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President Harry S. Truman gets credit for a lot of critical and world-shaping decisions during his Presidency from 1945 to 1953: ending World War II, creating the Truman Doctrine, authorizing the Berlin Airlift, desegregating the armed forces, recognizing Israel, defending South Korea and forming NATO.
But President Truman did not start the tradition of pardoning the White House turkey.
It’s a question researchers at the Truman Library frequently receive.
Library staffers have found no documents, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs, or other contemporary records in our holdings which refer to Truman pardoning a turkey that he received as a gift in 1947, or at any other time during his Presidency. Truman sometimes indicated to reporters that the turkeys he received were destined for the family dinner table.
As the White House Historical Association explains, the focus on Harry Truman as the originator of the turkey pardon stems from his being the first President to receive a turkey from the Poultry and Egg National Board. From September to November 1947, announcements that the government was encouraging “poultryless Thursdays” grabbed national headlines. Homemakers, restaurant owners, and the poultry industry deflated the effort in time for Thanksgiving, but not before poultry growers had sent crates of live chickens— “Hens for Harry”— to the White House in protest. The turkey they presented to President Truman that December promoted the poultry industry and established an annual news niche that endures today.
Then in December 1948, Truman, a longtime farmer, accepted two turkeys and remarked that they would “come in handy” for Christmas dinner. There was clearly no plan for these birds to receive a presidential pardon.
In 1949, the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board as the organizations most frequently involved. These two groups were involved in the presentation pictured, which took place on November 16, 1949.
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