Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (21 page)

The Administration should select the issues upon which there will be conflict with the majority in Congress. It can assume it will get no major part of its own program approved. Its tactics must, therefore, be entirely different than [
sic
] if there were any real point to bargaining and compromise. Its recommendations—in the State of the Union message and elsewhere—must be tailored for the voter, not the Congressman; they must display a label which reads "no compromises."
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Satisfying the elements of the Democratic coalition called for careful maneuvering, as Truman quickly found out with two such groups in early 1948: blacks and Jews. The volatile issue of race, while far less central to America's national politics at that time than it was to become later, was already creating strains in partisan alignments. After Truman failed in his efforts to secure a permanent FEPC, he named a liberal committee in December 1946 to advise him on civil rights policies. The committee's report, "To Secure These Rights," was released in October 1947 and demanded a range of measures against racism in America. These included legislation eliminating discrimination and segregation in employment, housing, health facilities, interstate transportation, and public accommodations; a law making lynching a federal crime; abolition of the poll tax; federal protection of voting rights; creation of a permanent FEPC; and issuance of executive orders against racial discrimination in the federal civil service and the armed forces.

The report sparked great excitement in liberal circles. The
New Republic
wrote, "For those who cherish liberty, freedom and forebearance; for those sickened by the sight of reaction ruling the land; for those who feel alone and for those who are afraid, here is a noble reaffirmation of the principles that made America." Truman, too, seemed pleased and ready to act. "Every man," he proclaimed, "should have the right to a decent home, . . . the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share in making public decisions through the ballot."
³⁰

Truman's support for civil rights did not include social mixing of the races. "The Negro himself knows better than that," he once had explained, "and the highest types of Negro leaders say quite frankly that they prefer the society of their own people."
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In private conversation he used "nigger" and other racial slurs from time to time. His Justice Department did little to investigate or prosecute the many violations of civil rights in the country. Still, Truman's appointment of such a liberal committee, and his endorsement of the report, stamped him as a friend of civil rights. No American President before him, FDR included, had taken such a strong stand.

Speaking for civil rights, however, was not the same as taking decisive action. When it came to that, Truman moved slowly. In February 1948 he sent a message to the Hill calling for enactment of some of the committee's recommendations, including passage of an anti-lynching law, a permanent FEPC, and laws against poll taxes and discrimination in interstate transportation. He said he would issue executive orders against discrimination in the armed forces and the civil service. But he did not follow up by introducing legislation, which would have provoked a filibuster, and throughout the spring and early summer of 1948 he failed to issue the executive orders. At the Democratic National Convention in July he gave his support to a civil rights plank so vague that liberals like Hubert Humphrey erupted in protest. Only then, faced with open rebellion, did Truman turn about and support a more liberal plank.
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Only then, too, did he finally issue his executive orders, in a move whose political motives were obvious: to prevent loss of black votes in the North. But here, too, Truman moved cautiously, for the issues remained volatile. The order affecting the civil service called for an end to discrimination, not immediately to segregation. More important was his order against segregation in the armed services, into which millions of impressionable young men were later to be drafted. Advocates of civil rights, relatively optimistic in those days, hoped that greater interracial contact among young men would gradually diminish prejudice. They hailed Truman's move.

But this order, too, was implemented only slowly, in part because of resistance to it among top military leaders, who were frightened that desegregation would damage military discipline and provoke fighting among the troops. The day after Truman issued his order, army chief of staff Omar Bradley warned, "The Army is not out to make any social reform. The Army will not put men of different races in the same companies. It will change that policy when the nation as a whole changes it."
³³
Resistance such as this delayed widespread implementation of Truman's order until after the North Korean invasion of South Korea in the summer of 1950, when the American army had to scramble to put together units with any available troops. Even then, black draftees piled up in Japan, barred by the army from joining white units even as battlefield commanders begged for help. Not until 1954 was the process of desegregation in the Army complete in the sense that no unit was more than one-half black. Thereafter blacks continued to form only a very small percentage of the army's officer corps.

Truman's caution on the issue of civil rights greatly bothered many liberals. But his backtracking rested on a political reality that had paralyzed Roosevelt, too: the Democratic party had always been badly divided on the issue of race. In a few northern cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, and New York, the massive south-to-north migrations of black people heightened their potential at the polls. In some of these areas, Clifford had pointed out, black voters could make the difference between victory and defeat. Most whites in the North, however, had not yet been drawn to the cause of racial justice; that began to happen only later. And in the South, where a majority of African-Americans still lived, almost all whites adamantly opposed moves to liberalize race relations. When Truman belatedly accepted the liberal civil rights plank at the convention in July, thirty-five delegates from Alabama and Mississippi marched out of the hall waving battle flags of the Confederacy. They spearheaded a move that culminated in the nomination for President of Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina on the States' Rights Democratic ticket. "Dixiecrats," as opponents branded them, carried four Deep South states (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) for Thurmond in November. So much for Clifford's predictions about the loyalty of what was obviously the no-longer-so-solid South.

By contrast to blacks, Jews were a small group. In 1948 they numbered fewer than 5 million people, or around 3.5 percent of the total population. (Blacks then numbered nearly 15 million, or 11 percent.) Jews differed among themselves in the depth and nature of their religious commitments. But most Jews had greatly admired FDR and the New Deal; by 1948 they were overwhelmingly Democratic. More than blacks, they were concentrated in a few northern urban areas, and they were politically active. Rowe and Clifford had mentioned Jews as potentially vital to Democratic prospects in 1948, especially in the electorally important state of New York.

