Eisenhower: Civil Rights 1953-60

What was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955?

- A 'test case' by the local NAACP branch to trigger a bus boycott to force white bus company owners to reconsider their policies.

- Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, as a result the black community refused to take the bus and walked.

- The Boycott was supported the local black college, churches and most of black community. It was led by MLK JR. It lasted a year and most of the 50,000 black population participated in Montgomery.

What was the significance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott?

- The white Montgomery Citizens' Council organised opposition, using arrests and intimidation to frighten leader, such as King. It attracted some nationwide sympathy for the black community.

- Demonstrated the potential power of a new mode of activism (mass direct action) and confirmed economic threat of black boycotts, though NAACP litigation to ensured desegregation in SCOTUS Nov 1956 Browder v. Gayle ruling.

- King emerged as a major black leader. In 1957, he established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to continue the fight against segregation.

What were the Student sit-ins?

-In Feb, 1960 4 black college students in Greensboro, North Caroline, refused to leave the all-white Woolworth cafeteria, when asked Day after day, other students took up and retained the seats waiting in vain for service. The café closed.

- MJK Jr said 'In sitting down at the lunch counters, they are in reality standing up for the best in the American dream'.

What was the significance with the student sit-in?

Across the South, roughly 70,000 students participated in sit-ins that:

- helped end Jim Crow. Lost business made Woolworth's desegregate all its lunch counters by 1961 and 150 cities began to desegregate public places.

- mobilised black students, although inter-organisational strife increased, when they created SNCC (student non-violent co-ordinating committee). NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall refused to work with them. SNCC criticised MJK's 'top-down' leadership, preferring to empower ordinary black students.

Why were some in the Democratic people had become increasingly liberal on race?

- Basic human decency

- Awareness of the increasing importance of the black vote outside the South (there were 4 black dems in the House by 1960).

- Increased Black consciousness and unwillingness to accept inequality.

- recognition that racism helped keep the South the poorest region in America.

What was the Democrat policy to civil rights?

From 1948, it was to promote the civil rights programme advocated by Truman. In 1952 & 1956, the party platform said, 'The Democratic Party is committed to support and advance the individual rights and liberties of all Americans'.

What was the Republican policy to Civil Rights?

- Disliked large-scale federal interventionism on any great issue, respected states; rights and hesitated to impose change on Democrat-dominated South. Party platform in 1952 and 1956 claimed commitment to racial equality and in 1956 dropped in the 1952 commitment to states rights

- Some republicans, e.g. Earl Warren and Nixon were liberal on race, but most remained conservative. Eisenhower had one African-American on his staff, but he felt the admin was ignorant on the issue.

- They were aware of increasing of black vote in the North, Republican support for civil rights was muted, because most black northerners voted Dems and GOP to profit from White disillusionment with Dems liberalism on race.

Why was the SCOTUS important for helping Civil Rights?

- Under the relatively liberal leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court was the federal gov branch most responsive to black problems before the 1960s. Important rulings in the Eisenhower years included Browder vs. Gayle, Cooper v. Aaron and the Brown ruling of 1954.

What was the Brown v. Board of Education 1954 case.

- Church minister Oliver Brown lived in Kansas, one of 17 states with segregated schools. He could not send his daughter to the 'whites-only' school five blocks away from where they lived, so she had to cross railroad track to get to all-black school twenty blacks away. Brown challenged this in the law courts. The NAACP supported him, hoping it might succeed, because Kansas was a border state.

- In the case, Earl Warren orchestrated a unanimous decision that even if facilities were equal (black schools always received less funding so they never were), separate education was psychologically harmful to black children.

Why was the Brown ruling significant?

- Rosa Parks believed Brown inspired African-Americans to further activism.

- Brown removed all constitutional sanction for segregation, but was not a total victory for the NAACP, because the SCOTUS gave no date, by which school desegregation had to be achieved and said nothing about de facto school segregation outside the South.

- Although the NACCP gained the Brown II (1955) ruling that integration be accomplished 'with all deliberate speed', the Supreme Court's lack of enforcement powers meant implementation of the ruling varied. Desegregation was fast in the peripheral and urban states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, desegregated schools within a year. However, schools remained segregated in the Deep South of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

- It aroused a white backlash. White Citizens' Councils were formed through the south to defend segregation and boast 250,000 members by 1956. Many were highly respected members of their local community, such as Senator James Eastland of Mississippi. Even more ominously, the KKK was revitalised.

- Most Southern Politicians signed the Southern Manifesto, co-authored by Senator Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell. It pledged to oppose Brown.

- Attempts to integrate school sometimes led to violence, notably in Little Rock, Arkansas

How is Eisenhower's record on Civil Rights seen?

- Some Historians praise him for appointing Earl Warren and other moderate Republicans, who made liberal rulings on segregation in the lower federal courts in Louisiana and Georgia.

- Within week of becoming President, Eisenhower called for a combination of of publicity, persuasion and conscience to help end racial discrimination.

- He worked against discrimination in federal facilities in Washington and federal hiring, but his President's Committee on Government Contracts lacked teeth.

