paternal grandparents had owned slaves, and his mother, victimized by Yankee forces, railed against Abraham Lincoln for the remainder of her ninety-four years. When Truman assumed the presidency on April 12, 1945, Michael R. Gardner points out, Washington, DC, in many ways resembled Cape Town, South Africa, under apartheid rule circa 1985. Truman's background notwithstanding, Gardner shows that it was Harry Truman?not Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy?who energized the modern civil rights movement, a movement that basically had stalled since Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves. Gardner recounts Truman's public and private actions regarding…