essional opposition, the administration sought a strong civil
rights program to put before the Eightieth Congress. Thus, the
committee's recommendations would get respectful attention in the
White House. Finally, neither the civil rights leaders nor the
President could have foreseen the effectiveness of the committee
members. Serving under Charles E. Wilson, president of the General
Electric Company, the group included among its fifteen members
distinguished church leaders, public service lawyers, the presidents
of Dartmouth College and the University of North Carolina, and
prominent labor executives. The committee had two black members, Sadie
T. M. Alexander, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and Channing H. Tobias,
director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Its members not only prepared a
comprehensive survey of the condition of civil rights in America but
also presented to the President on 29 October 1947 a far-reaching
series of recommendations, in effect a program for corrective action
that would serve as a bench mark for civil rights progress for many
years.[12-11]

[Footnote 12-9: White, _A Man Called White_, pp.
330-31.]

[Footnote 12-10: Executive Order 9808, 5 Dec 46.]

[Footnote 12-11: In addition to Chairman Wilson, the
following people served on the committee: Sadie T.
M. Alexander, James B. Carey, John S. Dickey,
Morris L. Ernst, Roland B. Gittelsohn, Frank P.
Graham, Francis J. Haas, Charles Luckman, Francis
P. Matthews, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Knox
Sherrill, Boris Shishkin, Dorothy Tilly, and
Channing Tobias.]

[Illustration: WALTER WHITE.]

The group recommended the concentration of civil rights work in the
Department of Justice, the establishment of a permanent civil rights
commission, a federal antilynching act, a permanent Fair Employment
Practices Commission, and legislation to correct discrimination in
voting and naturalization laws. It also examined the state of (p. 296)
civil rights in the armed forces and incidentally publicized the
long-ignored survey of black infantry platoons that had fought in
Europe in 1945.[12-12] It concluded:

The injustice of calling men to fight for freedom while
subjecting them to humiliating discrimination within the fighting
forces is a