AHC/WI: A Republican President desegregated the Army

Driftless

Donor
I wasn't defending Wilson. My point was that the thing that led people like DuBois to support Wilson--which DuBois admitted was a risk--was that people like Taft and TR seemed just as unsatisfactory on racial issues.

Understood. I partly missed my point in my response. The political climate of the era would have made racial progress difficult, but I think there's enough evidence that Wilson's active efforts took it backwards. I feel like you take Wilson out of office and at least things don't get worse. I'm not sure who makes the forward steps, but it should be possible at an earlier date, without Wilson's negative impact.
 
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WI President Hughes took office after 1916 election?

Hughes was no doubt a man of good will on matters of race, but in 1917 plenty of people of good will accepted segregation in the armed forces, which, we should remember, was not a recent innovation like segregation in civilian federal offices, but an old tradition largely taken for granted. In 1917 even the leaders of the NAACP (Du Bois and Joel Spingarn) after some initial criticism, eventually accepted the federal government's proposal "that black army officers be trained in racially segregated facilities. The two NAACP leaders accepted the arrangement along with the compromising argument that without the special camps, there would be no black officer corps to provide leadership for black troops as they entered battle." https://books.google.com/books?id=0nmuvNARVtcC&pg=PA45

Hughes was not a bold innovator, and would not risk the wrath of southerners in Congress--or of an officer corps that was not without its prejudices--to start a "social experiment" (as it would then be regarded) when the war had to be won.

Could a Republican president have abolished segregation in the armed forces? Sure--if a Republican was president after World War II. It is just not going to happen during World War I.
 
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I've read Calvin Coolidge was pretty forward thinking on civil rights. But he was president when the KKK was at its peak, and quite strong outside the Jim Crow South. To say it wouldn't have gone over well is an understatement.

Coolidge was not forward-thinking enough to condemn the Klan by name in his 1924 campaign--something that even John W. Davis eventually did. He did support anti-lynching legislation "although without great effort" https://books.google.com/books?id=YdNlCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA168 But remember that his secretary (a position roughly similar to later White House chiefs of staff) was C. Bascom Slemp, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Bascom_Slemp a Virginia ex-congressman and a firm segregationist.
 
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samcster94

Banned
Thurmond doing better at Truman's expense could at most give Dewey Virginia--though even that's not very likely given that Truman defeated Dewey there by 6.85 points. That's not nearly enough to throw the race into the House, let alone elect Dewey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1948
He was limited as few non Southern states made Thurmond an option. A Thurmond that flips Virginia might be a good secondary factor though. Dewey campaigns harder as well and takes advantage of a relatively weak opponent rather than give up and make Hillary style mistakes.
 
Thurmond doing better(helping Dewey) might get you the result.

I had Dewey win in my TL, A Tale of Two Alternate Cities. Basically, Dewey actually has positions on the issues and campaigns better, while more Southern Democrats endorse Thurmond, so he wins in Georgia and Tennessee.
 
(1) A Republican president elected in 1948 is too late because, as I noted earlier in this thread, Truman had already issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26 of that year.
I think Truman got the ball rolling, but it was a process and took a while. In particular, I think the commission Truman appointed*

*No, the Fahy Commission, chaired by Charles Fahy wanted to push forward with desegregation.

It was the Army, Navy, and Marines who wanted such things as a 10% quota as far as the maximum cap on the number of African-American soldiers and sailors. And I’m guessing the Air Force wasn’t real great either.

I'm remembering a timeline which showed the actual steps in desegregating the army and other branches, and it took a couple of years. (And I do mean an actual timeline, not one of our fanciful timelines! :))
 
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For example, here’s a letter from Charles Fahy to President Truman dated 14 Dec. 1949.

https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whist...cuments/index.php?documentid=6-6&pagenumber=1

The Fahy Committee is calling for:

1) All Army school courses,

2) All Army military occupational specialties, and

3) All assignments of school-trained individuals on basis of qualifications,

To be made without regard to race or color, and to

4) Abolish the racial quota system for enlistment.

The Army had made good progress on school courses and occupational specialties, but was still primarily limiting black soldiers, except for a few specialties, to largely all-black units as well as overhead installations.

And regarding the quota system, Fahy wrote, “With respect to the question of the 10 per cent Negro quota, the Army and the Committee are continuing discussions.”
 
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