Henderson history: Harry Truman first sitting president to visit Henderson

President Harry Truman was two hours late pulling into Union Station Sept. 30, 1948; that’s not bad considering he was nearing the end of an 8,300-mile campaign trip to the West Coast and back.

It was the first time a sitting president had come to Henderson. Jimmy Carter's visit July 21, 1980, has been the only other time – so far. Carter also visited – before he was elected – Jan. 28, 1975, at the invitation of Dale Sights, to address the annual meeting of the Henderson Chamber of Commerce.

Other presidents who have visited before they were elected include Zachary Taylor in 1828 (who lived here most of that year), Theodore Roosevelt in 1900, Franklin Roosevelt in 1920, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. There have also been multiple visits by unsuccessful presidential candidates such as Democrats Horace Greeley in 1872, William Jennings Bryan in 1896, and James Cox in 1920.

The long train trek wasn’t the main reason Truman had to apologize for being late, however, according to The Gleaner of Oct. 1. The president’s special 16-car train “had been held up in Illinois by extra large crowds who ‘refused’ to let the train depart.”

Truman apologized again during his appearance later in Owensboro: “Hard-working Democrats ran me all over Southern Illinois and I lost two hours.” Part of the delay in Illinois was ascribed to an unscheduled 141-mile automobile trip around the southern end of Illinois.

Truman lived up to his nickname of “Give 'Em Hell Harry” in the coalfields of Southern Illinois. The coal miners ate it up when he blasted the “puppet-of-big-business Republicans who used the Taft-Hartley law to hack workers' rights” and who Truman said were trying to “nail the American consumer to the wall with spokes of greed.”

It was apparently the first time a presidential candidate had campaigned in Southern Illinois, and the crowd was boisterous in “breaking through police lines, swarming around and through the procession of cars and yelling a noisy greeting,” The Gleaner reported.

Truman’s remarks during his whistlestop here were tame compared to the speeches he gave earlier in Mount Vernon and Carbondale, Illinois.

At Union Station, he told the crowd that a Democratic victory in November would, as The Gleaner paraphrased it, “continue prosperity in the United States and continue to work for international peace and harmony.”

The one hard whack he gave the Republicans in his local speech referred to the Rural Electrification Administration. That comment probably was well received here, where Kentucky’s first rural electric cooperative began operating in 1937.

“The Democrats have always sanctioned cooperatives, but the Republicans denounced them by calling them socialistic,” Truman said. “You have a strong example of cooperative work in Henderson and Union counties. The REA supplies hundreds of homes with electricity. The Republicans think that is wrong.”

Truman spoke here only about five minutes, according to the Evansville Press, and the entire stop at Union Station was only about 10 minutes long. He was accompanied by his wife, Bess, and his daughter, Margaret, both of whom were presented baskets of flowers by local florists.

The president was introduced by state Sen. Stanley Hoffman, who was extremely brief: “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce to you the president of the United States, the honorable Harry S. Truman.”

Hoffman had told reporters beforehand that, “The people will come to see Mr. Truman, not me. I\'m not going to take up a lot of valuable time.”

And they came out to see him in droves. The crowd expected initially was 8,000, according to The Gleaner of Sept. 29, which noted caravans of cars from Morganfield, Dixon, Sturgis and Clay were coming, but it was listed as 10,000 in The Gleaner of Oct. 1. A manuscript history by Jack Hudgions places the number attending at 12,000.

City schools closed for the event. Superintendent H.L. Smith said in the Sept. 28 Gleaner there was no political motive behind the closure: “We believe the children will want to see Mr. Truman, not only because he is a candidate, but also because he is the president of the United States.” In the same issue Mayor Robert B. Posey asked local merchants to close at 1 p.m. for Truman’s visit.

Several local residents boarded the special train to accompany the president to Louisville. They included Hoffman, County Judge Fred Vogel, County Treasurer Lucille Farley, O.B. Springer, who headed the local Democratic party, WSON owner Hecht Lackey, Gleaner publisher Francele Armstrong, and Katherine K. Cooper, a staunch Democratic supporter.

