Fourth Draft, Address of President Harry S. Truman Before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]

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6-29-47 THOUGH 4th Draft. RECOADE Aão GOVERN SERVICE* <08 Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Roosevelt, Distinguished Guests, Ladies & Gentlemen: I am happy to be present at the closing session of the Thirty- Eighth Annual Conference of the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People. The occasion of meeting with you here at the Lincoln Memorial affords me the opportunity to congratulate the Association upon its effective work for the improvement of our democractic processes. I should like to talk to you briefly about civil rights and human freedom. It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights, When Isay all americans. Iarean all assericans. The civil rights laws written in the early years of our republic, and the traditions which have been built upon them, are precious to us. Those laws were drawn up with the memory still fresh in men's minds of the tyranny of en absentee government. They were written to protect the citizen against any possible tyrannical act by the new government in this country. But we cannot be content with a civil liberties program which emphasizes only the need of .protection against the possibility of tyranny by the Government.