 In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which eventually led to the end of segregation in the armed services.Housing segregation was a nationwide problem, widespread outside the South.Although the federal government had become increasingly involved in mortgage lending and development in the 1930s and 1940s, it did not reject the use of race-restrictive covenants until 1950, in part because of provisions by the Solid South Democrats in Congress.