The Age of Eisenhower

by William I Hitchcock

  Inside the White House, Morrow pleaded with Adams to act in response to the news from Mississippi and Alabama. “The failure of any prominent member of the administration to speak out against and deplore the present condition of terrorism and economic sanction against Negroes,” he wrote, “is causing deep concern among Negro leaders in the country today.” Morrow reported a widespread feeling that the administration “has completely abandoned the Negro in the South and left him to the mercy of state governments.” He urged a public denunciation of the lawlessness in the South as well as a meeting between Eisenhower and a high-level delegation of black political and religious leaders. Yet with Hoover’s reports circulating in the White House, linking African American activism with communism, Morrow got nowhere with his suggestions. The White House remained publicly silent.57

  Only after considerable persuasion from Rabb did the president agree to place a brief mention about civil rights in his State of the Union speech on January 5, 1956. It was a tepid statement, buried deep in a long speech. “It is disturbing that in some localities,” Eisenhower said, sounding as if the matter had just been brought to his attention, “allegations persist that Negro citizens are being deprived of their right to vote and are likewise being subjected to unwarranted economic pressures. I recommend that the substance of these charges be thoroughly examined by a Bipartisan Commission created by the Congress. It is hoped that such a commission will be established promptly so that it may arrive at findings which can receive early consideration.” Thus Eisenhower kicked the question back to the Congress—the very body that had failed to pass any civil rights legislation for nearly a century.58

  But events would not wait for a congressional commission. The authorities in Montgomery escalated the tension in that city by denouncing the ongoing bus boycott as the work of “Negro radicals” who the mayor claimed were determined to “stir up racial strife.” The city’s police commissioner, Clyde Sellers, appeared at a White Citizens’ Council meeting to announce that he would join the pro-segregation group; a few days later the mayor did so as well. On January 26 Rev. King was arrested on a trumped-up traffic charge and locked up overnight. Four days later an unknown assailant set off a bomb on the front porch of King’s home while his wife and infant daughter were inside. No one was injured, but the firebombing of the young pastor’s home confirmed the worst fears of federal authorities: the South was erupting into violent racial strife.59

  That picture was confirmed by events at the University of Alabama, where a black woman named Autherine Lucy had sought admission to the graduate program in library science. When the university refused her admission, the NAACP helped Lucy take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in October 1955, unanimously upheld her right to attend the public university. She attended her first class on Friday, February 3, 1956, but when she returned on Monday she was met by a screaming mob of 3,000 people who threw eggs at her and blocked her from entering the school buildings. The police used tear gas to disperse the protestors, and a few weeks later the NAACP filed a complaint against the university for conspiring with the crowd to keep Lucy from going to classes. In response the university expelled her for making “defamatory statements.”60

  Finally Eisenhower saw the writing on the wall: southern schools and universities were going to resort to violence before they accepted desegregation. In a meeting with his senior advisers on February 29, he wondered aloud if “the Federal Government could step in if there was mob action” in Alabama. Adams, Hagerty, and other staff debated just what power the federal government had to enforce the Supreme Court ruling. With great reluctance, and a sense of foreboding, the Eisenhower team now realized that perhaps only military intervention would compel local authorities to desegregate southern schools. Yet publicly Eisenhower dared not hint at such a drastic idea. In his press conference of February 8, he hoped “we could avoid any interference” in Alabama and said he felt sure the governor could “straighten it out.”61

  Meanwhile the harassment of boycott leaders in Montgomery intensified. On February 21, 115 boycott organizers—among whom were King and 23 other clergymen—were indicted by a grand jury for conducting an illegal boycott. The grand jury held these black leaders responsible for spreading “distrust, dislike and hatred in a community which for more than a generation has enjoyed exemplary race relations.” To this King replied from the rostrum of the First Baptist Church, where black leaders had gathered in protest of the arrest warrants, “This is not a war between the white and the Negro but a conflict between justice and injustice.” On February 25 the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church appealed publicly to Eisenhower to use federal authority to intervene in the dispute. By its 12th week the boycott had become national news. As the Washington Post reported “The eyes of Alabama, the South and now the nation are on Montgomery.”62

  VII

  The administration was struggling to prepare a response to the events in the South. In fact since December 1955 Attorney General Brownell had been drafting proposals to present to Congress that would empower the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute civil rights violations. Brownell had been frustrated by his inability to do anything in the Till case, and the blatant violations of voting rights in the South now left him determined to strengthen the federal government’s hand. But there was also a political calculation here. On February 29, 1956, the president announced that he would run for reelection. At a stroke the White House began thinking about everything through the lens of politics. In a memo to Adams, Rabb went so far as to call for “a new look at our civil rights policy from a partisan viewpoint.” He felt it was time to break “this iron curtain of silence on our civil rights case” and seek out northern black voters. With a more active civil rights program he suggested, “we still can gain, without too much effort, a five to ten percent increase” in the black vote, “which would be decisive in fringe districts.”63

