To Secure These Rights

About the Author

A committee of fifteen prominent citizens drafted To Secure These Rights. Hoping for balance, Truman appointed two women, two southerners, two business leaders, and two labor leaders. General Electric president Charles E. Wilson agreed to chair, while Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, Catholic bishop Francis J. Haas, Episcopal bishop Henry Knox Sherrill, and Methodist official M. E. Tilley provided religious diversity. Labor’s representatives included Boris Shishkin of the American Federation of Labor, and James B. Carey of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. University of North Carolina president Frank P. Graham and Dartmouth president John S. Dickey provided an academic aspect, while Morris L. Ernst, Francis P. Matthews, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., and Dr. Channing H. Tobias represented the public and nonprofit sectors. Perhaps most notably, the civil rights lawyer Sadie Tanner Alexander was the committee’s only African American.

Alexander wrote Truman on December 9, 1946, that the committee’s work was “the greatest venture in the protection of civil liberty officially undertaken by the government since reconstruction.” Holding a PhD in economics, Alexander had served on the board of directors of the National Urban League, worked with National Council of Negro Women president Mary McLeod Bethune, and practiced law in Philadelphia. Her presence went far toward establishing the committee’s credibility in civil rights circles.