Impact of Presidents on Civil Rights

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  • Created by: Pip Dan
  • Created on: 20-09-17 14:11

The impact of Presidents cannot be underestimated, for better or worse, in the civil rights movement. However, it must equally be remembered that presidents should act on behalf of what the public want and so perhaps people who lobby the president or cause him to act more significant. Nevertheless, these men remain key to the lives of African Americans.

Harry S. Truman

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In Executive Order 9980, Truman ended racial discrimination in federal employment

Attempts to make lynching a federal offence failed in the Congress

Truman also put the Fair Employment Practice Commission on a permanent, peacetime footing. Again in an attempt to end racial discrimination in federal employment

Truman only tried to end discrimination in federal employment and not in the private sphere

Truman also met members of the National Emergency Committee against Mob Violence in September 1946. The Committee highlighted the extent of legal segregation in the South. Nevertheless Truman made no deliberate measures to combat this

Executive Order 9981 desegregated the US armed forces, this had a massive ideological significance and a large practical one

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Eisenhower did appoint Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953 helped to bring about a revolution in that institution. Under Warren's leadership, the Supreme Court became a proactive force in bringing about full civil rights. In the Brown case of 1954, it declared unconstitutional the 'separate but equal' interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment

It is clear that Eisenhower did not plan to have such a change in the Supreme Court. He called appointing Warren the 'The biggest … mistake I ever made' and declared in response to the Brown case 'I am convinced that the Supreme Court decision set back progress in the South at least 15 years.' He was too afraid of drastic change or of upsetting congress by any radical improvements which he believed, to quote him, could result in 'social disintegration'

Eisenhower was forced to act in the Little Rock incident of September 1957, where 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division were sent to enforce integration

Arguably, Eisenhower only took action over Little Rock to maintain the supremacy and power of federal government over that of the southern states

Eisenhower did push through during his presidency the 1957 Civil Rights Act. The impact of this Act is controversial. University professor, Ralph Bunche, saw the bill as a sham and stated that he would have preferred no act at all rather than the 1957 Act. However, Bayard Rustin of CORE, believed that it was important because of its symbolism – the first civil rights legislation for 82 years

Cynics have stated that this was simply to win the ‘Black Vote’. Up to 1957, and for a variety of reasons, only 20% of African Americans had registered to vote

In his second administration he made some attempts to increase the number of African American voters. The 1957 and 1960 Acts attempted to give federal judges more power in enforcing black…

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