Boyle, Jr., William M. Papers

Chairman, Democratic National Committee, 1949-1951

The William M. Boyle, Jr. Papers include reports, printed materials, press releases, correspondence, invitations, speeches, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, and other items relating to Boyle's life and position as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Size: 1 linear foot, 4 linear inches (about 1,800 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor gave to the U.S. government her copyrights in her husband's writings in this collection. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their duties are also in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Erwin J. Mueller (1970)
Updated by: Mary Louisa Williams (2013) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The Papers of William M. Boyle, Jr. contain materials pertaining both to his position as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and to his personal life. The papers include a certificate, correspondence, invitations, speeches, reports, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, press releases, and other printed materials.

The Boyle Papers are organized in one series and are arranged alphabetically. They include a congratulatory certificate for his election as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee; personal and professional correspondence; a record of the proceedings of the 1944 Democratic National Convention; lists of all elected and appointed Democratic Party officials; invitations to White House and other Washington social functions; an Oregon political survey for the 1950 elections; state-by-state reports and newspaper clippings regarding Truman's 1948 Presidential campaign; obituaries and biographical sketches of William M. Boyle; speeches made by Boyle; correspondence between Margaret, Bess, and Harry S. Truman and the Boyle family; and printed materials regarding the Truman-Smith Victory Dinner, a celebration of the election of Truman as President and Forrest Smith as Governor of Missouri in 1948. Other materials include programs for dinners held in President Truman's honor and an article on Boyle in Time magazine, as well as an address by the President on Boyle's election as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Much of this collection consists of scrapbooks of newspaper clippings ranging from 1948 to 1950. One scrapbook is a collection of newspaper articles on President Truman's trip through the western portion of the United States during the 1950 campaign season. Another from 1949 consists solely of news articles on Boyle published in foreign language newspapers. The other four scrapbooks contain a mix of articles regarding both Boyle and President Truman from the years 1948 to 1950.

Related collections at the Truman Library include the Records of the Democratic National Committee and the Papers of Democratic National Committee Chairmen Robert E. Hannegan, J. Howard McGrath, and Stephen A. Mitchell.