The Age of Eisenhower
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78. Draft resolution by Dulles, December 18, 1956, and meeting with congressional leaders, January 1, 1957, FRUS 1955–57, 12:413, 432–37; strategy session with Dulles, December 22, 1956, Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda, box 4, DDEL.
79. “Eisenhower Doctrine,” January 5, 1957, Miller Center Presidential Speeches, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-5-1957-eisenhower-doctrine. The essential scholarly study is Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism.
80. Press conference, November 14, 1956, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1096.
CHAPTER 14: THE COLOR LINE
Epigraph: Letter to Swede Hazlett, July 22, 1957, PDDE, 18:322.
1. Washington Post, March 6, 1957; Chicago Defender, March 6, 1957; New York Amsterdam News, March 2, 1957.
2. New York Times, December 18, 1956; Washington Post, December 18, 1956; Eisenhower-Nehru discussions, December 19, 1956, FRUS 1955–57, 8:331–40; DDE, Waging Peace, 114.
3. Memorandum for Nixon, February 18, 1957, FRUS 1955–57, 18:372–74; Morrow, Forty Years a Guinea Pig, 133.
4. Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 4:145.
5. Chicago Defender, March 6, 1957.
6. The court case was Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (M.D. Ala. 1956). On the bombing, see Branch, Parting the Waters, 196–203.
7. Telegrams to Eisenhower and Nixon, January 11, 1957, Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 4:99–103.
8. Press conference, February 6, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 131; King telegram to Eisenhower, February 14, 1957, Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 4:132–34; Time, February 18, 1957.
9. Pre-press conference briefing, November 14, 1956, Papers as President, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 8, DDEL; Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 204–6.
10. Some scholars have recently tried to make Eisenhower into a hero of the civil rights movement, an argument that surely overstates the case. See especially Nichols, A Matter of Justice. A far more restrained assessment can be found in Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, which points to a record of “hesitancy and extreme political caution in defending black legal rights” (263). For a wholly negative and dismissive assessment, see Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line, 85–134.
11. Moon, “The Negro Vote in the Presidential Election of 1956.” On results in 1952 and 1956, see http://www.gallup.com/poll/9451/election-polls-vote-groups-19521956.aspx. Rigeur, The Loneliness of the Black Republican, 11, 29–31.
12. Klarman, “How Brown Changed Race Relations.”
13. New York Times, January 1, 1957; and see Legislative Leadership Meeting notes, December 31, 1956, Belknap, Civil Rights, the White House, and the Justice Department, 93–106.
14. For Brownell’s public statements on voting rights, see New York Times, January 25, 1957; Washington Post, January 28, 1957.
15. Evans and Novak, Lyndon Johnson, 119–40.
16. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 3: 904–5.
17. Telephone call with Johnson, June 15, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 25, DDEL; press conferences, February 6 and May 15, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 122–35, 352–66. For similar words, see press conference, June 19, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 468–80.
18. Brownell, Advising Ike, 219; Russell’s speech reported in New York Times, July 3, 1957.
19. Press conference, July 3, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 515–27.
20. Telephone call to Brownell, July 3, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 25, DDEL; diary entry, July 3, 1957, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 9, DDEL.
21. Legislative leaders meeting, July 9, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 25, DDEL; diary entry, July 10, 1957, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 9, DDEL; Morrow letter to Adams, July 12, 1957, Morrow Papers, box 9, DDEL.
22. Brownell, Advising Ike, 223–25; Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 3:926–27; New York Times, July 11, 1957.
23. “Statement by the President on the Objectives of the Civil Rights Bill,” July 16, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 545.
24. New York Times, July 12 and 17, 1957; Washington Post, July 14, 1957.
25. Press conference, July 17, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 546–58; New York Times, July 21, 1957.
26. Washington Post, July 25, 1957.
27. H.R. 6127 (85th): An Act to Provide Means of Further Securing and Protecting the Civil Rights of Persons within the Jurisdiction of the United States, September 9, 1957, Govtrack, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/85/hr6127/text.
