India Edwards Oral History Interview, November 10, 1975

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened October, 1977
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

ZELMAN: I've read that you were responsible for President Truman's appointing our first woman ambassador and for making the treasurer...

EDWARDS: Oh, he made a great many appointments, and Roosevelt had made some, but of course Roosevelt had Eleanor at his elbow at the time which was a big help, but Truman had never known any professional women and I really flatter myself, but he probably wouldn't have made any if it hadn't been I happened to be director of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee and worked very

[2]

hard in the 1948 campaign and was practically the only person who thought he was going to be elected, and so when it was over, why he was terribly good to me and always willing to consider any woman's name that I took to him. He was really a--on his own he wouldn't ever have thought about it, but he always said there's no sex in brains; you bring me a woman who's qualified and I'll consider her, and he did. He considered a woman for the Supreme Court, but the other Justices wouldn't have her.

ZELMAN: Who was the woman?

EDWARDS: Florence Allen, whom Franklin Roosevelt had appointed, was the first woman appointed to the district court, the Federal bench, and so he was--I persuaded him.

ZELMAN: You raised his consciousness?

[3]

EDWARDS: Yes. But of course what you're interested in is Johnson. I'm sure he appointed more women than Truman did, but it wasn't as surprising for him to appoint them because he knew lots of professional women, and, in a way, Lady Bird herself was, having studied at the school of journalism, you know, more or less a professional. Johnson was very interested in giving women an opportunity.

ZELMAN: From reading his papers, I sense a real commitment. Do you think this was something new for a President?

EDWARDS: No, no--new with him?

ZELMAN: No, new for a President to have concern about using the Government as a showcase in the employment of women?

EDWARDS: No, because Truman had it. I mean, after I gave it to him! But Truman had a very smart

[4]

wife. Bess Truman is one of the best educated, loveliest women I've ever known in my life. Most people didn't realize that because she's so reticent, kept to herself, never gave an interview or anything like that. But he was well aware of the capabilities of women. I never could have sold him on the idea that we needed women in Government if it hadn't been that he had a smart wife. And of course Roosevelt was the first President to recognize that women were important. And he did. And that was also because he had a smart wife.

ZELMAN: Whom, I imagine, gave him some pressure.

EDWARDS: Yes.

ZELMAN: Did you talk with President Johnson very often about women appointments?

EDWARDS: No.

[5]

ZELMAN: I've seen in the White House files so often the notation "check this with India Edwards." How did they check with you?

EDWARDS: They'd call me and ask me.

ZELMAN: Who would call you?

EDWARDS: Well, Liz would often be the one to call--let me think who else--oh, various young men on the staff. I can't remember what their names were. And nothing like as much as I was consulted by the Truman administration because there I was vice chairman of the National Committee and director of the Women's Division. With Johnson I had no official job with his administration, and the appointments he made of women were made--most of them--in the early days, and I wasn't doing anything official then. But they knew, and he knew, that I knew a lot of women and had ideas about them.

[6]

ZELMAN: Did you send recommendations to him?

EDWARDS: I never sent any recommendations to anybody. I believe in recommending a particular woman for a particular job, and I attributed my success with Truman to the fact that I never went in with a bunch of women's names and said, "These are women who ought to be appointed," because I didn't believe that he wanted a woman who was not qualified, and the trouble is that a lot of women who have worked hard in the party see no reason why they shouldn't get some big appointment when they nave no qualification whatsoever for it. And the only time I suggested anybody--I did write Lyndon a letter right after he was elected and I said that there were two things I certainly hoped he was going to do. One was to reorganize the Government so that there would not be so much duplication of effort in the different

[7]

departments, and that he would continue what Truman had started, the appointment of a lot of women, because Kennedy had done nothing. I mean, Kennedy, he just didn't...he never thought of a woman as anything but a sex object.

ZELMAN: You know he created the Commission on the Status of Women, I've heard, at the insistence of Esther Peterson.

