Thomas Trueblood - Professor of Elocution and Oratory

Professor of Elocution and Oratory

Trueblood was a native of Salem, Indiana. He attended Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana and received an A.M. degree. In 1878, Trueblood and Robert I. Fulton established the Fulton and Trueblood School of Oratory in Kansas City, Missouri, which became "one of the largest and best known institutions of its kind in the United States." In 1884, Trueblood came to Ann Arbor as a lecturer on public speaking, intending to give a six-week course. The next year he was invited back. At the time he also was lecturing at Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio Wesleyan, and working out of Fulton and Trueblood School. Michigan asked him to join the faculty, and he stayed for 67 years. In 1892, he founded the Department of Elocution and Oratory and became its first chairman. Michigan's Oratory and Elocution Department was the first such unit in any major university or college in the country. He also established the first credit course in speech at any American university. At the turn of the century, speech and oratory played an important role in American society and academia, so much so that Trueblood was the highest paid professor on the University of Michigan faculty, and students were required to take Trueblood's courses.

In addition, Trueblood organized and coached the competitive debate and oratory contests at Michigan. He established the Northern Oratorical League, and later the Central Debating League, for the purpose of conducting competitive debates among Midwestern Universities, including Michigan, the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Oberlin College, Iowa, and Minnesota. In 1903, an Iowa newspaper noted: "It was due to his zeal in organization, his success in persuading students to enter the competitive contests, and his skill in drilling them, that has enabled Michigan to take so high a rank in oratory in these league contests, with seven first honors to her credit in ten years, and nine of the twelve victories in debate."

Trueblood also delivered speeches and gave dramatic readings on tours all over the world. One newspaper noted: "As a reader Prof. Trueblood is well known throughout the west. His readings are taken from the best literature, with special attention to Shakespearean work. It is his plan to give the principal scenes of the play, narrating the unimportant parts, thus providing an entertainment acceptable to those who do not attend the theater." After a performance of Hamlet in 1908, an Iowa newspaper wrote: "Prof. Trueblood is a man of remarkable personality. His cuttings of the play were taken from the most dramatic parts, giving a wide range of understanding of all the characters. Not only were the different parts interpreted with extremely keen judgment of the most real kind, but the speaker introduced each division with a brief description and delineation of the men and women who appeared. Prof. Trueblood's manner of speaking and his diction are acquirements of a very high character and he held the interest of his hearers from beginning to end."

Trueblood was president of the National Association of Elocutionists when they met in June 1899 for their annual convention at Chautauqua Institute, New York. He brought with him Charles Casper Simons, a law student who coached the debate team for Trueblood. Simons had won first honors in a speech contest with his oration on abolitionist John Brown. Knowing that Southern elocutionists would be in attendance, Trueblood asked Simons to deliver his tribute to Brown at the conference. One account of the conference states: “The introduction was delivered without much reaction; but when Simons intoned, ‘The South had slain the man, but the spirit which animated him was beyond the reach of earthly power,’ the Southerners were distressed. Simons went on to proclaim that John Brown ‘taught the South that a new era had begun, that not by persuasion, threat or rant, but by force was slavery to be exterminated.’ The Southern members of the association walked out of the amphitheater in angry protest.”