India Edwards Oral History Interview, January 16, 1969

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened January, 1972
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

HESS: Mrs. Edwards, when did you first become interested in politics?

EDWARDS: I think I was always interested in politics, but I wasn't active in politics because I worked for a Republican newspaper, I was always a Democrat so it would have been a little difficult for me to have been an active political worker, but I think that my great interest in politics started with Franklin Roosevelt's first administration.

HESS: When did you first become associated with the Democratic National Committee?

EDWARDS: When I volunteered to work in the 1944 convention.

HESS: Can you tell me about that?

EDWARDS: I had left Chicago in 1942 when I married Herbert Edwards, who was working for the Department of State, and I moved down to Washington. I had had quite a long career as a newspaperwoman, and I expected just

[2]

to settle down and be a housewife. My son by a previous marriage was killed late in December of 1943. He was just nineteen years old, was in the Air Corps, and I decided then that I would have to do something to occupy my mind and time fully. So I was looking around for things to do and I was thinking of going with UNRRA, in fact I was offered a position with UNRRA which was just starting up at that time. My husband was very much against my taking it, because he said the red tape of Government and I would never get along. A very close friend of mine from Chicago days, who then lived in Washington, was a volunteer at the Democratic National Committee, and she kept telling me that I ought to work for the Democrats. I would say, "Perhaps I will," but I kept putting it off. Then the Republicans held their convention in Chicago, ahead of the Democratic convention, and Clare Boothe Luce made a speech at the Republican convention, to which my husband and I listened on the radio in our living room (we then lived in Maryland). I became so infuriated that I paced up and down the room saying: "Now, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to volunteer to work for the Democrats tomorrow morning,"

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and I did.

Mrs. Luce attempted to speak for "G.I. Jim." The implication was that if the boys who had been killed in the Second World War could come back they would say to vote against Roosevelt. I thought this was the lowest thing I ever heard of any politician doing. She couldn't speak for my son.

And so I went down to Democratic headquarters the next morning and volunteered to work if they wanted me, and they did. They seemed to be very glad to have me because I offered to work for nothing. They sat me down, had me writing--not speeches, I didn't start out writing speeches--I wrote biographies and news releases, things of that sort for about two weeks.

Then the Democratic convention came along. It was going to be held in Chicago, and the people at the committee said, "Oh, we wish we could take you out to the convention," because after all I had only been away from Chicago a short time so I knew all the newspaper people out there. But they said, "We have no money. We've allocated every penny we have for travel, but if you would come out, we'd be so happy."

So I said, "O.K., I'll come." I went and paid all

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my own expenses. And I really worked very hard all during that convention. It was very amusing because they didn't even give me a ticket to get into the hall, and the only way I ever got inside the hall was that my former boss, Colonel [Robert] McCormick, had a box and he invited me to use the box whenever I wanted it. I was so delighted that no columnist ever picked that up, because I thought it would look very peculiar. Here I was volunteering for the Democratic National Committee, and sitting in Colonel McCormick's box during the sessions.

HESS: That would be a little strange.

EDWARDS: But luckily none of the columnists ever saw it, or wrote anything about it.

HESS: When did you first meet Mr. Truman?

EDWARDS: I met him then in Chicago after he was nominated. There was a reception, as I remember, for him and Mrs. Truman and Margaret at the Blackstone, and I met him then, but just very casually. Then I met him during the campaign. In those days they used to move the headquarters to New York. I came back after the convention and settled down in Washington and the committee moved up to the Biltmore in New York, and

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they called me one night and said, "We really have to have you up here, but we can't afford to pay you."

And I said, "I'm terribly sorry, but I can't afford to come and live in New York for two or three months and pay all my own expenses."

And they said, "We’11 give you a room at the Biltmore. Could you do it then?"

I said, "Yes, I could manage to feed myself."

