camp where there was wine, women, and song. in both cases, his prior attitudes, which were public attitudes become genuinely admiring of jack johnson. the two had a lot in common. they are both entertainers. he quoted shakespeare to annoy the crowd which screamed kill him, kill him over and over. but london's racial studies are really vital to his work. >> okay. i think we have to finish. first of all, let's thank both the panelists and the staff for all the work they did. [ applause ]. and then she secondly i want to remind you we have reception and the pop-up exhibit behind you. and you have the owner of the exhibit if you want to question some of the items. he will be here as well. enjoy the reception and thanks

for coming. >> you're watching american history tv on c-span3 every weekend during congressional breaks and on holidays too. follow us on twitter. like us on facebook. and find our programs and schedule on our website, c-span.org/history. coming up next on the presidency, library and richard levinson confronts three myths about presidents and their health. and how in other cases have saved them all without the public knowing. the central the library, part of the free library of philadelphia hosted this hourlong event. >> i'm pleased to introduce the

free library's own dick levinson. in addition to being our speaker tonight, dick the is a librarian here in the central senior services department of the library and he is really different was really his -- he was one of the motivators behind this expire series on presidential history. it would not have come without his effort. he has worked at the library since 2009. he conceived, promoted and hosted ava right of intellectually challenging programs for mature adults here at parkway central library. he went a decade at the college of physicians in philadelphia. dick is a history buff in general but is particularly focused on issues of presidential health.

he will shed light on desperately ill and dying presidents who deceased the public to the stay in power. i asked if he was going to talk about our current candidates and their health conditions, but he assured me this is entirely historically focused. i hope you enjoy his talk. and with that -- dick levinson. [ applause ]. >> i want to thank jeff cooper for that gracious introduction. our program on robert kennedy has proven to be so popular, we worked it from 108 to the auditorium. so please join us there next week. you know, so often in life the people who are laboring behind the scenes doing the real work never get any recognition at all. i want to take a quick minute

now to thank three remarkable welcome. i'm here to tell you that without them tonight's program and our entire american presidency series would never have seen the light of day. now, the first key theme i want to focus this evening is the idea that american presidents have always gotten the very best health care available in whatever era they lived. well, i want to tell you that this is a charming myth and problems began almost immediately with george washington. you know, after retiring from the presidency, washington's real job was administering the family plantation mt. vernon. and particularly he would spend hours 6th day writing out on his

plantation keeping a close eye on what was going on and intervening whenever necessary because he was a tough boss. one day in december 1799, washington wrote out it was 10:00 in the morning and it was snowing. and is soon the snow turned over into a cold, relenting rain. washington was not property dressed for the winter. in minutes, his head and neck were secced. soaked. he didn't do the common sense thing you and i would have done immediately. he did not change out of his wet clothes and put on dry ones. he answers some letters, did various projects around the house, enjoyed a leisurely

dinner the. he didn't change out of his clothes until it was time for bed. it was not surprising that in two days he is feeling really, really sick. and the locust of the problem was washington's throat. what the problem was depends which historian you want to believe. some say that he had a terrible case of tonsillitis. others it was a very bad strep throat. some historians have even referred to the soft tissue at the front of his voice box speculating that that tissue grew so large and inflamed that it began to choke off washington's windpipe. but this is not in dispute. it became agony for the former president to swallow. and breathing was pretty hard too. and this was all complicated by the fact that in washington's

time, american medicine was mired in the middle ages. the prevailing medical model suggested that human beings were made up of various fluids and the key to good health was keeping them in proper balance, the right alignment as if humans were automobiles. there weren't very many tools you could use to balance those humors. there was blood letting and fusion. blood letting is danger theous and you can do a lot of damage if you didn't know what you were doing. i bet there are some fans of robin hood here in this audience. and i bet they remember in most versions of the robin hood legend, robin hood meets his by