28. The legal complexities in the debate were notorious. For a lucid contemporary evaluation of the debate, see New York Times articles by Robert Phillips and William S. White, July 28 and August 1, 1957; as well as Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 3:944–53.
29. On LBJ’s arm-twisting, see James Reston, New York Times, August 3, 1957; Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 3:953–89.
30. Statement by the president, August 2, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 587; diary entry, August 2, 1957, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 9, DDEL; legislative leaders meeting, supplemental notes, August 6, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 26, DDEL; letter to Bob Woodruff, August 6, 1957, PDDE, 18:354–56.
31. Legislative leaders meeting, August 13, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 26, DDEL.
32. Memo, August 16, 1957, Gerald Morgan Papers, box 6, DDEL; telephone call with Lyndon Johnson, August 23, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series Diary, box 26, DDEL.
33. Chicago Defender, August 10 and September 4, 1957; Washington Post, August 31, 1957; New York Amsterdam News, September 14, 1957; New Journal and Guide, Norfolk, Va., September 7, 1957; Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1957; Citizens’ Councils of America press release, September 2, 1957, Records as President, General File, box 918, DDEL.
34. Martin Luther King Jr. to Richard Nixon, August 30, 1957, William Rogers Papers, box 50, DDEL.
35. Press conference, September 3, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 639–50.
36. Reed, Faubus, 175–81; Nichols, A Matter of Justice, 170–71; Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 174–77.
37. New York Times, August 31 and September 1, 1957.
38. Washington Post, September 1, 1957; Chicago Daily Tribune, September 3, 1957; New York Times, September 3, 1957.
39. New York Times, September 4, 1957.
40. The details of these events have been reported by many witnesses and subsequent accounts. See Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 1–8; Kirk, Redefining the Color Line, 106–38.
41. New York Times, September 5, 1957; Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1957.
42. Faubus to Eisenhower, September 4, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL.
43. Wilkins to Eisenhower, September 5, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL; Granger message in Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1957.
44. Los Angeles Times, September 8, 1957; Washington Post, September 8, 1956; Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1957; Adams, Firsthand Report, 346; Brownell, Advising Ike, 208.
45. Faubus interview, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1957; Davies order, New York Times, September 11, 1957.
46. Notes of telephone call with Adams, September 11, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 27, DDEL; Adams, Firsthand Report, 348; Brownell, Advising Ike, 209; Nichols, A Matter of Justice, 176–79; Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 178–81.
47. “Notes dictated by the President on October 8, 1957, concerning visit of Gov. Orval Faubus,” Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 9, DDEL.
48. Adams, Firsthand Report, 351; Nichols, A Matter of Justice, 179–83.
49. Ann Whitman notes, September 14, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 9, DDEL; press release, September 14,
1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 674–5; Adams, Firsthand Report, 352–53; Brownell, Advising Ike, 210.
50. New York Times, September 15, 16, 19, and 20, 1957.
51. Faubus address, Washington Post, September 21, 1957; details on courtroom in Washington Post and New York Times, September 21, 1957.
52. Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son, 163–72; Kirk, Redefining the Color Line, 118–19; New York Times, September 24, 1957, carried shocking pictures of the gang beating of Wilson; Nichols, A Matter of Justice, 189–91.
53. Telegram from Mayor Mann to Eisenhower, September 23, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL; Ann Whitman notes, September 20, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 27, DDEL; Brownell, Advising Ike, 211; Adams, Firsthand Report, 354; “Statement by the President,” September 23, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 689.
54. Telegram from Mayor Mann to Eisenhower, September 24, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL; Ann Whitman notes of phone calls with Brownell, September 24, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 27, DDEL; Adams, Firsthand Report, 355; Brownell, Advising Ike, 211. Brownell’s detailed legal opinion on which he based his advice is in a memorandum to the president, November 7, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Administration Series, box 8, DDEL. The text of the law is 10 USC 332: Use of Militia and Armed Forces to Enforce Federal Authority, Government Publishing Office, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCODE-2011-title10/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partI-chap15-sec332.
