by Owen J. Hurd
In Washington, DC, Truman spent a week politicking with Democrats, visited the Senate floor, and did some subtle lobbying for a presidential pension. Then it was off to Philadelphia where he delivered his first post-presidential political speech. A thousand attendees on hand as well as thousands of radio listeners nationwide listened in as Truman warned against Eisenhower’s plans to reduce the defense budget. The next stop on the itinerary was New York City, the new home to his adult daughter, Margaret. The Trumans lived it up in New York, staying in comped rooms at the Waldorf Astoria, which provided the former president and first lady with a complimentary five-room suite. They took in a couple of Broadway shows, dined at swanky restaurants, and managed to tour the United Nations, which was founded during Truman’s presidency.
Truman did not of course pay a social call to the MacArthurs, who resided at the famous hotel. As chairman of the board at Remington Rand Corporation, MacArthur occupied a vastly higher rung on the socioeconomic ladder. Between his salary and military pension, MacArthur brought home about $90,000 per year.
On the return trip to Independence, Truman had a couple run-ins with the law. The first one occurred on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Harry was a bit of a lead foot, but his wife—aka “The Boss”—kept a close eye on the speedometer, insisting that Harry not exceed the posted speed limit. Harry obliged, but made the mistake of doing so in the left lane, creating a long “car snake.” A patrolman pulled the car over and was shocked to find the bespectacled moonfaced president behind the wheel. He let him go with a warning.
The Trumans also got pulled over by the police in Richmond, Indiana, but this time it was by a pair of self-aggrandizing troopers intent on capitalizing on a photo opportunity. Truman was a good sport about it, but he was eager to be back home in Independence, where he and Bess could go about their lives relatively unmolested by the locals.
MacArthur meanwhile was helping his company, now called Sperry Rand Corporation, garner hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues related to defense and space programs. MacArthur also continued to collect his salary as an active five-star general. Between those revenues and others—the Philippines gave him half a million for his services over the years—MacArthur would never know the financial pressures that weighed on Truman during his retirement years. When he died in 1964, MacArthur’s estate would be valued at nearly $2 million.
Lacking a financial incentive, the most likely reason MacArthur wrote his memoirs was to settle scores and secure his legacy. Truman’s autobiography had been sharply critical of MacArthur on many counts. Truman claimed that he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had “leaned over backward in our respect for the man’s military reputation,” but that MacArthur repaid him with a slap in the face. MacArthur’s behavior in this episode, Truman said, “had the earmarks of a man who performs for the galleries.” Summing up, Truman drew a favorable parallel between his troubles with MacArthur and Lincoln’s with the irksome George McClellan.
MacArthur’s memoir, Reminiscences, attempted to even the score with a man he privately referred to as “a vulgar little clown.” He charged Truman with having “an uncontrolled passion.” To illustrate, he trotted out the old story about how an irate Truman threatened to punch a music critic who savaged a theatrical performance by the president’s daughter, Margaret. MacArthur made his own comparison with Abraham Lincoln, citing an instance in which Lincoln pledged his wholehearted support for General Grant. Truman, MacArthur implied, was no Lincoln, but it was equally true that MacArthur was no Grant, at least not in terms of obedience to his commander in chief.
Like Grant, though, MacArthur never lived to see his book published. In a negative review, a critic for Harper’s magazine suggested that this might have been a good thing, in MacArthur’s case. “He was always his worst enemy, and his autobiography will add nothing to his reputation. He should be remembered by his deeds, not his words.” Douglas MacArthur died on April 5, 1964. He is buried at a shrine built in his honor at Norfolk, Virginia.
Truman’s health began to falter at about the same time. Famous for his daily early-morning walks, Truman was forced to abbreviate them as he became dependent on a cane, and eventually gave them up altogether. Truman died on December 26, 1972, at the age of eighty-eight. Bess lived another ten years, eventually becoming the oldest living first lady in U.S. history before dying at ninety-seven on October 18, 1982.
LOOSE ENDS
One of the enduring mysteries related to Douglas MacArthur is the fate of his only son. Arthur MacArthur IV was thirteen years old when Truman fired his famous father. When he accompanied his parents to the United States, it was the first time he ever set foot on American soil. In the following months, his every move was scrutinized and publicized by the media. Described by one of his teachers as a “sensitive, bright, delicate boy”—who was said to possess a gift for music—Arthur apparently disliked all the attention, for he largely shunned public appearances after his first few whirlwind months in America. He also turned his back on the military legacy established by his father and grandfather, both Medal of Honor recipients. Instead of attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Arthur matriculated at Columbia University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in 1961. In the years after his father’s funeral, Arthur MacArthur disappeared from public life. Some have speculated that he changed his name and pursued a career in music. A handful of people have tried to uncover his current whereabouts but none have succeeded. Presumably, the mystery will not be lifted until his obituary appears in the newspaper.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CIVIL RIGHTS AND WRONGS
The 1950s and 1960s were a period of massive social upheaval in the United States, as the civil rights movement picked up steam and boiled over throughout the southern states and into the urban north. Activists pressed for desegregation of public education and public transportation, as well as free and equal access to voting booths, housing, and public commercial spaces, such as restaurants and hotels.
