Brown v. Board

Eisenhower is often criticized for his refusal to state unambiguous support for the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board, which ruled that separate public schools for whites and Blacks were “inherently unequal” and, therefore, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. This left many Americans with the impression, right or wrong, that he did not personally agree with it. A public statement in support of Brown would not have been likely to change the minds of hardened segregationists, but it might have dissuaded them from testing his resolve to enforce the decision. Furthermore, a statement of support from someone of Eisenhower’s stature would have provided the nation with invaluable moral leadership on this divisive issue. In his memoirs, published more than ten years after the decision, Eisenhower said that he had agreed with the court on Brown.⁸ Evidence from the time suggests otherwise, but if this was the case, he missed an important opportunity to provide that moral leadership.

Two fundamental beliefs shaped Eisenhower’s policies on civil rights and contributed to his decision not to publicly endorse the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board. The first was that the role of the federal government should be limited to those areas where it had clear jurisdiction. This enabled Eisenhower to make significant progress in the desegregation of the District of Columbia, for example, but it allowed the southern states to perpetuate segregation within their own jurisdictions. The second of these fundamental beliefs was that people’s feelings about race could not be changed through legislation or executive action. Speaking on civil rights in his first press conference as a presidential candidate, Eisenhower said, “I do not believe we can cure all the evils in men’s hearts by law.”⁹ This belief, which suggested that only the passage of time could bring an end to racial discrimination, played into the hands of southern segregationists and alienated many African Americans.¹⁰ The Brown v. Board decision challenged both of these beliefs. Not only was education an area in which the federal government had no clear jurisdiction, it was an area that segregationists felt very strongly about, and one in which law was unlikely to cure the evil in their hearts.

In June 1953, after ordering a second round of arguments in the Brown v. Board case, the Supreme Court invited Attorney General Herbert Brownell to file an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief stating the administration’s position on whether segregated public schools were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brownell believed that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional, and he was eager to share this opinion with the court. Eisenhower initially resisted the Supreme Court’s invitation to file an amicus curiae brief, considering it a breach of the separation of powers. In a memo to Brownell, Eisenhower stated his opposition to the request: “The court cannot possibly … delegate its responsibility and it would be futile for the Attorney General to attempt to sit as a court and reach a conclusion as to the true meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.”¹¹ The president did not realize that it was common for the Supreme Court to request such amicus curiae briefs. In fact, the Truman administration had already filed one on Brown v. Board taking a strong stand against the constitutionality of segregated public schools. Brownell convinced Eisenhower that such a brief would have to be filed, but the president was never entirely comfortable with the idea.

Governor James Byrnes of South Carolina wrote to the president to try to influence the administration’s response to the court. Eisenhower was already concerned about how the executive branch would enforce a ruling that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Byrnes predicted that such a ruling would result in the southern states virtually shutting down their public-school systems and giving state funds to private schools for whites only. Byrnes’s letter made a lasting impression on the president, reinforcing his belief that the White House should stay out of the controversial issue. In Eisenhower’s response to Byrnes, he disassociated himself from the amicus curiae brief that Brownell would file on behalf of the administration. “It became clear to me that the questions asked of the Attorney General by the Supreme Court demanded answers that could be determined only by lawyers and historians,” Eisenhower responded. “Consequently, I have been compelled to turn over to the Attorney General and his associates full responsibility in the matter. He and I agreed that his brief would reflect the conviction of the Department of Justice as to the legal aspects of the case… . It is clear that the Attorney General has to act according to his own conviction and understanding.”¹²

Eisenhower’s desire to keep the federal government out of public-school desegregation was thwarted by the Supreme Court’s ruling on May 17, 1954. It declared that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” thereby denying segregated schools protection under the court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.¹³Brown v. Board had made public-school desegregation the law of the land, and Eisenhower, sworn by his presidential oath to uphold that law, could not long refuse to play a role. The most controversial position Eisenhower took in the field of civil rights, perhaps the most controversial position he took in any field during his presidency, was his refusal to endorse the Brown decision. He said nothing publicly about it until asked at his press conference on May 19. His carefully prepared response was brief: “The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional processes in this country; and I will obey.”¹⁴

