#presidential libraries

[usnatarchives]

Bess Truman, born on February 13, 1885.

The future First Lady loved hats even as a child. According to her best friend, Mary Paxton, Bess “always looked more stylish than anyone else in the crowd…. Bess had more stylish hats than the rest of us did, or she wore them with more style.”

[deadpresidents]

"I'm sure that the Presidents who stand out in our history and in our memory are those who led the nation through times of great trial and challenge...Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman. On the other hand, these very same Presidents would not be regarded now as great if their reactions and their responses had been weak, or if they had failed to achieve some of their major goals of if they had run away from the challenges...Greatness is an elusive thing and the judgment of history is sometimes different from that that is made when a President's in office or just after he leaves office. Wilson died a broken and disappointed man because he failed to win approval of the League [of Nations]. Yet history has judged that he was right in that fight and the willful men of the Senate who opposed him were wrong...There are a great many misconceptions about the Presidency...Some people think the President is a man who welcomes visitors to our country, who signs the laws that Congress sends him, who occasionally makes a speech about one of our problems, a kind of father or figurehead. Others see him as a manipulator or as an arm twister who is interested in power and how to use it. Others see him as a solitary figure surrounded by yes men, insulated from all [counselors], isolated from the real world. But very few people have any idea of the long and tedious and grinding work that goes into every Presidential day. I doubt that there was a single day of the Presidency, Sundays included, that I didn't give two or three hours to just solitary reading. There was hardly a night that I was President that I didn't read two or three hours. Even if it were a State Dinner or dancing...when I retired for the evening, I would have two hours of night reading ahead of me...No President in history has been able to do all the things that he or the people hoped he could accomplish at the time of election. But that doesn't mean that the job is impossible and that doesn't mean it's doomed. It's doable."

-- Former President Lyndon B. Johnson, on some of the unseen work of the Presidency.

Here's a great photograph taken by White House photographer Robert Knudson of some of LBJ's "night reading" homework, waiting for the President on his bed in the White House on October 12, 1966:

(I want to thank the incredible archivists at the @lbjlibrary and the National Archives ( @usnatarchives on Tumblr) -- especially, in this case, Chris of the Audiovisual Archives at the LBJ Library -- for tracking down a high-quality version of this specific photo for me. Without having any specifics on when or where the photo was taken, I reached out to the LBJ Library and vaguely described seeing this photo in the past and they quickly found a high-quality file that they sent me. The LBJ Library has done this numerous times for me over the years and I cannot express how grateful I always am for their help. The archivists at the National Archives and the NARA's Presidential Library system are incredible public servants and one of the very best examples of our federal government providing services to and for the American people.)

[macaron-n-cheese]

I went to the Nixon and Reagan Presidential Library and Museums today!

I have a migraine from reading in the car so I'm not going to write a lot.

Nixon. I love his signature anime girlie pose :)

WOOF WOOF

THE JASON HEUSER PAINTING IN THE CORNER

I can now say that I am a Richard Nixon fan, he's just silly. The intro video actually called him a loser since he's always lose before he won 😭

Reagan

NOOOO NOT CUSTER 🤢🤮

It's still so cool that Reagan acted and was even President of the Actor's Guild.

President fandom:

MARX 'S THUMBS-UP IS SO FUNNY. Teach your kids about the wonders of communism RIGHT NOW. 👍

Horse :)

the glare is horrendous...BEAN PORTRAIT

*😐 among us WHOHMP tat tat tat* uh....

[fdrlibrary]

Visit From Kara Blond

We were delighted to host Kara Blond, Director of Presidential Libraries, for a visit last week. Our staff was excited to meet with her and have the opportunity to show off the FDR Library!

@ourpresidents

[noctomania]

Presidential centers from Hoover to Bush and Obama unite to warn of fragile state of US democracy

The statement released Thursday, the first time the libraries have joined to make such a public declaration, said Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and human rights around the world because “free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home.”

[the-flowing-river]

Honestly, the idea of presidential libraries is just so fascinating to me. Like... There's this guy, who makes a ton of important decisions for the nation (wich, for posterity, i am not from.) and afterwards they just go, "fuck it, I'm making a library." Like... Fascinating. I don't know if their collection changes, like, does roosevelts library only have books he (or his assistants) decided should be included, or do they update the collection, keeping the old, but also adding to it? Either way, this is fascinating to me. I hope i get to visit one someday.

[deadpresidents]

Never mess with an archivist.

[archivyrep]

A post written in April 2019 which talks about Robert Caro's flawed ideas on archival research, archival digitization, and digital archives.

[usnatarchives]

#OnThisDay in 1981 Sesame Street LIVE performed at the Thanksgiving Party at the White House.

Photos Courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

[deadpresidents]

I've actually never seen this photo of LBJ!

The @richardnixonlibrary in Orange County is not just one of the best Presidential Libraries in the National Archives system (and has the unique feature of having Nixon's birthplace on site, just a few dozen feet from his gravesite), but they also have one of the best Tumblr sites for history content! You guys should follow them.

