The Age of Eisenhower

by William I Hitchcock

  53. NSC meeting, April 29, 1954, FRUS 1952–54, 13: pt. 2, 1431–45.

  54. Joseph and Stewart Alsop, “Dien Bien Phu: Another Yorktown?,” Washington Post, April 30, 1954; see their equally strident column, Washington Post, May 9, 1954. “For an Indochina Settlement,” editorial, Washington Post, May 2, 1954; Knowland quoted in New York Times, May 5, 1954.

  55. New York Times and Washington Post, May 7, 1954.

  56. Editorial, Washington Post, May 4, 1954.

  57. Text of Dulles address, New York Times, May 8, 1954. The speech received sharp criticism from the Alsops in their column, Washington Post, May 9, 1954.

  58. Dulles press conference transcript, May 11, New York Times, May 12, 1954; Dulles testimony, May 12, 1954, U.S. Senate, Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, vol. VI, 257–81.

  59. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 138–44; Zhang, Deng Xiaoping’s Long War, 17–18; Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 57–64. For an account that stresses the North Vietnamese interest in accepting the deal on offer at Geneva, see Asselin, “The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the 1954 Geneva Conference.”

  60. On Franco-American contacts about a renewed intervention scheme, see memorandum of conversation between Dulles and French ambassador Bonnet, May 8, 1954, Dulles Papers, Subject Series, box 9, DDEL. Memorandum of conversation between Dulles and Eisenhower, May 19, 1954, Dulles Papers, White House Memorandum series, box 1, DDEL; “Conference in the President’s Office” between Eisenhower, Dulles, Robert Anderson, Admiral Radford, Douglas MacArthur II, and Robert Cutler, June 2, 1954, White House Office, Office of Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Records, NSC Series, Briefing Notes Subseries, box 11, DDEL; “Talking Paper,” June 4, 1954, Dulles Papers, Subject Series, box 9, DDEL. Dulles made such threats public in a speech on June 11 in the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel. See New York Times, June 12, 1954. His remark to Smith is in a telegram dated June 14, 1954, Dulles Papers, Subject Series, box 9, DDEL.

  61. Meetings with legislative leaders, June 23, 1954, in Papers as President, Legislative Meetings Series, box 1, DDEL. (See also the similar message Dulles delivered in the June 28 meeting with Knowland, minutes also in box 1). At the meeting Eisenhower rebutted the “Far Eastern Munich” charge: “Munich was giving away something without war. These people are giving up something as a result of defeat in war, which is quite a different thing.” The press picked up the shift in policy, noting that the administration “is thinking largely of salvage, or a policy of limited loss,” in Indochina. New York Times, June 24, 1954.

  62. Dulles statement, July 23, 1954, Dulles Papers, Subject Series, box 9, DDEL.

  63. NSC 5429, “Review of U.S. Policy in the Far East,” August 4, 1954, and NSC meeting to discuss this policy, August 12, 1954, both in FRUS 1952–54, 12: pt. 1, 699–703, 724–33.

  64. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 167–70; Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 189–99.

  65. NSC meeting, September 12, 1954, FRUS 1952–54, 14: pt. 1, 613–24.

  66. NSC meeting, September 9, 1954; Dulles memorandum for the president, September 12, 1954; NSC meeting, October 6, 1954, all in FRUS, 1952–54, 14: pt. 1, 583–95, 611–13, 689–701.

  67. NSC meeting, September 12, 1954, FRUS, 1952–54, 14: pt. 1, 613–24.

  68. Dulles memo, October 18, 1954, and NSC meeting, October 28, 1954, FRUS 1952–54, 14: pt. 1, 770–71, 803–9.

  69. Memo of conversation, Dulles and Dr. George Yeh, Chinese foreign minister, January 19, 1955, and NSC meeting minutes, January 20, 1955, FRUS 1955–57, 2:49, 69–82.

  70. NSC meeting minutes, January 20, 1955, FRUS 1955–57, 2:69–82.

  71. Text of message to Congress, FRUS 1955–57, 2:115–19. The resolution was passed by the House on January 25 by 410 votes to 3; the Senate acted on January 28, voting 85–3 in favor.

  72. Dulles speech, Washington Post, March 9, 1955; “The President’s News Conference,” March 16, 1955, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=10434; Nixon in New York Times, March 18, 1955. See also detailed analysis by Chang, Friends and Enemies, 116–42; Soman, Double-Edged Sword, 124–53.