By this time most politically engaged American Jews had become supporters of Zionism, a movement that called for creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine—the Holy Land—which had been under mandate to the British. Many Zionists thought such a state had been promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration issued by the British Foreign Secretary in 1917. Many others, with the Holocaust fresh in their memories, greatly stepped up their appeals after World War II. The American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC) embarked on a well-financed publicity campaign that helped by late 1947 to generate large majorities—some polls said over 80 percent—of the American people in favor of such a homeland. AZEC's efforts helped induce thirty-three state legislatures to pass resolutions favoring a Jewish state in Palestine. In addition, forty governors, fifty-four senators, and 250 members of congress signed petitions to Truman on the issue.
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All this activity took place amid growing violence between Arabs and Jews in the region, which prompted the British in late 1947 to turn to the United Nations for help. In November the UN supported partition of the region. It was immediately clear, however, that partition—which involved creation of a Jewish state—would drive the Arabs to war. UN leaders then sought to craft a plan that would have placed the area under UN trusteeship, thereby deferring creation of Jewish independence. Virtually all top foreign policy officials in the United States—Secretary of State Marshall, Undersecretary Lovett, Defense Secretary Forrestal, Kennan—also resisted creation of a sovereign Jewish state out of part of Palestine. Helping to set up an independent nation for the Jews, they thought, would endanger American relations with the Moslem world, thereby undermining Truman Doctrine efforts to promote stability in Turkey, Iran, and Arab countries. Behind these concerns was the unthinkable: the cutting off by angry Moslems of shipments of oil to western Europe and the United States.

Forrestal was especially adamant, both because he worried about oil supplies and because he (and Marshall, too) was certain that creation of a Jewish state would mean war, which he thought the Jews would lose. "You fellows over at the White House," he exclaimed to Clifford over breakfast one morning, "are just not facing up to the realities in the Middle East. There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about six hundred thousand Jews on the other. It is clear to me that in any contest the Arabs are going to overwhelm the Jews. Why don't you face up to the realities? Just look at the numbers!"
³⁵
Clifford had indeed looked at the numbers. But he was listening more carefully to two ardent Zionists in the White House, presidential assistant David Niles and Max Lowenthal, an old friend of Truman. Clifford sympathized with the plight of the Jews, and he was very conscious of the importance of the Jewish vote. Niles, Lowenthal, and Clifford fed Truman memoranda on the subject and drafted some of his statements.
³⁶

How much Truman knew of this in-house activity is unclear, but throughout the winter and early spring of 1948 he did not give the matter great attention. It gradually became clear, however, that though he was irritated at times by Zionist pressure, he sympathized with the Jewish position. This predisposition had many sources. He appreciated the suffering of the Jews, their apparent commitment to democracy, and their desire to establish a new world for themselves. His selective reading of history inclined him to believe that the Jews had the best claim to a homeland in the area. And he was well aware of domestic political considerations, including the importance of campaign contributions from the Jews. He once told State Department people, "I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
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For all these reasons Truman made little effort to see things from the perspective of Arabs, who hotly demanded to know why the President was ignoring their deeply held feelings—Palestine was a Holy Land for Moslems (and Christians) as well as for Jews—at the same time that he was resisting large-scale immigration of Jewish refugees to America. Deaf to such complaints, Truman also downplayed the ferocity of regional hatreds in the Middle East. He shared with many other American liberals the naive hope that Jews and Arabs could learn to cooperate and that the United States could manage to get along amicably with both sides.

The issue came to a head on May 12, when Truman assembled his top advisers for a key meeting. By this time the imminent departure of the British (on May 14) made it impossible to put off decisions any longer. It was one of the most explosive confrontations of his presidency. When Marshall found Clifford at the meeting, he grew angry and accused him—and Truman—of favoring a Jewish state for political reasons. "Unless politics were involved," he said in what Clifford later called a "righteous goddam Baptist tone," "Mr. Clifford would not even be at this meeting."
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Astounding those present, Marshall then said to his commander-in-chief, "If you follow Clifford's advice and if I were to vote in this election, I would vote against you." According to Clifford's recollection, this outburst—all the more shocking because it came from the normally grave and judicious Marshall—so stunned those present that the meeting ended then and there.
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The confrontation deeply upset the President, who revered Marshall. Truman especially feared that Marshall might make a public statement on the issue, thereby exposing the divisions within his inner circles. Worse, Marshall might resign, causing political damage to his administration. Calling in Clifford, the President asked him to work out a solution. Clifford turned to Lovett, a friend, as a go-between with Marshall. Two very tense days followed, after which Marshall finally signaled that he would not rock the boat. On May 14 Israel proclaimed itself a state, which the Truman administration instantaneously recognized de facto. Arabs then attacked Israel, which surprised a lot of people by resisting effectively and ultimately winning the war.

Many American Jews wanted Truman to go further in the summer of 1948—by recognizing the new state de jure and giving arms to Israel. But they appreciated Truman for his immediate de facto regonition, and they voted in large majorities for him in November. (The President, however, lost New York State.) Whether the President deserved great credit for his policies nonetheless remains debatable. He was not well informed about Middle Eastern history and politics; he did not take charge of policy-making on the matter; and he let political considerations affect important questions of national security. Here as at other times in his presidency, Truman vacillated, exhibiting little of the "buck stops here" decisiveness with which he has been credited.