Word: pendergast
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...haberdashery shop in Kansas City, Mo. He prospered briefly, then went broke during the depression of 1922, but proudly paid back all his creditors, although it took years to do so. His political career began when the brother of Kansas City's Boss Thomas Pendergast walked into the failing store, leaned an elbow on the counter, and asked whether Truman would be interested in running for county judge in Jackson County-which includes Kansas City. The offer was apparently made because Boss Pendergast's nephew Jim had served in Truman's regiment. Having no better prospects...
...liberal gains in suburban St. Louis this spring, but have failed to align themselves with the progressive black community leaders in the inner city. Instead they are associated with the old Negro bosses who are on the way out. In Kansas City McCarthyites dumped the last remnants of the Pendergast machine with whom Harry S. Truman got his start a half-century ago. But the McCarthyites have failed to unite with the Kennedy forces and the black community which means a liberal party takes over is impossible for the present...
Local Kingmaker. When he became editor, Roberts was just as belligerent. Considering the Star the "hair shirt of the community," he joined in the growing newspaper war on the corrupt Pendergast machine, and kept firing until Pendergast was destroyed. "I'd rather report than eat," said the editor, who excelled at both. He loved to play politics, and became a kingmaker in the Republican Party, backing Dewey, Willkie and Ike; he also lent a helping hand to a local Democratic boy, Harry Truman. Dubbed "Mr. Kansas City," he once boasted: "I'll have the biggest damn funeral Kansas...
WILLIAM B. PENDERGAST...
Died. William Marshall Boyle Jr., 59, astute alumnus of Boss Pendergast's Kansas City school of ward-heeling, machine-tooled politics who as a youth attached himself to County Judge Harry S. Truman, followed him to Washington as a member of his Senate staff, masterminded Truman's upset victory in the 1948 presidential campaign, the following year became chairman of the Democratic National Committee only to resign in 1951 after a Senate investigation grudgingly absolved him of direct personal involvement in influence peddling; in his sleep; in Washington. During the 1948 campaign, Boyle conceived both Truman...