Essay on Truman: President of the United States and Open Public Housing

Submitted By mm2222
Words: 745
Pages: 3

President Truman had an effect on the position of African Americans, he saw what was happening to the African American and he wanted to change this. Veterans come home from the war however instead of being praised for what they did, they still were discriminated, getting murdered. Local and state governments saw and just turned their backs to it. Truman saw the injustice and did not like what he saw; therefore the election in 1948 became a “Battle for life” and realized he needs the black vote.
Truman published “To Secure These Rights” in 1947 but lacked support from Congress in implementing the recommendation as they say they were “unrealistic”. In 1948 a drive started to end discrimination. The Cold war is to be said that it forced the US into dealing with blacks. However the result of the Cold war not only affected blacks, it also limited the range of quality in human rights. In election year Truman issued two Executive orders banning segregation and fair employment in the civil service.
The starting point for Truman was when in 1948 he signed an executive order, which desegregated the army but took two year to push through the law. This was a major civil rights victory for the African Americans. The amount of African Americans on the front line increased in the Korean War compared to the Second World War but very few of them became officers; the idea was to give minorities equal treatment. However in the military a large number of whites resisted this and racism continued within the military. Furthermore, there was a short of money from the start of the implications and many federal agencies didn’t support this. In addition the Government did not want the desegregation and did not like the idea of it, still Congress prevented fairer distribution of funds leading to inferior education being persisted. The Executive order was the first major action towards segregation giving hope to all African Americans that change was possible.
Not everything that Truman did succeeded. His ‘Fair Deal’ housing policy did backfire. The policy was designed to make urban areas more pleasant to live in which meant knocking down several housing estates and building more open public housing estates to improve how people live. His idea was to make more pleasant areas, where what had been previously ghettos. However, there was a big issue as this actually reduced the amount of houses/housing estates. Therefore fewer houses lead to many African American families becoming homeless, meaning this policy had failed for Truman. From this action several African Americans started to lose faith in President Truman.
The Fair Employment Practices (FEPC), which was originally step up by Roosevelt and was successful in the northern cities, tried to end racial discrimination with regards to hiring of labour. In 1945 Truman supported the FEPC and tried to