#OTD 1/22/1973 Former President Lyndon Baines Johnson died at the age of 64 following his third heart attack. In his statement on President Johnson’s death, President Nixon said, “No man had greater dreams for America than Lyndon Johnson. Even as we mourn his death, we are grateful for his life, which did so much to make those dreams into realities. And we know that as long as this Nation lives, so will his dreams and his accomplishments.” (Image: WHPO-1892-14A)

[deadpresidents]

Have you ever written a letter to a president and got a response?

I've been a Presidential history nerd since I was a little kid. I don't know when I first became interested in the Presidents or what specifically piqued that interest, but I know that I can't remember a time where it wasn't something I wanted to learn everything I could possible learn about it. So when we'd go to the school library in elementary school, my friends would check out age-appropriate kids books and I would check out full-fledged Presidential biographies.

So, yes, I absolutely wrote letters to Presidents and I still have some of the responses I received. As a kid, I sent a letter to the White House whenever there was a new President because I never forgot what happened the first time I wrote to a President. I was probably 7 or 8 years old and back when the phone companies would publish yellow pages and white pages, they would have sections with contact information for government officials. I saw that there was an address for the White House (1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW), so I wrote a letter to President Reagan. I have no idea what I wrote at the time, but I remember that I got a big envelope from the White House with a little note written on fancy paper with the Presidential seal and a signed photo of the President, as well as a little booklet about the White House. I don't have that first letter from Reagan, but after he left office, I had learned about the Presidential Libraries and the fact that former Presidents had post-Presidential offices. I wrote to former President Reagan at his office in Los Angeles and received pretty much the same thing I had been sent while he was still in office. I do still have that:

I wrote to President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton when they were in the White House, too. President Bush sent a letter and photo and President Clinton sent a photo:

Those were the last incumbent Presidents that I wrote to while they were in the White House. I turned 13 years old when President Clinton took office in 1993 (and I mean that literally -- believe it or not, my birthday is Inauguration Day) and while I was still interested in Presidential history, I was also interested in girls, so I kind of grew out of the letter-writing. But when I was a teenager, I did also write to former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter at their post-Presidential offices. Sadly, I didn't get around to writing to former President Nixon before he died in 1994, so I never received anything from him. I regret that I didn't write to him in time because that's around the time I wrote to former Presidents Ford and Carter.

But President Ford and President Carter really made my nerdy letter writing all worthwhile. The letters and photos I received from President Reagan, President Bush, and President Clinton were all signed by an auto-pen, as you would expect for someone responding to as much mail as the President of the United States does.

However, President Ford and President Carter sent me photos with their actual autographs! I remember Ford sent some packets of information about himself and a copy of an interview where he answered a bunch of questions about stuff that kids might be interested in. Carter also sent something like that, as well as a folder with information about the Carter Center and the work it does around the world. But the coolest thing to receive were the photos with their genuine autographs on them. I took advantage of that and actually wrote to President Ford several times when I was a teenager (I don't know why I seem to have written to President Carter only once) in hopes that his office would send me more autographs and they did!

Looking back, I wish I never would have grown out of writing letters to Presidents because those are all really cool little souvenirs, especially for a Presidential history fanatic. It would have been fun to have similar things from other Presidents. But if you have a kid or if you are a kid (if you are a kid, I sure hope you have parental permission to read my blog because I say bad words sometimes) with interest in the Presidents/Presidential history, it's really fun to write to the President or former President and get something back. At one point, you could just drop a letter in the mail addressed to "THE PRESIDENT, Washington, D.C.) and it would be delivered to the incumbent in the White House, but I'm not sure if they do that anymore. But it's super easy to find the mailing address to the White House or to the post-Presidential offices of former Presidents online. Presidents and former Presidents have franking privileges, so it's also cool to get a big envelope with a President's signature in the place of stamps. If you're a teacher of younger kids who are learning about the Presidents or Presidency, it's also a cool little project to do. When I was running afterschool programs many (way too many) years ago, I did that with my students and they all received photos from the President at the time (George W. Bush), along with a letter that was addressed to the entire group as a whole.

[makingdonalddrumpfagain]

🤣

[thashining]

Octavia Butler - Parable Of The Sower 1993

[deadpresidents]

I know World War II was going on and he probably didn't have the energy to spend on this, but it's a travesty that history doesn't actually have a photograph of FDR wearing this.

I've been reading a lot about President Ford lately, and after seeing some of the photos of what they were wearing in the White House in the mid-70s, this vest wouldn't have been out of place then.

Luella Smith of Inglewood, California sent Franklin Roosevelt this handmade button vest on January 3, 1944. In a letter that accompanied her gift she noted: “I want you to have your picture made in it and a photo sent to me to put on my stand so that I can admire my boy in the White House, I know you are busy but it sure would make me happy."

See more on our website: https://fdr.artifacts.archives.gov/objects/30602/button-vest