a relative who betrayed him. he had members of the household staff bleed him. and when the three doors who were ultimately caring for washington arrived, what do you think happened then? they bled him again. not just once but repeatedly. on a practical level what they did was to destroyed whatever strength or resilience the former president had left and he would so desperately need to recover from this infection and get well. as a result of this he was in a very weakened state. the youngest, a man actually named dr. dick, argued strongly on behalf of a new experimental

treatment, a trach on the my. he wanted to make an incision in washington's throat believing it would make it easier for the president to breathe. the two older doctors had a fit because they were obsessed with the idea that if an experimental treatment was tried and he died, they would go down as the doctors who killed george washington. given he was in a weakened state, we don't know if he would have survived if the trach on the my would have been performed. but the sad truth is by refusing to allow dr. dick to do the trach on the my they guaranteed the one outcome they were trying most to a avoid. so now we're going to take a big jump ahead in history, the year is now 1881. the president is an ohio republican james a. garfield.

we are now 16 years from the assassination of abraham lincoln. and people in the white house still haven't gotten the message, haven't read the memo, haven't really learned what we need to do to protect american presidents and keep them secure. like some of the people in this room, james garfield had a summer house at the jersey shore. and one very hot summer he simply wanted to be reunited with his family. he wanted to take the train from washington, d.c. to the jersey shore. and people in the white house allowed him to drive to the train station with his secretary of state james g. blain in blain's carriage with no security whatsoever. when they arrived at the train station they were met by another member of garfield's

administration, robert todd lincoln, the son of our most revered president. but no security whatsoever. that's how garfield's assassin, charles gu toe, was able to sneak up from behind, pull out a pistol and shoot him point plank in the back. garfield ex claimed, oh, my god, what is this, and collapsed on the ground. now, let me say something about charles gu toe and what it was he was attempted to accomplish. he was a low level federal employee. he was a clerk in one of the federal agencies. he was a pathetic little man. and it's also i think true to say that he was insane. this is a man who sadly failed at everything he tried to do in

life with the single exception of killing president garfield. he suffered from delusions of grandeur. he felt he was put on earth to do missions from the almighty. one of the missions was to make it possible for chester allen arthur, who was actually garfield's vice president, to become president. the republican party was divided into two factions at this time. and gu toe was a great believer in the faction headed by chester allen arthur. so he believed by committing this heinous act that he was carrying out god's will and securing his own destiny. well, in terms of what happened to garfield, i want to talk for

a minute about the state of medicine. once again, american medicine was lagging behind. i think that many of you have heard something about joseph lister, the pioneering british surgeon and humanitarian. as early as 1867, lister had demonstrated by using carbolic acid it was possible to sterilize medical instruments before doing surgery. it was possible to clean out a patient's wounds so he or she would not die of infection like millions and millions of people before. and lister believed this so strongly that when america celebrated its great centennial in 1876 and here in philadelphia there was that terrific world's fair, the wonderful centennial

exhibition, lister came here because it was an opportunity to talk to some of the most important members of the medical community based on the east coast. so lister actually gives a talk as part of that centennial exhibition. the room is packed. all the most important doctors from the eastern part of the united states were there, including willard bliss, the man who would ultimately be responsible for garfield's care. but unfortunately, you know, this is before the era of scientific medicine. germs could not be seen. and so those doctors wrote lister off as a well meaning cook. this is when american doctors did not wash their hands before seeing patients. they didn't sterilize their instruments before operating. and they took particular pride in wearing their faithy blood

encrusted white coats week after week, month after month, year after year. it was a point of pride for many of them. so in terms of garfield's situation, i'm sorry to say, what happened is as a result of the doctors constantly poking and probing at garfield's wounds with their unwashed fingers and unsterilized metal probes, the people who wanted to help garfield actually killed him. the bitter irony is if ever a man was meant to survive, james garfield was that man. he lingered for more than 60 days after being shot. you know, if he had only received less attention from doctors he almost certainly would have survived. now, i would like to quickly call your attention to a couple