The Gleaner of Oct. 3 carried an article by Armstrong detailing that train trip. She noted the president’s car was bulletproof – even the windows – and weighed three times as much as a regular rail car.

Because Truman spoke extemporaneously, a stenographer took down his words and provided reporters with mimeographed copies within a half hour of the end of every speech.

“At the stops, the Democrats running for office are called through the armored coach to appear on the back platform. But most of the time the train rolls through the country with the forward coaches carrying on conversations entirely detached from the occupants of the president’s coach.”

Keep in mind Truman’s last-minute, cross-country trip wasn’t for pleasure; he was literally running for his career. Practically every poll in the country saw him losing to Republican Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York. On July 26 Truman had fractured the Democratic Party by his executive order requiring racial integration of the armed forces, sparking the third-party candidacy of Strom Thurmond under the Dixiecrat banner.

That’s the context for Armstrong including a paragraph about Fletcher Martin, a reporter for the Black-oriented Louisville Defender, who was one of two Black journalists on the train. Armstrong – tongue in cheek, no doubt – said Martin “forgot to take bets on whether the president would mention ‘civil rights’ this side of Boston.”

As much as Truman accomplished for civil rights, California Gov. Earl Warren probably did more as the nation’s chief justice 1953 to 1969. The Warren court issued multiple landmark rulings on such diverse issues as racial justice, one man-one vote, and protections against police overreach. Many of those decisions were unanimous.

In 1948, however, Warren was Dewey’s vice-presidential running mate and appeared here Sept. 22 at Union Station, according to the following day’s Gleaner. Speaking to a crowd of 500 to 600, Warren called for national unity, saying “all virtues are not in one party, and all evil doesn’t flow from the other. We must have unity to have peace.”

He went out of his way to praise Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Alben Barkley of Paducah, who he called “a fine American and a fine statesman…. I hope that when Senator Barkley visits California he will be given as grand a reception as the one you have given me in Henderson.”

The Oct. 3 Gleaner carried an article about Truman’s return to Washington, D.C., where his executive staff turned out to greet him with a shout.

“I appreciate this welcome home,” the president said. “And if I hadn’t just shaken hands with 30,000 to 40,000 people, I’d shake your hands too.”

100 YEARS AGO

The Parent-Teacher Association of the Alves Street School for Blacks appeared before the city Board of Education and presented a proposal to move Douglass High School to a larger building, according to The Gleaner of Oct. 3, 1923.

The PTA proposal was for it to raise the money to buy the Virginia D. Kennedy home at Dixon and Alvasia streets and use it for a school. The purchase took place the following year for $3,500; it enrolled 60 students in 1924 and graduated six in 1925.

The building at Clay and Alvasia streets most people associate with the Douglass name was completed in 1932 and opened that fall. It closed when local schools were fully integrated in 1965 under threat of losing federal funding.

50 YEARS AGO

The last bundle of mail was shipped from the Hebbardsville Post Office, according to The Gleaner of Sept. 29, 1973. Postmaster Frances Priest was retiring, and no replacement was appointed.

She and her husband, Pruitt Priest, had operated a garage and then a country store at the site since their marriage in 1929. Her husband had been appointed postmaster in 1942; she took over when he retired from the job in 1963.

25 YEARS AGO

The Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Co.’s Sebree Mine was going to close at the end of the year unless another customer could be found, according to The Gleaner of Sept. 25, 1998.

The underground mine’s only customer was the Louisville Gas & Electric Energy Corp. The closure would affect 116 union miners and 21 salaried employees.

The Gleaner of Nov. 18 reported the company had not been able to find any new customers and that the mine would be idled. It opened in 1991 to serve LG&E.

Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com, on X, the social media forum once known as Twitter at @BoyettFrank, and on Threads at @frankalanks.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Henderson history: Truman first sitting president to visit Henderson