by Jim Newton
Eisenhower refused to blame the South or the citizens of Little Rock for the crisis. Instead, he reviewed the sequence of events that had brought about the clash—from the Court’s ruling in Brown to the actions of the Little Rock school board to the approval of the desegregation plan by the district court in Arkansas and the judge’s issuance of orders to restrain those who sought to obstruct the plan. Once those orders were issued, Eisenhower explained, there was no longer room for disobedience. “Proper and sensible observance of the law then demanded the respectful obedience which the nation has the right to expect from all the people. This, unfortunately, has not been the case at Little Rock.”
Only once in his address did he seem close to anger, and it was, predictably, over the Cold War ramifications of this episode. “Our enemies,” he said, “are gloating over this incident and using it to misrepresent our nation.” He closed with a thinly veiled warning, presented as an enticement. “If resistance to the Federal Court order ceases at once, the further presence of Federal troops will be unnecessary,” he said, “and the City of Little Rock will return to its normal habits of peace and order, and a blot upon the fair name and high honor of our nation in the world will be removed.” If not? He did not say. The whole address took thirteen minutes; when it was over, he called to check on Mamie.
In Little Rock, the arrival of federal troops had precisely the intended effect. The racists who were brave enough to confront defenseless high school students shrank back in the face of the U.S. Army. Under the orderly supervision of the 101st Airborne, Little Rock’s black boys and girls were escorted into school to exercise their constitutional rights. Eventually, the mob lost heart and melted away. By November, the federal troops had been withdrawn, and though the students continued to suffer brutish indignities, they persevered. On May 25, Ernest Green became the first black student ever to graduate from Central High. A young black minister sat with Green’s mother: Martin Luther King Jr.
The showdown in Little Rock in 1957 did not solve the riddle of Eisenhower’s views on segregation. As Ike had long feared, some southern segregationists responded to integration orders by closing schools altogether. Indeed, Faubus helped spearhead that movement, winning approval from the Arkansas State Legislature for a bill that allowed him to close schools and lease them to private groups. After the 1957 school year, he shut down Central High and reopened it the following fall as a private school for whites only. His actions alarmed some Little Rock residents—some community leaders had lobbied for respect for the law even at the height of the confrontation—but Faubus was cheered across the South as he completed his expedient transformation from socialist youth to redneck officeholder. He served four more terms as governor of Arkansas.
For Eisenhower, Little Rock was both tragic and redemptive. Even before Brown, Eisenhower had dreaded the South’s response to court-ordered desegregation. With Little Rock, his worst fears were realized, and he deployed troops with the gravest unease. Yet Little Rock would come to stand—incorrectly, in one respect—as the high mark of Eisenhower’s commitment to civil rights. For while Eisenhower did defend integration with the full force of federal authority, there is no evidence that he did so out of sympathy for civil rights. He simply could not allow a governor to defy the orders of a federal court. As Eisenhower well recognized, that would have marked the effective end of federal authority and the acceptance of nullification as a constitutional principle. Race motivated Faubus throughout the crisis, but it did not drive Eisenhower.
In fact, Eisenhower’s approach to civil rights was more evident in the debate over that year’s bill on the issue than it was in Little Rock. At Little Rock, Ike was forced into a confrontation he sought to avoid but was determined not to lose. In his negotiations with Congress, by contrast, he moved cautiously forward. He compromised when he felt it necessary and achieved modest but real progress, joined by centrist elements of both parties. That was how Eisenhower imagined civilized, orderly progress.
When it was over, Brownell, the architect of so much desegregation in the Eisenhower years—the man who recommended Warren and Brennan, who stocked the southern courts with sympathetic judges, who wrote and lobbied for the Civil Rights Act of 1957—could take no more. He had warned Eisenhower that he intended to leave after the first term but had delayed his departure because of Little Rock. Now that the crisis had subsided, it was time for him to go. He worked hard on his resignation letter, drafting it by hand, extensively editing and refining it. He submitted it in October, and Eisenhower accepted it with regret and acknowledgment that Brownell had supplied the Department of Justice—and the nation—with “effective leadership, steadfastness of purpose and your own devotion to principle.”
