He was also reliable advocate for civil rights.
But he was not yet certain that he wanted to be president.
On March 24, 1952, Herbert Brownell met with Eisenhower. Brownell had experience organizing political campaigns. The two men quickly found common ground: both agreed that a president should be “to eliminate discrimination against black citizens in every area,” as Brownell phrased it.
Brownell, and other leaders, persuaded Ike be a candidate.
Later that year, Ike accepted the nomination to be the Republican Party’s candidate for the presidency. His running mate was Richard Nixon. Like Ike, Nixon was in favor of integration and desegregation.
The opposition, the Democratic Party’s ticket, included staunch segregationist John Sparkman.
On the question of civil rights, there was a clear difference between the two tickets. Nonetheless, this was not an attention-getting concern in the campaign.
In the 1952 election, central matters were the Korean War, the global threats posed by the USSR and by communist China, and scandals about corrupt officials inside the federal government. There were also concerns about education and the economy.
Despite the fact that civil rights weren’t getting much attention in the media, Eisenhower explained to Brownell that, as president, he would take action to secure freedoms for African-Americans. This was not widely reported or discussed during the election, as historian David Nichols writes:
Civil rights would not be a major issue in the 1952 presidential election. A cluster of cases - subsequently known as Brown v. Board of Education - challenging Plessy v. Ferguson was scheduled for review by the Supreme Court, but no ruling was imminent. Eisenhower’s commitment to Brownell in invoke federal authority against discrimination was not a political strategy aimed at garnering votes; it was, as he stated years later, “a matter of justice.”
After winning the 1952 election by a solid margin - including a large percentage both of Black voters and of female voters - Eisenhower set to work on his civil rights agenda. He method was to act rather than to speak.
Ike appointed Herbert Brownell to be Attorney General. Brownell was Ike’s teammate in many of the civil rights advancements made during the 1950s.
Eisenhower didn’t give major speeches on the topic, didn’t release official statements about it, and didn’t discuss it at press conferences. But silently, behind the scenes, he accomplished significant milestones.
During his presidency, he desegregated the military, the federal government, and the entire District of Columbia. He generated, and gained congressional approval for, two civil rights bills. He implemented the actions implied in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Famously, when Democrat Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, prevented African-American students from attending Little Rock Central High School, Eisenhower sent soldiers to protect the “Little Rock Nine” and assure their admission into the high school.
Although each of these events was a noteworthy step in the struggle for civil rights, Ike remained quiet. He gave no in-depth interviews about the matter.
The decade of the 1950s was a watershed moment in United States history. By the end of the decade, major civil rights objectives had been achieved: an inevitable movement toward the desegregation and integration of schools was in motion; Blacks were gaining equal access to public accommodations (buses, lunch counters, etc.); the percentage of African-Americans who voted was increasing.
The president who brought about this dramatic change worked behind the scenes, not seeking attention. It was Eisenhower’s actions, not his words, that changed the world.