Eisenhower may have also been considering the political implications. In 1952 he had been the first Republican presidential candidate to make significant inroads into the South, winning the electoral votes of four southern and three border states.¹⁵ Most of his supporters in the South had been “Eisenhower Democrats” who voted for him because of his popularity as a war hero, not because of his party affiliation. Some of Eisenhower’s political advisers believed that if he came out strongly in favor of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board, he might win some additional votes from Blacks and liberals in the North who were in favor of desegregation. Others argued that these converts would not make up for the white southern votes he would lose if he took such a stand.¹⁶

After the Brown v. Board decision, the White House was deluged with letters from white southerners expressing concern and resentment over the decision. Many blamed Eisenhower personally. Rather than writing off such sentiments as reactionary or obstructionist, Eisenhower was troubled that white southerners might consider Brown v. Board a Republican or, worse, an Eisenhower administration decision. At the May 19 press conference, Eisenhower was asked whether he was concerned about losing southern supporters since the court’s decision had come “under the Republican administration.” He responded, “The Supreme Court, as I understand it, is not under any administration.”¹⁷ Although he had little patience for those who talked of nullification or noncompliance with the court’s decision, he empathized with white southerners who were apprehensive about school desegregation. Most of Eisenhower’s closest friends were southerners, and he had spent much of his life on segregated army posts. He did not wish to criminalize people who had until now, by virtue of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, been within the law. Because of this, Eisenhower hoped that the court would adopt a policy of gradualism in its implementation of Brown.

It is difficult to reconcile Eisenhower’s desire to keep the federal government out of the desegregation of public schools with his appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren who wrote the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board. When Chief Justice Fred Vinson died in September 1953, the Brown case was already before the Supreme Court. Eisenhower understood that his appointment to replace Vinson would play an important role in its decision on the case. Eisenhower was also aware that Warren was progressive on the issue of race relations and, as governor of California, had supported fair employment legislation for Blacks.¹⁸ Defending his choice of Warren to his more conservative brother Edgar, who had called the appointment “a tragedy,” Eisenhower wrote, “To my mind he is a statesman… . a man of national stature … of unimpeachable integrity, of middle-of-the-road views, and with a splendid record.”¹⁹

Some historians have claimed that Eisenhower later regretted his appointment of Warren, calling it “the biggest mistake of his presidency,” but there is no record of this.²⁰ Brownell, Eisenhower’s closest adviser on judicial matters, said that Eisenhower never made such a comment to him and doubted that he would have made it to others, stating that it did not reflect the president’s views and would have been “uncharacteristic.” Brownell did admit the possibility that Eisenhower may have made the remark in an “off-hand” way, perhaps when dealing with someone who hoped that Eisenhower regretted the choice.²¹

In the year between the court’s May 1954 decision and May 1955 when it announced how the verdict would be implemented, Eisenhower went on record as favoring a gradual implementation of school desegregation. In a presidential statement read to the delegates present at the annual meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in June 1954, Eisenhower said: “We must have patience without compromise of principle. We must have understanding without disregard for differences of opinion which actually exist. We must have continued social progress, calmly but persistently made.”²² Eisenhower hoped that the court would adopt such a stand as well. In an October letter to Swede Hazlett, he wrote: “The segregation issue will, I think, become acute or tend to die out according to the character of the procedure orders that the Court will probably issue this winter. My own guess is this—they will be very moderate and secure a maximum of initiative to local courts.”²³

Once again, the Supreme Court invited the attorney general to file a brief stating the administration’s opinion on the implementation of school desegregation. This time there is no record of Eisenhower considering such a request an abdication of the court’s powers. In fact, he personally edited Brownell’s draft to make sure that it reflected his opinion that the decision should be implemented gradually.²⁴ At a press conference on November 23, 1954, the day before Brownell filed his brief, Eisenhower hinted at what it contained. The president referred to “great practical problems” and “deep-seated emotions” in the South and said he hoped that the court would “take into consideration these great emotional strains” and “try to devise a way where, under some form of decentralized process, we can bring this about.”²⁵

The brief filed by Brownell the next day reflected Eisenhower’s preference for a gradual, decentralized implementation of the court’s decision that would consider circumstances unique to local situations. The brief recommended that the federal court system serve as the overseer of the desegregation process. Local school boards should develop and implement programs under the supervision of the federal district court that served the affected school district. The brief also recommended that school districts be required to submit a plan within ninety days of the court’s ruling.²⁶