“I shall be forever thankful,” the president concluded.
No sooner had Little Rock subsided than the American people were roiled again, this time from above. It was a cool October evening in Washington, where a weeklong series of meetings brought together scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union in a tentative Cold War exchange of collaboration and mutual suspicion. As the participants enjoyed a reception at the Soviet embassy, a reporter from the New York Times burst into the room with a breaking story out of Moscow. Tass, he said, was reporting that the Soviet Union had launched an earth-orbiting satellite, a scientific achievement that American and Soviet scientists had been pursuing for months. Richard Porter, an American who was part of the conference, tracked down another member of the delegation and whispered: “It’s up.” As word trickled through the crowd, Lloyd Berkner, America’s official representative to the international committee hosting the conference, graciously acknowledged the work of the Soviet scientists. “I wish to make an announcement,” he called out. “I’ve just been informed by the New York Times that a Russian satellite is in orbit at an elevation of 900 kilometers. I wish to congratulate our Soviet colleagues on their achievement.” The Soviets beamed.
That was an uncommonly sanguine reaction on “Sputnik night.” The specter of a Soviet eye peering down from the sky sent Americans into an orbit of their own. Though hardly a technological marvel, the 183-pound aluminum sphere traveled at eighteen thousand miles per hour and was able to circle the earth every ninety-five minutes. On the satellite’s first passes over the United States, there were four sightings: two from Columbus, Ohio; one from Terre Haute, Indiana; and another from Whittier, California. NBC and CBS both interrupted their programming to broadcast the sounds of the ping that Sputnik emitted. News of the launch dwarfed all other stories—nudging aside the election of Jimmy Hoffa as president of the Teamsters and even news from Little Rock, where Faubus declared that he had acted in the tradition of Robert E. Lee in choosing loyalty to the people of his state over obligation to the federal government. Sputnik’s literal place above America spooked a Cold War jittery nation.
Eisenhower at first was barely troubled. He was in Gettysburg on “Sputnik night.” He had played eighteen holes of golf that morning, then inspected his cattle and toured a neighboring pig farm in the evening. He was home by 6:30 and spent the rest of the night with family, which he did not bother to interrupt to respond to reports of the Soviet satellite. He had some good reason for nonchalance. Unbeknownst to the American people, the U.S. government was already conducting regular overflights of the Soviet Union using the U-2 spy plane. So Eisenhower knew that the United States had long been exploiting this form of military reconnaissance. Moreover, Sputnik in theory validated the shaky defense of the U-2, namely, that flying through the airspace of another nation did not technically violate its sovereignty. In one other sense Sputnik validated Ike: he had proposed “Open Skies” at the Geneva Summit in 1955, and the Soviets had rejected it. Now the two sides had secretly achieved what the Soviets had publicly disdained—common occupation of the high ground.
All that made Sputnik initially seem inconsequential to the White House. In fact, Adams glibly derided it as a “celestial basketball,” an unfortunate phrase that mainly ser
ved to remind critics of his arrogance. For, as the White House soon learned, the public did not share its lack of concern. Within a week, an internal White House analysis concluded that the satellite had significantly altered the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union. In Mexico, editors of scientific journals reported that they were more inclined to seek submissions from the Soviets; in Europe, officials chided the United States for falling behind, and German politicians rethought the American tilt of their neutralism. Japanese Liberal Democrats stepped up their campaign to push U.S. forces off their soil, and Iranian officials were so chagrined that they avoided bringing up Sputnik with their American counterparts. Most worrisome was what might happen next. “The peculiar nature and dramatic appeal of the Sputnik, making its passes over every region of the earth, are likely to give it greatest impact among those least able to understand it,” White House analysts concluded. “It will generate myth, legend and superstition of a kind particularly difficult to eradicate or modify, which the Soviet Union can exploit to its advantage, among backward, ignorant, and apolitical audiences particularly difficult to reach.”
