In the past thirty years, memory studies have flourished within the historical discipline. A corpus of works has complicated our understanding of how Americans have remembered, at times reimagined, everything from military conflicts and their leaders, to social movements and political figures. While the historiography of remembrance is vast, this panel’s goal is to shed light on three presidents whom scholars of memory in the United States have largely overlooked: Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Ronald Reagan.

For decades after his 1875 death, Andrew Johnson was seen as a traitor by many in his native South, and in the North as the chief obstacle to its Reconstruction goals. The 1920s witnessed a resurgence in Johnson’s popularity, his boosters positing him as a strident constitutionalist, a hero for all Americans and a symbol of national reconciliation. Led by his descendants and Democratic-party operatives, the movement to rehabilitate his reputation during the 1930s and 1940s saw Johnson characterized as everything from a working-class icon to a stalwart defender of white supremacy. Their efforts also resulted in the federal government purchasing his Tennessee homestead and the formation of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, yet the brightness of Johnson’s star soon dimmed amidst the New Deal’s expansive use of federal power.

As efforts to establish the Johnson site took shape during the Depression years, supporters of another embattled former president, Herbert Hoover, embarked on their own effort to revise the historical narrative. While Hoover and his wife, Lou, played a significant role in creating the Hoover Birthplace Society—which over time evolved into a site including historic buildings, a presidential library, and a park—family friend, William Anderson, had a largely unacknowledged part in its creation and operation. Dedicating much of his life to developing the Hoover site, Anderson was a constant fundraiser, defending Hoover and helming the successful push for the federal government’s funding of the Hoover Presidential Museum and Library.

Though Hoover and his allies spent the three decades after he left office until his death in 1964 defending his tenure in office, by the end of the twentieth century the small-government, anti-liberal mantle had been thrusted upon the legacy of Ronald Reagan. As he left office in 1989, various actors—from ordinary voters to conservative media pundits—sought to use Reagan’s legacy to herald conservatism, undermine New Deal liberalism and knock Franklin Roosevelt from the pedestal of the twentieth-century’s most revered head of state. In pursuing a presidential library and commemorative events around the nation, supporters articulated a legacy of Reagan that hardly mirrored his complex time in office.

As a whole, this panel explores how diverse actors shaped Americans’ commemoration and memorialization of divisive presidents, deploying their images, defending their actions, and reifying myths of each man to serve present needs. Moreover, the papers demonstrate the ways in which conservative Americans have sought to legitimize their views and policies by harnessing the power of remembrance.