On May 31, 1955, in a ruling known as Brown v. Board II, the Supreme Court announced its decision on the implementation of public-school desegregation. The court placed primary responsibility for developing desegregation plans with the local school boards. The district courts would have jurisdiction and were directed to consider local factors when judging implementation plans. The school boards, however, were to make a “prompt and reasonable start” and proceed “with all deliberate speed.” The burden of justifying delays was to be borne by the local authorities.²⁷

Although the Supreme Court had adopted the decentralized, gradual approach to desegregation that the administration had recommended in Brownell’s brief, Eisenhower was still not entirely pleased with the outcome. In future years, when civil unrest in the South forced a presidential response, Eisenhower would often blame the troubles on the Supreme Court. To his secretary Ann Whitman, Eisenhower said that “the troubles brought about by the Supreme Court decision are the most important problem facing the government, domestically, today.” When Whitman asked what alternative course the court might have adopted, the president responded: “Perhaps they could have demanded that segregation be eliminated in graduate schools, later in colleges, later in high schools, as a means of overcoming the passionate and inbred attitudes” that had developed over generations.²⁸ To Hazlett, Eisenhower complained: “No single event has so disturbed the domestic scene in many years as did the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 in the school desegregation case.” This decision and other subsequent ones, he said, “have interpreted the Constitution in such fashion as to put heavier responsibilities than before on the federal government in the matter of assuring to each citizen his guaranteed constitutional rights.”²⁹ These comments, however, were made only in private to trusted friends and associates.

In public, Eisenhower never criticized Brown v. Board, but he also refused to endorse it. He urged his cabinet members, when speaking on the issue, to stress the need for “calmness, sanity, and reason,” hoping that they might pacify the racial tension that had been growing in the South since the Brown v. Board verdict.³⁰ He also expressed his disappointment in the fact that southern authorities were devoting their energy to acts of defiance rather than developing plans to comply with the court’s decision.³¹ Eisenhower also realized, in the wake of the decision, the importance of appointing federal judges who had not publicly opposed the ruling and would faithfully uphold it. Particularly important were the judges he appointed to the fourth and fifth circuit appeals courts. Eisenhower’s first Supreme Court appointment after the Brown decision was of great symbolic importance. John Marshall Harlan II was the son of the lone dissenting justice in the Plessy v. Ferguson case upholding racial segregation. Occasionally, southern senators would appeal directly to Eisenhower to change his appointments for posts in their states, even offering legislative support if he would nominate candidates who were unsupportive of civil rights. According to the attorney general, Eisenhower never failed to support one of his nominees in such a situation.³²

In 1956 and 1957 the Eisenhower administration dedicated itself to the passage of a civil rights act that would enforce the right of southern Blacks to vote. There were several reasons for the emphasis on voting: first, the administration wished to shift emphasis away from the explosive issue of desegregated schools; second, Eisenhower believed that if Blacks had the right to vote, they could more readily achieve their other civil rights without the federal government having to step in; and finally, Republicans were anxious to tap into the southern Black vote. The result of this effort was the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The legislation created a bipartisan commission to investigate the problem of Blacks being denied the right to vote because of their race, created the Civil Rights Division and a new assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Department of Justice, and allowed federal prosecutors to charge those who interfered with the right to vote with contempt of court. A Senate amendment guaranteed those charged with federal contempt the right to a jury trial. Although this amendment greatly weakened the act, it was still a significant step forward—the first federal civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

Little Rock Central High School

In May 1955 the U.S. Federal Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas accepted the desegregation plan submitted by the Little Rock Board of Education. The plan would begin with the integration of Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957, achieving full integration of all Little Rock public schools by 1963. It greatly divided the Little Rock community. On the opening day of the fall term, Governor Orval Faubus, claiming that it was necessary to maintain the peace, called out the National Guard to prevent Blacks from entering the school. By stepping in to prevent the Little Rock Board of Education from complying with a federal court order, Faubus initiated the federal-state confrontation over school desegregation that Eisenhower had sought to avoid since the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision.

