Seeing what needed to be done, Eisenhower desegregated and integrated his troops. The result was victory.
Eight years later, General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. During his campaign, he expressed his intentions to desegregate and integrate various aspects of American life. His opponents in the election, nominated by the Democratic Party, argued for segregationist policies.
Once elected, Ike proceeded both resolutely and cautiously. He was resolute in that he would not be deterred from his goal of integration; he was cautious in that he knew that his actions could cause angry backlash from the Democrats, as historian Kasey Pipes writes:
As early as 1953, Eisenhower had written in his diary of the possibility that a “conflict of the police powers of the state and of the nation would set back the cause of progress in race relations for a long, long time.” Almost alone among political leaders of the time, Ike feared that a Little Rock-type eruption could happen. This premonition guided his every move. Thus, from the beginning of his presidency, he moved carefully and cautiously. He wanted to bring about change on civil rights, but he wanted to do so in a way that did not “inflame passions” as he often said. This explains why even after the Little Rock crisis began he moved deliberately. He wanted to exhaust every possible option before resorting to force. Still, when he did try everything else with no success, he didn’t hesitate to use military action to enforce the order of the federal court.
Ike was not dramatic. He was committed to doing the right thing, and his commitment was unshakeable, but also unemotional. Ike was driven by duty, not by passion.
The Democratic Party had made Orval Faubus the governor of Arkansas in 1954. Faubus used his powers to continue his party’s segregationist policies. Ike’s communication with Faubus in 1957 exemplify his tendency to avoid inflammatory rhetoric while maintaining his determined stance:
Eisenhower replied to Faubus on September 5 with a brief and elliptical message: “The Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.” Eisenhower intended this to sound like a thinly veiled threat.
After exhausting any chances of persuading Faubus to comply with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision — a decision made under the watchful eye of Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was an Eisenhower appointee — Ike knew that he needed to ignore Faubus and take his own actions.
To comply with the Supreme Court’s decision, Faubus should have allowed the integration of Little Rock Central High School. But he didn’t. It was Eisenhower’s job to see to it that Black students had access to education in that school.
In September 1957, Eisenhower ordered the legendary 101st Airborne Division, an elite military unit, into Little Rock. The 101st made sure that African American students had access to Central High School and that they were safe. Eisenhower had made it happen: desegregation was advancing.
Black leaders praised Ike’s decision. Martin Luther King Jr. wired the president, thanking him for his support of “Christian traditions of fair play and brotherhood.”
Ike was pragmatic. He avoided drama and passion. He preferred to get things done with as few words as possible, and certainly without inflammatory rhetoric. He also wanted to achieve goals with a minimum of collateral damage. He achieved integration, desegregation, and advancements in civil rights, and hoped to do so with as little trauma and destruction as possible.
While successful and popular, Ike’s calm approach was occasionally criticized, as Kasey Pipes explains:
Eisenhower favored gradual reform while many in the civil rights movement urged dramatic change. He often told his staff that “more than laws” had to be changed in order for America to truly be a just society. Indeed, no less a source than Dr. Martin Luther King believed Ike was sincere in wanting to help the cause of civil rights. But King faulted Ike’s “conservatism” which was “fixed and rigid” and prevented him from moving more quickly and more dramatically to enact civil rights. At Little Rock, the president did not hesitate to defend the order of the federal court. Even still, his preferred approach was to let the local and state authorities find a solution. When it became obvious that Governor Orval Faubus had no intention of solving the problem, Ike solved it for him.
Although MLK didn’t always agree with Ike’s tone, the two of them nonetheless successfully collaborated. MLK and Eisenhower worked together, along with Vice President Richard Nixon, to promote the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and to ensure its passage through Congress.
This was followed by a similar process to obtain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