Some of the biggest events included Rosa Parks’s refusal to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger and James Meredith’s forced integration of the University of Mississippi. In the following entries, we’ll see how one of these civil rights icons was marginalized by the movement she helped to inspire and how the other one did everything he could to marginalize himself.
Where the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had supported efforts to extend civil rights to oppressed classes in the 1960s, the Nixon administration engaged in covert operations that willfully deprived U.S. citizens of their civil rights, most notably the right to privacy. Believe it or not, the government informant who helped expose the Watergate scandal was subsequently found guilty of depriving other U.S. citizens of their civil rights.
A Seat on the Bus, but Not at the Table
Some have called Rosa Parks the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. It is an appropriate moniker, not only because her courageous stand on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus gave birth to a larger and ultimately triumphant campaign but also because, although many claimed to love and admire her, she was often taken for granted. Parks was content to labor in the background, doing the unglamorous work of a yeoman volunteer—before and after that momentous date, December 1, 1955, when she refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger.
There’s a new myth in circulation, a supposed corrective to an older myth. The original myth was that Parks was just a humble seamstress whose feet were tired from a long day at work. A simple woman, she took the obvious yet powerful stance that the system was unfair and she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before? Well, they had. In fact, Rosa Parks was thoroughly aware of several recent instances in which other African Americans had similarly refused to give up their seats, resulting in arrest or ejection from the bus.
Parks knew about these cases because she was more than just a seamstress working at the Fair department store in downtown Montgomery. She also volunt
eered at the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Parks and other members of the NAACP were looking for a good test case to challenge the city’s segregated public transportation system. They thought they had their ideal case when a high school student named Claudette Colvin was arrested on March 2, 1955. But they decided not to go ahead with the challenge. It turned out that Colvin, already considered a somewhat ill-mannered teenager, was also pregnant out of wedlock, making her an easy target for the white press.
So Parks was definitely aware of the issues and active in helping to right a wrong, but she always insisted that on the day she was arrested she had no intention of becoming a test case herself. She was busily planning for the holidays and juggling competing obligations in her mind on her way home from work when the bus driver demanded that she give up her seat. She made a snap decision in the moment that she was tired of being pushed around. The other factor that sometimes gets overlooked is that the driver on that fateful day just so happened to be the same driver who ejected Parks from a city bus years earlier. Ever since, Parks had refused to ride any bus driven by this man, but preoccupied with her thoughts, Parks boarded the bus that evening without noticing the driver. Her bitter memories of that past injustice swelled within her and propelled her toward her historic encounter.
The new myth is that Parks’s decision to refuse her seat was a premeditated act, that she boarded the bus with the express purpose of getting arrested. Of course, even if true, it’s not clear how this would diminish the nobility of her actions. But it wasn’t. None of her fellow activists was aware of any such plan. And when they learned of her arrest, they were just as surprised as her husband, Raymond, was when he found out. They all rushed to the police station—Raymond in a panic. It took some time to collect the bail money, as it was more than the Parkses could come up with. Bail was eventually posted by civil rights attorney Clifford Durr and local activist E. D. Nixon.
Regardless of how it came about, the Montgomery civil rights movement now had its ideal test case. Durr and Gray outlined their legal strategy. In the best-case scenario Parks would be found guilty of violating the city ordinance that required blacks to forfeit their seats to whites, they would appeal the case, taking it as far as the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary, until they secured a decision that was binding on a statewide or federal level, thereby reinforcing the illegality of segregation that had been established in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Parks was indeed convicted and fined $14, but her attorneys eventually determined that the particulars of her case would not make for a precedent-setting appeal. There was a good chance that the higher court’s ruling would hinge on a technicality.
But Parks’s act of civil disobedience spawned another parallel offensive in the fight against segregated public transportation. The day after Parks’s arrest on a Thursday, Jo Ann Robinson, the leader of the Women’s Political Council composed a leaflet calling for a citywide boycott of the bus system to coincide with Rosa Parks’s court date on Monday. As the clear majority of the system’s riders, African Americans hoped to cripple the system by refusing to ride. Robinson printed up thousands of the leaflets, distributing them to churches, schools, and other community hubs. The flyer was also printed verbatim in the local newspaper. The boycott would ultimately last for thirteen months. Organizers, including a young minister named Martin Luther King, coordinated carpooling arrangements, negotiated reduced fares from black-owned taxi companies, and encouraged solidarity throughout the boycott.
