From this wiki on interviewer Davis Susskind
It hardly seems to be within the realm of possibility that he would be so bigoted (and even if he was bigoted so careless) to say something that objectionable.
The quote says “citation needed” and if it’s a hearsay recalled statement that’s unlikely to be able to be verified. Could he have actually been so stupid as to have actually said something like that?
He was the first person to recognize the new state of Israel in 1948.
One of his closest and earliest friends was a Jew named Edward Jacobson.
I don’t believe it.
Note: I’ve heard the allegation before that Bess Truman was antisemitic before. The way I read the OP it’s not that Truman had a problem with the idea of a Jew in his house, but that his wife had a problem with the idea of a Jew in her house.
And AIUI, that level of antisemitism was not particularly shocking for the time.
I have little trouble believing that Truman may have said what the OP quotes. I don’t know that it proves anything about him, rather than about his wife. I’ll be honest that Truman gets enough slack in my books for what he did for race relations that I will not condemn him for catering to his wife’s prejudices in pursuit of domestic tranquility.
hajario, I don’t have a cite for it, but ISTM that in the US History trivia quiz Jacobsen was said to have been one of Truman’s long time political allies and never allowed in his personal house because of his wife’s prejudices.
This is how it was presented in an NPR story a month or so ago. Bess Truman was upset with her husband for his stance on Israel, as she was anti-Semitic.
Truman must have been one pussy-whipped son of a bitch.
Here’s a (claimed) more complete version of the quote I found since posting the OP
Plus it indicates he wasn’t as friendly to the Jews in his private diaries.
In Truman’s case, I’m willing to believe that actions speak louder than words.
A wise man keeps peace on the domestic front.
]
Also, this was an era in which women often had a whole lot of say about what happened inside the home and no say at all about what happened outside it–it’s not about being whipped, it’s about rigidly defined separate spheres.
True, and as an example, I have personal knowledge of at least one Midwestern US real estate development in the late 1930’s that included a mandatory, perpetual convenant prohibiting Jews from not only purchasing property, but from being an overnight guest of anyone else’s. And the penalty proscribed was loss of the property by the owner without recourse to courts, AFAIK, legal in those days.
And while pre-war and post-war might seem like a world apart, we’re only talking 10 years with no significant civil rights movement at work.
An interesting sidelight which shows how paranoid some people can be…the covenant, attached to every deed, also prohibited the keeping of ducks, pigs, chickens and cattle inside the house. No penalty was given; presumably if someone heard a cock crow next door, the sheriff would be called and he would hand out a ticket. But if Josh Goldberg crashed on your couch overnight…
At least you didn’t have to shoot them on sight.
Yup…and I’m sure Lincoln said some fairly unfriendly things regarding negroes, but I think his actions were pretty substantially in their favor.
The actions he made for political reasons speak louder than the actions he made for personal reasons?
Viv-a-vis Truman’s remarks about Jews in his private diary:
It isn’t anti-Semitism to accuse a group of people of being selective in their demands for human rights. When the Israelis were bulldozing the homes of apparently innocent Palestinians because family members had participated in violence against Israel, it was suggested by some that this was exactly the kind of pogrom-like persecution the Jews themselves had suffered, thus they should have known better than to indulge in it. Just because one doesn’t unfailingly support all things Jewish doesn’t mean one is anti-Semitic.
It’s not possible for a cultural-genetic affiliation to “be selective” in anything. An invite to the club doesn’t arrive on every Jewish baby’s doorstep. “The Jews” can no more “be selective in their demands for human rights” than “The Kurds” can like hamburgers. You’re buying into ancient anti-Semitic notions of a unified Jewish consciousness.
I agree, and since he was business partners with Edward Jacobson in his haberdashery, I think that says a lot.
I may be buying into an ancient notion of a unified Jewish consciousness, and that may be mistaken. But mistaken does NOT equal anti-Semitic. Bigotry is born of ignorance, but ignorance doesn’t always produce bigotry. I’ll plead guilty to ignorance, not to bigotry.
From the info presented in this thread, my gut feeling is Truman (Mr.) may have been pretty liberal and a reasonable civil-rights dude, but his old lady (Mrs.) was not. Perhaps, to keep the peace, he had to give a little to get a lot.
It wouldn’t be the first compromise in American politics that looked wrong years later.
I highly recommend that folks interested in the subject check out Truman by David McCullough. An excellent read, as well as a detailed look at the man. He grew up in the era of Jim Crow laws, and was able to rise above them, while still carrying the taint of predjudice. He intergrated the military in response to the lynching of an African-American WWII vet. He told racist jokes, but when he found out about the lynching became enraged that this could happen to someone who fought for the country and thought, perhaps, this would prevent it from happening in the future.
As for Bess, he fell in love with her when they were in school, and pledged to marry her, even though her mother felt that he wasn’t good enough for her daughter. Truman really adored Bess, and when he was President, risked his life to travel home during a snow storm (Bess and Margret were in MO, as the White House was a wreck when Truman was in office). Bess gave him hell for doing this, as he was the President and shouldn’t be doing such things. Truman, when he got back to the White House wrote a letter telling her that she’d hurt him terribly by chewing his ass out. He never sent it. It was discovered in his desk drawer after his death.
I’ve read Truman, and have it on audio as well (It contains clips from his speeches, and has him playing the “Missouri Waltz” over the closing credits), which I’ve listened to many times on a long commute. But the book doesn’t say a thing about the Susskind incident, or Bess’ anti-semitism, which is news to me. The book portrays Bess as a well-educated and capable woman, and I find this anti-semitic bent surprising. I realize that one can be well-educated and still bigoted, but, then again, I really have no experience with anti-semitism. I knew bigits when I was growing up in the 1960s, but even my bigots weren’t anti-semitic.
Nice article in Salon that’s very helpful in this area.