  73. See the careful analysis of Ike’s nuclear brinkmanship in Sechser and Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy, 188–94. For an especially critical assessment of Ike’s handling of the Quemoy crisis, see Soman, Double-Edged Sword, 145–53.

  74. DDE, Mandate for Change, 483.

  CHAPTER 9: TAKING ON JIM CROW

  Epigraph: Eisenhower letter to Adam Clayton Powell, June 6, 1953, in White House Central File, Official File, box 614, DDEL.

  1. On Mrs. Bryant’s changing story, see Sheila Weller, “The Missing Woman: How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case,” Vanity Fair, January 26, 2017; Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till.

  2. Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1955; Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1955; Chicago Defender, September 10 and 17, 1955; Jet, September 15, 1955. The details of the case are very ably laid out in Metress, The Lynching of Emmett Till.

  3. Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1955; New York Times, September 8, 1955.

  4. A perceptive contemporary commentary was written by journalist John Popham, “Racial Issues Stirred by Mississippi Killing,” New York Times, September 18, 1955. The confession was published in Look, January 24, 1956.

  5. Universal Military Training: Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 80th Congress, Second Session, April 3, 1948. The testimony is on 985–1013; the key passages on segregation are on 995–98.

  6. Lawson, To Secure These Rights.

  7. These quotations come from various digests of speeches on civil rights that Eisenhower made in the 1952 campaign. See Maxwell Rabb Papers, boxes 5, 6, and 44, DDEL.

  8. “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” February 2, 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/1953_state_of_the_union.pdf.

  9. Brownell, Advising Ike, 186–87. The Supreme Court case was District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc., 346 U.S. 100 (1953). On the Justice Department brief, see New York Times, March 11, 1953; on Thurgood Marshall’s praise, New York Times, March 12, 1953; on the decision, New York Times, June 9, 1953. A report from Samuel Spencer, president of the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia, summarized subsequent progress made in the capital. Spencer to Eisenhower, November 25, 1953, White House Central File, Official File, box 239, DDEL.

  10. Press conference, March 19, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 108.

  11. Stevens to Hagerty, March 20, 1953, Young, Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, 1:4–7.

  12. Powell’s public letter of June 3, 1953, White House Central File, Official File, box 614, DDEL.

  13. Eisenhower’s reply to Powell, June 6, 1953, and Powell’s reply to Eisenhower, June 10, 1953, White House Central File, Official File, box 614, DDEL. The African American press also gave wide coverage to the exchange: see Norfolk (VA) Journal and Guide, June 6, 1953; New York Amsterdam News, June 13, 1953; Chicago Defender, June 20, 1953; Pittsburgh Courier, June 27, 1953. On Rabb’s role, see Donovan, Eisenhower, 154–58.

  14. Charles C. Thomas, undersecretary of the navy, “Segregation in Naval Activities,” June 23, 1953; Navy Secretary Robert Anderson to Eisenhower, n.d., [November 1953]; statement by Eisenhower, November 11, 1953, all in White House Central File, Official File, box 614, DDEL. These matters can be followed more fully in MacGregor, Integration of the Armed Forces, 473–500.

  15. Eisenhower to Nixon, August 15, 1953, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 3, DDEL.

  16. Eisenhower to Nixon, September 4, 1953, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Administration Series, box 28, DDEL; Walter White in New York Amsterdam News, August 22, 1953, and Chicago Defender, September 12, 1953.


  17. Diary entry, July 24, 1953, PDDE, 14:418. In an effort to explain his moderate position to Byrnes, the president wrote the governor a letter arguing that in desegregating military bases and setting up the Government Contracts Committee, the president was fulfilling his “oath of office.” But Ike signaled that he had no desire to trespass on states’ rights. Byrnes would not be mollified. He replied that while no one could doubt the supremacy of federal power in a military installation such as the Charleston Navy Yard, “there will be differences of opinion as to the wisdom of your decision,” which went further than anything Truman had proposed. But Byrnes directly rebutted Eisenhower’s claim that the Government Contracts Committee was merely an advisory board. “The Federal government purchases about one-fourth of our national product,” Byrnes wrote. If the government now mandates certain practices of all its contractors that are not mandated by the states, then clearly “the executive would be usurping the powers of the Congress.” Byrnes declared that this new government overreach left him “frightened.” This exchange was only the start of a long, angry conflict between Eisenhower and the leading men of the South. Eisenhower to Byrnes, August 14, 1953, and Byrnes to Eisenhower, August 27, 1953, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Name Series, box 3, DDEL.