of points. i think it's very interesting that america survived without any real president for nearly 80 days. and we were absolutely fine. there were no ill effects whatsoever. so i think it tells the you something about how much america's position in the world has changed from 1881 to now. secondly, i want to say something about the tragic case of robert todd lincoln. he was present for all three presidential assassinations that occurred during his lifetime. i wonder what the statistical odds are of something like that being possible. and i wanted a man whose name is

often forgotten today. charles perbs. he was the chief surgeon of what was known as the freeman's hospital in washington, d.c. he is the first black doctor to care for an american president. we should all know his name. and i think it's a shame that we do not. well, now, i want to jump ahead in history once again. we're now at the year 1901. the president is another ohio republican, william mckinley. and in the city of buffalo they are having a great international exposition, a world's fair. and the organizers said, well, gosh, we have to invite the president and give him an opportunity to come. and mckinley wanted to come and give a speech. but here again, we're now 36 years from the time that abraham

lincoln was assassinated. and we're still doing things the same way. people in the white house allowed william mckinley to become a sitting duck. they arranged for him to participate in an open receiving line where any interested party could join the line, greet the president, shake his hand. and that's exactly what his assassin did. and this gentleman was an anarchist. he believed the best thing to hand for mankind is to rise up and kill as many presidents, prime ministers and kings as possible. and he certainly intended to do his share. this man was immaculately dressed. he certainly seemed to fit right in. but interestingly, people noticed that this hand was covered by a small tee towel.

and that they assumed was that he was hiding some sort of injury or wound. in reality, when this man got very close to mckinley in the line, he whipped away the tea towel. hidden in the hand was a small caliber pistol. he proceeds to shoot mckinley several times point-blank in the stomach. even today that's a very serious injury. and i'm afraid that from that point on everything that could go wrong did go wrong. first of all, in a community the size of buffalo there was at least one gentleman with a national and international reputation as a surgeon. and wouldn't you know on the day that mckinley is shot, he's hours away from the city consulting on another case. so a stomach wound is serious business. the president needed urgent medical attention.

and the only doctor they could get on such short notice was an ob/gyn. so really not qualified for the mission he was given. and can you imagine the terrible pressure that this man was under? it must have been awful. and so it's really not very surprising that he didn't clean the president's wounds properly. didn't close them up properly afterwards. those two mistakes guaranteed that william mckinley would die. once mckinley was dead, the first thing that his number one paet ron and friend, mark hannah. mark hannah was an ohio businessman and important political boss at this time. when he learned mckinley was dead he said the following. now, that damn cowboy is president of the united states. and he was referring to theodore

roosevelt, who was in fact, our vice president. and how t.r. happened to be vice president is a really intriguing story. roosevelt might have been a devout republican, but he was a liberal. by temperament and inclination he was a reformer. and that was enough to make him public enemy number one in the mind of tom platte, who was the republican boss in the state of new york. and the man who ran one of the most powerful and effective political machines in all of america. and platte had had a belly full of roosevelt and his conscience, his complaints, and objections. and he resolved to use his political power to force roosevelt onto the political ticket of william mckinley. and he figured that if he could do it, he'd never have to be bothered with roosevelt again.

well, i guess that was not a very good call. the second thing that i want to focus on tonight is the idea that presidents have always been truthful and honest with congress and the american people about the state of their health. well, sadly, that is another myth. that's true partly because people are never, or almost never give up great power voluntarily. and the other thing, and i would say if there's one takeaway from tonight's talk, you're about to hear it. the other thing is that a president's short-term political needs always trump longer term health concerns. always, always, always. the first president that i want to talk about in relation to this is actually a democrat,

finally. grover cleveland, who was a democrat from the state of new york. the only american president to serve two nonconsecutive is terms. and he had the misfortune to serve his second term during what was the worst economic crisis in the united states until the great crash of 1929. and, you know, cleveland was not a brilliant man, not an intellectu intellectual, but he had a lot of common sense. and he embraced the gold standard, which meant he did good on wall street. and i think was slowly but effectively working his way out of this mess when one american he awakes to discover a lump on the roof of his mouth that had not been there two or three days before.

