This being Black History Month, I thought it would be a good time to talk about someone who should be recognized for his contribution to the progress of blacks: Harry S. Truman.

I know, you thought I was going to say Lyndon Baines Johnson. But before LBJ became the president it took to bring to fruition the goals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil-rights leaders, there was Truman.

His 1948 executive order desegregating America’s armed forces should be considered right along with the 1960s civil rights and voting rights acts as crucial to the progress of black people in this country.

Truman made a way for blacks to use the military as a means to advancement that private business didn’t offer. Colin Powell, the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a legacy of Truman’s order. As were Powell’s predecessors, including Gens. Roscoe Robinson Jr., Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., Vice Adm. Samuel L. Gravely Jr., and other black flag officers.

After Truman’s order, thousands of black enlisted men and women who served in the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force returned to their hometowns determined to gain in civilian life some semblance of the unbiased opportunities the military had provided. Many became foot soldiers in the civil-rights movement.

Truman’s act, when black people were still being denied the vote in the South, can’t be dismissed as a calculation toward winning election to the office he assumed after FDR’s death. It took political bravery to write off Southern Democrats who opposed any move to treat blacks as equals.

Truman had signaled his intent in a June 29, 1947, speech to the NAACP that deserves review today:

“It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights.

“When I say all Americans I mean all Americans. …

“We must make the federal government a friendly, vigilant defender of the rights and equalities of all Americans. And again I mean all Americans. …

“The only limit to an American’s achievement should be his ability, his industry, and his character. These rewards for his effort should be determined only by those truly relevant qualities. …

“There is no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry, or religion, or race, or color.

“We must not tolerate such limitations on the freedom of any of our people and on their enjoyment of basic rights which every citizen in a truly democratic society must possess.”

Strong words by a strong president who deserves to be included in any study of black history. That Truman typically isn’t mentioned during Black History Month says something about the way those four weeks are traditionally observed.

Changing the emphasis from a celebration of personalities to a study of important events and ideas in black history would be a better approach.

Instead of just studying Crispus Attucks, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, etc., have students spend extra time on the “three-fifths clause” in the Constitution, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Hayes-Tilden Compromise, the Niagara Movement, the Brown decision, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Do that and they will encounter plenty of historical personalities.

Taking such an approach would also make the study of black history more meaningful to those white students who barely hide their disdain for memorizing little nuggets like: Who was the inventor of the shoe last machine? That’s right, Jan Matzeliger, a black.

I certainly understand why Black History Month (a promotion from the Negro History Week we observed when I was a child) came to be a time to look at the achievements of individual African-Americans.

After slavery and during segregation, black parents and teachers wanted to make sure their children knew they weren’t inferior, that they had the ability to achieve anything. As evidence, they provided role models from American history.

Black children today still need to know they can do anything they set out to accomplish. But that is done best with programs that look beyond the individuals who achieved mighty things to the circumstances under which those achievements were made.

One person who helped change the circumstances for blacks was Harry S. Truman, 33rd president, and in his own way a civil-rights leader. He integrated the U.S. armed forces.