Oral History Interview with
Oscar L. Chapman
Assistant Secretary of the Interior, 1933-46; Under Secretary
of the Interior, 1946-49; Secretary of the Interior, 1949-53.
Washington, DC
May 19, 1972
Jerry N. Hess
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This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry
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Opened 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
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Oral History Interview with
Oscar L. Chapman
Washington, DC
May 19, 1972
Jerry N. Hess
HESS: All right, Mr. Chapman, to begin this morning, we have a Xerox
copy from the New York Times of August 1, 1948. It's entitled:
"Professionals Take Full Charge of the President's Election Campaign."
It's an article by Anthony Leviero. The first two heading the list are
yourself and Oscar Ewing. What are your recollections when you look back
on those days? Did you regard yourself as one of the top professionals
that were taking over at this time?
CHAPMAN: Well, I never thought of myself as a professional. I thought
of myself as a crusader on the issues that Truman was fighting for, and
that was always utmost in my mind. I developed some experience in handling
a presidential campaign. I had traveled throughout eleven western states
for President Roosevelt on two campaigns for him, not as an advance man,
but as one of his many men that were gathering information and putting
together groups that we could get together to develop a campaign.
HESS: What two campaigns did you do that for Roosevelt?
CHAPMAN: Well, I was working in the ‘36 and '40 campaigns very much,
and in the '44, too. I worked in the ‘44 campaign. The '36 campaign was
an easy road. That was an easy campaign.
HESS: You didn't get into Maine and Vermont in that one?
CHAPMAN: No, I didn't. I didn't get into Maine and Vermont. I followed
the instructions of Jim Farley very carefully. He was chairman most of
that time, and he was a very good chairman. He had an exceptionally good
chairman, far better than the average man that could manage this kind
of a thing. He had a personality that was very intriguing and interesting
to people. He would give me instructions to go into certain areas, spend
some time there, as much as I felt was necessary, to gather the information
and get some people lined up and get them together and get them to work
together. That was a lot of my work.
HESS: To build an organization.
CHAPMAN: At that time it was to build an organization out in the states;
that was primarily what I was doing then.
HESS: Did you concentrate on the Western States?
CHAPMAN: Pretty much.
HESS: Did you work in Colorado?
CHAPMAN: Yes. I pretty much concentrated on the Western States. I didn't
go into the South at all, because as far as I was concerned, I was not
the best person to work in the South with them, because I had been too
outspoken on the issues of civil rights and things like that, and I had
done several things that gave my position a good airing, a good airing
to the public mind, of my feelings about civil rights for people, particularly
there the Negro was the principal one that needed help. However, there
are many other minorities that needed the same help, and many the very
same kind of help.
You see, you get to working in the civil rights question and you work
from a principle that this individual has inherent rights, as you do.
You begin to follow that through in a practical sense and to bring it
about in a coordinated way so that the help that you want to give to the
minority groups, and the Negro especially in history; he was so far behind
in doing the little thing that should have been done a hundred years ago.
There were so many things that were still undone, that had not been attended
to, in clarifying their rights and letting them exercise their rights.
HESS: What is your opinion of Mr. Roosevelt's view of civil rights?
CHAPMAN: Oh, I was very much impressed with his fundamental belief and
his sincerity in trying to help these people. He realized that there were
limitations to what any one man can do before he would lose his power
in getting together an audience.
You see, in President Roosevelt's last term, he was not too well, and
when he came back from the Yalta Conference (that was his last trip),
he was obviously, at that time, you could see his health had deteriorated
very seriously. I had the opportunity to see him, visit with him one day,
and I said, "Mr. President, I hope we can get some of these basic principles
nailed down in law and some legislation to protect them, because whoever
succeeds you will have a hard time trying to push the program that you
have been pushing."
He said to me, "You know, you're mistaken about that. People get the
wrong impression on that. As a matter of fact, a man that succeeds me
can push it further than I did, because the groundwork has been laid so
hard and so solid that my successor can even be more aggressive about
it and can push it further and probably faster than I did." He had gotten
the basic work done in terms of some legislation to create some of these
things.