subsequently, a biopsy reveals that the lump was cancerous. and now cleveland is truly panicked. for two reasons. he had made a commitment to address the joint session of congress and to lay out his strategy for getting america out of this financial crisis. can you imagine if a president of the united states makes a commitment like that and then doesn't show? i mean, that sends a pretty powerful message that something is terribly wrong. the other thing cleveland was worried about is his vice president. because as a result of a political deal he had accepted as his vice president a man named adelaide stevenson. not the stevenson we remember from 1952 and 1956, his grandfather. this stevenson was a very popular politician, ameable man.

he was an inflationist. he was a believer in soft money for the coinage of silver. well, to people on wall street, that made him worse than satan himself. one of the things that was concerning cleveland was the idea that died and add light stevens became president, the financial institutions of the country would simply collapse. that is why grover cleveland had to endure a secret operation on a yacht off long island sound. those doctors jury-rigged a chair, strapped the president in and began to operate. in fairness, given some of the other comments i made earlier about doctors in american medicine, these doctors did a wonderful job. they not only removed the growth

but they got all the cancer. we know this is true because cleveland lived on in very good health until the year 1908. but there was still a serious problem. because cleveland, as you recall, had made this commitment to address a joint session of congress. and the problem was you don't have to take the very much tissue out of somebody's mouth before they can no longer communicate in a way so that other people can understand him. interestingly, medical progress never moves along, you know, a unified front at the same time. it's always, you know, moving ahead here, falling back there. and fortunately at the time that cleveland had this surgery, one thing we did know how to do was vulcanize rubber.

so they crafted a prosthesis. he wore it in his mouth. they could understand him. the crisis passed. everything was fine. but you now know what a close call it really was. so now i'd like to say something about a president that you know a lot about, woodrow wilson. a man who was previously president of princeton, and governor of new jersey. it was little known and understood during wilson's own time and little understood today. woodrow wilson was a very fragile man. we believe he began suffering mini strokes as early as 1896. if he had the misfortune to have been born later in history in a time when there were very aggressive capable newspapers like the "new york times" and the "washington post" or even

later when there was a 24-hour news cycle or internet, the man never would have been governor of new jersey, let alone president of the united states. so in that way he was lucky. wilson's first term was a huge success. the volume of important progressive legislation that washed through congress and onto the presidents desk that wilson accidentally signed. incredible. this only worked because wilson had a white house doctor who understand him, who knew what a fragile man he was. as a result of this prewar period, wilson took a long nap every day. every week he was able to play golf and participate in carriage rides. and so everything worked because he was not pushed too hard. with the coming of world war i, everything changes. you know, there are no easy or

brief hours when your nation is at war. wilson had no not only cope with that, but accidentally he had to face that peace conference in paris facing some of the toughest politicians that europe has ever produced. george clemens of france said war is too important to be left to generals. david lloyd george of britain arguably the craftiest prime minister britain has ever had. and we're not even saying anything about mr. orlando, the prime minister of italy. well, you know, during this period, wilson began having serious is problems. because sometimes when a person has a life-changing medical event, a heart attack or a stroke, his or her personality changes too. woodrow wilson had always been a proud man, someone on the stubborn side. but as time went on he became

more and more rigid and unwilling to compromise. and, folks, i can tell you except in the republic of north korea, compromise is really still where it's at, you know, in the realm of democratic participatory politics. but wilson took a delegation to the peace process. not a single republican was there. that was a grave error. when he came back, he wanted the senate to approve the league of nations treaty as it had been written word for word. well, that was never going to happen. i think if wilson had been a healthier man, he would have attempted to negotiate with the republicans in the senate and they probably would have been able to achieve something. but instead, wilson was inflexible and he decided that he was going to take this fight to the american people. and so he embarked on an