  18. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 538 (1896).

  19. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950), decided June 5, 1950. The second case, decided the same day, compelled the University of Texas Law School to admit a black plaintiff. Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950).

  20. On Marshall’s decision to challenge segregation in public schools, see Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 21–45.

  21. Nichols, A Matter of Justice, 52, shows the depth of concern within the Court; see also Kluger, Simple Justice, 617. Chalmers M. Roberts article in Washington Post, June 9, 1953, suggested a divided and uncertain Court. A careful account of the internal debates on shaping the Eisenhower position on Brown is Mayer, “With Much Deliberation and Some Speed.” Brownell suggests in his memoir that the Court did indeed want to know where the new president stood on the matter of Plessy (Advising Ike, 189).

  22. “Memorandum for the Record,” August 19, 1953, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Administration Series, box 8, DDEL; Brownell, Advising Ike, 189–90.

  23. Washington Post, November 28, 1953. Selections from many of the key documents can be consulted in Martin, Brown v. Board of Education, including Brownell’s brief, 165–68.

  24. Warren, Memoirs, 260; Brownell, Advising Ike, 119, 165.

  25. Eisenhower spelled out his thinking in a long diary entry and in a letter to his brother Milton. See diary entry, October 8, 1953, and letter to Milton Eisenhower, October 9, 1953, PDDE, 14:567–68, 576–77.

  26. Brownell, Advising Ike, 165–68.

  27. Telephone call notes, November 16, 1953, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 5, DDEL.

  28. Robert F. Kennon to Eisenhower, November 20, 1953, and James Byrnes to Eisenhower, November 20, 1953, White House Central Files, Official File, box 614, DDEL.

  29. Pittsburgh Courier, December 5, 1953; New York Times, November 28, 1953.

  30. Eisenhower phone call with Brownell, December 2, 1953, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 5, DDEL; Eisenhower to Byrnes, letter backdated December 1, 1953, Ann Whitman File, Name Series, box 3, DDEL.

  31. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). The inside account of how the Court arrived at this decision is carefully detailed by Kluger, Simple Justice, 660–702.

  32. The assertion made by Tom Wicker that Warren had “received no help at all from” the Eisenhower administration in helping prepare the Brown opinion is demonstrably false (Dwight D. Eisenhower, 52).

  33. Wilkins and Mathews, Standing Fast, 214–15.

  34. “Let’s Give Thanks,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 29, 1954.

  35. Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 54.

  36. Press conference, May 19, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 489–97.

  37. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President, 542. These critical comments do not appear in the earlier edition of Ambrose’s biography, published in 1984. Pach and Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, 142, argue that Eisenhower “declined to endorse” the ruling and “tried to divorce himself” from the decision. Patterson argues that Eisenhower’s failure to speak out in favor of Brown was “morally obtuse and it allowed southern intransigence . . . to go unchallenged” (Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 82).

  38. Herbert Brownell Oral History, February 24, 1977, DDEL; diary entry, June 16, 1954, Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 67. Letter to Hazlett, October 23, 1954, Griffith, Ike’s Letters to a Friend, 135.

  39. Washington Post, May 18, 1954, two articles surveying southern opinion; New York Times, May 18 and 19, 1954; Washington Post, May 19, 1954.

  40. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 200–201.

  41. Warren, Memoirs, 291; Edwin Lahey, “Byrnes on Integration,” Washington Post, May 22, 1954.

  42. Swede Hazlet to Eisenhower, January 23, 1955, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Name Series, box 18, DDEL.

  43. Nine Democrats, all southerners, opposed Harlan’s nomination: James Eastland and John Stennis (Mississippi), Sam Ervin (North Carolina), Lister Hill (Alabama), Olin Johnston and Strom Thurmond (South Carolina), John McClellan (Arkansas), George Smathers (Florida), and Richard Russell (Georgia). On Harlan, Kluger, Simple Justice, 718–19. Harlan’s confirmation hearings revealed the depth of Eastland’s opposition to Harlan. See Baltimore Afro-American, March 5, 1955.