It wasn’t easy. Activists were brutalized, bombed, and arrested. Rosa Parks was indicted on February 21, 1956, along with about eighty other activists, for violating a city ordinance that prohibited boycotts. On the following day—not on the occasion of her first more famous arrest—the iconic photos were taken of her being fingerprinted by a white police officer and holding the number 7053 in her now-famous mug shot.
Ironically, Parks’s attorneys decided to resurrect the case of Claudette Colvin, along with several other appellants, for their strategic appeal to end bus segregation. In Browder v. Gayle, the U.S. District Court found in favor of the appellants, outlawing segregation on Montgomery buses. Never ones to miss a photo opportunity, Martin Luther King and fellow rising civil rights star Ralph Abernathy arranged to have their photographs taken riding in the front seats of city buses, signaling the successful end of the boycott. Strangely, neither of them thought to invite Rosa Parks to join them. But a Look magazine photographer did coax Parks to pose for a picture that is probably the best-known image of the civil rights crusader. She sits gazing out the window of the bus, as a grim-faced white man sits behind her.
The day marked a turning point in the lives of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. From this point on the woman who inspired a successful campaign to end a major component of segregation in the American south would be overshadowed by one of the men whose reputation was first established by the boycott launched by her arrest. It’s not that Parks sought out the spotlight. It wasn’t in her nature to grandstand. Even so, she bristled at the male chauvinism that shunted her to the side of the movement. One local activist called Parks a “lovely, stupid woman.” Abernathy considered her little more than a useful tool of the movement.
Not only that, Parks also lost her job as a result of her activism, and her husband quit his job when his workplace became a hostile environment. It wasn’t easy to be the husband of Rosa Parks, always fearing for his wife’s safety and often the target of insults and threats himself. Raymond compounded bad health and psychological stress with heavy drinking.
Out of work, frustrated with the direction of the local civil rights movement, and daunted by unrelenting death threats, Parks moved to Detroit with her husband and mother. She once again found work as a seamstress, and performed behind-the-scenes volunteer work for the Detroit chapter of the NAACP. Parks participated in several more defining moments in civil rights history, including the March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and the freedom march from Selma to Montgomery. On both occasions, however, Parks felt marginalized by the other leaders of the movement. Whether they had no respect for her ideas or her public speaking abilities or whether they were disinclined to share the stage with a woman, civil rights leaders never asked Rosa Parks to speak at these events. She was considered a useful symbol of the movement, but nothing more.
Parks regained a measure of respect in 1975 when the city of Montgomery invited her to return to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of her arrest and the bus boycott. By this time she had also been working for more than a decade for U.S. Congressman John Conyers. In 1987, Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, an organization designed to help minority youth. Parks wrote several books, including My Story and Quiet Strength, both targeted to young adult readers.
In 1994 an intruder broke into Rosa Parks’s home and beat her savagely. The assailant made off with $103, but was arrested shortly thereafter. A final insult, at least according to Parks, came in 1999, when the rap group Outkast released a song called “Rosa Parks.” Although intended as a tribute of sorts, the song included language that Parks considered offensive. Parks sued the band but the judge ruled that the song was protected expression under the First Amendment. Another unfortunate by-product of the lawsuit was the disclosure of Ms. Parks’s medical records, which indicated the elderly activist was suffering from dementia.
On a happier note, Parks had received many tributes and rewards over the years, including the Congressional Gold Medal, bestowed by President Bill Clinton in 1999. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery opened in 2000.
Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005, at the age of ninety-two.
LOOSE ENDS
James Blake, the bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on the bus, continued to work for the Montgomery City Lines bus company for another twenty years. Later in l
ife, Blake remained unapologetic about his role in history. “I wasn’t trying to do anything to that Parks woman except do my job,” he said in a Washington Post interview. “She was in violation of the city codes. What was I supposed to do? That damn bus was full and she wouldn’t move back. I had my orders. I had police powers—any driver for the city did. So the bus filled up and a white man got on, and she had his seat and I told her to move back, and she wouldn’t do it.” Blake died of a heart attack on March 22, 2003. He was eighty-nine years old.
James Meredith, Accidental Activist
On January 20, 1961, the same day that John F. Kennedy took the oath of office as president of the United States, an African American man named James Meredith submitted a written request for an enrollment application to the University of Mississippi, where no other black student had ever attended. Meredith’s plan was to integrate the university, and he planned to do it by putting “pressure on John Kennedy and the Kennedy administration to live up to the civil rights plank in the Democratic platform.” Unaware of the applicant’s race, the university sent a stock reply, stating, “we are very pleased to know of your interest in becoming a member of our student body.” They soon changed their tune. When they learned Meredith was an “American-Mississippi-Negro citizen,” the university balked, claiming that the entire enrollment process had been put on hold.