Harry S. Truman Quotes
The United States, which would live on Christian principles with all of the peoples of the world, cannot omit a fair deal for its own Indian citizens.
Truman, Harry S. "Statement by the President on the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Bill," October 17, 1949. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1949, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964, p. 515.
Standing Bear and some other Indians left the Indian territory where the government had assigned their tribe and with an invitation went to live on another Indian reservation designated for another tribe. The Government sent the military police to take the Indians back to the Indian Territory. The Indians claimed that they had the right to live wherever they wanted and did not have to live in the place the government had assigned them. The Indians won and since then, Indians like all other Americans were free to go wherever in the country that they wanted so long s they were not trespassing or violating other laws.
In the only presidential Special Message to Congress on the subject of Indians in American history:
This was the first major civil rights speech. He had previously in his political career tread carefully in the civil rights arena. The Southerners had disproportionate control over the Congressional committee chairmanships and they could hold up his entire legislative agenda. JFK’s father was a right wing fascist who supported Hitler earlier and always advised against pushing civil rights.
There was then legislation proposed to to nullify a number of Indian treaties. Indians themselves were divided as to the desirability. Mrs. Roosevelt favored negotiations and discussions with each tribe separately regarding their treaties as opposed to the proposed legislation which treated the tribes monolithically when indeed they were 500 separate tribes with different cultures, needs and desires.
The intentions of the Founding Fathers towards the Indians was decent, respectful, and well intentioned. However, there was not enough of a system of enforcement or the will to enforce when the greed of the average whites grew too great. Many settlers saw these vast lands and could not see any harm in using a few acres for their farm. And if there had been only a few, there would have been little trouble. However, the settlers kept coming and coming and soon the Indians began to push back. In a sense, it was a class problem. The members of the Continental Congress who wrote the Northwest Ordinance were educated, affluent men who had plenty of land. Most of the men who contested for the Indian lands had little land or were newly affluent and saw few limits to America.
While this was a type of “Equal Rights Amendment”, It emphasized dignity rather than operations. For example, adultery was made a crime if committed by a woman (not for a man), And women could be dismissed from a job, simply because they were pregnant. And unusual aspect of this quotation is the fact that it applies to equality of dignity of Social status. In America we have this as an unwritten concept of fairness and egalitarianism, but it is not followed very much and certainly not guaranteed by our Constitution.
Harry S. Truman was an American politician who served as the 33rd President of the United States (1945–53). He served as a United States Senator from Missouri (1935–45) and briefly as Vice President (1945) before he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president during the final months of World War II, and approved the plan to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was elected in his own right in 1948. He presided over an uncertain domestic scene as America sought its path after the war and tensions with the Soviet Union increased, marking the start of the Cold War.