We so often think of the civil rights program as, say, giving a minority
or the Negro, in this particular case, his rights to attend meetings with
white people, and participate in sitting in hotel rooms and not be excluded
from the right to use of a hotel, for instance right here in Washington.
They couldn't do it when we first started. Before we finished the second
term of President Roosevelt, practically every hotel had come around and
let us use the hotel for a Negro banquet, we'll say, and it didn't cause
us any trouble after awhile.
But what we had not accomplished, we had not gone far enough to establish
his economic rights and give him the opportunity to an economic foothold
into the present economy of our country and into the level of society
that we were trying to maintain. There is one of the weakest points that
we have at the present time on the Negro and the minority groups, the
economic opportunities that we've got to work out to help him. We've got
to give him some help, too, so he can be able to make his own living,
make a standard of living that is substantial and is adequate for his
health and welfare.
HESS: How can that be done?
CHAPMAN: That can be done in many ways. For instance, if we spent one-tenth
as much time trying to find a mechanism to work out help for the poor
people of this country, regardless of their color, as we spend on trying
to give Lockheed three hundred million dollars to keep their manufacturing
going, you'd find it mighty fast; you'd find it mighty quick, a method
to do it. It can be done. There are several ways. I don't claim to be
an expert to say that this is a better way to do it than we are now doing
it, but we should improve it. We ought to improve it each year a little
bit, and tighten it up in the administration as we go. That has to be
done, and over the course of years it will be improved.
HESS: Some black leaders point out that it's often difficult for some
of their men, some black men, to join unions, or to be accepted as trainees
in unions.
CHAPMAN: That was one of the hardest places that we had difficulty with,
but the union people...
HESS: That picture hasn't completely changed yet today, has it?
CHAPMAN: No, it hasn't completely changed, but it has begun. It has begun
with a substantial, solid backing, and it's only a matter of a few years
and you'll have that, I think, the other way. I think that will clear
itself away in a short time, partly because of the need for a labor force
that we need to have. You've got a certain number of unemployed practically
all the time. I think it was five and one half million this year, approximately.
HESS: Let's go back a little bit more to civil rights and the conditions
that existed here in the Nation's capital during World War II, shall we
say. Now, it wasn't until after World War II when Negroes could eat in
restaurants, was it not?
CHAPMAN: That's right.
HESS: And housing was and yet today is quite a factor.
CHAPMAN: Housing is still the hardest place to break through with harmony
with the community and so on.
HESS: Did you have a lot of pressure brought against the things that
you were trying to do by real estate interests?
CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. They were obviously trying to oppose any advance help
towards the black man's having a free choice of buying a livable house
in a community which he wanted. He had a lot of trouble with that. Now
that still exists to quite an extent. It's not cleared yet.
HESS: It still exists today.
CHAPMAN: Yes, it does. Now, the Roosevelt campaign contrasted with Truman's
quite differently, totally different. You had two types of men, two entirely
different types of men. Truman had, but most people didn't appreciate
it at first, Truman had a real understanding of what I consider the real
poor people, the real man on the farm and on the street looking for work.
Truman had a much better understanding of him and his problems than even
Roosevelt.
HESS: To what would you attribute that?
CHAPMAN: That was the difference in their backgrounds. The thing that
Roosevelt had that more than made up for that, was his sincerity and desire
to find a way to improve a situation that he found, and he wanted to improve
it. He put a whole bunch of us young fellows to work on certain programs
and tried to work them out, test them out, and try them out on different
people, and find a better way to do certain things for the poor people
that he wanted to help.
HESS: To what extent would political expediency enter into the thinking
of both men?
CHAPMAN: Truman had absolutely no thought politically whatsoever in what
he was doing on the issues. What you had to do with President Truman was
supply him with proper and adequate facts, give him the facts about a
situation, and he knew which way he wanted to go. You didn't have to convince
him about any part of the rights of these people. All you had to do was
convince him of the true facts of life of what we could do.
HESS: We were discussing the political views of the two men.
CHAPMAN: The two men had the same objective in mind, in their hearts,
but they had a little different approach about how to accomplish it, how
to do it, you see. As I said to you, Truman understood the minds and the
hearts of the poor people, the underdogs that needed help. What you had
to do was to supply him with a formula and with information, or facts,
that would support his position on this thing, and he wanted it solid
and sound.