In response to Faubus’s defiance of a court order, Federal District Judge Ronald Davies requested that the Justice Department begin collecting information concerning those individuals, including the governor, who were preventing the desegregation of Central High. This ended Eisenhower’s hope that the crisis could be defused without the direct involvement of the executive branch. In response to the governor’s plea to the president for understanding and cooperation, Eisenhower insisted that he would support and defend the Constitution by all legal means at his command. He added that he expected Faubus to cooperate fully with the Justice Department’s investigation.³³

Despite Eisenhower’s terse reply to Faubus, he was still seeking a way to defuse the situation before a direct confrontation became necessary. U.S. Congressman Brooks Hays, who represented the Arkansas district that included Little Rock, suggested a meeting between Faubus and the president. Sherman Adams was convinced that Faubus had realized that he had made a mistake and was looking for a way out of the situation. He told Eisenhower that he thought such a meeting was a good idea. Faubus, he said, was not really a segregationist since his son went to an integrated college—he just thought that desegregation should proceed more slowly. Brownell was against such a meeting, taking the hard line that Faubus had violated a federal court order and should be forced to comply. Eisenhower rejected Brownell’s position saying that it failed to take into consideration the situation in the South. The Justice Department, he said, should make clear that it only wanted to ensure the National Guard was not being used to prevent a court order from being carried out: “By no means does the Federal government want to interfere with the governor’s responsibilities.” Adams’s argument for a meeting appealed to Eisenhower’s philosophy of gradualism, moderation, and balance, and he agreed to meet with Faubus if the governor would request the meeting and state in his request that he would be “guided by federal court orders.”³⁴

On September 11, Faubus submitted such a request, and Adams set up a September 14 meeting at the Naval Station in Newport, Rhode Island, where the president was vacationing.³⁵ Eisenhower and Faubus were alone for twenty minutes. By Eisenhower’s account, Faubus went to great lengths to tell the president that he was a law-abiding citizen and that he recognized the supremacy of federal law. Eisenhower sensed that Faubus wanted to resolve the situation. He later recalled suggesting to the governor that he “go home and not necessarily withdraw his National Guard troops, but just change their orders… . Tell the Guard to continue to preserve order but to allow the Negro children to attend Central High School.” Eisenhower also warned that in any “trial of strength between the President and a Governor … there could only be one outcome—that is, the State would lose.” He added that he “did not want to see any governor humiliated.” When Faubus left, Eisenhower was under the impression that the governor had agreed that he would change the National Guard’s orders immediately upon returning home.³⁶

Before returning home, Faubus spoke to the press. He said that he and the president had had a “friendly and constructive” discussion, and that he had “assured the president of my desire to cooperate with him in carrying out the duties resting upon both of us.” He added that “I must harmonize my actions under the constitution of Arkansas with the requirements of the Constitution of the United States.” In regard to desegregation, he said, “I have never expressed any personal opinion regarding the Supreme Court decision of 1954… . That is not relevant. That decision is the law of the land and must be obeyed.” He added that “in so doing, it is my responsibility to protect the people from violence in any form.” When asked whether he intended to remove the National Guard troops from Central High before classes on Monday morning, he said that decision would have to wait until he returned to Arkansas.³⁷

Faubus then returned home and, after consulting with his political advisers, decided not to remove the National Guard or change its orders. When Eisenhower heard of this, he was furious. He telephoned Brownell in Washington and said, “You were right, Faubus broke his word.” The president, however, was still reluctant to use the military to force compliance with the court’s orders out of fear that Faubus would shut down the public-school system, as Byrnes had warned, and that other southern states would follow suit. Brownell began to fear they would have no other choice and told the president that he would begin conferring with the secretary of the army in case such a move proved necessary.³⁸

On September 20, Faubus failed to appear in federal court as ordered, prompting Judge Davies to issue an order forbidding Faubus or the Arkansas National Guard from interfering with his previous order to integrate Central High. That evening Faubus withdrew the National Guard, suggesting the possibility that the crisis might end without the direct confrontation that Eisenhower hoped to avoid. Eisenhower’s statement the next day reflected his relief that the situation seemed to be coming to an end. He asked the people of Little Rock to “preserve and respect the law—whether or not they personally agree with it,” and to “vigorously oppose any violence by extremists.”³⁹

