what does truman do? is he going to allow our interests, our allies' interests in west berlin to be limited simply because stalin has this ability to close us off by land? no. truman is going to respond with almost an entire year of an airlift of goods and supplies, food, fuel, anything that the people of west berlin needed will now be flown in to that part of the city. i love the map simply because it shows you that in each of the three sectors, each of the three sectors has an airport. and so we can fly in cargo planes into each sector, loaded with food, medicine, supplies. walmart gift cards, aa batteries, whatever they need, they are going to have access to. and truman knows that stalin won't shoot down those planes. if you stop and think about your geography here, these planes are going to have to fly from take off maybe from a base in great britain, fly across the channel, across friendly air space in western europe, and then they have to fly over eastern germany before they can get into the west be

what does truman do? is he going to allow our interests, our ally's interest in west berlin to be eliminated simply because stalin has this ability to close us off by land? no. truman is going to respond with almost an entire year of an airlift of goods and supplies, food, fuel. anything that the people of west berlin needed will now be flown in. they are going to have to fly from -- take off maybe from a base in great britain, fly across the channel, across friendly air space in western europe and then they have to fly over eastern germany before they can get into west berlin. they are actually flying into soviet controlled air space. truman says, they won't be shot down. there's nothing stalin can do about us ai lifting all these goods and supplies into west berlin. he won't shoot down our planes. why not? >> start a war. >> if a war starts? >> we've got a bomb. >> we've got a bomb and they don't. truman has a very tough stance against stalin. he's talking tough. we've got the bomb and you don't. our ex

truman didn't do -- truman deserves credit for the executive order on desegregating the armed forces, by eisenhower in fact implemented most of it and had the prestige in the armed forces to make it happen. and he did make it happen in a variety of ways. he desegregated bases in the south. he desegregated federally controlled schools for military dependants in the south before the brown decision, and everybody who thinks that eisenhower was anti-brown really haven't done their homework, and you mentioned about my book. my book is not an opinion piece. there's not a phrase in it that's not rooted in a document or in compelling circumstantial evidence. that doesn't mean there isn't argument that can be had about motivation, but there's some things facts that aren't hidden hand facts as the phrase has become, supreme court appointments. eisenhower refused to appoint judges to federal courts who were known segregationists, refused to do that. john f. kennedy when he came in appointed those right and left, and i have to say to you, folks, i have a son named for jfk, if you want to know whe

churchill and truman were coming in march of 1946. unfortunately he didn't really know what he bargained for and is seemed pretty easy to write and certainly nice getting to go to the white house but soon enough the question came to his mind how on earth is this town as 8,000 people going to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors coming here to see the two most famous men in the world? so to try to overcome this logical nightmare to have every conceivable detail, housing, safety, policing, communications, even toilets. they did have a toilet kennedy worryingly enough. now, he didn't do all this work alone. so he hired the publicists and worked around the clock with them even while hooley during to restore the westminster college to the prosperity because of course any mail over the age of 17 had been trucked eligible and it was only his negotiating that had in fact kept the college going when the government agreed to host a naval training program for the cadets. as the westminster college had lots of room with a free hotel for a hu

it's a new big three with harry truman being the president. truman's attitude is different. some indication of that change of u.s. policy comes right away. even harry truman was not kept informed. it was like okay, a few things you need to know. one is we have been working on a bomb. you know what? it's the biggest baddest bomb around. truman gets the word that it works. we have detonated an atomic bomb. it works. he goes over to stalin. lit her has been defeated and we want to cooperate with you, but i need to let you in on a secret. the secret is we are going to end this war with japan because we have an atomic weapon the likes of which the world has never seen. they were kept in the dark, but stalin already knew. we have soviet spies in the united states. they passed information along that we were working on it and close to it. he knew we were very close to having a successful nuclear weapon. well, what truman is going to do then is to give the japanese an opportunity to surrender when they don't. we talked about this and dropped two. first on hiroshima august sixth when

