In an effort to give a realistic answer to the question “Where are they from?”. the data in Table III take into account the region of primary experience of each staff member as as his birthplace. Like other federal executives and business leaders, White House staff members generally had, their principal occupational experience in a region other than their birthplace. Their mobility tended to be from farms and small towns to cities, especially Washington.
Thirteen of fourteen staff members for whom data is available in the Roosevelt Administration after 1939 and fifteen of twenty Truman staff members were born -in rural areas. However, nearly all of them had their principal experience before appointment to the White House Office staff in Washington or the Middle Atlantic cities. On the other hand, a majority of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson staff members were born in urban areas. Those who were born in rural areas had their principal experiences in the cities of the East and there was even a tendency for those born in urban areas to migrate to Washington for their major occupational experience prior to appointment to the White House Office. Only two of the fifty-seven staff members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations for whom data is available had their principal experience prior to their White House assignment in fural areas.
Naturally, Presidents tend to find a primary recruiting ground in their own native regions. Thus Truman relied more than the other Presidents on the West North Central states. Similarly, Kennedy relied on New England and Johnson has relied on his native Texas. Eisenhower, long removed from his midwestern origin, tended to favor the business world of the Middle Atlantic states as his primary recruiting ground. Roosevelt’s staff members were not concentrated in any particular region of birth, but half of them had had their primary experience in Washington.
The East South Central, West South Central, Mountain, and Pacific regions were noticably underrepresented on the White House Staff, both as regions of birth and principal experience, compared with the total population of the region. The South Atlantic region, almost entirely because of the location of Washington in the region, was overrepresented as an area of principal experience. The Middle Atlantic region was overrepresented as a region of birth and, to a large extent, as a principal region, Significantly, ten of the staff members in this period were
Table III. Geographical Origins, White House Office Professional Staff, 1939–1967
| Census Region¹ | % of pop., 1950 census | FDR² Birth | FDR Prin. loc. | HST³ Birth | HST Prin. loc. | DDE⁴ Birth | DDE Prin. loc. | JFK⁵ Birth | JFK Prin. loc. | LBJ⁶ Birth | LBJ Prin. loc. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New England | 6% | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 11 | 8 | 5 | 8 | 4 | 5 |
| Middle Atlantic | 20% | 0 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 25 | 33 | 8 | 3 | 8 | 6 |
| South Atlantic | 14% | 3 | 7 | 3 | 14 | 8 | 25 | 1 | 12 | 1 | 14 |
| East South Central | 8% | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| West South Central | 10% | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 2 |
| East North Central | 20% | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 11 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 1 |
| West North Central | 9% | 3 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Mountain | 3% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Pacific | 10% | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Foreign | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Rural* | 13 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 36 | 12 | 12 | 2 | 12 | 0 | |
| Urban | 1 | 11 | 5 | 20 | 50 | 74 | 16 | 26 | 17 | 29 |
* Includes small towns.
¹ New England: Me., Vt., N.H., Mass., Conn., R.I. Middle Atlantic: N.Y., Penn., N.J. South Atlantic: Del., Md., D.C., W.Va., Va., N.C., S.C., Ga., Fla. East South Central: Ky., Tenn., Miss., Ala. West South Central: La., Ark., Tex., Okla. East North Central: Ohio, Ind., Mich., Ill., Wisc. West North Central: Minn., Iowa, Mo., Kan., Neb., S.D., N.D. Mountain: Mont., Idaho, Wyo., Nev., Utah, Col., Ariz., N. Mex. Pacific: Wash., Ore., Calif., Alas., Hawaii.
² Data available for 14 of 16 staff members. ³ 20 of 22. ⁴ 86 of 86. ⁵ 28 of 28. ⁶ 29 of 33.
foreign-born.