Federal Intervention

Eisenhower’s hope that removing the National Guard would end the crisis was in vain. Faubus’s prediction of imminent violence, which he had used as justification for calling out the National Guard in the first place, had become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Encouraged by Faubus’s defiance of the courts, groups such as the White Citizens Council had whipped segregationists into a frenzy. On the morning of September 23, a crowd of several thousand converged on Central High to protest the admission of Black students.⁴⁰ At 3:44 p.m. central time, Woodrow Wilson Mann, the mayor of Little Rock, sent Eisenhower a telegram. Local law enforcement had been unable to control the mob, and the “Little Rock Nine” had to be removed from the grounds for their own safety.⁴¹ The “mob,” he said, had been “no spontaneous assembly. It was agitated, aroused, and assembled by a concerted plan of action.” One of the “principal agitators,” Mann informed the president, was Jimmy Karam, “a political and social intimate of Governor Faubus,” which suggested that the governor was at least aware of the plan.⁴²

That afternoon, Hagerty released a presidential statement. Eisenhower wanted to “make several things clear in connection with the disgraceful occurrences” in Little Rock. Orders of the court, the statement read, “cannot be flouted with impunity by any individual or mob of extremists.” The president said that he was willing to “use the full power of the United States including whatever force may be necessary to prevent any obstruction of … the orders of the federal court.” He still hoped that the “American sense of justice and fair play” would prevail, however, and lamented that it would be a “sad day” for the country “if school children can safely attend their classes only under the protection of armed guards.”⁴³

The statement was followed up by an executive proclamation: “Obstruction of Justice in the State of Arkansas.” The proclamation stated that “certain persons in the state of Arkansas, individually and in unlawful assemblages … have willfully obstructed the enforcement of orders of the United States District Court.” This obstruction of justice, it said, “constitutes a denial of the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.” The president, it concluded, commands “all persons engaged in such obstruction of justice to cease and desist … and to disperse.” The proclamation cited Title 10 of the U.S. Code. Section 332 of Title 10 allows the president to use the armed forces of the United States “as he considers necessary” to enforce federal law or suppress unlawful obstructions to it.⁴⁴ It is the same law that George Washington had used to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

The next day the situation worsened. Mann sent Eisenhower a telegram at 9:06 a.m. central time that said: “The immediate need for federal troops is urgent. The mob is much larger in numbers at 8 am than at any time yesterday… . Situation is out of control and police cannot disperse the mob.”⁴⁵ The second telegram from Mayor Mann prompted a swift response from Eisenhower. It was now clear to him that there was no way of avoiding the use of federal troops. Tentative plans to use National Guardsmen from other parts of the state were abandoned in favor of using regular army troops. Eisenhower federalized all the Arkansas National Guard, and by the end of the day one thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division, many of them Korean War veterans, arrived from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.⁴⁶ In another important step, Eisenhower decided to leave Newport and return to Washington. Eisenhower had, up to this point, resisted returning to Washington for two reasons. First, he thought that “to rush back to Washington every time an incident of serious character arose would be a confession that a change of scenery is truly a ‘vacation’ for the President and is not merely a change of his working locale.” Second, he did “not want to exaggerate the significance of the admittedly serious situation in Arkansas. I do not want to give a picture of a cabinet in constant session, of fretting and worrying about the actions of a misguided governor who, in my opinion, has been motivated entirely by what he believes to be political advantage in a particular locality.”⁴⁷

The stated purpose for Eisenhower’s return to Washington was to deliver a national television and radio address to the American people to explain the federal government’s response to the recent events in Little Rock. In the address, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, Eisenhower explained that a “mob” in Little Rock, “under the leadership of demagogic extremists,” had deliberately prevented the carrying out of federal court orders to admit Black children to Central High. Local authorities, he said, had been unable to control the mob, making it necessary for the executive branch of the federal government to become involved. The president’s responsibility being “inescapable,” he had ordered the use of federal troops. These troops, he said, “are not being used to relieve local and state authorities of their primary duty to preserve the peace and order of the community. Nor are the troops there for the purpose of taking over the responsibility of the School Board and the other responsible local officials in running Central High School.” The troops were only there “for the purpose of preventing interference with the orders of the Court.”

