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A humorous memoir about a mischievous kid who, through relentless
efforts by his parents, Jesuit teachers and wife succeeds as a U.S.
Ambassador, lawyer, author, Georgetown professor and four-time
Presidential appointee.
Given his background, President Truman was an unlikely champion of
civil rights. Where he grew up--the border state of
Missouri--segregation was accepted and largely unquestioned. Both
his maternal and paternal grandparents had owned slaves, and his
mother, victimized by Yankee forces, railed against Abraham Lincoln
for the remainder of her ninety-four years. When Truman assumed the
presidency on April 12, 1945, Michael R. Gardner points out,
Washington, DC, in many ways resembled Cape Town, South Africa,
under apartheid rule circa 1985. Truman's background
notwithstanding, Gardner shows that it was Harry Truman--not
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or John F.
Kennedy--who energized the modern civil rights movement, a movement
that basically had stalled since Abraham Lincoln had freed the
slaves. Gardner recounts Truman's public and private actions
regarding black Americans. He analyzes speeches, private
conversations with colleagues, the executive orders that shattered
federal segregation policies, and the appointments of like-minded
civil rights activists to important positions. Among those
appointments was the first black federal judge in the continental
United States. One of Gardner's essential and provocative points is
that the Frederick Moore Vinson Supreme Court--a court
significantly shaped by Truman--provided the legal basis for the
nationwide integration that Truman could not get through the
Congress. Challenging the myth that the civil rights movement began
with "Brown v. Board of Education "under Chief Justice Earl Warren,
Gardner contends that the life-altering civil rights rulings by the
Vinson Court provided the necessary legal framework for the
landmark"Brown v. Board of Education "decision."" Gardner
characterizes Truman's evolution from a man who grew up in a racist
household into a president willing to put his political career at
mortal risk by actively supporting the interests of black
Americans.
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