55. “Radio and Television Address to the Nation,” September 24, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 689–94.
56. Eisenhower letter to Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, October 7, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL; Eisenhower letter to Walter T. Forbes of Chattanooga, Tennessee, October 8, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 28, DDEL.
57. Larson, Eisenhower, 132–33; Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President, 542.
58. King to Eisenhower, September 25, 1957, Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 4:278; letter from Jackie Robinson, September 25, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL; Bates quoted in Chicago Defender, September 30, 1957.
59. Roundup of southern opinion in Washington Post, September 25 and 26, 1957; Gathings to Eisenhower, September 29, 1957, Records as President, Official File, box 615, DDEL; Talmage B. Echols to Eisenhower, October 21, 1957, Records as President, General File, box 921, DDEL; Kentucky Citizens’ Council, FBI report, October 1, 1957, White House Office, OSANSA Records, FBI Series, box 2, DDEL; Russell telegram to Eisenhower, September 27, 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Administration Series, box 23, DDEL.
60. Press conference, October 3, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 704–16.
61. Morrow, Forty Years a Guinea Pig, 164; New York Times, May 13, 1958; Washington Post, May 13, 1958. See for reaction Chicago Daily Defender, May 15, 1958; New York Amsterdam News, May 17, 1958; Baltimore Afro-American, May 24, 1958.
62. Summary of meeting of June 23 (dated June 24), 1957, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 33, DDEL; Wilkins and Mathews, Standing Fast, 258. For an inside account, see Morrow, Forty Years a Guinea Pig, 164–78.
63. Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 193–96, 201; Nichols, A Matter of Justice, 223–29.
64. Roy Wilkins to Fred Morrow, September 4, 1958, Morrow Papers, box 10, DDEL.
65. The FBI reported extensively on the event, duly turning over reports to the White House. FBI Report, October 27, 1958, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, FBI Series, box 2, DDEL. Also New York Times, October 26, 1958.
CHAPTER 15: IKE’S MISSILE CRISIS
Epigraph: State of the Union address, January 9, 1958, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 2–15.
1. Morgan, Eisenhower versus “The Spenders,” 99–102.
2. Life, October 14, 1957. Viewers on Earth probably saw the large booster rocket in orbit rather than the tiny Sputnik craft itself.
3. Memorandum of October 8, 1957, conversation with the president, October 9, 1957, Papers as President, DDE Diary Series, box 27, DDEL; NSC meeting, October 10, 1957, minutes, Papers as President, NSC Series, box 9, DDEL.
4. Newsweek, October 21, 1957; Time, December 16, 1957; Life, October 14 and 21, and November 4, 1957; New York Times, October 19, 1957.
5. Press conference, October 9, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 719–32.
6. Arthur Krock, “The Effects of Sputnik Thus Far,” New York Times, October 10, 1957; “GOP on the Defensive,” New York Times, October 13, 1957.
7. Edwin Dale Jr., “Are We Americans Going Soft?,” New York Times, December 1, 1957; Walter Lippmann, “Analysis by Light of the Sputnik,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1957. Further details on the media reaction in Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, 11–33.
8. New York Times, November 7, 1957.
9. Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times, November 4, 1957; Washington Post, November 5 and 6, 1957; New York Times, November 10, 1957.
10. The report was written chiefly by Paul Nitze, who had also written the frightening NSC 68 paper. See Herken, Counsels of War, 111–21; Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, 144–54.
11. NSC meeting, November 7, 1957, and “Report to the President by the Security Resources Panel of the ODM Science Advisory Committee on Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age,” November 7, 1957, FRUS 1955–57, 19:630–35, 638–61.
12. The CIA’s NIE 11-4-57 (dated November 12, 1957) has been fully declassified and is available at CIA Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000267692.pdf. The CIA consultants gave their assessment to Allen Dulles, who passed it to Eisenhower’s staff secretary, General Goodpaster. Dulles to Goodpaster, October 28, 1957, DDO, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/3eqUC0.
