Note (Back) — CHAPTER 12
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Nor did his attitude change drastically in later years. In 1961, seven years after the Supreme Court's vital school integration decision, Truman was calling the Freedom Riders "meddlesome intruders who should stay at home and attend to their own business." His suggestion to proprietors of lunch counters undergoing sit-ins was to kick out unwelcome customers.[12-3] But if he failed to appreciate the scope of black demands, Truman nevertheless demonstrated as early as 1940 an acute awareness of the connection between civil rights for blacks and civil liberties for all Americans: