Historians Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten write that Truman " was the first president to have a civil rights program , the first to try to come to grips with the basic problems of minorities , and the first to condemn , vigorously and consistently , the presence of discrimination and inequality in America . " A 1947 report by the President 's Committee on Civil Rights titled '' To Secure These Rights '' presented a detailed ten-point agenda of civil rights reforms . In February 1948 , the president submitted a civil rights agenda to Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to issues such as voting rights and fair employment practices . This provoked a storm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the runup to the 1948 Democratic National Convention , but Truman refused to compromise , saying : " My forebears were Confederates ... but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers , just back from overseas , were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten . " At the start of the 81st Congress , pro-civil rights congressmen attempted to reform the Senate 's filibuster rules so that a filibuster could be defeated by a simple majority vote . Southern senators blocked this reform , thereby ensuring that civil rights would not emerge as an important legislative issue until the late 1950s
1948 Democratic National Convention
1948 Democratic National Convention
Presidency of Harry S. Truman