Roosevelt would strike out and he would throw two or three balls in the
air at once. He’d have Congress fighting over three bills at one time,
and he’d always get two of them through. That was one of his unique ways.
But if he'd put three bills up there on Monday morning, and I've seen
him do it, he'd get through with two of them.
HESS: Would he do this on purpose, knowing that one would probably fail?
CHAPMAN: Yes.
HESS: He knew it would fail. He knew he wouldn't get all he wanted.
CHAPMAN: But he’d get it later. If he got the other two through, later
on they'd give him this one. He had a unique way of approaching Congress.
HESS: How did he do that?
CHAPMAN: Well, in the first place, he kept a rather close contact with
the leadership in Congress, much more than people realized. He kept a
close contact. The fact that he couldn't get around and go walking, getting
out of the way, he was more available all the time to see more people,
and he saw more people. He worked; that man worked the hardest I ever
saw anybody work. Roosevelt really was working. You see, when we were
working out a plan for him to visit, say, San Francisco, I would have
two or three Secret Service men from the White House; they would be there
with me, and I would work out with them the details of what I wanted to
do, then they would trim it and set it to a security base for protection.
They were the last word. I always left the last word to them on security,
and there were some very good men, very good men. They never did mix with
the political phase of it at all. They were there to watch the President,
looking out for him.
HESS: Strictly the security angle.
CHAPMAN: Strictly. They never interfered with our program at all.
Now, Roosevelt, as I said, had a different approach from Truman, but
it was extremely good for the time, the timing of it.
I want to read this when you get it put in typed form, and I'll probably
have to make some adjustments in the language if nothing more.
HESS: That's a normal thing. When we get the drafts back, we can make
changes, additions. It's usually an excellent place to make a good addition,
because quite often we find a place where we started to say something,
started to tell a story, and something came up and we did not. We can
just write it out in longhand and insert it, so when the final transcript
comes out, the full story will be there.
CHAPMAN: That's it. I want to be careful not to appear that I'm attacking
somebody in this thing. I don't want to get into that. All I want to do
is tell the story of my experience with Truman and what he said and what
he was doing, and how he was doing it. I caught his technique on that
first trip I handled entirely by myself.
HESS: The June trip.
CHAPMAN: I want you and me to research the records to see if he didn't
make a May trip as well as June.
HESS: He made a May trip in 1950. He went out to the rededication of
Grand Coulee Dam in May of 1950.
CHAPMAN: That's right, that's when he dedicated another generator.
HESS: For some reason they were rededicating the dam again.
CHAPMAN: That's what they all kidded me about, all the reporters on the
train. They said, "How many times are you going to rededicate this thing?"
I said, "Oh, every time we add another million kilowatts, we rededicate
it."
HESS: Was that the reason?
CHAPMAN: No, we really did dedicate these generators when we put them
in.
HESS: That's right, but it doesn't necessarily take the President of
the United States to do it though. What was the reason for the May 1950
trip?
CHAPMAN: Let's be sure to pinpoint that trip as to what time, what year
it was made in. My memory has absolutely done tricks on me with that trip
and I can't pinpoint it to the right year and time.
HESS: I feel pretty sure it was ‘50.
CHAPMAN: You're probably right. I just absolutely can't...
HESS: Then in ’48 was the June trip; that was the trip out to Berkeley
to receive the degree.
CHAPMAN: That’s right.
HESS: You also stopped by Grand Coulee on that one, too.
CHAPMAN: Do you remember, they had a big flood up there in Oregon, what
year was that? They had a big flood and we called the Red Cross in. There
were a lot of people killed in that flood in Oregon. What I did, I canceled
the part of the program I had lined up for Truman, because I had him scheduled
to ride in the head of the march for the Rose Petal Day--I’ve forgotten
what they called it--but that was the city of roses, beautiful roses there
at that time of the year in Oregon.
The roses were pretty, and they had beautiful girls lined up. The local
people handled that; I didn't have anything to do with it, for this was
something they were handling.
