Fair Deal

Identification President Harry S. Truman’s policy program for bolstering civil rights and domestic social policy

Date Launched in September, 1945; articulated in January, 1949

The Fair Deal achieved neither the success nor the lasting notoriety of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. However, President Truman did achieve some positive changes for African American citizens, particularly those living in poor urban areas. The program also institutionalized the model of a bigger federal government created by Roosevelt.

Following Roosevelt’s death in April, 1945, Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency, looking to affirm his former boss’s conception of America as a progressive liberal democracy. Truman’s activist proposals met with more limited success than the policy work of Roosevelt and that of later, fellow big-government Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Truman was repeatedly stymied in Congress—first by a group of Democratic moderates and later by the heavy weight of the unpopular Korean War. The president from Missouri was, however, direct and tenacious as always, and was able to claim victory on at least a handful of policy fronts.

The Mixed Success of the Fair Deal

Scholars have noted the failures of the Fair Deal, while pointing out a few of its unlikely successes. Decades later, it became safe to pronounce the legislative effort of President Truman as a mixed bag containing both slow defeat and surprising change. In September, 1945, fewer than six months after assuming office, Truman sent a twenty-one-point domestic policy plan to Congress. It included both renewed funds for New Deal programs, such as rural electrification and public housing, as well as more innovative policies such as broad education grants and robust agricultural support. However, his plan was flawed by being overly vague and conciliatory in tone. At this point, the plan did not have a name; the “Fair Deal” moniker came in January, 1949, at the start of his second term.

Truman was not the gifted, aggressive policy leader that Roosevelt had been. His approach to the Fair Deal was to negotiate with Congress to achieve its passage. He wanted the legislative branch to take the lead. As a former senator, Truman believed in the legislative process as the prime mover of federal law. He strove personally to frame the conversation regarding America’s conversion from a wartime footing to a peacetime footing, but he wanted to leave the details to Congress. This was perhaps a noble nod to the intent of the Framers of the Constitution, but the method failed to produce strong legislative outcomes during the mid- and late 1940’s.

Truman’s first priority was to support organized labor with greater unemployment compensation, reduced taxes, national health insurance, and full unemployment legislation. All of these efforts failed despite Truman’s best efforts at charming members of Congress. These failures caused Truman’s reputation to suffer in the public eye, and he consequently lost some of his influence in Washington, particularly within his own cabinet, whose holdovers from Roosevelt’s New Dealers did not hold him in high regard. The New Deal coalition was certainly not strongly behind Truman, who was expected to lose the 1948 presidential election. To the surprise of most prognosticators, however, Truman won a second term. Nevertheless, although he was energized by his electoral victory, he did not make much more progress with his Fair Deal agenda in the second term.

The Fair Deal and Civil Rights

The aspect of Truman’s Fair Deal proposals that experienced the greatest success was civil rights, even though most of his ideas failed. Truman envisioned a permanent commission to deal with civil rights, a new civil rights division within the Justice Department, measures against discrimination in employment and lynching, as well as the strengthening of federal civil rights protections already in the books. These ideas would not come to fruition for another twenty years.

Where Truman most succeeded was in pointing out the continuing ills left by slavery in post-World War II America. Although American slavery had long been legally dead, Truman recognized that its effects lingered. Truman’s efforts to address racial segregation in public restrooms, schools, and transportation did not get through Congress.

Stymied by Congress, Truman used his presidential power to issue executive orders to achieve some of his goals and achieved what are perhaps his most lasting accomplishments in domestic policy.

On December 5, 1946, he used Executive Order 9808 to create the first Presidential Committee on Civil Rights. On July 26, 1948, he issued Executive Order 9980 to end segregation in federal employment and Executive Order 9981 to abolish segregation in the military. Breaking down these racial barriers would help set the stage for further civil rights actions in the 1960’s.

At this period in American history, southern Democratic politicians did not support the equal treatment of African Americans. Truman recognized this but persisted to win them over nonetheless. In the end, he never did.

Impact

In retrospect, the Fair Deal did not have the grand impact of the New Deal. Nevertheless, it is impressive that Truman achieved as much as he did even though he inherited a cabinet that was not personally loyal to him and had to work with a hostile Congress. Southern congressmen opposed every progressive move he made.

The looming crisis of the Great Depression was over, as was any real sense of urgency about drastically changing American society. During his second term, Truman faced the mighty challenges of the Korean War, the rise of communist China, and McCarthyism. In the end, he was able to continue to fund Roosevelt’s programs such as old age insurance and unemployment benefits. Whenever and wherever he could, Truman supported organized labor and minorities. Perhaps most important of all, he changed the terms of the national debate after World War II. The genius in the Fair Deal, to the extent that it was a political masterstroke, was not in the details of specific policies. The lasting impact of the Fair Deal lies in how it kept issues regarding the most disadvantaged citizens in the public spotlight for later change.

Bibliography

Gardner, Michael M. Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Using the actual speeches and executive orders of Truman as a narrative structure, this sweeping work is a great place to begin study of this president and his civil rights platform.

Hamby, Alonzo L. Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. A noted Truman scholar takes up the topic of Truman and his time guiding the American experiment in liberal democracy. It focuses on not only the Fair Deal program but also on his foreign policy work.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Informative, thick one-volume work on Harry Truman, covering his birth through his post White House years back in Missouri.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Harry S. Truman and the Fair Deal. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974. A respectable collection of academic writings and original texts concerning the Fair Deal. The entry by Truman staffer Neustadt is particularly insightful.

Woods, Randall Bennett. Quest for Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Well-written general work of history that covers the time of the Fair Deal to the present. Provides information on which direction the country followed after Truman’s policy initiatives in the 1940’s.