It worked out very well because my husband in his work at the State Department had to go to New York quite a lot, so it wasn't as if I were leaving him neglected in Washington. So I went up and many times I never put my nose outside the Biltmore for five or six days at a time, because the office was there, and I was staying there.

HESS: What were your duties during that period?

EDWARDS: I was working in the public relations department of the Women's Division, and I started out writing news releases, biographies, but pretty soon I was writing speeches for various and sundry people.

You remember--you're too young so probably you don't--but in '44 it was very hard to travel; to go by plane you had to have a priority and train travel was

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difficult, too. So, not that I would have been doing any traveling anyway, but we were very dependent upon radio, and that's what I ended up doing for the Women's Division. I can't tell you--I used to know but I've forgotten, it's been so many years ago--how many hundreds of platters that we sent out. There were certain speeches that were very effective. For instance, Dorothy Thompson had made a speech that was wonderfully effective, and there were others. And I ended up in charge of all that. And many a time I would leave the Biltmore at 11 o'clock at night with my secretary and we would walk across to the American Express office, which was just nearby, carrying great armloads of these platters and mail them out, because they were used in meetings all over the country. And then I wrote quite a number of speeches. I met the vice presidential candidate, Mr. Truman, at that time. He came to the Biltmore one day.

I'll tell you an amusing story about that: Of course, I was not an experienced political speechwriter, but I was a trained writer, and had earned my living writing for a good many years. I always ended every speech with "Elect Roosevelt and Truman." It seems for quite

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a while some people on the staff wanted to get up the nerve to tell me that I didn't. need to mention the Vice President, so finally one of them did tell me. She said, "India, you don't really have to mention Senator Truman. It's enough to mention Roosevelt."

I said, "I never heard anything to crazy in my life. I shall continue to mention Mr. Truman in every speech I write. The person who gives it can change it if he or she wants to, but I think the Vice President who is being elected this year will very probably be the President eventually." You had only to look at Roosevelt's face to know that the ravages of the office and illness and time had taken a great toll. Somebody told me--I don't know whether this is true or not--but someone is supposed to have told Senator Truman that I was the one who insisted that his name be included in every speech that we sent out.

HESS: Where were you on election night in 1944? Were you at the Biltmore?

EDWARDS: Yes.

HESS: Do you recall anything of interest that may have taken place that night?

EDWARDS: Well, I don't remember anything particularly

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interesting in that election, because we were all so certain of victory; everybody was. I don't think that any Democrat thought for one minute that Dewey was going to win that year. We were all sure that Roosevelt and Truman would be elected. But it was a different story in 1948.

HESS: In 1944 were you surprised when Senator Truman was selected as the Democratic nominee for Vice President?

EDWARDS: Well, I wasn't surprised, because I had not been involved enough in politics to really have any idea about it. I wasn't surprised, also, because I knew something about his record as chairman of the Truman Committee, and to me, he was a very fine Senator. But remember, I was outside the establishment, as it were, at that time.

HESS: Just as an opinion, how much influence do you think that Mr. Truman's chairmanship of that committee had on his receiving the Democratic nomination?

EDWARDS: Well, I would suppose, and this is only my judgment, which is really not worth very much because I know too little about it, but I would suppose that Mr. Truman's nomination was largely dependent on Bob Hannegan's work and his--what shall I say--finagling

[9]

has such a bad sound, and I don't mean it that way--but I think Bob Hannegan was responsible for his nomination. But I think that President Roosevelt was willing to accept Truman because of the fine work he had done as chairman of the committee. That would be my own evaluation of it.

HESS: What do you recall of Mr. Hannegan's maneuvering?

EDWARDS: I wasn't close enough to know very much of what was going on, but that was what I understood, that Bob Hannegan had been the one who pushed for Truman when somebody wasn't acceptable. I've sort of forgotten what the details were. It had to be cleared with--who was it--Sidney Hillman. But I would feel certain that it was because of Senator Truman's reputation that President Roos