But I took Truman out of that niche and got him to cancel his part of
the program of marching in the parade, because too many people had been
killed and their bodies were still not found when we were there, and you
didn't want get the President in a position of having a good time visiting
Portland and seeing...
HESS: Right after a tragedy.
CHAPMAN: That's right. It was not a good time, and I called the President
and told him that I was to cancel it entirely, any speeches. He said "Set
the whole thing up to suit you." And I did. I set it up, and we had good
coverage on that with both of the radio stations and everything. We had
the Red Cross man to come and appear with Truman, and make his commitment,
that they would have their field men there tomorrow delivering some goods
to the families that had been very seriously damaged, some of them having
been killed. Then we brought in the Corps of Engineers and the Reclamation
Service to help develop some protective features to that river there.
We had had so much destruction that year, and had had then once before,
but it was many, many years before, and this particular year was the most
devastating that we'd had.
That incident is the thing I can't put together as to the time. It's
in my mind that it was the first of May, and I can't be certain of it
at all. I was out there, of course, ahead of him, on the June trip anyway.
He may have made two trips. I'm not sure.
HESS: I know that he went out West in June of '48 and in May of '50.
We can find out when the Oregon flood occurred and that will pretty well
pin it down.
CHAPMAN: Yes, that will pin it down, because that was specific and definite.
We canceled his program of participating in the rose parade, that and
one other program that they had for that night that I didn't think he
ought to go to, and he didn't.
Now, we came out of that from Oregon and I don't know whether we dedicated
the dam on that trip or the next, I've forgotten. I'll have to research
that to see. Now, that you can get from the files.
HESS: I feel quite sure that the dedication of the dam was in '50, and
in June of '48 he stopped by the dam. He visited the dam, but I don't
believe there was any dedication.
CHAPMAN: Just stopped by to see how it was progressing and so on.
Now as to the form of what my work consisted of during that period from
the convention time on, I devoted my full time to his campaign entirely.
I took leave without pay--no, that was another time I took a leave. But
I devoted full time to his campaign.
You should have in your files up there a book that thick, a very thick
book, of a breakdown of Truman's trip, where he stopped and what he talked
about in each place, because we got together for him, from each department,
things that Truman had made decisions about, something in that community,
and we would make a brief paragraph or two on that and refer to it as
to the subject matter which he spoke about and so on.
Now, a lot of that trip was keyed to the Reclamation Development Program.
Naturally since I was in the Department of Interior, I was interested
in reclamation, and I keyed a lot of it to that. I knew that better than
I did the other, and it was more substantial than anything else, except
the farm end of it was substantial, more so than the reclamation.
HESS: Is this the way an itinerary is drawn up? Different people with
different expertise in different fields will recommend where the President
should go in a certain area. Perhaps the Department of Agriculture could
recommend where he should speak in the farm belt, and yourself in the
Department of Interior could recommend where he should speak in the West?
CHAPMAN: Well, to be rather closely accurate to that idea, Charlie Brannan
and I, between us, pretty much indicated the places we preferred him to
speak, and the subject matter he should cover in that area. That was what
I referred to you in my last interview, that Brannan had done a magnificent
job of really putting together a fine schedule for the President, and
the subject matters he ought to discuss and where. He did a superb job
of that and it made the President's work come out looking better at the
end, because he placed him properly.
HESS: At the time that you would recommend subject matter for the specific
speeches, did you also turn in a draft of a speech, or an outline of a
speech?
CHAPMAN: No, I never drafted a speech. I was not a speechwriter. I would
give him the subject matter.
HESS: Would you get someone in the department to submit drafts?
CHAPMAN: Well, what I would do, for instance, if we were going to Kansas,
Omaha and through there, some of Charlie Brannan's men would prepare drafts
of speeches.
HESS: Farm subjects.
CHAPMAN: Yes, Charlie himself would pitch in on that.
Now, do you want to have a meeting next Friday?
HESS: Fine. Same time next Friday?
CHAPMAN: Same time next Friday. This is the best time for me to cut out
appointments from clients at this hour in order to finish up my homework
in the office here.
HESS: Do you want to cut it off for today?
CHAPMAN: Yes.
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