Vote or You Waste a Precious Privilege, Says Harry Truman

President Truman had a deep commitment to voting rights, so deep that he jeopardized his reelection hopes to promote it. On February 2, 1948, he took a great political risk by presenting a daring civil rights speech to a joint session of Congress. In it, he asked Congress to support a civil rights package that included better protection of the right to vote, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. These proposals met strong opposition in Congress and led to the splintering of the Democratic Party right before the 1948 presidential election. Segregationists refused to support Truman and instead formed the Dixiecrats with Strom Thurmond at the top off the ticket. Thurmond carried Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, but Truman managed to eek out a victory nonetheless.

Harry Lurge was a civil rights activist who in 1967 suggested to President Johnson that he name Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1959 he wrote former President Truman about the low percentage of Americans that turn out to vote. Truman responded. Typed Letter Signed, on his personal letterhead, Independence, Mo., March 31, 1959, to Harry Lurge. “Thank you very much for your letter of the 27th. I more than appreciated it. In a great many states the day of national elections is a legal holiday. In Missouri, for instance, banks, drinking places and some other places of business are closed. According to the old rule voting was from sun-up to sun-down, but that has been changed now to specific hours, from 6:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. Frankly, I do not know what would be the best way to wake people up to the fact that they are wasting a precious privilege when they do not exercise their right to vote.”

In 1860, over 80% of eligible voters came to the polls to vote for Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge and Bell. A century later, in 1960, 63% voted in the presidential election between Kennedy and Nixon. In 2016, the number of eligible voters had fallen to 54.6%.