13. New York Times and Washington Post, November 8, 1957; “Address to the American People,” November 7, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 789–99; “Our Future Security,” Oklahoma City, November 13, 1957, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 807–17. See also Larson, Eisenhower, 154–58.
14. Walter Lippmann, Washington Post, November 12, 1957; Kennedy in New York Times, November 15, 1957.
15. Adams, Firsthand Report, 195–97.
16. Washington Post, December 5, 1957; Wall Street Journal, November 29, 1957; Stewart Alsop, Washington Post, November 29, 1957; Drew Pearson, Washington Post, November 30, 1957.
17. Memo by Richard Nixon, December 3, 1957, William Rogers Papers, box 50, DDEL.
18. John Eisenhower, Strictly Personal, 199; Lasby, Eisenhower’s Heart Attack, 239–46; DDE, Waging Peace, 227–30.
19. U.S. Senate, Hearings before the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, 2.
20. U.S. Senate, Hearings before the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, 7–8; New York Times, November 26, 1957.
21. U.S. Senate, Hearings before the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, Bush quoted on, 60, Doolittle on 113 and 119, Gavin on 485–512, von Braun on 579–89.
22. Pedlow and Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, 122–43; Peebles, Shadow Flights, 164–94; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 119. The amount of material the CIA gained on Soviet ICBM progress from the U-2 flights can be seen in documents declassified in 2011 and available at the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/what-was-missile-gap. See especially “Photographic Intelligence Briefing,” August 23, 1957; joint photographic intelligence memorandum “The Tyurtam Missile Test Facility,” September 12, 1957; SNIE 11-8-57, “Evaluation of Evidence Concerning Soviet ICBM Flight Tests,” September 18, 1957. For a complete list of U-2 flights over the USSR, see Allen Dulles to Andrew Goodpaster, “U-2 Overflights of Soviet Bloc,” August 18, 1960, DDO, http://tinyurl.galegroup.c
om/tinyurl/3oXNV4. Eisenhower biographers tend to muddle the U-2 story. According to Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower remained calm and unperturbed because of “iron-clad evidence provided by extensive CIA surveillance flights over the Soviet Union.” Smith says the U-2 photographs provided “convincing evidence that there was no missile gap” (Eisenhower in War and Peace, 733–43). Evan Thomas too insists that the missile gap was always known to be a falsehood: “The U-2 spy plane had found nothing to suggest that Russia was building a great nuclear strike force” (Ike’s Bluff, 259). And biographer Jim Newton writes that Eisenhower “had some good reason for nonchalance,” namely, the comforting U-2 overflights (Eisenhower, 254).
23. Some of the internal discussion in the CIA on how to interpret the reconnaissance data can be seen in the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room collection, “ORR Contribution to CIA Proposed Draft of SNIE 11-10-57,” November 6, 1957, and “Addendum to CIA Proposed Draft of SNIE 11-10-57,” November 8, 1957 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79T01049A00170044001-4.pdf.
24. “Briefing for Senate Preparedness Subcommittee on Soviet Guided Missiles,” November 26 and 27, 1957, DDO, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/3erMD7.
25. SNIE 11-10-57, “The Soviet ICBM Program,” December 17, 1957, CIA FOIA Electronic Briefing Room collection. For the problems with these estimates, see Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap, 30–47.
26. For a detailed picture, see “Chronology of Significant Events in the U.S. Intermediate and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Programs,” November 8, 1957, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs: Records, 1952–61, Special Assistant Series, Subject Subseries, box 7, DDEL.
27. NSC meeting, September 8, 1955, FRUS 1955–57, 19:111–22; “Guided Missiles Summary,” April 18, 1957, DDO, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/3fxDo4. On the July 1955 briefing, see Sheehan, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, 287–302.
28. State Department memorandum, November 30, 1955, and NSC meeting, December 1, 1955, FRUS 1955–57, 19:154–61, 166–70. The key presidential decisions on the missile program were tabulated in NSC 6021, “Missiles and Military Space Programs,” December 14, 1960, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs: Records, 1952–61, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries, box 29, DDEL.