ill-considered whistle-stop tour across the country giving five, six, seven speeches a day. you know, and political speeches then were much longer than they are now. this of course was in a period before there was air-conditioning. so frequently he was spending a great deal of time speaking in the broiling sun. and so one day when the tour reached pueblo, colorado, his body had had enough. and he suffered a massive, debilitating stroke. they turned the train right around and returned to washington, d.c. and i want to mention to you that woodrow wilson virtue is alley disappears the last 18 months of his presidency. there was one cabinet meeting where his >> adrian:s and handlers attempted to see how well he could do. and it turned out to be a grave

mistake. members of wilson's cabinet who had not seen him since the stroke were shocked at what an ill, broken piece of equipment he appeared to be. and it was very clear that wilson could no longer concentrate on anything for more than 10 minutes at a time. so that experiment was never repeated. and interestingly, robert lansing, wilson's secretary of state, tried to have him removed from office on the basis that, you know, he was incapacitated and was incapable of carrying out the responsibilities of a president. well, nobody would support him. and so he was unable to accomplish anything. and you might be asking yourself, wilson had a vice president. where was he? what was he doing? this was a very different era. this is a time when vice presidents were regarded a lot like children. you know, fine for them to be

seen, not so good for them to be heard. and wilson's vice president, thomas marshall, you know, frequently told the following story. two american brothers, one ran away to sea, the other became vice president. and neither one was ever heard of again. so you really do get a sense of what things were like. now, there are a lot of people in this room excited about the prospect of hillary clinton becoming our first female president. well, i have to tell you been there, done that. we can check off that box already. because once wilson returned, his wife essentially became acting president of the united states. we know this because pieces of legislation, executive orders, other things would go up to the residence for wilson's signature and they would come back signed.

but white house insiders knew it wasn't woodrow wilson's signature, it was mrs. wilson who had signed. you know, the more you look into this, the better the case you can make was mrs. wilson was actually our first female president. i would like to jump in time to franklin deleno roosevelt. in the 1940s, she came to a social event at the white house. it is possible because mrs. wilson was much, much younger than her late husband, president wilson. she comes into the white house for a social occasion. she sees the president. and she thoughtlessly repeats to many other people in and around the white house that the president looks awful. he looks like he's dying. and at that point fdr, secretary

of labor francis perkins takes her aside and said the president has a great and terrible job to do and he's got to do it even if it kills him. don't ever say that again. interestingly, when we look at the health history of fdr, aside from the polio you're familiar with, when he enters the white house in 1933, the most serious medical complaint that he has is a chronic sinus condition. so the navy assigns him a doctor, ross mcentire, who is an ear, nose, and throat man. for a while, things are fine. but over the years the unrelenting pressure of dealing first with depression and then clearly with a world war that is can coming, whether americans wanted it to or not, coupled with the crazy hours he was keeping and the unhealthy diet

that he enjoyed, it was just a matter of time until fdr was suffering from serious heart disease, hypertension, and high blood pressure. mcentire apparently oblivious to the all of them. and it wasn't until the president's daughter anna insisted that the navy provide a second medical opinion that howard bruin was brought in to examine the president. man, he was horrified. after he examined him he wanted to put him on bed rest for months, possibly years. in the midst of a national crisis, it just couldn't happen. but what did happen is that fdr, in essence, now has two doctors, good old ross mcentire who was good with the public and good in

the media, and howard bruin was caring for him. he did what he could. he improved the president's diet, gave him digitalis, built in more time for the president to rest and sleep. and the goal was simply to keep him alive as long as they possibly could knowing that weren't going to be able to do it forever. so i would now like to mention that in 1944 hollywood decides this is the right time for a woodrow wilson bio pick. fdr is is very interested in this. after all, he had been woodrow wilson's assistant secretary of the navy. so he did have a personal connection to wilson. and so as fdr is watching this movie, which gets to be very

