Video: 'American Experience Truman 2 of 3' (Feb. 2, 1948, at 39:49)

(Monday, February 2, 1948) — President Harry S. Truman sent a special message to Congress today on civil rights, announcing the he had “instructed the secretary of defense to take steps to have the remaining instances of discrimination in the armed services eliminated as rapidly as possible.”

Truman also offered a ten-point program to outlaw lynching and Jim Crow practices, to establish a nationwide federal system of monitoring civil liberties and to take other affirmative steps to increase the protection and dignity of the individual.