About President Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States, beginning his term in 1945 and ending in 1953. Some of Truman's greatest accomplishments as president were the Marshal Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and NATO. Truman was a member of the Democratic Party and succeeded President F.D. Roosevelt after his death in 1945.
Truman's Western United States Tour
During his campaign, Truman embarked on the Western United States Tour where he visited states across the western part of the country to speak. He traveled to Ohio, Missoula, Cheyenne, Rawlins, Laramie, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angelas, and many more. His goal was to connect with small towns in direct conversation. His goals were to effectively speak to the masses about his policies, including higher minimum wages, low cost housing, stronger social security, and creating a national health insurance plan. For this memory, he visited the University of Wyoming in Laramie to speak to college students, Laramie locals, and others to advance his campaign and appeal to voters.
Connections to Public Memory
Part of what makes a speech impactful for an audience is the ephemera and after effects. Ephemera is the things that remains after performances that encapsulate what is there after the thing itself. Truman came to speak to college students at the University of Wyoming during the Cold War. The speech itself might not be crucial because it is simply one person talking to a room of thousands of other people. However, when the ephemera of the speech is considered, there are remnants of the words Truman shared that day that inspired many students. Speeches especially, can have ephemera of hope, passion, strength, and inspiration that affect people for years to come.
According to Connerton's "Seven Types of Forgetting," Truman's Speech may be a hidden memory more than it has been forgotten. This memory has not been forgotten over time, but has been hidden from people as it's not told anymore. This memory could be the fifth type of forgetting which is forgetting as an annulment which just means that this memory has been lost over time due to the over abundance of newer events that take up more space in the mind that overlap this event. More recent events are easier to remember than those from decades ago. This does not deminish the importance of the event, it only means that time has prevented it from being at the forefront of the mind almost 100 years later.
