Posted on 07/13/2015 1:46:06 PM PDT by markomalley
The Missouri Democratic Party is changing the name of its annual “Jefferson-Jackson” fundraising dinner, deleting the names of slave-owning party heroes Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. The party will instead honor avowed racist Harry Truman.
Though the state party denied that the name change was due to racial issues, Democratic state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, who has called for the name to be changed, said that it was probably due to race. Every state Democratic party holds an early-summer Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently attended the dinners in Arkansas and Virginia.
But the Missouri party’s decision to instead name the dinner for Harry Truman might not have been the most racially savvy choice.
“I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman,” Truman wrote as a 27-year old in 1911. “Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a nigger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman.”
“[Uncle Will] does hate Chinese and Japs,” Truman wrote. “So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.”
Though Truman nearly lost the 1948 Democratic nomination when Southern Democrats walked out of the convention due to Truman’s mildly progressive racial policies at the time, his personal beliefs were pretty firmly racist.
As a U.S. senator, Truman told his daughter in a letter that the White House waitstaff was comprised of “an army of coons.”
Truman was not a racist.
America needs you Harry Truman, well, he was very young back then, he did end up befriending Catholics in Kansas. I think they were his bosses.
Here we go again, these Dumbocrat twits who forever pronounce themselves as agents of tolerance when wanting to dig up graves or ban flags or tear down statues or remove television programs from popular viewership are ultimately contradicted by their own real history.
President Truman integrated the once segregated US Armed Forces.
Some racist, he...
When I was young in the 50s it was well known that Truman had been a member of the Klan although at that time so were most politicians in certain areas of the country.
I once did a search and found nothing at all to confirm it but I am certain that he was. My Brother-in-Law was from South Illinois, knew quite a bit about Truman. One thing he told me was that he was a member of the Pendergast Gang.
My father told me that he got his start in national politics because the Pendergast Gang bragged to another big shot in the state that they could take a nobody and make him a U.S. Senator. HST was a minor ward boss at the time and they agreed that he was enough of a nobody for the Pendergast test.
Not a fan of harry Truman myself - but - why is it that those who throw stones are always the most intolerant? Never fails to amaze me. Perhaps it is their lack of Christian spirit?
If they really want to eliminate all artifacts of slavery and the Confederacy, they need to outlaw the Democrat party.
“Party of Slavery” at its founding two centuries ago, Party of Slavery today.
More cultural cleansing. First the Confederate flag, now this.
At this ever quickening pace, the Dems will have erased all traces of their deeply racist history in just a few more generations.
Bump.
In the book “O Jerusalem”, Truman is said to have called a friend (who was pushing for a Jewish nation) as a “Jewish bastard”.
There is some question as to whether the comment was mean as a slur or whether it was good-natured exasperation at his friend’s lobbying - but if we are going to play the slippery slope game, then Truman’s name should not be attached to the dinner because of either his anti-Semitism or his lack of class.
Can we just say Truman was a foul-mouthed little man and leave it at that? Maybe whatever greatness he had in him makes his faults stand out, so he has to be more strongly condemned -- as a racist -- than if he were just an average person who liked to toss around ethnic slurs.
Truman saved Berlin from the USSR with his airlift in 1948 - 1949, making him a hero to the German people. Like many, he was not all bad.
How about racist Robert Byrd .
How about racist Robert Byrd .
Why does Truman get a pass for being a member of the KKK?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.