EDWARDS: I'm sure it was at the instigation of somebody, because he never would have done it. A reporter in Washington, a woman who ran a news service, told me that she went to--I don't know if it was Kenny O'Donnell, one of the Irish Mafia--and she said, "How can any President appoint a commission on the status of women and not have India Edwards on it, since she's done more for women than any other woman in the United States?" And he said, "India Edwards will never be appointed to anything while John

[8]

Kennedy is in the White House."

ZELMAN: Why would he say that?

EDWARDS: Because I had been co-chairman of the Committee to Elect Lyndon Johnson, to get Johnson the nomination, and I had brought up Kennedy's illness. Kennedy and I remained friends always, but his Irish Mafia hated me. And Bobby. So that was why. So I was never on that committee. But I can assure you, I think I had more to do with the women Johnson appointed than the Commission had, because I did recommend a lot of women that he appointed.

ZELMAN: Could you tell me a few?

EDWARDS: Katharine Elkus White, whom they appointed Ambassador to Denmark, and, oh my goodness, it's been so long ago I can't remember--Barbara Bolling, what did they appoint her to? I

[9]

can't remember.

ZELMAN: Neither can I.

EDWARDS: And there were various people that...

ZELMAN: Well, I know that you had a lot to do with recommending and approving appointments. Do you think there were other people reminding the President about women? Liz Carpenter wrote in Ruffles and Flourishes that one day President Johnson came to her and said, "Anna Rosenberg Hoffman tells me we need more women in Government." Do you suppose she came to see him, and were there others you know of...

EDWARDS: I would think that there were probably a lot of women who were interested. Now Anna Rosenberg was a great friend of mine.

ZELMAN: From the Truman years?

EDWARDS: Yes. President Truman had one of his

[10]

aides call me on the phone one day, when General Marshall was Secretary of Defense, and he said, "General Marshall wants to appoint Anna Rosenberg as Assistant Secretary of Defense, and President Truman wants to know if that meets your approval."

I said, "Oh, very definitely. I would be delighted."

And this aide said, "Does she have the capability for doing that job?"

And I said, "Indeed she does,"--it was to be for Manpower--"she would be the one I would pick."

So I feel sure that Anna was always interested in women, so that if she went to see LBJ, I'm sure she would tell him that. And I'm sure there were many other women, like Katie Louchheim, who was mentioned this morning. I'm sure Katie was recommending people. I'm sure all of us who were interested

[11]

were. Like I say, I never gave anybody a list of women that I thought were qualified. I just had the feeling that you get the woman for the job, match them up, and do it quickly.

ZELMAN: When you were in the Department of Labor did you work in the Department or just consult?

EDWARDS: No, I had an office in the Department of Labor, and I worked full-time. I didn't have to; being a consultant I could have worked two hours a day.

ZELMAN: You were a consultant on youth employment?

EDWARDS: On youth employment. I worked full-time. They were planning the poverty program at that time. I worked to a very large degree helping to plan the Neighborhood Youth Corps, which was under the sponsorship of the Labor Department.

ZELMAN: Now I have read that the NYC did a very good

[12]

job of including girls in its...

EDWARDS: Neighborhood Youth Corps is the only part of the poverty program that amounts to anything.

ZELMAN: The Job Corps never really brought women in...

EDWARDS: Well, they had a Women's Job Corps, and they had a very good woman at the head of it, but it cost so much money to train one person in the Job Corps. We didn't really have very many men in there.

ZELMAN: I've read so much about Daniel Moynihan putting the emphasis on educating Negro males.

EDWARDS: Yes.

ZELMAN: And forget about the women.

[13]

EDWARDS: Yes.

ZELMAN: And I know Edith Green in the Congress wrote into the Job Corps bill the provision for training women.

EDWARDS: I talked to Edith about that.

ZELMAN: You did? Tell me about that.

EDWARDS: It was the first director for the Women's Job Corps--I can't remember her name...

ZELMAN: Dr. Jeanne Noble?

EDWARDS: Yes. Jeanne Noble and I talked to Edith Green about it because I thought it was terribly unfair, and of course Jeanne was awfully upset about it. They were given nothing. So Edith became very interested, and they did create a--but they never gave them very much money. Then Jeanne left, went back to New York University.