The realization that the Soviet Union could credibly claim that it had surpassed the United States in an arena of strategic consequence roused Eisenhower to action. And as he grappled with the satellite’s implications, a German scientist secured from the same Reich that Ike defeated twelve years earlier seized the moment to pursue his own vision of American space exploration.
Wernher von Braun was brilliant, handsome, and manipulative. At forty-five, he had spent his entire life imagining ways to put rockets into space, an ambition he used to serve Nazi Germany, helping to engineer the terrifying rocket attacks on England, while relying on the work of thousands of slave laborers housed in filthy, disease-ravaged tunnels. When the war ended, von Braun sought out the U.S. Army, where he asked to speak directly with Eisenhower but was turned down. Instead, he was squired out of Germany and quietly relocated to the United States. The Army took him in, and von Braun brought with him a passion for rocketry that transcended national loyalties.
Through the early years of Ike’s administration, von Braun could not persuade Washington to give him the funding he insisted was necessary for his Jupiter program as it vied for attention with a rival effort known as Vanguard. In September 1957, worried that a Soviet breakthrough was at hand, von Braun argued for a stepped-up American investment, proposing a national space agency with funding of $100 million a year. “I am convinced,” he wrote from Huntsville, Alabama, “that, should the Russians beat us to the satellite punch, this would have all kinds of severe psychological repercussions not only among the American public, but also among our allies. It would be simply construed as visible proof the Reds are ahead of us in the rocket game.”
Four weeks later, Sputnik sailed overhead, and von Braun quickly saw his opportunity. Neil McElroy, whom Eisenhower had just nominated to succeed Charlie Wilson at the Defense Department, happened to be visiting Huntsville that October evening. Von Braun cornered him at a cocktail party: “If you go back to Washington tomorrow, Mr. Secretary, and find that all hell has broken loose, remember this. We can get a satellite up in 60 days.”
America’s sense of foreboding intensified over the coming weeks. In November, the Soviets fired a second satellite, this one carrying a small “Eskimo dog” named Laika, a flight memorably dubbed “Muttnik.” And then, on December 6, a much-anticipated Vanguard launch ended with the rocket exploding just a few feet off the launchpad. That became “Flopnik.” The German scientist who promised quick results offered promising possibilities.
Von Braun was already well-known as a magnetic scientist, but his profile was enhanced by Lyndon Johnson, who convened congressional hearings to explore the perceived failings of America’s space efforts. Johnson’s hearings were chiefly a vehicle to promote his own political ambitions, but they also provided von Braun an opportunity to make his case for vastly expanded rocketry. He was a masterful witness—urbane, polished, quotable—and he argued for a federal space agency to consolidate America’s technological efforts. Just three months earlier, he was quietly lobbying for $100 million for such an agency; now he urged spending of $1.5 billion.
As Congress moved to take up that idea—and, with it, to suggest that Eisenhower had been guilty of underfunding this critical aspect of American defense—von Braun fast-tracked his own program for a satellite launch. More Vanguard failures kept international attention nervously riveted while von Braun refined his missile and its payload. Finally, at 10:48 p.m. on January 31, 1958, a Jupiter-C class rocket, specially modified to carry a small satellite, lifted off at Cape Canaveral. Von Braun tracked the launch from the Pentagon, where more than an hour passed without word on the mission’s success. Finally, eight excruciating minutes after the satellite was expected to pass over the West Coast tracking stations, four analysts picked it up simultaneously. The United States was in orbit, von Braun’s reputation was secure, and Eisenhower’s response was vindicated. As Sherman Adams put it, “The enervating suspense was over.” Told of the successful launch, Eisenhower replied: “That’s wonderful.”