  44. New York Times, April 13, 1955.

  45. New York Times, April 13 and 14, 1955.

  46. Washington Post, November 25, 1954; Mayer, “With Much Deliberation and Some Speed,” 69.

  47. Washington Post, April 14, 1955; New York Times, April 14, 1955; Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1955; New York Times, April 15, 1955.

  48. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka II, 349 U.S. 294 (1955); Washington Post, June 1, 1955. For the oral arguments before the Court, as well as the internal hammering out of the Brown II decision, see Kluger, Simple Justice, 731–50, Marshall quote on 750.

  49. “The Republican Party and the Negro,” and cover letter from Val Washington, director for minorities at the National Republican Committee, July 28, 1955, and Eisenhower to Washington, August 1, 1955, Records as President, Official File, box 614, DDEL; Pittsburgh Courier, June 25 and August 20, 1955; Norfolk (VA) Journal and Guide, July 2, 1955; New York Times and Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1955; Baltimore Afro-American, August 20, 1955.

  50. Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1955; Washington Post, June 2 and 23, 1955; New York Times, June 3, 5, 8, 25, 26, and 27, 1955. A good summary of the southern reaction is in Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance, 67–81.

  51. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance, 121.

  52. Morrow, Forty Years a Guinea Pig, 61.

  53. Roy Wilkins to Eisenhower, September 16, 1955, Papers of Maxwell Rabb, box 51, DDEL; New York Times, October 3, 1955.

  54. Frederic Morrow to Maxwell Rabb, November 30, 1955, Maxwell Rabb Papers, box 51, DDEL.

  55. J. Edgar Hoover to Dillon Anderson, special assistant to the president, September 6 and 13, 1955, October 11, 1955, November 22, 1955, December 14, 1955, January 3, 1956, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Records, FBI Series, box 3, DDEL. Quotations taken from the reports of September 13, 1955, January 3, 1956, and December 14, 1955, respectively.

  56. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 51–54.

  57. Morrow to Sherman Adams, December 16, 1955, Rabb Papers, box 43, DDEL.

  58. “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 5, 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/1956_state_of_the_union.pdf.

  59. Kirk, Martin Luther King, Jr., 27–28; Branch, Parting the Waters, 1
59–68.

  60. James B. Kaetz, “Autherine Lucy,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2489.

  61. “Pre-press conference briefing,” February 29, 1956, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, box 13, DDEL; press conference, February 8, 1956, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 234.

  62. Pittsburgh Courier, February 4, 1956; New York Times, February 22, 24, and 26, 1956; Washington Post, February 26, 1956.

  63. Max Rabb to Sherman Adams, February 27, 1956, Rabb Papers, box 43, DDEL. Rabb also pleaded with Adams in a March 1, 1956, memo that the White House set up a meeting between Ike’s senior advisers and “top Negro leaders” such as Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, and A. Philip Randolph. But Adams threw cold water on this idea, writing in the margin of the memo, “We should talk about this. I am uncertain.” Gerald Morgan Records, box 6, DDEL.

  64. Brownell, Advising Ike, 218–19.

  65. “Racial Tension and Civil Rights,” March 1, 1956, paper prepared by J. Edgar Hoover for the March 9 cabinet meeting, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Cabinet Series, box 6, DDEL. The FBI’s obsession with communist activity among African American citizens is plain in a monograph on the topic sent by Hoover to the White House. See J. Edgar Hoover to William H. Jackson, October 24, 1956, and “The Communist Party and the Negro,” October 1956, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, FBI Series, box 10, DDEL.

  66. Maxwell Rabb, the secretary to the cabinet, produced two sets of notes from this extraordinary meeting: “Minutes of Cabinet Meeting: March 9, 1956,” which is a short summary of issues discussed, and an informal set of notes that tried to recapture verbatim what Eisenhower had said on civil rights. This was then sent to Brownell after the meeting. “Memorandum for the Attorney General: The President’s Views on the Proposed Civil Rights Program,” Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Cabinet Series, box 6, DDEL. For Rabb’s handwritten notes of the meeting, see Rabb Papers, box 16, DDEL.

  67. “Southern Manifesto on Integration,” March 12, 1956, Supreme Court, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/sources_document2.html.