grim at the end, we know that fdr grimaced, looked at the screen and proclaimed loudly, that's not going to happen to me. and it didn't, but something else did. i want to leave the fdr portion on of this talk by bringing you back to the day that his vice president harry truman realized he would soon be president. and, you know, this relationship is very sad. because truman idolized roosevelt. all through his political career, his time in congress. one of the president's staunchest supporters. and roosevelt, however, never found time to spend with truman. in all the days that harry truman was vice president, roosevelt was with him, just the two of them, on two occasions. one was a long ride in an automobile when it was pouring

rain. and the second was a private lunch at the white house with the two of them. at this lunch, roosevelt attempted to pour himself a cup of coffee. his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't do it. and truman had to do it for him. and harry truman, perhaps not the best formally educated person in the nation, was a very smart man. nobody's fool. and he knew that he would soon be the president himself. now, the next theme that i would to explore is this idea that television is going to change things. that once division gains a critical foot hold in american life, you will not see the chicanery. i have a great case study,

dwight david eisenhower. in 1955, a as you all know, eisenhower has a massive heart attack. so the people around eisenhower bring in the most imminent paul dudley white. he examines eisenhower. tells people in the white house we'll be lucky if he lives long enough to complete his first term. there was no question in his mind that if eisenhower was lucky enough to survive that he would retire and live a very quiet life beginning in 1956. you know, the problem was eisenhower liked being president. mrs. eisenhower liked being first lady. there were a whole bunch of eisenhower friends, cronies.

and they wanted to keep them. so what actually happens is both a fascinating story and a scandal. the political people beat up on paul dudley white so badly he signs a public letter stating the polar opposite of what he believes. he signs a public letter saying that eisenhower is a good candidate for a second term in the white house. there is another problem that all the tv reporters were pretty aggressive and they sure wanted to know a lot about eisenhower's health and they were steicking their noses in all sorts of places the white house did not want them to be. fortunately, eisenhower has a great press secretary. a man named jim haggerty, who becomes one of the first

presidents of abc news. and haggerty realizes if you can't stonewall them you can bury them in minutia. he scheduled multiple press briefings every single day. the poor president couldn't have a bowel movement without the american people needing to know. what did the president have for lunch, who visited, what did they talk about. by god, haggerty pulled it off. he had them so busily focused on what he wanted them to focus on that they weren't asked the questions that presumably would be asked today. well, i want to wrap up by giving you a homework assignment. i'm old enough to believe that

there is no valuable educational experience without a homework component. so the next time you're at your neighborhood branch of the free library, i want you to tell the librarian you would like to see a copy of the u.s. constitution. and if there are too many of you, for each person to have his or her own copying you can use a library computer and see it online. and what i want you to look at is the 25th amendment to the u.s. constitution. that is the amendment which was ratified in 1967 that attempts to truly address all the issues that we have been talk building this evening. there is a section of this amendment that allows a president to name a new vice president when that office is vacant as long as the person is confirmed by the congress.

there is a critically important section in the 25th amendment that allows a president who is temporarily incapacitated to transfer power to his vice president and then reclaim it later when he is able to do so. and, you know, i'm not an historian. i'm not an expert on iran contra. but one of the elements running through here is the idea, and i think this is correct, that reagan had some sort of surgical procedure involving anesthesia that was close to decision making around iran contra to raise questions whether reagan, or any president in that situation, was really able to make truly appropriate decisions.

the last section of this amendment, the fourth section, is the potential ticking time bomb. because going back to the woodrow wilson situation where the president is incapacitated but alive and determined to hang on, that last section of the 25th amendment provides a road map for presidents in that situation to be removed in members of their cabinet and the american congress agrees. this amendment is so critically important. and i think it's just a matter of time, no one knows when, you know, when we're going to get a dry run on this section floor and we'll find out whether or not it truly does work. well i want to thank you for being such a great audience tonight. and now -- [ applause ]. -- i'm going to take my life in

my hands and attempt to answer some questions. >> hello. thank you. that was a really wonderful talk. >> thank you very much. >> in this last sunday's inquirer there was an article on george w. bush and his hyperthyroidism which turned to be hypothyroidism. one thing that struck me about that article is he was running, he was doing running and all of his security people had to go running with him. so that made me wonder who do you think was -- i mean, however you want to form this. who do you think was a very healthy president?

