Review

The late 1960s and 1970s were the high point of scholarship on the Truman administration. The issues and debates between what was known then as the liberal and the revisionist interpretations haven't changed appreciably since then. At that time, Alonzo Hamby, who remains today one of the most authoritative scholars on the Truman administration, remarked correctly that no area of Truman's domestic policy had been so well covered and debated as civil rights. The liberal position gave Truman significant credit as a civil rights pioneer and the revisionists complained that his policy was more image than substance. No major work has concentrated on Truman's civil rights activities since the book which is generally considered the most definitive word, Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten's Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration, published in 1973. The book was generally favorable but nuanced and at times critical. Almost all of the various Truman biographies and assessments of his administration written in the last decades follow this mid position in dealing with his handling of civil rights policy.	1
Michael R. Gardner's Harry Truman and Civil Rights is a retro-liberal argument far beyond the McCoy and Ruetten position. Gardner's thesis is that Truman was a pioneer, a hero, and the instigator of the modern civil rights movement and is reminiscent of the early pre-revisionist Truman scholars. Although I personally agree with Gardner's positive treatment of Truman's civil rights actions, the author is overly enthusiastic, even gushy, to the point of hagiography. His writing is often too emphatic and at times the book appears sophomoric. For example, he proclaims personal new discoveries such as "the often historically overlooked fact that Woodrow Wilson was a proactive segregationist," a fact well known by all historians. A communications policy attorney and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he has taught courses on the presidency and communications public policy, Gardner's treatise often reminds one of an attorney's legal brief, an advocacy position, rather than dispassionate historical scholarship.	2
After tracing Truman's background in a conservative racist society, the author devotes chapters to the major Truman civil rights hallmarks. These include Truman's Committee on Civil Rights in 1946–47, his speech to the NAACP at the Lincoln Memorial in 1947, the State of the Union Address and the Special Message to Congress on Civil Rights both in 1947., the Civil Rights plank at the 1948 Democratic Party Convention, Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 which desegregated federal government employment and the military, the Harlem Speech in October 1948, battles with Congress during the second term, the Vinson Supreme Court, the Howard University Commencement Address in June 1952, and the Harlem Address in October 1952.	3
The volume's best contribution is the discussion of the relationship between Truman and his good friend and poker companion, Fred Vinson, who first served as the Secretary of the Treasury until Truman appointed him Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1946. Gardner' legal background is useful as he guides the reader through the important Vinson civil rights cases such as Shelley v. Kraemer, Hurd v. Hodge, Henderson v. United States, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, and Sweatt v. Painter, which systematically undermined Plessey v. Ferguson and set the stage for the Brown v. Board decision later under Chief Justice Earl Warren. Typical of Gardner's approach, he credits Truman with this entire legal direction by stating that Truman was a good judge of character and that he knew Fred Vison would act aggressively on civil rights.	4
Gardner does employ new sources, especially the Philleo Nash background papers for Truman's civil rights speeches and oral histories and personal interviews with key Truman staffers on these issues, such as George M. Elsey and Philleo Nash, as well as interviews with less well known figures such as White House janitor Bob Brown and butler Alonzo Fields, two Black staffers who had personal relationships with the President. What the author does not do is to systematically confront those who are less charitable about Truman's civil rights activities than he is. He tends to proclaim his position rather than to refute the opposition. By dealing with civil rights in isolation rather than as part of the totality of Truman's domestic policy agenda, he leaves himself vulnerable to the revisionist claim that Truman talked a good game, but often sacrificed civil rights to other priorities. Used with some temperance, the book can provide good material for lectures on the early civil rights movement; but speaking specifically to readers of this particular journal, it is not a volume that one would classify as a book of especial value for classroom teaching.	5
Converse College Joe P. Dunn

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