Drafted by President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights in 1947, To Secure These Rights (subtitled “The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights”) remains one of the most important federal civil rights reports in United States history. Following the war, the president wanted to address the problem of inequality and drafted a fifteen-person committee to discuss how and why non-white citizens remained on an unequal footing in the United States despite the Constitution and its amendments meant to reverse that problem. The committee consisted of lawyers, religious figures, politicians, and labor leaders, all of them white except for a lone African American lawyer, Sadie Alexander. Nevertheless, the committee investigated the federal government for racial disparities, conducted hearings, interviewed witnesses, and solicited opinions before issuing its report to the president.