[14]

Then, oh, Washington, what's her name?

ZELMAN: Benetta.

EDWARDS: Yes. Benetta Washington took over. Her husband was the mayor of Washington. Benetta is a brilliant woman and I don't know whether she devoted full-time to it or not. I don't know whether it was a big enough job to need anybody full-time. But I know Benetta gave it whatever was necessary because she's that sort of a person. And Benetta would probably not agree with me. She would probably feel that it was a success. But I felt it was a complete and total failure from the very start; it never stood a chance. The men's Job Corps was a failure. It never stood a chance.

ZELMAN: Why do you think this was so? Because it was so expensive?

[15]

EDWARDS: Oh, they played a numbers game with it. The important thing in the estimate of Sargent Shriver and the young Ph.D.'s who were in there helping him--the poverty program did a great deal for a lot of young Ph.D.'s who had just gotten their degrees--and they planned the programs, and they knew no more about--I used to sit in the meetings and nearly die at their inexperience and their absolute refusal to want to even consult with anybody who'd had any experience--and they would say--I'm all in favor of young people with new ideas and new insights, and all, but sometimes you have to be practical. And I remember sitting in a meeting with these young men. I would go representing the Secretary of Labor at these meetings, and I remember meeting with four or five of these young men, and they worked for the OEO. They were planning various

[16]

things, parts of the OEO. I said something to the effect, "Of course, the first thing you will do when you go into a city to organize anything, is to get in touch with the mayor." Oh, indeed not. They weren't going to have anything to do with the mayor.

ZELMAN: You feel that was the downfall of the whole community action...

EDWARDS: I said, "Well, young men, you can't do a thing in a city like Chicago unless you have Dick Daley helping you. There may be cities where you can go in and operate without it, but not very many. None that I can think of.

ZELMAN: Not for very long, anyway.

EDWARDS: No! I said, "You've got to have the mayor and the city council. At least you've got to consult them." And I said, "In the end you may

[17]

have to fight them in order to get anything done, but you've got to start out by observing protocol." But they didn't do it.

ZELMAN: I wonder how different it might have been if they'd listened to you...who can tell?

Did you work much with Esther Peterson or any of the people from the Women's Bureau? Mary Dublin Keyserling?

EDWARDS: Not much. No. I worked with Mary some, but our paths didn't cross very much.

ZELMAN: What exactly did you do to help set up the Neighborhood Youth Corps?

EDWARDS: Well, I used to go to all the meetings about defining the NYC. I suppose you could say I was the Secretary's representative. And I was not very popular. The young men did not like me at all because they knew I was a

[18]

Presidential appointee, and they knew I wasn't there to stay. Civil servants just don't like Presidential appointees anyway. So they didn't pay much attention to my input.

ZELMAN: Was your input mostly of a political nature--what was possible?

EDWARDS: Yes, at least what I thought was sensible. But it didn't do much good. In fact, it did no good.

ZELMAN: I'm curious, am I correct in classifying you as a feminist? To me you seem like an ideal...

EDWARDS: I suppose...

ZELMAN: You're certainly interested in women. How did you get that way?

EDWARDS: Well, I worked on a newspaper from the time

[19]

I was eighteen.

ZELMAN: In Chicago?

EDWARDS: Yes, first as a reporter, then as society editor, then as women's editor. And I never really felt that I was discriminated against on the paper. Quite the contrary, I was the pet of the paper, starting at such an early age. So I was so shocked when I volunteered to work in politics and found out how women were discriminated against in politics, in Government. It really was a revelation to me. I became a fighting militant.

ZELMAN: This would be in the late forties?

EDWARDS: Early forties. I volunteered to work with the Democratic National Committee in 1944. I just never...I've always been liberated. I never expected anything else. At the end of

[20]

the '48 campaign, the man who had been in charge of the Whistle Stop train came to me and said "President Truman wants to know what you would like. Do you want to be in the Cabinet? What do you want?"

And I said, "I don't want a thing." I said, "I didn't go into politics in order to get anything for myself." I said, "I loved politics. The only thing I would like to do is stay at the committee if the President and the chairman want me there. But I want a lot of jobs for a lot of women."