Four days later, Eisenhower asked James Killian, the president of MIT, to head up a task force to organize the government’s space and missile efforts; Killian accepted, effectively becoming the nation’s first presidential science adviser. On April 2, Eisenhower sent Congress a proposal calling for the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Congress passed the bills necessary to create NASA, and Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 on July 29. The following day, he appropriated NASA its first $125 million. By year’s end, NASA had initiated the Mercury project, dedicated to putting a man in space.
As 1957 drew to a close, Eisenhower was tense and drawn. On a Monday afternoon just before Thanksgiving, he had greeted the king of Morocco and was preparing for a state dinner that evening. Returning from the airport, Ike reported feeling a chill and then had trouble finding his words. His assistant, Ann Whitman, rushed to Adams with the news that something was wrong with the president. She fought back tears.
They summoned Dr. Snyder, making his third emergency visit to his presidential patient in twenty-six months. Snyder put Ike to bed and called for other medical help. Those closest to Eisenhower spent an anxious afternoon, unsure if the president was gravely ill or merely out of sorts. Would the state dinner proceed? If so, could Eisenhower attend? After conferring with the doctors, the White House released word that the president would not attend the dinner, disclosing only that he had suffered a chill. Next was the question of whether Mamie should attend anyway, and as she and Adams were discussing it, Ike walked in.
“I suppose you are dis—,” he began and then got stuck, “talking about the dinner tonight.” Eisenhower kept tripping over his words, his frustration mounting. “There is nothing the matter with me,” he finally insisted. “I am perfectly all right.” And yet it was obvious that he was not. Simple words eluded him, and though he looked healthy, he remained agitated and inarticulate. When Adams, Snyder, and Mamie urged him to give up any thought of hosting the dinner, he exploded. “If I cannot attend to my duties I am simply going to give up this job,” he raged. “Now that is all there is to it.” He stomped out.
Adams begged Nixon to take over, and Nixon, just as he had after the heart attack, rose to the occasion. He and Pat Nixon joined Mamie in co-hosting the event, which Mamie gamely did, worrying for her husband as he lay upstairs. “It was,” the White House usher J. B. West recalled, “a ghostly white Mamie Eisenhower who descended the elevator with Vice President and Mrs. Nixon that night.” Mamie rushed through her duties as quickly as protocol would allow, then hurried back upstairs. As she left, she uncharacteristically chided the staff, charging that the carnations selected for the evening were too dark, making the room dull. West understood that Mamie was not really upset with the staff. “It seemed to me,” West recalled, “that the room may have see
med dull because the light of her life lay ill upstairs.”
Frightening though it was, this time Ike’s medical setback was mild and temporary. The White House released sketchy statements that night, assuring reporters that he had no temperature, that his pulse was normal. The following day, the White House at last disclosed the nature of Eisenhower’s trouble: he had suffered a mild stroke. At the same time, the administration was also able to announce that the president was rapidly recovering. By November 27, Eisenhower was back at work, afflicted only by occasional blank moments in which he struggled for a word.
Ike’s verbal acuity might be an expendable luxury, but the conflicts of that year produced more lasting and consequential changes as well. Never again would an American governor question Eisenhower’s determination to enforce federal law. Spurred by von Braun, Eisenhower accelerated the nation’s satellite program. And, made forcefully aware of Soviet designs on the Middle East, he articulated a new American strategy for the region and held to it despite congressional uncertainty.
Informally known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, Ike’s formulation for the region was a natural outgrowth of that fall’s Suez confrontation, producing an overdue recognition that much of the Cold War would be fought in the Middle East and through intermediaries. Eisenhower recognized Soviet ambitions for the Middle East could be better achieved by infiltration and destabilization than by conquest. Soviet overtures first came in the form of aid, Eisenhower argued, but then devolved into control. Once under that control, the nations struggled for liberation, to no avail. Eisenhower sought a rationale for American intervention before nations fell captive to oppression. He honed his thoughts in the closing months of 1956 and then presented his proposal to a joint session of Congress early in the New Year.
