Federal civil-service desegregation policy

The Federal civil-service desegregation policy was the federal civilian-workforce component of Harry S. Truman’s civil-rights program. Truman’s final assessment of his presidency placed the order to desegregate the federal Civil Service among his administration’s consequential civil-rights actions, while acknowledging that his record fell short of his ambitions.

Policy and scope

The evidence identifies the policy as an order to desegregate the federal Civil Service. It distinguishes this civilian workforce measure from the parallel order concerning the armed services, presenting both as actions of the federal government. The account does not specify the order’s date, administrative procedures, or the pace and extent of its implementation, so its documented scope here is the policy commitment itself.

Part of a broader program

Truman situated the order within a wider set of federal civil-rights efforts. His retrospective account also noted the establishment of a landmark civil-rights commission and his intention to set goals for future progress. These measures formed part of a program whose aims exceeded what he had achieved by the end of his presidency.

Civilian and military desegregation

The federal civil-service order was paired in Truman’s record with desegregation of the armed services. Their parallel appearance underscores that his civil-rights actions reached across distinct parts of the federal establishment: civilian employment and military service. The account names both directions of action but does not detail how the policies interacted or how they were carried out.

Significance and limits

Truman judged his civil-rights accomplishments incomplete, yet argued that he had done more than any president since Abraham Lincoln to awaken the nation’s conscience to civil-rights issues. The civil-service policy belongs to that claimed record: a concrete federal order within a larger effort, rather than evidence that racial equality had been fully achieved. The account’s emphasis on both action and limitation preserves the distinction between setting a federal policy and realizing the broader goal.