ZELMAN: I have read that story about you.

EDWARDS: You have?

ZELMAN: Yes, and the first time I read it I almost cried and applauded at the same time.

EDWARDS: If I had taken one job, if I had taken

[21]

the job it would have been the end. There wouldn't have been another woman appointed.

ZELMAN: It's one of the best things anybody's ever done for women in politics.

EDWARDS: Well, I think it was. But there was nothing I wanted. I was happily married, and I didn't feel that I was trained for any--you know, I had no great bubbling talent that had to be recognized. And I loved politics. I loved the political groups of the day. And I won most of the time.

ZELMAN: That makes a difference in your outlook!

EDWARDS: Well, I realize that I was in a very fortunate position in having a President with whom I was very close. We were friends, and he knew that my interest was in the party, not with anything for myself. Because my husband was already with the State Department

[22]

when I married him. So, he was wonderful. One of my most cherished possessions is a note from Lady Bird, written after Lyndon's death. I didn't write her for quite a long time, and I wasn't able to come to the funeral or to the memorial service in Washington because my husband had just had a very serious operation, and I just couldn't bring myself to write her. I loved Lyndon Johnson, and his death coming so soon after Harry Truman's really just broke me up. And I felt so strongly that Lyndon Johnson was a casualty of the Vietnam war just as much as if he'd been shot. And to me he's one of the tragic figures of our century. And it was a long time before I wrote Lady Bird, and I don't know what I said, but my heart was in it. And she wrote me right after she got the letter, and thanked me for my sweet understanding

[23]

letter, and she said, "I'm sure you know that it was"--well, I can't quote it exactly, but it was something to the effect that it was largely because of his admiration for me and my achievements that he wanted to open the doors of opportunity for more women.

ZELMAN: How beautiful.

EDWARDS: Isn't that a lovely thing? And that's a letter I value very much.

ZELMAN: You should.

EDWARDS: Lady Bird doesn't write anything like that unless she means it. I don't think she said largely, but it was "in large part" or something like that.

ZELMAN: He must have known some very wonderful women.

EDWARDS: I think Lyndon did like me, and that...

[24]

ZELMAN: Well, I know he certainly valued your opinions. You can tell that from reading his files.

EDWARDS: The last time I ever talked to Lyndon--I never came down here after he left the White House, but in the White House before the 1968 convention--Margaret Price, who was vice chairman of the committee then, was dying of cancer. And he asked me to step in and take her place and make plans for the women at the convention. I just had to do it, because I loved Margaret so dearly and I knew she was dying. She said, when I finally said that I would do it, she said, "India, I will sleep tonight for the first time in months without a worry." She died about two months after that. Anyway, went back to the committee, and I was very unhappy. I was working as a volunteer. I was very unhappy with the way the committee was set

[25]

up and what they were doing, and not doing, mostly.

ZELMAN: That was a pretty bad year for the party.

EDWARDS: Terrible. And, oh, I finally wrote Lyndon a note. He had taken himself out of politics so perhaps I ought not ask to see him on a political matter, but I said I really felt I had to. I said, "May I have an off-the-record appointment to talk to you?" And so next morning--I sent it over on a Thursday afternoon, a note to the White House--and the next morning his secretary called me and said, "If you'll come in at 5:30 this afternoon the President will see you." I went in and the members of the Cabinet were waiting to see him. The appointments secretary made it very clear he hoped I'd only stay five minutes. Every time I'd get up to go Lyndon would say, "Don't go, don't go," and we were talking politics.

[26]

I told him what I wanted and how much money I felt I needed, and I said, "You know, I love Margaret Price very dearly, that's why I am willing to fill in for her. But," I said, "you know, she's allowed herself to be a doormat." I said, "That's the way you men treat her." I said, "You know that I have never been a doormat, and I never intend to be."

He said, "Nobody ever tried to treat you like a doormat. We all know that."

I was there for about an hour and a half.

ZELMAN: With the Cabinet waiting.

EDWARDS: And I got what I wanted. That was the last talk I had with him. I didn't see him again. We moved to California.