On this occasion, Eisenhower chose not to state support for the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board, but merely to say that it should be obeyed because it was the law. “It is important that the reasons for my action be understood by all our citizens,” Eisenhower said. “As you know, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that separate public educational facilities for the races are inherently unequal and therefore compulsory school segregation laws are unconstitutional. Our personal opinions about the decision have no bearing on the matter of enforcement; the responsibility and authority of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution are very clear.”⁴⁸ Eisenhower was acting on his constitutional obligation to enforce a federal court order. The nature of that order was, at least in terms of this obligation, irrelevant. It is worth noting, however, that on the day Eisenhower became aware of the situation in Little Rock, he had, for the first time, endorsed the Brown decision. “The Supreme Court in its decision of ’54,” he said at his September 3 press conference before leaving for Newport, “pointed out the emotional difficulties that would be encountered by Negroes if given equal but separate schools, and I think probably their reasoning was correct, at least I have no quarrel with it.”⁴⁹ Surprisingly, given Eisenhower’s past reluctance to offer even a qualified endorsement such as this, his comments were not major news.⁵⁰

The president’s address made every effort to direct blame away from the people of Little Rock, pointing out that many of the agitators had been brought in from outside the community. Although Eisenhower did not mention Governor Faubus by name, it was clear that the president considered him to be one of the “demagogic extremists.” In a telegram to Senator Richard Russell (D-GA) released four days later, Eisenhower’s opinion of Faubus’s role became more explicit: “Had the police powers of the State of Arkansas been utilized not to frustrate the orders of the Court but to support them, the ensuing violence and open disrespect for the law and the Federal Judiciary would never have occurred,” Eisenhower wrote. “As a matter of fact, had the integration of Central High School been permitted to take place without the intervention of the National Guard, there is little doubt that the process would have gone along quite smoothly and quietly as it had in other Arkansas communities.”⁵¹

Contrary to Eisenhower’s earlier statement that any direct confrontation between federal and state power would inevitably result in a federal victory, the situation in Little Rock remained a standoff. Black children were admitted to Central High, but only because federal troops remained on the premises to keep the peace. Eisenhower refused to remove federal troops until Faubus agreed that he would not obstruct court orders and would maintain order in Little Rock so that those orders could be carried out. Faubus would only agree that he personally would not obstruct court orders; he refused to offer assurances that he would not allow others to do so.⁵²

On October 14, one-half of the army troops were withdrawn and four-fifths of the National Guard were defederalized. On November 27, the last of the 101st Airborne left Little Rock, and the remaining federalized National Guard took over control of the school area. These guardsmen would remain until school let out in May 1958.⁵³ This was not the end of the standoff. In September 1958, Faubus, using powers given to him by the Arkansas State Legislature, closed the four public high schools in Little Rock. This was the outcome Eisenhower had feared all along. In June 1959 the federal court ordered that the schools reopen for the fall 1959 term. When school began, local law enforcement authorities were successful in dispersing a small crowd, and three Black students enrolled without further incident.⁵⁴ Sending federal troops to Little Rock was anything but moderate—many whites in the South saw it as nothing less than an act of war. But even during this decisive action, there were those who were disappointed in what they believed to be Eisenhower’s lack of leadership on the issue. Less than a month after the president ordered the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Frederick Morrow, the first African American to hold an executive position in the White House, wrote in his diary: “Of late I dread going to the office. The letters and phone calls are from irate friends and citizens who are fed up with the president’s moderate stand on civil rights. They accuse him of refusing to assume the moral leadership of the country.”⁵⁵ Emmet Hughes, a speech writer for Eisenhower but also one of his harshest critics, believed that the president’s actions in Little Rock had little to do with civil rights. “Eisenhower kept affirming his resolve to maintain respect for the law… . But he refused, with equal tenacity, even to hint that he personally respected the worth of the law.” Eisenhower, he wrote, “was never more decisive than when he held to a steely resolve not to do something that he sincerely believed wrong in itself or alien to his office.”⁵⁶

Politicians are often criticized for being “all talk and no action.” In the field of civil rights, however, Eisenhower is accused of being all action and no talk. His actions were commendable. He desegregated the District of Columbia, completed the desegregation of the U.S. military, signed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, and after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board, appointed federal judges to southern districts who would uphold the ruling. Finally, when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus violated a federal court order by interfering with a public-school desegregation plan, Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock. By refusing to state his unambiguous support for the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board, however, he left many Americans with the impression that he did not personally agree with it. In his memoirs, published more than ten years after the decision, Eisenhower wrote:

