Letter from Arden Rappaport to President Truman, 1952

Letter from Miss Arden Rappaport to Harry S. Truman Regarding Harry T. Moore, 1-21-1952 (Archives ID 6050580) (1)As head of the Florida NAACP, Harry T. Moore tirelessly protested lynchings and discrimination. He led a voter registration drive that added more than 100,000 African American voters. In 1951, on Christmas night, Moore’s house was bombed—killing him and his wife, Harriette. The attack shocked many Americans.

Among those who expressed their outrage was Arden Rappaport who wrote that those guilty of this crime should be apprehended and punished as living example[s] that the United States not only preaches high moral values, but lives and acts by her own dictates and principles.”

Andrew S. Evans to President Truman, June 20, 1949.
National Archives, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum

This document is being featured in conjunction with the National Archives’ National Conversation on Civil Rights and Individual Freedom.  Click here to see more related records.

The “National Conversation on Rights and Justice” is presented in part by AT&T, Ford Foundation, Seedlings Foundation, and the National Archives Foundation.

Past Featured Records

Mr. Santa Claus: Romance of the Postal Service
On Display 12/5/2024 – 1/8/2025 This holiday featured film is one of a series of silent movies produced by the Post Office Department in 1921. The mini melodrama shows how the postal service helps make a happy Christmas for a boy and his sister when their “Dere Sandy Claws” letter is answered by a young married couple. https://catalog.archives....
Bring Them Home, Uncle Sam
Soldiers arrive home aboard the S.S. Haverford as the transport ship pulls into Philadelphia, 1918. Records of War Department General and Special Staffs On Display 10/31/2024 – 12/4/2024 More than two million American service members were overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, ending World War I. Americans would continue to ...
Betty Ford: Raising Breast Cancer Awareness
On Display 10/03/2024 - 10/30/2024 Just weeks after she became First Lady, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer. On September 26, 1974, doctors discovered a lump in her breast during a routine medical examination. She underwent a mastectomy two days later. Breaking with social conventions of the time, Betty Ford shared her cancer diagnosis with the public. This ...
Title IX
An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
Court-Martial record of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, March 10, 1778.
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.” More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...