Question: Good afternoon, Mr. LaRouche. This is Dave from Washington, D.C.

This is really a response to your analysis of Harry Truman. I tend to think it's a little big one-dimensional, in terms of what he did in the Marshall Plan, providing the [inaud] of aid to rebuild Europe, and later on, Japan.

I think what Harry Truman also did, was that he did a good deal of efforts toward civil rights. He was the first President to meet with the NAACP, after the infamous lynching in Georgia in 1946. He was the first President to desegregate the U.S. Army, the military, and the first President to put forth the Civil Rights Act. I think what he did, was that he paved the way for future Presidents, especially Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, to go further in the areas of civil rights.

LaRouche: Yeah, good. Well, actually, don't give Truman any credit at all. Give him credit for a feral instinct, like a fox who's been caught in the hen-house, by the farmer.

The civil rights struggle, was actually a key figure: This was Eleanor Roosevelt, not Harry Truman. Eleanor Roosevelt was deployed, even though she did not always agree with her husband on many things, but she was deployed on many causes, together with Henry Wallace. And, in the Democratic Party, they had two things: They had, first of all, they had a lot of pressure; secondly, you have to think of the times: Truman was adapting to the times.

Let me give you the picture. You know the story about Birmingham [Alabama], at the end of the war? The steel workers? The fight for civil rights? You had a bunch of guys, who were GIs with me, in the war. Black GIs: They came back; they said, "Hey! We're not slaves. We have rights." And they were a very serious movement. They were returning veterans. And, as the Eisenhower Presidency attests, the good side of World War II: People rallied around the Eisenhower image, precisely, because of that--they saw, this was a President, who should be responsive to the concerns of the veterans returning from the war.

So, Eleanor Roosevelt and others were working. Franklin Roosevelt agreed. But conditions of the time were such... so this was postponed business, and the impetus was there. But the impetus came in large part from the people. It came largely from so-called African-Americans. They were actually in there, and they had a sense of confidence.

You know what it's like. I don't know exactly what your experience is, but you must know what it's like. That, if you have a bunch of people who won't fight--they're flaccid, they give up, they're easily bought off, around you, and you try to lead something, you know what it feels like? But, if you have, on the other hand, a bunch of feisty people, who sense they have their rights; they feel young, they feel they have rights, and, if you're dealing with that as your support, you're collaborators--you're powerful! And, that was the point. We had a powerful movement.

Now, this led to things later, which became the fight around civil rights, in the 1950s: the school fight, for example, which was crucial. This became the basis, which led to what Martin Luther King represented later.

Now, in the case of Johnson, unlike Truman, as Amelia would often say about Johnson--because she dealt with him directly; she and JL Chestnut dealt directly with Johnson, on this question of the two civil rights bills. And this was from Selma. And this is Martin Luther King, and Amelia almost being killed by this crazy sheriff, going across that bridge. And, they went to Johnson, and Bobby Kennedy, I believe, was in support of this thing, at that time. But, Johnson, in their opinion, actually went through a Damascus Road reaction, on the issue of civil rights: the most courageous thing he ever did in his life, were those two bills--especially the second one; especially the Voting Rights Act. That was an act of genuine courage. And, in that case, I would give him credit, with all his defects in the past, and other defects, I would give him credit for that decision.

But I would not, Truman. Truman was operating under difficulties. He was in danger of losing the election. He needed every vote he could get. He needed to get the vote out. And the sentiment among my generation, at that time, the sentiment was: civil rights. That was the sentiment in the military service. It was the sentiment coming out. There was a strong movement for it, which disappeared afterward. It disappeared under the influence of the McCarthyite movement, which Truman had set into motion. Joe McCarthy, or the "Pepsi-Cola Kid," who was created by the Communist Party of Wisconsin, which got him elected Senator, directly, and he lived on a subsidy from Pepsi-Cola with the sugar trust. And, suddenly, he decided, for his re-election to become an anti-Communist, and he went in the direction of Roy Cohn and Company, and ran this role. But this role was set up by Truman!

And what happened to the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and early '50s: It was demoralized. Because, if you were for civil rights, you were a Communist! And, it was this anti-Communism thing, the Soviet conflict, which was used to destroy these kinds of measures.

And concessions were made by Truman, yes. They were made under tremendous pressure. I don't give him credit for it. He's a political animal. And sometimes, however, in politics, you sometimes win something, if you know how make a political animal run down the right route. And that's what happened to him. He got the pressure. But, at that time, 1946-47-48, a lot of us--a lot of us!--had had our belly full, of putting up with this kind of stuff. And Truman needed the support of everyone he could get, for the Democratic Party. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was probably more responsible than anyone else, because he hated and feared her. [applause]

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