d veterans' benefits.

The conversion of Harry Truman into a forceful civil rights (p. 294)
advocate seems to have come about, at least partially, from his
exposure to what he later called the "anti-minority" incidents visited
on black servicemen and civilians in 1946.[12-6] Although the lynchings,
property destruction, and assaults never matched the racial violence
that followed World War I, they were enough to convince many civil
rights leaders that the pattern of racial strife was being repeated.
Some of these men, along with a group of labor executives and
clergymen, formed a National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence
to warn the American public against the dangers of racial intolerance.
A delegation from this committee, with Walter White as spokesman, met
with the President on 19 September 1946 to demand government action.
White described the scene:

The President sat quietly, elbows resting on the arms of his
chair and his fingers interlocked against his stomach as he
listened with a grim face to the story of the lynchings.... When
I finished, the President exclaimed in his flat, midwestern
accent, "My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We've
got to do something!"[12-7]

[Footnote 12-6: Harry S. Truman, _Memoirs_ (New York:
Doubleday, 1958), II:180-81; White, _A Man Called
White_, pp. 330-31. Truman's concept of civil
rights is analyzed in considerable detail in Donald
R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, _Quest and
Response: Minority Rights and the Truman
Administration_ (Lawrence, Kansas: University of
Kansas Press, 1973), Chapter III.]

[Footnote 12-7: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]

But the Truman administration had nearly exhausted the usual remedies
open to it. The Attorney General had investigated the lynchings and
Klan activities and the President had spoken out strongly and
repeatedly against mob violence but without clear and pertinent civil
rights legislation presidential exhortations and investigations
counted for very little. Civil rights leaders like White understood
this, and, given the mood of Congress, they were resigned to the lack
of legislative support. Nevertheless, it was in this context that the
President decided to create a committee to