but president truman i think did issue the executive order in 1948 for two basic reasons. one was his own personal conviction. the other was he was in the fight of his life for an election. and he issues it on july 26th, 1948, and calculation of black votes in that is apparent. i don't mean that's the only motivation. these are complicated people, eisenhower and truman, and they do things for multiple reasons. and i think from -- from an african-american perspective, all of these guys don't quite get it sometimes, but they still were in a political context where they were trying to do things, so truman issued that order in 1948. the story i'll want to get into, when we have time, is that he didn't enforce it very well until we got into korea and then they began to be some desegregation in the armed forces in korea, but four years later, most of the american combat units were still segregated. dwight eisenhower did most of that, and frankly i think it's a disgrace to my profession that the textbooks still say truman did it without mentioning eisenhower when eisenhower came

truman says great. you be the president. i will be the secretary. >> they were joking, but that language, reagan uses it with carter. there are souvenirs. at one point kennedy sends eisenhower a bunch of golf balls with the presidential seal and says i cannot use these in new a the only one that legitimately can. >> when reagan leaves office, here are some rules are going to need to follow. you're going to have to say no most of the time. they what try to drag you into financial deals. you have to ignore this. people will try to take advantage of you. we will talk about this as it goes on. we will have to consult. there is a kind of real process. even now, the chiefs of staffs to the presidents talk quite a bit in e-mail quite a bit. >> i want to ask about the eisenhower/jfk beginning. i saw these letters between richard nixon and ronald reagan before 1968. they cannot summer into the west. >> no one ever looks at the start. no one lives of these letters in real time next to each other. it delayed the political context. they

truman died at christmas. johnson died in january. truman died. >> when were the most former presidents? >> of bill clinton is inaugurated in 1993. he had five former presidents alive. >> which has never happened other than lincoln. >> the inauguration of abraham lincoln. his five were nixon, ford, carter, reagan, and bush. >> they had all been turned out of office. >> had you spent much time on them? >> when you could only write a book of so many pages that was the place to start. hoover. hoover goes up to truman on the diocese of ike swearing in says let's start a president's club. truman says great. you be the president. i will be the secretary. or was the treasurer? secretary. that is the beginning of a thing. >> they were joking, but that language, reagan uses it with carter. "since we are members of this very exclusive club -- " there are souvenirs. at one point kennedy sends eisenhower a bunch of golf balls with the presidential seal and says i cannot use these in new a the only one that legitimately can. reagan present clinton

truman first takes office and says "can you help me? you did this after world war i, we have a problem, i need your help." and that was the start of what turned out to be a beautiful friendship. >> ifill: it also became tradition over time but it wasn't really about party lineage here. we had john kennedy trying to court eisenhower. >> right. we found over and over that actually presidents from different parties get along better than presidents from the same party which is not what we expected. we thought they'd branch out. they actually seemed to bond

truman's popularity plummets. and by the early 50s, there is sort of a change in the political atmosphere. remember i talked about a 30-year cycle. the 1920s, conservative and republicans. 1930s, liberal and democratic. 1940s, a transition, if you will, because of the war. we're back to our 30-year cycle. the 1950s are going to be more conservative and republican and dominated by these two guys. dwight d. eisenhower and richard nixon, elected in 1952 and '56, republicans regain the white house. >> the 30-year -- >> republican and much more conservative. who better to lead a total war than the general, dwight dwight d. eisenhower? one of the most decorated generals in world war ii? he wasn't really a politician, yet -- and, in fact, no one really knew if he was a republican or a democrat. not even interested in politics. but he decided to get involved. the republicans got him and everybody seemed to like ike, as he was known. he was just a very personable gentleman. well, the popularity of eisenhower is not just be

truman's popularity plummets. and by the early '50s there's sort of a change in the political atmosphere. remember i talked about a 30 year cycle. the 1920s, conservatives and republicans. 1930s, liberals and democratic. 1940s, transitional because of the war. we're back to our 30 year cycle. 1950s are going to be more conservative and republican and dominated by these two guys. dwight d. eisenhower and richard nixon. elected in 1952 and '56. republicans regained the white house. republican is much more conservative. who better to lead a cold war that be a general? dwight d. eisenhower. he wasn't really a politician yet. in fact, no one really knew if he was a republican or a democrat. not interested in politics. but he decided to get involved. and everybody seemed to like ike, as he was known. he was a very personal gentleman. well, the popularity of eisenhower is not just because of his military record of world war ii. it also has to do with the economy of the day. when you take a look at how the united states e

