How Effective Were Truman’s Reports in Bringing About Change for the Inequality of African-Americans

1539 Words7 Pages
Truman was raised in the southern states of America a place where segregation occurred strongly therefore as a result Truman experienced this at first hand. He grew as a young racist he used abusive language towards African Americans referring to them as ‘niggers’ also, he paid 10 dollars to join the Ku Klux Klan at the age of 38. However, he eventually outgrew his racist beliefs and stressed more interest in equality rights in America. Furthermore, critics have argues that Truman was not interested in social equality and he admitted to it however he believed in fairness, equality, before the law. [McCullough, David, Truman, Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 247] for example, he was deeply moved by stories of black war veterans who were the victims of racist attack after they defended America in WW2 and wanted to give them a better opportunity in life then what they were initially provided with. He had been particularly affected by the experience of Isaac Woodard, the African-American sergeant who had been dragged from a bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, and beaten and blinded by police. The October 1947 ‘to secure these rights’ a series of reports that covered a range of topics, including discrimination in the army, lynching between 1882-1945, police brutality, voting rights, employment and education and racial discrimination in the area of health also, each one of the reports followed recommendations of how the problem should be tackled. The first problem discussed in the report was lynching in the years 1882-1945, there had been over 300 lynchings in five of the southern states. Statistics show that although lynching had declined no year after 1882 was free of it for example, from 1882-1968 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States and 3,446 were black. The lynching of the blacks accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched in total. Also, only 1,297 white people

More about How Effective Were Truman’s Reports in Bringing About Change for the Inequality of African-Americans

Open Document