Why can Eisenhower be said to be generally unhelpful to Black Americans?

- The GOP had done well in the South, as a result of Dem divisions over civil rights and could only lose, if by adopting a firm civil rights policy.

- Eisenhower often reminded people that he spent much of his life down South and in the segregated armed forces. He sympathised with Southerner. He had urged Warren against ruling in favour of desegregated schools in Brown.

- He was uneasy mixing with African-Americans and only met black leaders once. He assured his speechwriter that his public calls for equality of opportunity did not mean that black people and white people had 'to mingle socially - or that a Negro could court my daughter'.

- He frequently highlighted the 'great emotional strains' and possible 'social disintegration' that would arise in the South from School desegregation. He said it was 'difficult... to change a man's heart' by legislation or force.

- Eisenhower was ideologically opposed to large-scale federal intervention in the states and sympathetic to states' rights. After attempted desegregation by school officials in Clinton, Tennessee, led to mob violence, a reporter asked him if the Fed Gov would intervene. Eisenhower said it was a local issue. In this instance, Governor Frank Clement sent the National Guard to protect black students entering Clinton High School.

What was the relations between Eisenhower and state authorities on Civil Rights?

After the SCOTUS brown ruling, the state authorities in the South did all they could resist desegregation of schools. In Feb 1956, four Southern state legislature passed interposition resolutions that said that the Brown ruling had no effect in their states.

- Conservative Dem Governor of Texas, Allan Shivers, a Eisenhower supporter, demonstrated his sympathy for a white mob in Mansfield. He sent law enforcement officers to defy a court order on school desegregation and boasted, 'I defy the Federal Government'. Although Eisenhower said the SCOTUS decisions had to be accepted and that U.S marshals would enforce a federal court order if a federal court cited someone for contempt, he failed to se to use federal power in response to action such of those of Shivers - until the crisis in little Rock.

What was the Little Rock Crisis in 1957?

- The city of Little Rock planned to comply with the Brown ruling by 1963 and Central High School was to be the first integrated school. With NAACP encouragement, 9 African-Americans students attempted to enter it in September 1957.

- Keen to exploit racism to gain re-election, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to keep students out.

- An abusive white mob surrounded the students as they tried to enter Central High. Eisenhower feared the breakdown of law and order and reluctantly sent in federal forces to protect the 'Little Rock Nine'.

Why was Little Rock significant?

- It demonstrated how SCOTUS met resistance in practice. The 'Little Rock Nine' suffered violent attacks inside Central High. They were pushed down the stairs and had chemicals and wads of burning paper thrown at them. As Eisenhower had feared, Faubus closed all Little Rock's high schools for a year, while Faubus got re-elected. Central High School was finally integrated in 1960, other Little Rock schools by 1972.

- Faubus's use of the National Guard demonstrated how white-dominated law enforcement in the South gave no protection to African-Americans.

- Amongst the many congressional critics of Eisenhower's intervention in Arkansas were the Democrat Senators Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy.

- Eisenhower demonstrated no clear moral leadership on civil right and head been forced into action. He explained in a TV statement that he had intervened, because of the breakdown of law and order and, by implication, not in support of desegregation. Warren thought a word of approval from the president on Brown would have helped stop the mob violence that kept African-Americans out of white schools throughout the South.

- In his TV statement, Eisenhower pointed out that 'our enemies are gloating' over Little Rock: a reminder that Cold War imperatives sometimes pushed some Americans into greater liberalism on race, in order to substantiate national claims about equality.

- The power of TV was demonstrated. On-the-spot reporting was pioneered at Little Rock. Images of black children being spat by aggressive white adults shocked many Americans.

- Many black activists concluded Supreme Court rulings were insufficient and other forms of activism were required.

What is the relationship between Eisenhower and Congress on Civil Rights?

- To win black votes in the 1956 election, the Eisenhower admin drew up a civil rights bill to help ensure black voting rights. Around 80% of Southern African-Americans were not yet registered, including some college professors. Eisenhower publicly praised the bill, expressing 'shock' that only 7000 of Mississippi's 900,000 black population were registered to vote and that registrars set impossible questions for those trying to register.

- Southern Democrats worked to weaken the bill, Eisenhower didn't really know what was in it & did not fight to keep it intact. In 1957, the bill passed as a greatly weakened Act that did little to help African-Americans. E.g. public officials could be indicted for obstructing a black voter, but those officials were invariably found innocent by all-white juries. Many consider it a sham, by some black leaders were pleased. The Act's greatest significance lay in that it established the long-lasting and influential Civil Rights Commission and a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department.

- In May 1958, Eisenhower was concerned about bombing of Southern black schools and churches. He introduced what considered to be a moderate civil rights bill, but Southern Democrats diluted it. It finally passed in 1960, because both parties sought the black vote. It made the obstruction of court-ordered school desegregation a federal crime and established penalties for the obstruction of black voting.

- Together the Civil Rights Act added only 3% of black voters to the electoral rolls during 1960, they constituted an acknowledgement of federal responsibilities and encouraged civil rights activists to work for more legislation.