U.S. armed-forces desegregation policy

The U.S. armed-forces desegregation policy was a major civil-rights action of Harry S. Truman’s presidency. Its documented significance is clear: Truman ordered the armed services to desegregate, making military service part of his effort to address racial inequality through federal action.

Policy and Civilian Authority

The account identifies the policy as an order to desegregate the armed services, but does not specify its date, implementation process, or the military’s response. It places the measure within a presidency that treated civilian authority over the military as a fundamental principle. During the war, Truman argued that the war effort had to remain in civilian hands, rather than allowing military leaders to acquire control over industry and agriculture. That wider commitment provides institutional context for his exercise of presidential authority over the armed forces, though the account does not describe it as the cause of the desegregation order.

Place in Truman’s Civil-Rights Record

By the end of his presidency, Truman acknowledged that he had achieved less in civil rights than he had hoped. He nevertheless pointed to the creation of the President's Committee on Civil Rights and to orders desegregating both the armed services and the federal civil service. He regarded these steps as part of a record that had done more than that of any president since Abraham Lincoln to awaken the national conscience to civil-rights questions.

Significance and Limits

The policy was one element of a broader federal civil-rights record, not evidence that Truman considered the work complete. His retrospective account pairs the armed-services order with other measures while expressly recognizing the gap between his goals and what he achieved. The evidence establishes the policy’s direction and its place in his legacy, but does not detail how the armed forces carried it out or what changes followed within military institutions.