library, folks are like, you know, truman, you're going to have to die. you're going to have to go. we're going to have to get rid of you some way or another. you're going to have to go. for the southern democrats, the politicians themselves were saying, unless you get back on this track, we're going to bury you. you will not see the white house again. you see this then in the democratic national convention in philadelphia in 1948 in july where when hubert humphry gets up and he makes a speech that says we've been in the shadow of states' rights for too long, and it's now time for us to walk within the bright sunshine of human rights, and the crowd goes wild and the southern democrats are sitting there going oh really. and they get up and walk out and form the dixiecrat party with the strom thurmond as the dixiecrat's presidential nominee. this was -- he faced -- when you read through, you get the sense of anger with him, the sense that you are a traitor, that you don't deserve to be in the white house, so he faced a lot of pressure for his stance on -- o

but it turns out harry truman hated "the missouri waltz." had always hated "the missouri waltz," and mrs. truman said the only good thing was by then he was so deaf he couldn't hear what the president was playing. laurie firestone, you were there for the entire first bush presidency. those were eventful years, significant years in the history of the white house and the country. tell us something about barbara bush that maybe we don't know. >> well, you know, i think barbara, everybody knows her because i think she was so open, and, you know, yes, there may be a cute little story or something that hasn't been written, but i think she had a very unique ability to really be a very warm and friendly, and she was everybody's friend. and so i remember back in the days at the vice president's, and, you know, television was becoming more and more important, and, of course, the first ladies aren't on it often, but often vice president bush would be on it, but people would come to the house, and i would always greet them and say good-bye to them. and

and, you know, truman was the boy from independence, and he got to do a divided tour, truman gave cronkitee white house but walter was so nervous he could barely talk he was a cub reporter basically and he would ask truman things like did the clocks work and, you know, in the white house and he was very sad about his performance, but by the time it clicked into gears in the eisenhower years he got close to eisenhower because the head of cbs used to work for eisenhower in world war ii and had great success with ike, even later went to normandy with him famous by but john f. kennedy, the first television president, and walter got him, he got a huge interview on cbs, months before kennedy died and he did as you mentioned all the presidents threw up to ronald reagan who gave himñr a great good-bye interview when he stepped down. >> you know, knowing walter, it does not surprise me that he asked harry truman how the clocks worked. walter was the most curious person i have ever met. he wanted to know how everything worked, if there was a car wreck outside this bureau right now, walter would want

first, a discussion of the civil right rights of dwight eisenhower, truman. then president kennedy. >> sunday on q & a. >> i think the problem with with walter cronkite, people see him only as the evuncular friendly man. but there was another side of him that wanted to be the best, he was obsessed with the ratings. he's probably the fiercest competitor i've ever written about. and i've written about presidents and generals. cronkite's desire to be the best was very pronounced. >> best selling author douglas brinkley on his new biography of long time cbs news averager walter cronkite, sunday on c-span. >>> next, a conference on the presidency and civil rights hosted by the john f. ken dpi presidential library and museum. this panel looks at the intern of japanese americans in world war ii. the desegregation of the armed forces. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> good afternoon, i'm david ferio. it's a pleasure to welcome you this afternoon. this conference is on the presidency and civil rights. as you know the national archive is is charged with preserving arc

as truman aircraft carrier, that time patrolling the eastern mediterranean, and give a lecture on the history of the u.s.-israel relationship. i thought about this for maybe a quarter of a second. i said are you kidding? of course i want to do this. so one day they brought me up to an airfield outside of tel aviv. there was a prop plane, enable probably the extravagant, put a helmet on me. we went airborne, and no one bothered to tell me that this aircraft was going to go from a 180 miles an hour to zero in less than one second when it landed on the truman. when i landed i thought we had crashed. my eyeballs were some were over there. i don't recommend you ever do this. they thought it was pretty funny. it wasn't. but when it emerged from this aircraft, there was this floating american island somewhere between the island of rhodes and the coast of turkey, 5200 crew members, and officers, all standing at attention to him he gave a lecture about the history of the u.s. and israel alliance. extraordinary. the next snapshot took place a couple months ago when i was invited by the assembly

