Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. Joshua D. Farrington

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ time thinking, or talking, about unless pressed to do so. More pragmatic than ideological, Eisenhower’s self-touted brand of “Modern Republicanism” emphasized moderation and stability over rigid dogma and radical change. As such, he balked at conservative calls to overturn the New Deal, but was also skeptical of idealistic liberals who sought to upend the South’s deeply entrenched racial order. By his second term, he found it increasingly difficult to strike a moderate balance on civil rights that would placate both black and white southerners. Together, these two groups had played an important role in his 1956 victories in Texas, Louisiana, and the border South, with African Americans seeing him as a potential alternative to Democrats and whites valuing his military service and down-to-earth persona. Without decisive leadership from the White House, the Republican Party of the 1950s lacked ideological and strategic moorings, sharing the president’s hope that they could both retain black gains and expand deeper into the Democratic South.

      This balancing act became even harder to maneuver by the late 1950s, as grassroots protests like the Montgomery bus boycott mobilized African Americans across the South and launched a new phase of the civil rights movement. If Eisenhower didn’t want to rock the boat on race relations, the undercurrents of black discontent that had risen to the surface would rock it for him. As E. Frederic Morrow noted, “American Blacks were set to love President Eisenhower. But when he failed to come to grips with their hopes and aspirations, the Black community soured and the expressions of protest became physical rather than just verbal.” As black dissatisfaction morphed into nonviolent demonstrations, and white backlash against activists intensified, Eisenhower’s second term would be marred by his cautious approach that confused and offended both blacks and segregationists. Moderate support for civil rights might have been acceptable, even progressive, in the early 1950s when Eisenhower first entered the political arena, but by the end of the decade African Americans were no longer content with gradual reform. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had cast his ballot for Eisenhower in 1956, reflected the frustrations of many African Americans by the late 1950s, describing the president’s remedy for cancerous Jim Crow as “bit by bit with a tweezer because the surgeon’s knife was an instrument too radical.”¹

      Eisenhower was willing, however, to combat egregious forms of black disenfranchisement. Despite a steady rise in black voter registration in the region since the 1940s, only 25 percent of voting-age African Americans in eleven southern states voted in 1956. In Mississippi, where blacks composed over 40 percent of the state’s adult population, they made up less than 4 percent of registered voters. African Americans represented one-third of Alabama’s population, but only 8 percent of the state’s voters. Approximately 75 percent of Georgia’s voting-age African Americans were not registered. Sixteen counties in the Deep South with majority black populations had zero registered black voters, and just 5 percent of African Americans were registered in forty-nine additional black belt counties. These registration numbers were a byproduct of over sixty years of violence and intimidation. For those who risked their lives and attempted to register, local officials disenfranchised them through a legal maze of poll taxes and restrictions, including literacy tests that featured intentionally impossible questions, such as “How many bubbles are there in a cake of soap?”²

      Central to Eisenhower’s focus on eliminating voter discrimination was his belief that if black voters could be protected, they would end Jim Crow themselves at the ballot box. This would allow for state-level repeals of segregation rather than sweeping federal decrees. By targeting the most obviously unconstitutional denial of black citizenship rights, it also let him off the hook when it came to dealing directly with the social and cultural forms of discrimination that permeated the South. In January 1957, Eisenhower reintroduced voter-protection legislation similar to the failed bill from the previous year. Again written by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the law made it a federal crime to interfere with voters in federal elections, created a new assistant attorney general to handle civil rights violations, and gave federal judges the power to issue injunctions to protect the right to vote and declare in contempt anyone who interfered. By placing this power in the hands of judges, Brownell intended to remove the matter from criminal trials, where he was well aware that southern juries would side with local officials.³

      While the administration’s bill made it through the House without any substantial changes, the Senate, where southern Democrats chaired five of the eight most powerful committees, was a much more hostile environment. Even northern Democrats, including John F. Kennedy (Massachusetts) and Warren Magnuson (Washington), voted to send the 1957 bill to James Eastland’s Judiciary Committee, where its most effective sections were diluted. Opposition to the legislation initially focused on Title III, which provided civil and criminal penalties for anyone who violated another’s rights, including, but not limited to, voting rights, and gave the president the authority to use troops to enforce civil rights laws. Led by Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, who claimed that it would create “new and drastic procedures to cover a wide variety of vaguely defined so-called civil rights,” the Senate rejected the provisions. Despite protests from Jacob Javits, William Knowland, and other Senate Republicans, Eisenhower agreed to a compromise that excluded the controversial section.⁴

      The president was less conciliatory on the issue of jury trials. On August 1, the Senate passed a jury trial amendment that placed the power to prosecute a person held in contempt of a federal judge’s orders in the hands of southern juries. Twelve conservative Republicans joined thirty-nine Democrats in supporting the amendment, which significantly weakened the federal government’s ability to enforce the law, as southern juries were notorious for acquitting those accused of civil rights violations. Even Mississippi’s segregationist governor described the new bill as a “fairly harmless proposition.” Among those who voted for the amendment were emerging conservative Republican icon Barry Goldwater (Arizona) and liberal Democrats Paul Douglas (Illinois) and Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota). Vice President Richard Nixon, one of the amendment’s most vocal critics, described its passage as “a vote against the right to vote.” Senate minority leader William Knowland called it “a vote to kill … an effective voting rights bill,” and was later found crying in his office by the NAACP’s Clarence Mitchell. At a cabinet meeting the following day, Eisenhower described the amendment as “one of the most serious political defeats of the past four years,” and issued a statement lamenting that millions of black voters “will continue … to be disenfranchised.”⁵

      It remained initially unclear whether Eisenhower would sign or veto the compromised law. The NAACP took a “calculated risk” and endorsed the bill, telling members, “even though it has been weakened by the Senate … [it] will constitute a start toward our goal, and a start is better than standing still.” They were joined by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and union leader Joseph Rauh, who argued that to a starving man “a half-loaf of bread was better than no bread at all.” King followed suit, telling Vice President Nixon, who supported a veto, that “while I sympathize with your point of view, I feel that civil rights legislation is urgent now, and the present bill will go a long way to insure it.” Other black luminaries, including Ralph Bunche, baseball legend Jackie Robinson, John Sengstacke of the Chicago Defender, and Earl Dickerson of the NAACP board of directors, were less willing to compromise, echoing A. Philip Randolph in declaring that a weak bill was “worse than no bill at all.”⁶

      Leading black Republicans supported a veto. Val Washington argued, “it is better to have no bill at all than to have one with no teeth in it.” The Grand Exalted Ruler of the black Elks, Robert H. Johnson, declared that his organization opposed the weakened bill, and Elk official Larry Foster wrote Eisenhower, “your veto of the bill … will be welcomed by all those who hate deception and love justice. The bill as it now stands is a farce.” Though the impetus for the legislation came from Eisenhower’s Justice Department, its compromised form belonged to Lyndon Johnson, who rallied his party behind a tame bill acceptable to all but its most rabid segregationists. Northern Democrats could tell black constituents they passed a civil rights bill, while southern Democrats could return home to highlight their role in rendering the same bill ineffective. Though the NAACP’s national leadership and union leaders would have preferred a stronger bill, their strong СКАЧАТЬ