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American Experience
Sunday, May 25, at 9:30 p.m.
Monday, May 26, at 9 p.m.
on WKAR-HD and WKAR-23
Harry Truman Profiled on "American Experience"
He was a farmer, a haberdasher gone bankrupt, an unknown politician from Missouri who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held office, he was the least prepared. Yet Harry S Truman would have to end the war with Germany and Japan, decide whether to use the most terrible weapon ever devised, confront the Soviet Union, and wage war in Korea.
Truman is next in the retrospective series The Presidents , part of The American Experience. The program begins at an unusual time – Sunday, May 25, at 9:30 p.m. and concludes the following event. The documentary is directed and written by David Grubin.
The first night of Truman recounts his early struggles and failures as a young adult, and his undying determination to have an accomplishment to call his own. Truman’s success as an army captain during World War I gave him the confidence to marry his lifelong sweetheart, Bess, and begin his path into the world of politics. When he landed the vice presidency with FDR in 1944, he had no idea that his world was about to change forever.
After Harry Truman’s unlikely rise to the presidency, he would face some of the biggest crises of the century. Truman would end the war with Germany; use the atomic bomb against Japan; confront an expanding Soviet Union; and wage war in Korea — all while the woman he adored, his wife, Bess, refused to stay in the White House and play the role of First Lady.
On the home front, Truman was the first president to tackle civil rights issues for blacks — a move that would prove controversial when campaigning for his second term. His unpredictable win over Thomas Dewey in the presidential election of 1948 proved to Truman that he had finally separated himself from the specter of FDR. However, his second term brought another war and battles with Congress to pass health care and civil rights legislation.
Exhausted after his second term, Truman relinquished the presidency and retired to Independence, Missouri, where he lived as a popular and well-loved citizen. In later years, he would receive recognition for all his accomplishments and come to be admired as a gritty American original.
published: May 20, 2008
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