  Brownell agreed that there might be some electoral benefits from pushing moderate civil rights legislation. But he worried more about determining just what power the federal government really possessed to protect basic civil rights in the states. Brownell believed he simply did not have enough authority to mount a successful legal challenge to recalcitrant southerners, and he wanted to strengthen his hand. He therefore drew up four proposals that he submitted to the cabinet and the president for consideration. First, he drafted a bill to create a civil rights commission that had subpoena power to investigate ongoing abuses. Second, he wanted a new Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, with additional authority and resources. Third, and more boldly, he wanted to be able to pursue civil injunctions against defiant local and state authorities who were violating the basic civil rights and voting rights of black citizens. Brownell pitched this idea as a gentle way of exercising federal power: instead of prosecuting local officials for a crime, he could bring civil proceedings against them if they were seen to be interfering with voting rights. And fourth, Brownell wanted broader Justice Department powers to investigate any conspiracy that aimed at the deprivation of civil and voting rights. Taken as a package, these proposals, if they became law, would substantially increase the Justice Department’s power to compel desegregation in the South.64

  Brownell faced some serious headwinds in getting his ideas made into law. In a March 9, 1956, cabinet meeting in which Brownell was scheduled to present his proposals for discussion, Hoover beat him to the punch. The FBI director had been invited to give an update on the racial tensions in the South since Brown, and he did not miss his chance. His report to the cabinet was chilling. Once again using the old canard that the NAACP was being infiltrated by the Communist Party, Hoover depicted black activist organizations as provocative and dangerous. Their spokesmen, he said, had declared that “white blood will flow,” and he singled out the bus boycott in Montgomery as an example of the NAACP’s revolutionary activities. Hoover praised white southerners who had reacted to provocations by fo
rming citizens’ councils made up of “bankers, lawyers, doctors, state legislators, and industrialists,” that is, “some of the leading citizens of the South.” These men were protecting “historic traditions and customs” and would not abandon them “without a struggle.” The situation was a powder keg, Hoover darkly declared, and some “over-zealous but ill-advised leaders of the NAACP and the Communist Party” were likely to set off an explosion.65

  With this remarkable presentation having cast a pall over the Cabinet Room, Brownell introduced his plans for new civil rights legislation. He ran into criticism from Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson, HEW Secretary Marion Folsom (a Georgian), and others who questioned the need to move quickly on the package of civil rights proposals. Eisenhower backed Brownell but also launched into an impassioned plea for tolerance and respect for the “deep emotions” surrounding this subject. He urged Brownell to moderate the tone of the proposed legislation. “Don’t take the attitude that you are another [Charles] Sumner,” Ike said, referring to the Radical Republican senator from Massachusetts who had violently denounced slavery during the 1850s and led the fight to grant civil rights to African Americans after the Civil War. The president insisted, “These people in the South were not breaking the law for the past 60 years. . . . Now we cannot erase the emotions of three generations just overnight. . . . People have a right to disagree with the Supreme Court decision, since the Supreme Court has disagreed with its own decision of 60 years standing. But of course the new decision should now be carried out.” Eisenhower asked Brownell to resubmit revised and toned-down proposals to the cabinet.66

  Just two days later, and perfectly timed to complicate Brownell’s efforts, a leading Virginia congressman, Howard Smith, and Georgia senator Walter F. George, read on the floor of their respective chambers a “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” which rapidly earned the sobriquet “The Southern Manifesto.” It denounced the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown as an abuse of power, described the Court as having destroyed in a stroke “the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races,” denounced “outside agitators” who wanted to bring “revolutionary changes,” and pledged to halt the implementation of school desegregation. The document was signed by 82 representatives and 19 senators—about one-fifth of the Congress, all Democrats except for two Virginia Republicans. Every one of the signatories, including the 1952 Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Sparkman of Alabama, hailed from the Confederacy. The South now spoke with one voice: it would not recognize federal law. A constitutional crisis loomed.67

  No wonder, then, that Eisenhower’s advisers were becoming exasperated. However, their anger was not directed at southern white leaders but at black activists. Fred Morrow, despondent, wrote a long and revealing entry in his diary about the atmosphere in the administration. Even Max Rabb, normally a close ally, gave Morrow a “tongue-lashing” about black behavior. After all Eisenhower had done, Rabb asserted, “Negroes had not demonstrated any kind of gratitude,” and most of the responsible officials in the White House had become completely disgusted with the whole matter. He said there was a feeling that “Negroes were being too aggressive in their demands; that an ugliness and surliness in manner was beginning to show through.” What black leaders wanted, Rabb told Morrow, “far exceeded what reasonable white people would grant.” And Rabb was Ike’s chief adviser on minority affairs.68

  When the cabinet convened on March 23 to reconsider Brownell’s civil rights proposals, the attorney general ran into still more opposition. John Foster Dulles, just back from a trip to Asia, thought the laws Brownell proposed “deviated too far from accepted mores” and should be shelved. Defense Secretary Wilson and HEW Secretary Folsom also pounced on the proposal, saying things were too dangerous already “without adding more fuel” to the fire. The leading members of the cabinet had thus arranged themselves against Brownell’s civil rights proposals. The president himself now began to worry “about piling up laws that could not be enforced.” On March 20 he spoke with Rev. Billy Graham, who told him that desegregation “would come eventually” but that “the South has a fixed tradition” and could not be forced to move quickly. A consensus was forming: new federal laws to strengthen civil rights protections would only intensify the fury of southern whites. The discussion was brought to a close when Eisenhower asked Brownell to see him after the cabinet meeting had adjourned.69

