The Eisenhower Years

1. The Eisenhower Years 1953-1960

2. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka • What happened? • When the 1953-54 school year opened, 2.5 million African American children attended all-black schools in 17 Southern states and the District of Columbia. The black schools were separate from the schools white students attended, but their facilities were far from being equal. In 1954 the South spent an average of $165.00 for its white students and $115.00 for its black students. • Since its founding in 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had adopted the strategy of filing legal cases to gain justice and civil rights for African Americans. Led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP legal team chose five test cases to challenge state laws mandating segregation in the public schools. The famous Brown case took its name from the first name on the list – Oliver Brown of Topeka, Kansas. Brown wanted his eight-year-old daughter, Linda, to attend a nearby all-white elementary school instead of traveling 25 blocks to a black elementary school.

3. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka • What happened? • Thurgood Marshall argued that the segregated schools in Topeka were unconstitutional because they denied black children the “equal protection of the laws” guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall. In a unanimous decision, the Court reversed the long-standing “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.

5. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka • Why did the Supreme Court reverse Plessy v. Ferguson? • Thurgood Marshall argued that separate schools were inherently unconstitutional because they unjustly stigmatized (branded) all black children. He insisted that the system of racially segregated schools perpetuated inferior treatment for black Americans. • Chief Justice Earl Warren agreed with Marshall’s contention that the doctrine of “separate but equal” should be struck down. He also believed that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gave the Court the necessary authority to reverse Plessy v. Ferguson. • Speaking for a unanimous Court, Warren declared that, “We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

6. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka • Why should you remember Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka? • The Brown decision opened a new era in the African American struggle for equal rights. The Court’s landmark ruling awakened the nation’s more than 15 million black citizens to begin demanding “Freedom Now!” • One year after issuing the Brown decision, the Supreme Court unanimously directed the states to desegregate their public schools “with all deliberate speed.” Outraged Southern leaders responded by calling for “massive resistance” to the Court’s decision. In Congress, 82 representatives and 19 senators signed a Southern Manifesto that accused the Supreme Court of “a clear abuse of judicial power.” • President Eisenhower did not use his enormous prestige to morally support the civil right movement. Ike privately believed that, “You cannot change people’s hearts merely by laws.”

7. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka • Why should you remember Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka? • Massive resistance became a reality in Little Rock, Arkansas. The local school board adopted a desegregation plan that called for nine black students to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School when classes began on September 3, 1957. The crisis began when over 1,000 whites attacked blacks and sympathetic whites outside the school. The 150 city policemen failed to protect the nine black students from the howling mob. This display of resistance forced President Eisenhower to act. The next day he sent 1,100 paratroopers to Little Rock to protect the black students and enforce the desegregation order. Ike explained his actions by stating that, “The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rest upon the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of government will support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the federal courts, even, when necessary, with all the measures at the President’s command.”

8. Dr. King and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement • The Montgomery Bus Boycott • On December 1, 1955 a white Montgomery City Lines bus driver ordered Rosa Parks to give up her seat to a white passenger. Rosa Parks was a 42-year-old black seamstress who was a respected member of the local black community. Even though she was tired from a long day at work, Parks was also tired of enduring the injustices of racial segregation. As the driver impatiently waited for an answer, Rosa Parks did the unexpected. She refused the driver’s order by saying just one word, “No.” The bus driver promptly called police who arrested Parks and fined her $10.00. • Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by her young minister, the 26-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the black community supported Parks by boycotting the Montgomery buses. The boycott worked. Fifteen months later the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling the bus segregation was unconstitutional.

9. Dr. King and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement • Dr. King and nonviolent civil disobedience • The Montgomery Bus Boycott catapulted Dr. King into America’s most recognized and influential African American leader. Dr. King inspired his followers with a message of nonviolent civil disobedience derived from the writings of Henry David Thoreau and the actions of Mahatma Gandhi in India. Dr. King energized the Montgomery boycotters by reminding them that they stood for truth and righteousness. “The strong man,” Dr. King insisted, “is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back.” • Following the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Under his leadership, the SCLC sought to apply the principles of nonviolent civil disobedience to other Southern cities.

