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

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СКАЧАТЬ such as Julius Adams of the New York Amsterdam News, believed the NAACP had sold out to protect Democrats. E. Frederic Morrow publicly expressed his “shock” that the organization used “the long-ago discarded ‘half-a-loaf’ theory” to support the legislation, “no matter how emasculating or insulting.” Their willingness to compromise provided shelter for Democrats to “run for cover,” he noted, and, “it is strange to see the NAACP agreeing with men of the South like Eastland, Lyndon Johnson and Senator Russell of Georgia on the same bill.”⁷

      Guaranteed by Lyndon Johnson that a bill without a jury trial amendment would never get through the Senate, Eisenhower agreed to support a compromise bill. He feared that his opponents would never stop reminding black voters that a Republican president vetoed the first civil rights legislation in over eighty years, but understood that supporting the bill would be seen by many in his own party as caving in to Johnson and the Democrats. With Eisenhower promising his support, the Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 on August 29 by a vote of 60–15. All 15 votes against it were cast by southern Democrats.⁸

      While the law did not endear Eisenhower to African Americans, it enhanced the vice president’s image as the administration’s most prominent supporter of civil rights. According to a September edition of the Reporter magazine, the bill “turned Vice-President Richard Nixon … into an avowed champion in this field.” The day after the bill was passed, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote Nixon to say “how grateful all people of goodwill are to you for your assiduous labor and dauntless courage in seeking to make the Civil Rights Bill a reality…. This is certainly an expression of your devotion to the highest mandates of the moral law.” NAACP lawyer James Nabrit, Jr., sent the vice president a telegram, asserting, “The Negro people will not forget your great contribution toward the passage of the Civil Rights Bill.” Jackie Robinson, who would become a confidant of the vice president by 1960, promised “we will not forget those of you with enough courage to stand by your conviction,” and would “never forget the fight you made and what you stand for.”⁹

      Though supporters of civil rights could be found inside Eisenhower’s administration, including Nixon, E. Frederic Morrow, Maxwell Rabb, and Sherman Adams, it also housed conservatives who were far less willing to endorse even moderate advances. At cabinet meetings, secretaries John Foster Dulles, Charles Wilson, and Marion Folsom called Brownell’s civil rights bills “impractical,” and warned they would “aggravate the situation” in the South. secretary of health, education and welfare (HEW) Oveta Culp Hobby, wife of a former Democratic governor of Texas, fired Jane Morrow Spaulding, a black HEW appointee, after Spaulding publicly targeted southern hospitals that refused to hire black doctors. Behind the scenes, Eisenhower’s conservative chief of staff during his second term, Wilton Persons, told Morrow, “I would appreciate it if you never approach me or come to me with anything involving civil rights,” and advised him to “discuss any matters in this area with somebody else.” The conversation confirmed Morrow’s fears that “the South looks hopefully” to Persons “to exercise restraining influences on the President in matters of race.”¹⁰

      While his hands-off leadership gave liberal cabinet members like Brownell room to pursue a civil rights agenda, Eisenhower himself typically avoided the issue altogether. Simeon Booker of Jet stopped attending presidential press conferences, because Eisenhower refused to recognize black reporters and said little on issues of race. Journalist Alice Dunnigan similarly recalled that the president “was not familiar with many questions raised on civil rights … he would become very annoyed whenever such questions were raised.” Morrow wrote in his diary that while Eisenhower may have “noble instincts about things that are right and just … [his] closest personal friends are Southerners,” and he had a difficult time “in formulating an opinion or a policy” on issues of racial equality. Nor did he care for the direct action protests and tactics of the civil rights movement, once telling Morrow that “progress does not necessarily demand noisy conflict.” The president’s desire to place domestic issues like civil rights in the hands of cabinet members left matters of equality at the mercy of department secretaries. While a cabinet member like Brownell could actively pursue a progressive agenda, others could placate the South. Without a clear, strong voice from inside the Oval Office, administration policy was disjointed and confused, giving only glimpses of hope to African Americans looking for national leadership.¹¹

      Morrow observed that “civil rights in the Eisenhower Administration was handled like a bad dream, or like something that’s not very nice, and you shield yourself from it as long as you possibly can.” Many civil rights leaders echoed this sentiment. Fred Shuttlesworth declared African Americans had “no friend in Ike,” who “saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, and he did nothing until he had to.” Martin Luther King, Jr., claimed that while Eisenhower was “a man of genuine integrity and good will … I don’t think he feels like being a crusader for integration.” The president instead favored gradual change, where “you just wait 50 or 100 years and it will work itself out.” Roy Wilkins bemoaned that while Eisenhower “made inroads into the Negro vote,” his administration “demonstrated their ineptitude in expanding their gains … acting as though they were ashamed to be forthright on the issues.”¹²

      As the administration’s highest profile African American, Morrow implored the president to take a stronger stand against southern violence. Following the murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in August 1955, he suggested that the administration “issue some kind of statement deploring the breakdown of law and order in Mississippi, and stating that it is un-American and undemocratic and contrary to the American way.” To his dismay, he found that “there seems to be complete fright when it is suggested that such action be taken,” and warned, “it is things like the refusal of the Republicans to issue any kind of fear-allaying statement on conditions in Mississippi that contributes to the Negro’s thinking that the Republican Party deserts him in crisis.” Morrow, Val Washington, James Nabrit, J. Ernest Wilkins, and Maxwell Rabb concluded after a strategy meeting that “the Republicans missed the ball when no prominent member of the administration spoke out against the Till matter.” Rabb, a white advisor who had the closest ear of the group to the president, claimed to have a difficult time getting anyone “close to the President to go along with this kind of thing on the matter of civil rights.” Morrow could only conclude “there seems to be some uncanny fear that to alienate the South on this matter of race will be disastrous.” Even Sherman Adams, Morrow’s closest ally inside the White House, opposed issuing a statement condemning southern violence, claiming, “Eisenhower is the President of all the country and could not make speeches designed to influence or castigate any segment of the American public.”¹³

      African Americans from across the country joined Morrow in urging the president to speak out against racial violence. Morrow described daily “sacks of mail” brought to his office “berating the president for his failure to denounce the breakdown of law and order.” The editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, William Nunn, warned party officials that his paper was “swamped” with letters from readers who “feel that a miscarriage of justice such as this should call for some official statement from the Justice Department.” Roy Wilkins told Val Washington that if the administration had simply “made a move and been rebuffed it could have collected some kudos for effort…. But it said and did nothing.” Realistically, a presidential statement would have had a minimal effect on curbing southern violence, but symbolically to African Americans Eisenhower’s silence proved his apathy to their suffering.¹⁴

      The Eisenhower administration’s muted response occurred during a decade of sustained terrorism against southern blacks. The Ku Klux Klan grew exponentially in the 1950s, having significantly more members and committing more acts of violence than it had in decades. On Christmas night 1951, activist Harry T. Moore and his wife were killed after a bomb exploded outside his Florida home. In 1955, two of Mississippi’s leading civil rights workers, Rev. George W. Lee and Lamar Smith, were murdered for encouraging blacks to register to vote. Lee, no relation to George W. Lee of Memphis, was the first African American since Reconstruction to register to vote in Belzoni, Mississippi. СКАЧАТЬ