Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

Frances Perkins - Interview 99, side 1 - 17 May, 1955 - 2127 LeRoy Place N.W., Washington, D.C. This interview taken on a tape-recorder.

Interviewer:

We're looking at a picture of the swearing-in of Harry S, Truman on April 12, 1945.

Miss Perkins:

--by Chief Justice Stone. That was a very hastily assembled crowd. They came in from everywhere, startled and shocked at the situation which made it necessary.

There's poor Mrs. Truman, facing directly into the camera. I remember exactly how she looked that day. She'd been crying, she had been weeping, and her eyes were red and swollen, and it was with difficulty that she kept her face straight from contortions of grief during the swearing-in. She's a quickly emotional person, and had naturally cried in her distress and her confusion, but she stood there like a Trojan, just startled and having to bear it, that's all. Her face shows it. It's a very interesting portrait, on that account.

The expressions on the faces of the other people there are really extraordinary. I don't remember how Joe Martin happened to be called on, but I suppose he was called at the same time Sam Rayburn was, as representing the Republican side of the Congress.

Everybody, of course, has got their eyes sort of turned





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help