Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. Joshua D. Farrington
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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 ties to northern Democrats provided incentive to accept concessions, as a presidential veto would draw attention to the role of high-profile Democrats in scrapping its strongest sections. Many black Republicans, 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,