Share the Story of the 1948 Truman-Dewey Campaign with the Young People in Your Life
Exclusive Article Now Available on OurWhiteHouse.org
OurWhiteHouse.org, the NCBLA's companion educational website to the art and literature anthology Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, features a treasure trove of exclusive articles, discussion questions, activities, and other resources to help young people connect with American history. This substantive educational website has been named one of the American Library
Association's Great Web Sites for Kids.
JUST ADDED to OurWhiteHouse.org is a new web exclusive "The Second Shall Be First: The 1948 Presidential Election--Truman V. Dewey" by NCBLA volunteer writer Renee Critcher Lyons.
Parents, teachers, and librarians--remember reading about that famously false headline "Dewey Defeats Truman!?" You can read all about the media's mispredictions and the campaign tactics that led up to the 1948 re-election of Truman in Lyons' exclusive article, and we encourage you to share this story--and the accompanying discussion questions and activities--with all the young people in your life.
Here is an excerpt:
All three major pollsters—Gallup, Roper, and
Crosley—throughout the election, predicted Dewey would win by a landslide. ... The Roper poll even stopped surveys in September, so confident were
they of Dewey’s victory. Columnist Marquis Childs wrote, “We were wrong, all of
us, completely and entirely, the commentators, the political editors, the
politicians—except for Harry S Truman…”
No one except Truman himself, and his own pollster,
Lester Biffle, Secretary of the Senate, who disguised himself as a chicken
peddler and conducted his own poll that showed “the common people” were for
Truman, understood the power of the average American citizen to make up his or
her own mind. Truman knew: “The people are with us. The tide is rolling. All
over the country. I have seen it in the people’s faces. The people are going to
win this election.”
To read the entire article about the 1948 election, click here.
Our White House is an outstanding collection of essays, personal accounts, historical fiction, and poetry that melds
with an equally stunning array of original art to offer a look at America’s
history through the prism of the White House. Starting with a 1792 call for
designers and continuing through the present day, these highly engaging writings
and illustrations, expressing varied viewpoints and interwoven with key
historical events, are a vital resource for family and classroom sharing -- and
a stirring reminder that the story of the White House is the story of every
American.
To learn more about Our White House, click here.
For more articles and resources related to presidential elections, check out the OurWhiteHouse.org Civic Education page.
Our White House is available
in both hardcover and paperback.
in both hardcover and paperback.
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