>> well, harry truman i think was a remarkably healthy president. you know, look at both john adams and thomas jefferson. you know, andrew jackson is an amazing case. because there's a guy who functioned as president for, you know, eight years with bullets in his body that could never be removed. you know, failing eyesight. somebody who in theory, i mean, should never have been able to do the job. but he was. is and there are people who speculated that that is really what accounts for jackson's hair-trigger temper. he was an angry guy. but we now know he was in terrible pain every single day of his presidency. but, you know, that's a short list of some of our healthiest

presidents. >> barack obama? >> you know, it's very interesting to me. my impression -- and, again, i'm just a librarian. i'm not a historian. but my impression is that in 2008, john mccain, a much older man and much more fragile, at least on paper than barack obama, more forth coming about the state of his health and his health history than the much younger and presumably much healthier barack obama. so i think that's interesting. >> the 25th amendment you had talked about, it sounded effectively what it is saying that the president that is unhealthy is impeaching. >> impeaching is the wrong word. because being ill has nothing to do with committing crimes or breaking the law. it's just something that happens.

so this amendment does create a pathway to remove the president could which is could also be done through impeachment. but i don't like the impeachment connotation because we're talk building a medical issue and not -- >> okay. >> barkley used to tell that story about the two brothers. and he would get his usual laughs. james haggerty, as you know, created the image of the summer white house when eisenhower was in texas. he would make sure that important announcements came from texas. the question i would like to ask is william henry harrison. you didn't mention his illness and whatever happened to him in his 30 days. >> you know, i'm trying to think about this.

quickly, i think we all know william henry harrison, the first american president to die in office. i'm not he was the -- see, unfortunately, i'm conflating william henry harrison and zachary taylor. i have to be honest with you about the fact that i just didn't expect harrison to come up. [ inaudible question ] >> four hours in the rain, and i suppose he didn't take his wet clothes off. i was just wondering what the doctors did with him for 30 days, before he died. tyler, of course, had to fight for the fact that he was now president. they were trying to say you're just acting president. that was one of those compromises. >> you know what, we're going to have you give the next talk.

but that's an excellent point. >> yeah. >> thank you. >> may have had mental illness like depression or something like that, and how it may have been factored in? >> well, gosh, you know, you're asking a very important question. i don't think that we have enough time to do it justice. you know, my mind goes immediately to abraham lincoln. every woman this man ever loved died. so i mean, you can't tell me that he didn't have issues with depression. you know, i think that depression among american presidents is probably much more common, you know, than we tend to think or acknowledge. you know, temperament is so important. i'm glad you brought this up. because there is a wonderful book by the late james david barber called "presidential

character." that book talks about presidential temperament and how personality either really equips you to do well in the presidency, you know, calvin coolidge, who lost a son while he was in the white house, that was the reason that he declined to run for a second term. you know, had terrible problems with depression, and didn't last very long after leaving the white house and retiring. i think if we, you know, took a few minutes and thought about it, depression in the presidency is a very serious issue. it is just beyond the scope of this particular talk. >> during truman's presidency, we amended the constitution to limit the presidential terms to two terms in office. >> yes. >> at the time i think there were a lot of people who said this is reallipublicans who don want another roosevelt. do you have any insight into