After the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling, I refused to say whether I either approved or disapproved of it. The court’s judgement was law, I said, and I would abide by it. This determination was one of principle. I believed that if I should express, publicly, either approval or disapproval of a Supreme Court decision in one case, I would be obliged to do so in many, if not all cases. Inevitably I would eventually be drawn into a public statement of disagreement with some decision creating a suspicion that my vigor of enforcement would, in such cases, be in doubt. Moreover, to indulge in a practice of approving or criticizing Court decisions could tend to lower the dignity of government, and would in the long run, be hurtful. In this case I definitely agreed with the unanimous decision.⁵⁷

This rationale, although logical, seems incongruous with his earlier statements. More consistent with his statements from the time is that Eisenhower refused to publicly endorse Brown based on two of his fundamental beliefs. The first was that the role of the federal government should be limited to those areas where it had clear jurisdiction. The second was that people’s beliefs about race could not be changed through legislation or executive action. Brown v. Board challenged both of these beliefs. Not only was education an area in which the federal government had no clear jurisdiction, it was also an area that segregationists felt very strongly about, and one in which laws or, in this case, court orders were unlikely to alter their beliefs. Although a public statement in support of Brown would not have changed the minds of determined segregationists, it might have dissuaded them from testing his resolve to uphold the decision.

Eisenhower sought balance on the issue of public-school segregation: balance between the requirements of Brown v. Board, which outlawed public-school segregation, and the legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had protected it for fifty years; balance between those who demanded an immediate end to public-school segregation and those who sought to delay the process indefinitely; balance between the responsibilities of the federal government and the rights of states. When explaining his political philosophy to Bradford Chynoweth in 1954, Eisenhower had said that “excluding the field of moral values, anything that affects or is proposed for masses of humans is wrong if the position it seeks is at either end of possible argument.”⁵⁸ But Eisenhower failed to see segregation as a moral values issue. Thus, he was unable to provide the moral leadership the nation needed on this divisive issue in the years immediately following Brown v. Board.

Eisenhower’s civil rights position contributed to the early stages of a major political party realignment in the United States, an understanding of which remains important for our time. As we have seen, Eisenhower believed that in most cases civil rights should be handled by the states and, therefore, sought to limit the role of the federal government. He also showed empathy for the views of white southerners. Although politics were not Eisenhower’s primary consideration, there were political advantages to be gained from this approach, and future Republican presidential candidates would more consciously exploit them.

Richard Nixon, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 1960, narrowly lost the election to John Kennedy, but like Eisenhower, he did well in the South. Kennedy, fearful of losing any more of the region’s electoral votes, proceeded cautiously on civil rights. After Kennedy’s untimely death, Lyndon Johnson, his southern vice president, took up the cause. In the 1964 presidential election, many white southern Democrats, uncomfortable with Johnson’s support of the recently passed Civil Rights Act of 1964, voted for the Republican presidential candidate Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) who had voted against the legislation, saying it violated states’ rights. Although Goldwater lost to Johnson in a landslide, the 1964 election demonstrated that the Democratic Party could no longer take the South’s electoral votes for granted.

In the late 1960s, Republican strategists began more actively courting the white southern vote by pursuing what came to be known as the “southern strategy.”⁵⁹ Recognizing that straightforward opposition to civil rights was unpopular in the North, Republicans appealed to white southerners by positioning themselves as the party of states’ rights. Later, when some in the civil rights movement abandoned their commitment to nonviolence, Republicans began to emphasize “law and order.” The Republican Party’s pursuit of the southern strategy throughout the 1970s and 1980s contributed to its emergence as the dominant party in the region by the end of the twentieth century. In 2005, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, hoping to court Black voters, formally apologized for the party’s use of the southern strategy.⁶⁰ This apology notwithstanding, some within the party have continued to pursue it.⁶¹

The southern strategy, while making the Republican Party dominant in the South, secured the Black vote for the Democratic Party. Democratic candidates in the years since have been guilty of taking this vote for granted.⁶² Given their own shameful history in the South, this is a mistake Democrats should avoid. Clearly both parties have been guilty of exploiting race for political gain.