Executive Order 9981

For Truman, Executive Order 9981 was inspired, in part, by an attack on Isaac Woodard, who was an American soldier and African American World War II veteran. On February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, he was attacked while still in uniform by South Carolina police as he was taking a bus home. The attack left Woodard completely and permanently blind. President Harry S. Truman ordered a federal investigation. Truman also established the President's Committee on Civil Rights, whose report, To Secure These Rights, condemned the state of civil rights in the nation and recommended actions to correct these failures. He then made a historic speech to the NAACP and the nation in June 1947 in which he described civil rights as a moral imperative, submitted a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress in February 1948, and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 on July 26, 1948, desegregating the armed forces and promoting anti-discrimination throughout the federal government.

Before Executive Order 9981

Black Americans in the military worked under different rules that delayed their entry into combat. They had to wait four years before they could begin combat training while a white American would begin training within months of being qualified. The Air Corps was deliberately delaying the training of African Americans even though it needed more manpower (Survey and Recommendations). The Women's Army Corps (WAC) reenlistment program was open to black women, but overseas assignments were not.

Black soldiers who were stationed in Britain during World War II learned that the US military attempted to impose Jim Crow segregation on them even though Britain did not practice the racism which was practiced in the US. According to author Anthony Burgess, when pub owners in Bamber Bridge were told to segregate their facilities by the US military, they installed signs that read "Black Troops Only". One soldier commented: "One thing I noticed here and which I don't like is the fact that the English don't draw any color line. The English must be pretty ignorant. I can't see how a white girl could associate with a negro."

In a 1945 survey which was conducted among 250 white officers and sergeants who had a black platoon assigned to their company, the following results were collected: 77% of both officers and sergeants said that they had become more favorable towards black soldiers after a black platoon was assigned to their company (no cases were found in which someone said that their attitude towards blacks had turned less favorable), 84% of officers and 81% of sergeants thought that the black soldiers had performed very well in combat, only 5% of officers and only 4% of sergeants thought that black infantry soldiers were not as good as white infantry soldiers, and 73% of officers and 60% of sergeants thought that black soldiers and white soldiers got along very well when they were together. According to this particular survey, there were no reasonable grounds for racial segregation in the armed forces.