1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [128]
Truman, Harry S. (1884–1972) Truman was a U.S. Senator from Missouri who came to national prominence when his Truman Committee cleaned up corruption and waste among War Department contractors. He was tapped by Franklin D. Roosevelt as his running mate in 1944, and, just three months after taking office, found himself president when FDR succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage. It fell to Truman to lead the nation through the last stages of World War II, culminating in his decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Truman then formulated the “Truman Doctrine,” a policy of “containing” the aggressive expansion of Soviet (and then Chinese) Communism through economic and military action. The biggest tests of the new doctrine came with the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, which Truman circumvented by the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949, and the Communist invasion of South Korea, which became the Korean War of 1950–1953. Few pundits believed Truman could win reelection in his own right in 1948, but he defeated Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey. Largely because of the Korean War (and his firing, for insubordination, of Douglas MacArthur as commander in chief of U.S. and UN forces there), Truman was unpopular when he left office in January 1953, but he lived long enough to see himself reevaluated as one of the great presidents of the 20th century.
Trumbo, Dalton (1905–1976) Trumbo was a successful screenwriter (one of Hollywood’s highest paid) and novelist who became one of the “Hollywood Ten,” a group that refused to “name names” when summoned in 1947, during the postwar “red scare,” by the U.S. House Committee on Un American Activities about their alleged communist ties and the communist ties of their associates. Blacklisted—meaning that no studio would hire him—Trumbo was also imprisoned for contempt of Congress for 11 months.
Truth, Sojourner (1797–1883) This New York slave was born Isabella Van Wagener. Freed when New York outlawed slavery in 1827, she took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 and became an itinerant evangelist, who combined her religious message with a campaign for abolition and for women’s rights.
Tubman, Harriet (circa 1821–1913) Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, and escaped to freedom about 1849. Not satisfied with having achieved her own deliverance, she repeatedly risked recapture throughout the 1850s by journeying back into slave territory to lead some 300 other fugitives, including her parents, to liberty. She was a founder of the “Underground Railroad,” the abolitionist network that smuggled thousands of fugitives to freedom before the Civil War. During the war, she risked her life as a spy in Maryland and Virginia.
Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932) On July 12, 1893, Turner, a University of Wisconsin history professor, delivered a speech as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in which he presented census statistics that revealed the “closing” of the American frontier; that is, he explained, the population figures no longer demarcated a distinct western limit of settlement. With the frontier closed, Turner declared his belief that the “restless, nervous energy…dominant individualism…buoyancy and exuberance” traditionally engendered in the American character by the presence of the frontier would now be channeled into ventures abroad, and the United States would enter an age of imperialism.
Turner, Nat (1800–1831) Just before dawn on August 22, 1831, Turner, a slave and lay preacher, led 50 or more fellow slaves in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner and his band killed 60 whites before he and most of the others were apprehended. With 19 followers, Turner was quickly tried and hanged on November 11, 1831. Local whites retaliated against the uprising by randomly killing African Americans in the area. Uprisings such as Turner’s were a great fear of white southerners during the era