  In that closed session Eisenhower broke the news to Brownell: he could not support the controversial third provision of the bill that strengthened the attorney general’s hand in fighting civil rights violations. It was just too provocative in an election season. No verbatim record of that meeting exists, but Eisenhower must have sensed Brownell’s deep disappointment because he offered some compensation. Brownell could submit parts 1 and 2 to Congress as formal legislative proposals, while merely suggesting that the ideas present in parts 3 and 4 be considered. Brownell would have to present that case to Congress. If there was going to be a fight, he would take the heat. Eisenhower had decided to stay out of it.70

  Brownell accepted the challenge and began navigating the tricky waters of Congress with great cleverness. Knowing Eisenhower’s objections, he softened the proposals that he sent to the House Judiciary Committee. But he also tipped off his New York friend Congressman Kenneth Keating, who ensured that the proposal to strengthen the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute civil rights violations was beefed up in the bill’s language. It was a clever piece of chicanery, and it allowed Brownell to report to Eisenhower that he had followed the president’s instructions, while also posing as a stalwart advocate for bolder civil rights powers for the Justice Department. Crucially, this bit of theater also gave Eisenhower himself some distance from the legislation.

  It was Brownell’s bill as far as the administration was concerned, and he fought for it with verve. In hearings in Congress in April as well as in public addresses in New York and Washington, Brownell urged Congress to act to protect the right of every American to vote, and in particular to protect black citizens from what he called “haters and opportunists.” New York Times reporter Anthony Lewis described his words as “the strongest spoken thus far on the racial issue by any member of the Administration.” It was an impressive performance, and by early summer a new four-part civil rights bill was working its way through the House of Representatives. On July 23 it passed the House by 276–126 votes, drawing bipartisan support from Republicans and northern liberal Democrats. The first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction now moved on to the Senate.71

  And there it died, as everyone knew it would. Southern Democrats dominated the Senate committees through which the bill had to pass. Instead of considering the bill, the Senate went on summer recess and would not take it up again until 1957. Eisenhower did not seem to mind. He did not endorse the legislation in public, though privately he assured Republican congressmen he still favored it. Indeed, despite his successes in pushing moderate civil rights reforms in his first term, Eisenhower tried his best to stay clear of the subject during the fall election season for fear of alienating whites in the South who might be tempted to vote Republican. For Eisenhower, it was time to let the civil rights issue cool off a bit.

  But it was not for the president to adjust the temperature of the racial conflict that was gaining intensity across the South. Provocations and violence kept the crisis on a high boil. In late August 1956, exactly a year after Emmett Till’s horrific murder, a voice Eisenhower would come to hear frequently rose up from the front lines of the racial struggle and called for the president to turn his attention to Montgomery, a city marred by racial violence, the bombing of the homes of religious leaders, mass arrests, and intimidation of black citizens: “Hundreds of Negroes are being arrested daily on trumped up charges and fined. The revival of the Ku Klux Klan is a constant threat and the robed members are allowed to demonstrate in the city without
police interference whatsoever. Thousands of Negroes in the city of Montgomery and the state of Alabama are deprived of their right to vote.” Surely now was the time for the president to use “the power of your office to see that the proper investigation is made in Montgomery and Alabama to the end that justice and law will prevail.” The voice was that of Martin Luther King Jr., still leading the nine-month-old bus boycott in Montgomery, still clinging to the hope that Washington would respond to the outcry of black citizens across the South who clamored for justice.72

  Eisenhower remained impassive. He would not be drawn into King’s movement. Although Ike managed the civil rights problems of 1953–56 with dexterity, compiling a record of progress as good as that of any of his 20th-century predecessors, he refused to lead the country to embrace a new era of civil rights. As resistance to Brown increased, and as the battle lines formed for a prolonged period of conflict, Eisenhower retreated from the battlefield, seeking the comfort of the distant hills, while Brownell continued to fight in the trenches below. If this was an example of Ike’s “hidden hand,” it was a disappointing performance for those who yearned for some sign from America’s most powerful and popular leader that their struggle was also his.

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  God, Government, and the Middle Way

  “The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk.”

  I

  JUST AFTER CHRISTMAS 1955 EISENHOWER received some welcome news from George Gallup, the pollster and director of the American Institute of Public Opinion. Americans, Gallup reported, considered Eisenhower the most admired man in the world, at the head of a distinguished pack that included Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Pope Pius XII, and the Rev. Billy Graham. Yet the president was probably not surprised by the honor. He had also topped the list in 1954. And in 1953, 1952, and 1951. Indeed Ike would be America’s most admired man for ten straight years between 1951 and 1960.1