“To Secure These Rights,” most observers expressed shock that Truman allowed publication of an agenda so far in advance of public opinion. The report brought the phrase “civil rights” into common political parlance, replacing “the Negro question.” There was even greater shock the following February, just three days after the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi in Delhi, when Truman sent a special civil rights message to Congress asking for a federal anti-lynching law, among other things. Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill, the South’s most responsible liberal on the race question, attacked
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