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Harry S. Truman

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:150.00 - 200.00 USD
Harry S. Truman

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Auction Date:2013 Sep 18 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS as president, one page, 7 x 9, White House letterhead, January 7, 1948. Letter to Basil O’Connor, President of the American National Red Cross. In full: “I appreciated yours of December thirty-first with an invitation to appear at the American National Red Cross Convention to be held in San Francisco, California in June. I doubt the advisability of my appearance at that time—First, because the Congress no doubt will be winding up its business, and Second, because there are two political conventions in the immediate neighborhood of that date. I’ll be glad to talk with you about the situation sometime when you are down here.”

The conventions mentioned by Truman were the upcoming Republican and Democratic National conventions held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1948. Truman had shown strong support for the federal government’s involvement in civil rights, as evidenced by a speech he had given the year before in front of the NAACP. In response to this civil rights platform, the entire delegation from Mississippi, and half the Alabama delegation stood up and walked off the convention floor in protest during the roll call. They were led by Strom Thurmond (at that time still a Democrat), and went on to form the States’ Rights Democratic Party (better known by their nickname, the Dixiecrats) who convened their own convention in Alabama, and subsequently named Thurmond as their presidential nominee. Although Harry Truman was the sitting President of the United States, he was actually kept off the ballot in Alabama as a result of this defection. Newsweek magazine called the 1948 Democratic National Convention ‘the worst-managed, most dispirited convention in American history.’ In fine condition, with a bit of trivial brushing to signature.