Memoranda from Donald Dawson to President Harry S. Truman

filed auson 12850 THE WHITE HOUSE NOV 5 1952 WASHINGTON September 9, 1948. MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT: I am listing below one or two things you might want to know when you are talking to Philip Graham about the Armed Services Committee. (1) Since your Executive Order was issued, all important opposition to the draft on the basis of the Army's race policy has disappeared. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds have withdrawn from their Committee Against Jimcrow, and only a few conscientious objectors and other war resistors remain in this movement. (2) Negro leaders and their white friends have been universal in their praise of the Order and in their support of the proposed Committee. Perhaps the most significant of these is the group of sixteen prominent Negroes who were called in by Secretary Forrestal to advise him on racial problems in the Defense Establishment. The report of this group was submitted and published day before yesterday. The seven important recommendations of this group were directed primarily towards the Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, and the group asked that this report be submitted to the Committee as soon as it meets. # (3) The Committee will have complete minority press support. The Negro Press, which had been conducting a vigorous campaign against the Army's racial policy, has now abandoned it. The Afro- American newspapers were particularly bitter over the question of ROTC units in the Negro Land Grant Colleges. This matter was negotiated during the summer and the Army has improved its position in this respect, and there is now no organized newspaper campaign in existence. DONALD S. DAWSON Administrative Assistant to the President HARRY U.S. ARCHIVES 5. "NATIONAL RECORDS SERVICE GOVERNMENT TRUMAN AND TIBBARY