ZELMAN: Where in California do you live?

EDWARDS: Palm Desert. Near Palm Springs. But

[27]

we wrote letters. I think maybe he must have been very lonely after he got back here to Texas because I had so many letters from him.

ZELMAN: I think that would be hard to step out of being President. No matter how full your life is, it could never be as busy again.

EDWARDS: Yes, he was a very loveable man. Can you turn that off for a minute?

ZELMAN: You said something a while ago that interested me. You said when you went into politics you discovered there was discrimination. What kind of discrimination did you run into? Could you give me some examples?

EDWARDS: Well, yes! The men were perfectly willing to have the women help in the campaign in a menial way...give pink teas, and you know.

[28]

But most of them out around the country--not Roosevelt and not Truman--but most of the country acted as if women had no brains, that they weren't capable of anything more than a seven year old child could do--something of that sort. And I just had never encountered that in the newspaper business. Now maybe other women have, I don't know. My sex, to me, never seemed to make it difficult for me in the newspaper business. But in the first campaign I was in, the '44 campaign, I wasn't aware of it so much, because I was so terribly busy.

ZELMAN: And new, too?

EDWARDS: Yes, and I was working in New York, and I was writing speeches so I didn't have occasion to come in contact with people very much. I had my own office and secretary and I didn't....

[29]

but I was horrified when I took a professional job with the Democratic National Committee and discovered that I had a terrible time getting an appointment for a very prominent woman--the national president of the Business and Professional Women's Club came to see me, and she wanted to see Bob Hannegan, the chairman. I felt it was necessary--what she wanted to see him about was important. She represented a lot of women. And his secretary made it very clear that he couldn't be bothered seeing her. And so...

ZELIHAN: I'm surprised women put up with that. You didn't...

EDWARDS: They had put up with it for years! No I didn't. I sent a special delivery letter to his home resigning. I said I wasn't accustomed to being treated like a second-class citizen and that I had no idea of working

[30]

for the Democrats if that's the way they treated women.

ZELMAN: Good for you!

EDWARDS: He called me at 11 o'clock at night and said, "You're not gonna leave. You can't leave." He said, "I'll see the woman you want me to see." He said, "I'll see any woman you want me to see."

And I said, "Well, that's what you ought to do." I said, "I never asked to see the publisher or the managing editor of the paper I worked for that I had to wait more than four hours. Because they knew I wasn't coming to see them on, you know, unless I had something important." I said, "If you don't have that kind of confidence in me, then I don't belong here."

So I never really had much trouble with any of the men. But it was a constant battle. And

[31]

I was always battling for other women too, which helped. It's easier to battle for somebody else than it is for yourself.

But you didn't have to battle with Lyndon Johnson.

Allen, Florence, 2

Edwards, India:

Green, Edith, 13

Hannegan, Robert, 29, 30

Job Corps, 12, 13, 14-17
Johnson, Lyndon B., 3, 4, 6, 8, 22-23, 24-27, 31
Johnson, Mrs. Lyndon B., 22

Kennedy, John F., 7, 8

Neighborhood Youth Corps, 11-12, 17-18
Noble, Jeanne, 13

Price, Margaret, 24, 26

Rosenberg, Anna, 9

Shriver, Sargent, 15

Truman, Harry S.:

• • background of, 18-19
    and Democratic National Committee, 29-30
    and Democratic National Convention of 1968, 24-25
    and Department of Labor, 11-12
    and Job Corps, 15-17
    and Johnson, Lyndon B., 4, 6, 8, 22-23, 24-27, 31
    and Kennedy, John F., 7-8
    and Rosenberg, Anna, 9-10
    and Truman, Harry S., 1-3, 6, 7, 9, 20
    Women in government, role in hiring of, 20-21, 22-23
  • and women, role of, in his administration, 1-3, 4, 20-21
• Truman, Mrs. Harry S., 4

  Washington, Benetta, 14
  White, Katharine Elkus, 8
  Women in government, discrimination against, 27-31
  Women, role of, in administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, 3, 4, 5, 9, 23, 24-26