Presidents Day, which falls between the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, celebrates the contributions of those presidents. But here's a nomination for another president worth remembering on this long weekend: Harry Truman, the first of the presidents who succeeded Lincoln to accomplish anything of consequence to redress the injustices that black Americans continued to suffer long after their emancipation.
Driven by black protests, and by his own conscience, Truman ordered the integration of the armed forces and threw the weight of the federal government behind the legal struggle to end segregation in the nation's schools and housing. More broadly, with a flood of public utterances and proclamations, he put the prestige of the highest office in the land on the side of the least favored Americans, paving the way for the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.
During the interval between Lincoln, the 16th president, and Truman, the 33rd, blacks had grown accustomed to hypocrisy and broken promises from the president, regardless of his party. "May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either the Republican or the Democratic parties," declared the leading black intellectual of his day, W.E.B. DuBois, in 1922 after the latest betrayal, this time by Republican President Warren G. Harding.
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