roosevelt's failing health, which was an open secret may have had something to do with the limiting of times that someone can be in office because we may have a situation again where someone is so ill and dies in office from his illness. >> well, you know, i'm sure that that element, i mean, you know, was sort of percolating through that conversation. you know, i just have to say, though, that no sooner had the republicans managed to push that amendment through when they come up with a president who is so popular, i mean, dwight david eisenhower could have been elected to four terms himself. so it is just a matter of be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. >> there has been 43 presidents, four were shot and killed and two were shot do you think it is the most dangerous job in america? >> you know, these very difficult, very sad days, it is

becoming increasingly difficult to say. you know, what the most dangerous job in america is. you know, it is unfortunate that anybody who wants to be president, i think, really has to consider the possibility that, you know, something untoward might happen. and you know, one of the things that we've seen repeatedly recently is that if people are very determined and if people are comfortable sacrificing their own lives, boy, it is possible to do a lot. i don't think that there is really anybody who is absolutely safe or totally protected. >> so if eisenhower's heart attack was that serious, how was it that he not only survived his

second term, but i think he died nine or ten years after leaving office. did he change his diet? was it that we left out, what? >> there were a number of things that come into play here. i think that luck is certainly a factor. i think that it is very likely that the president not only changed his diet, but you know, one of the things that eisenhower was known for is somebody who ate all his meals. amazingly quickly. i mean, maybe that's connected to his military training in some way. but boy, you know, he was a guy who would work through a multi course dinner in no time at all. i think that really contributed not just to his heart situation, but you know, he also had illitis, colitis, a whole series of problems. they did make some changes as you were suggesting. >> if wilson's wife was the

first woman president, how about nancy reagan? i think reagan definitely had dementia. i think she was running the show. >> well, you know -- >> where is the third one? >> there are different opinions about that. i promised our president and director that this talk would be strictly historical. >> something to think about. >> look, perhaps not historical enough. >> anything you would like to say about kennedy? >> thank you for asking. there is a quick couple of things i would like to say about john f. kennedy. first of all, have any of you seen pictures of the newly minted congressman kennedy from 1947? he is so thin and scrawny, he

looked like alfred e. newman from "mad magazine." there are elevators for the public and elevators set aside for members. john f. kennedy was ejected from a member's elevator, because the elevator operator took one look at this scrawny young guy, looked like a teenager, and ordered him off. kennedy had to get out. and you know, this is a situation where a miracle drug, a steroid, cortisone, changed everything, because when kennedy began to take that, he filled out in tems of both hissed aboutdy and his face. if you see pictures of john kennedy from 1961, 1962, his face has a decidedly puffy look. it was incredibly important in his career, the cortisone, because this is a guy who base

so much of his appeal on strength, on vigor, and the fact that after eight years of eisenhow eisenhower, we needed a young, healthy, vigorous man as president. well, i'm here to tell you without cortisone, he would in every have looked the part. so thank you for bringing that up. well, thanks again for being such a great audience. [ applause ] >> i hope that you will be joining us next week for the program on robert kennedy. >> it was really good. >> thank you very much. you're watching american history tv. covering history c-span style with tours of museums, archival

film. you can watch us on c-span 3 every weekend during congressional breaks and on holidays too. for more information, visit our website at c-span.org/history. lectures on history, professor jill ogline titus, impact on civil rights. racial conflicts, voting rights and integrating workplace and the military. her class is about an hour and 15 minutes. hi, everybody. welcome. our topic for today is black americans and world war ii. so the big question of the day is how should we understand the relationship between world war ii and the modern civil rights movement. hopefully the readings for today gave you a lot to think about in terms of this question. during world war ii, recruiting

posters aimed at african-americans used images of dory miller decorated with his navy cross and joe lewis in his army uniform to send a message that black americans were needed and wanted in the american military and their service would be recognized and rewarded and respected. but as you read, the reality of the black experience during the war wasn't that simple. and the posters themselves, when we sort of tease them apart a little bit, reflect this gap between promises and reality, that characterize the experiences of this generation of black americans. both of these posters visually i think make it clear that the stakes in this war were high. in the wake of his famous victory over max schmeling in 1938, joe lewis became synonymous with being a symbol of