because that's left for truman to do. but the steps that fdr does take i think are not just in yes mental, but a slap in the face. he has gotten rave reviews for changing his cabinet and bringing in a new secretary of war and a new secretary of the navy. republicans, a bipartisan cabinet and absolutely adamantly opposed to any activity that will advance negros through the rank s simson says leadership i not embedded in the negro race. he's secretary of the war. the secretary of the navy cox -- i mean knox, says he will resign if, in fact this happens. so what does fdr do? he brings the dean of the howard law school in to be stemson's aide. he reports an african-american colonel to advise selective service and the firsten fr african-american general to ride rupp shod on them. the big obstacle is george marshall. if you look at who will block a lot of stuff. marshall is the one that says come down, not on my watch, we've got to win the war. eleanor works to help get the 99th squadron, the tuskegee airmen through. she worked

truman first takes office and says "can you help me?d this after world war i, we have a problem, i need your help." and that was the start of what turned out to be a beautiful friendship. >> ifill: it also became tradition over time but it wasn't really about party lineage here. we had john kennedy trying to court eisenhower. >> right. we found over and over that actually presidents from different parties get along better than presidents from the same party which is not what we expected. we thought they'd branch out. they actually seemed to bond faster when they haveless in common. carter and ford get together. clinton and nixon.oeç even the current president obama seemed to get along best with the first bush. so we see that not because they're so much rivals inside their party for who's the greatest president of the era. >> reporter: but there is some intraparty rivalry which i found interesting including between future presidents reagan and nixon. >> there's no question that... both men are preparing for 1968. they're both from califo

among the topics, if dr's world war ii interment of japanese americans, president truman's desegregation of the armed forces and president eisenhower's five appointments to the supreme court justices in faber of desegregation. we hear of attempts on first lady roosevelt's life because of he her efforts of integration and returning world war ii veterans on civil active. this program is about one hour and 20 minutes. >> good afternoon, i'm david ferio. it's a pleasure to welcome you this afternoon. this conferencen the presidency and civil rights. as you nknow the national archie is is charged with preserving archives to the most important documents, the records we safeguard are part of the backbone, important pieces of the story of the american journey. they contain accounts of heroism, tragedy, moments of pride and moments of shame of sacrifices that men and women have made to defend our country, and to extend basic human rights to all of our citizens. this library and 12 others like it around the country contain the records of the presidents dating back to 1929, when herbert hoover live

that's what that navy propeller jet was doing when they picked me up to take me to the truman. they were landing there. the sailor who say come and visit have a wonderful time. it's the friendliest port in the mediterranean for them. israel is not just involved in advancing america's military prowess on the battlefield. we're also engaged in saving american limbs and saving american lives. some of you may remember that at the outset of the iraq and afghani conflicts there was a lot of things said that they went to the battlefield with insufficient armor. there's a kibutz founded by americans that came up with an ingenious idea of making a do-it-yourself instant armoring kit. as of today, this little kibutz has armored about 20,000 american military vehicles serving in war areas and we have saved countless lives through these armoring kits. we at the embassy, we get the thank you letters from the parents, from the husbands, from the wives, thank you for saving our kids with these vehicles that took a direct hit but nothing happened to the people in them because of these kits. th

he was just in the as outrageous as truman, and it's a thrilling story, and i like truman too, but he landed unfair blows comparing the republicans to the nazis. that didn't sit well with anybody in 1948. that created bitterness. he did win because people were excited about the underdog, but it set to tone for the country that was bad, and duey's manager skills would have made him a great president. i was impressed with him, and truman did a lot of great things, but the second term was a disaster, and we would have been better off with duey. >> we have another question. how will the republican convention go if romney does not have enough delegates in your opinion? >> interesting question. we have not had a completely wide open convince since 1952 when the democrats picked stevenson, not running for president, but gave an up spiring welcoming address to the delegates, they insisted he was the nominee. they picked eisenhower over taft. the on other times they were in doubt was 1976 with reagan challenging ford. so close, it was not decided until the week of the convention, and then, of

president truman's desegregation of the u.s. armed forces and president eisenhower's five appointments to the u.s. supreme court of justices in favor of desegregation. we also hear about atemptsz on first lady eleanor roosevelt's life because of her efforts toward integration and about the impact of return african-american world war ii veterans on civil rights activism. this program is about one hour, 20 minutes. >> good afternoon. i'm david ferrio, the archivist of the united states and it's a pleasure to welcome you to this conference on american presidency and civil rights. the national archives is charged with preserving access to our nation's most important documents, the records we safeguard are part of the backbone of our democracy, important pieces of the story of the american journey. they contain accounts of heroism and tragedy, of moments of pride and moments of shame, of sacrifices that men and women have made to defend our country, and to extend basic human rights to all of our citizens. this library and 12 others l