10. Dr. King and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement • The sit-in movement • In 1960, lunch counters throughout the South remained segregated. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience inspired four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina to take action. Calling segregation , “evil pure and simple,” the Greensboro Four sat down at a “whites-only” Woolworth lunch counter and ordered coffee and apple pie. Although the waitress refused to serve them, the students did not vacillate (waiver). They returned the next day with more black student protesters. Within six months the Greensboro Woolworth desegregated its lunch counter. • The sit-in movement begun by the Greensboro Four galvanized activists throughout the South. Later that year, black and white students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to work with Dr. King’s SCLC. Soon a wave of student protesters held “read-ins” at libraries, “watch-ins” at movie theaters, and “swim-ins” at pools and beaches. Although they were taunted by segregationists, the black and white activists demonstrated courage and conviction as they remained true to Dr. King’s principles of nonviolent protest.

11. The Cold War and Sputnik • “A multiplicity of fears” • On the surface a majority of American’s seemed to enjoy a good life in the mid-1950s. The country liked Ike because his administration brought a material prosperity unequalled in memory. And of course everyone loved Lucy because the TV star’s zany antics brought a weekly dose of comic relief. • The surface appearance of calm belied the reality of an underlying sense of anxiety and even fear. In a press conference in 1954 President Eisenhower noted that Americans were “suffering from a multiplicity of fears.” The President was right. The fear of international Communism, the fear of domestic subversion, and most of all the fear of nuclear annihilation all produced a deep sense of anxiety.

12. The Cold War and Sputnik • “The balance of terror” and massive retaliation • The fear of nuclear war was not imaginary. By 1954 both the United States and the Soviet Union had exploded hydrogen bombs. What Winston Churchill called a “balance of terror” seemed real. Popular magazines warned that in the new missile age Americans would have at most 35 minutes warning before a Soviet missile attack hit the United States. Millions of public school students hid under their desks as part of Duck and Cover drills. Adults could dash into newly built fallout shelters located in many public buildings. Worried homeowners added an extra layer of security by building bomb shelters in their basements.

13. The Cold War and Sputnik • “The balance of terror” and massive retaliation • President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles added to public anxiety by announcing a “New Look” defense policy. The United States would no longer become involved in expensive limited wars. Instead, Dulles announced a new strategy called Massive Retaliation. This meant that the United States would consider using its nuclear weapons to halt Communist aggression. To threaten the use of using nuclear weapons would require nerves of steel. “If you are scared to go to the brink,” Dulles warned, “you are lost.” Journalists soon called this policy of going to the brink of nuclear war without going over the edge Brinkmanship.

14. The Cold War and Sputnik • Beep, beep, beep • While anxious Americans prepared for the worst, the Soviets appeared surprisingly confident. In Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev told visiting British and French officials that, “Whether or not you like it, history is on our side.” • Khrushchev’s boast seemed to come true on October 4, 1957. That night millions of Americans turned on their television sets and heard a newscaster tell them, “Listen now for the sound which forever separates the old from the new.” The beeping sound they heard came from a 184 pound satellite called Sputnik which the Russians shot into orbit earlier that day.

15. The Cold War and Sputnik • The impact of Sputnik • Sputnik jolted America’s self-confidence. A stunned public concluded that the Russians had overcome America’s scientific and technological lead. Time magazine grimly warned that Sputnik “posed the United States with the most dramatic military threat it has ever faced.” • Congress took vigorous actions to respond to the Sputnik crisis. In July 1958 Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to compete with the Soviet space program. Within a year, NASA named seven men America’s first astronauts. Congress also passed the National Defense Education Act to fund enriched science and math programs in the nation’s public schools and colleges.

16. Prompt #11 • Eisenhower was a successful president. Assess the validity of this statement.