investigate and report on
the status of civil rights in America.

The concept of a federal civil rights group had been circulating in
the executive branch for some time. After the Detroit race riot in
1943, presidential assistant Jonathan Daniels had organized a
committee to deal with racial troubles. Proposals to create a national
organization to reduce racial tensions were advanced later in the war,
principally by Saul K. Padover, a minority specialist in the Interior
Department, and David K. Niles of the White House staff. Little came
of the committee idea, however, because Roosevelt was convinced that
any steps associated with integration would prove divisive and were
unwise during wartime.[12-8] With the war over and a different political
climate prevailing, Niles, now senior White House adviser on minority
affairs, proposed the formation of a committee not only to investigate
racial violence but also to explore the entire subject of civil
rights.

[Footnote 12-8: Intervs, Nichols with Oscar Ewing,
former federal security administrator and senior
presidential adviser, and Jonathan Daniels, 1954,
in Nichols Collection, CMH; see also McCoy and
Ruetten, _Quest and Response_, p. 49.]

Walter White and his friends greeted the idea with some skepticism.
They had come demanding action, but were met instead with another
promise of a committee and the probability of interminable (p. 295)
congressional debate and unproductive hearings.[12-9] But this time,
for several reasons, it would be different. In the first place the
civil rights leaders underestimated the sincerity of Truman's reaction
to the racial violence. He had quickly agreed to create Niles's
committee by executive order to save it from possible pigeonholing at
the hands of a hostile Congress. He had also given the group, called
the President's Committee on Civil Rights, a broad directive "to
determine whether and in what respect current law enforcement measures
and the authority and means possessed by Federal, State, and local
governments may be strengthened and improved to safeguard the civil
rights of the people."[12-10] The civil rights leaders also failed to
gauge the effect Republican victories in the 1946 congressional
elections would have on the administration. Finding it necessary to
court the Negro and other minorities and hoping to confound
congr