today's after the assassination, he said, i used to feel bad for harry truman about the way he got elected, but of lease is was not murdered. the circumstances made him even more isolated and made it even more challenging to get his footing. the way he handled the transition stands up very well, signal stability, with three important, -- was very important, and was vindicated by the scale of his landslide victory. >> what is the word you used to quote other historians? what is the rule? >> we relied on five or six, so much but i felt i needed to quote them or praise them in the text of the book. you cannot understand nixon or reagan unless you understand the book about ronald reagan. you cannot understand jimmy carter unless you read a book on that. ford wasnk's work on essential spirit but was there an agreement it would not be published until he was dead? >> kennedy and johnson, richard reeves on kennedy. >> another one i saw was monica crowley. explain why she would be interesting. >> she was richard nixon cox and research assistants in the final years of his life. who did richard nixon

neither is truman. congress has stopped presidents. johnson picks.'t even let him know what's going on in the legislative process about kennedy's civil rights bill. he has to say to ted sore enson, i don't know what's in the bill. i have to read it in the "new york times". he says what's on the agenda? and the republican conservatives have introduced the bill that would limit the president's authority on a minor thing. a weak deal with russia. johnson doesn't see it as minor because lyndon johnson is a legislative genius. he wants to teach congress a lesson that there's a new man in charge now. he says i want to murder this bill. although he gets the majority, he stays up most of one night making telephone calls threatening, bullying, getting more votes until he does win by an overwhelming margin. the headlines say johnson defeats congress, and johnson says in his memoir -- and this is a correct statement in my opinion -- at that moment the power in washington began flowing from congress back to the white house. >> how would you contrast the leadersh

from truman and hoover to george w. bush and bill clinton, sunday at 8:00 p.m. on q&a. >> in his weekly radio address, president obama urged congress to work on passing his to do list on five initiatives, adding just threw in sourcing, mortgage assistance, small business tax credit, clean energy manufacturing, and veterans job assistance. rep kristi noem focused on college graduates and the job market. >> the last few years have been difficult on this country. after the worst recession in our lifetime, it will take longer than any of us would like for the economy to recover. but there are plenty of steps which can take to speed up the recovery. there things you can do right now to the crate jobs and restore some of the financial security that so many families of loss. the other side is not so optimistic. they think so we can do is cut taxes, especially for the wealthiest americans, and go back to letting banks and corporations write their own role again. that is their plan. but i think that they are wrong. we tried that for nearly a decadent it did not work out.

when harry truman lived in the white house. they tell the story of america. holdings also include the charters of freedom, the declaration of independence, the constitution, and the bill of rights which are located in the rotunda of our main building in washington. we also have 12 billion more documents, photographs, charts, and billions of electronic records and art i pacts that are part of the national archives. you don't have to read and study many of them to realize the story of america is a story of people struggling to achieve the rights or protesting because they were denied those rights. it is, of course, the constitution and its amendments the presidents have used to underpin major actions and upon which the united states supreme court has based so many landmark decisions involving civil and human rights. the list is daunting, and franklin roosevelt outlawed discrimination through the fair employment practices committee. harry truman ordered an end to segregation in the armed forces during the historic election year of 1948. dwight eisenhower sent ar

he is trapped in the logic that began with harry truman in the truman doctrine, saying that the whole world faces a choice between two systems. all right? and the whole world did face a choice between two systems. if you make that the defining element of your foreign policy forever forward, from 1947 to 1968, you are one to see that there only two powers. if the united states admitted it was hurting itself in vietnam, and withdrew, it goes down on our side end up on the moscow side. in other words, the problem that every politician faced in 1968 was how to liquidate the disaster of vietnam without accessing strategic defeat in the cold war which would've hurt in other areas. well, along comes richard nixon because he is richard nixon. and he figures it out. first of all, it was always the democrats they got saddled with losing china, never the republicans, because richard nixon compared to satellite program at that. he had freedom of action there. he realized what was going on, the clock was running out on him domestically, the draft, all volunteer army. right? richard nixon is too sm