Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in November 1948--that was 1 year after my birth--President Harry Truman issued a highly controversial Executive Order. It called for beginning the process to bring to an end the longstanding policy of racial segregation in the Armed Forces of our Nation. Just a few years earlier, my father and three of my uncles had served on active duty for much of World War II. One of them--Bob Patton--was killed in a kamikaze attack on his aircraft carrier, the USS Suwannee in 1944. But all four of them--my dad and three uncles--were born and raised near the coal mining town of Beckley, WV, where my sister and I were born after the war. Neither my father nor my uncles ever discussed with us the implication of President Truman's Executive Order. Having said that, I later learned that many of the people in my native State opposed it, as did many people in Danville, VA, the last capital of the Confederacy and the place where my sister and I would grow up. The transition that followed President Truman's actions was not an easy one, but history would later show the steps he ordered 62 years ago this year were the right ones for our military and for our country. Twenty years after Truman's historic action, I was commissioned an ensign in the Navy and headed for Pensacola, FL, to begin the training that would enable me to become a naval flight officer. I had just graduated from Ohio State University--the Ohio State University, I guess--which I attended on a Navy ROTC scholarship.…”