It looks like Republicans have realized when they use that "Party of Lincoln" line, they have no response to the retort, "But you have to go back that far," so they are once more reaching back to change your future by reinterpreting the past. They just ain't going back quite as far.
Ike Liked Civil Rights
By DAVID A. NICHOLSWinfield, Kan.
FIFTY years ago this week, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law providing voting protections for blacks known as the Civil Rights Act of 1957. While that act is hardly as well remembered as the landmark laws of the 1960s, it’s not because it wasn’t important: at the time, it had been 82 years since any federal civil rights legislation had been passed because a coalition of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans had consistently blocked progress.
What happened to break that logjam has been largely lost to history. Eisenhower complained in 1967 that if his critics felt “there was anything good done” in his presidency, “they mostly want to prove that it was somebody else that did it and that I went along as a passenger.” That has been especially true of his championship of civil rights.
The “somebody else” in this instance was Lyndon B. Johnson, who in 1957 was the Senate’s Democratic majority leader. Historians have consistently credited Johnson for the bill’s passage. Yes, Johnson played a role, but hardly the one his advocates might imagine: Eisenhower and his attorney general, Herbert Brownell Jr., first proposed strong legislation, and it was Johnson and his Southern cronies who weakened it beyond recognition.
It's an interesting article. It's not primarily about civil rights, though. It's about politics, and so would benefit from a bit of context. Said context is provided by the attached pdf file of an article from The New York Times, dated August 5, 1956. The article asserts, for analytical purposes, that there were four political parties at the time.
A little left of center, as Franklin Roosevelt used to say, is the Roosevelt-Truman party--the party of the New Deal and Fair Deal, the party that has tended to embrace the bulk of organized labor, Negroes, Catholics and other groups centered especially in the large urban states. This is the Presidential Democratic party...
In the exact center is the Eisenhower party--Presidential Republicans. They are middle-of-the-road on domestic policy and generally internationalist on foreign; they attract especially the modern business and suburban groups; they fight the Presidential Democrats for control of the urban states...
A bit to the right of the Presidential Republicans is the Congressional Democrats...As a result of Congressional politics and machinery, this party responds especially to Southern and border-state attitudes and interests.
Much further to the right is the Congressional Republican party...[t]his party claims to be the "real" Republican Party...[i]ts geographical center is the Midwest; it is also strong in Northeastern and Western rural districts. In foreign policy it leans toward isolationism.
Sound familiar? Sound like nothing has changed? It should.
Notice that, policy-wise, the South was not in play. Congressional Democrats were right-of-center, Congressional Republicans were even further right. This is the American Solid South in action, and an honest view of politics would emphasize the regional nature of political loyalties.
Mr. Nichols presents a pleasantly straightforward view of the politics at play in the 50s. Which reminds me of the old saying: for every problem there is a solution that is simple, direct
The recent defeat of the school bill is a case in point. Who was responsible for tis failure? The Congressional Republican party abandoned the President to support an anti-segregation amendment they knew would eventually defeat the bill. The Democrats split into fragments. The result was chaos; all parties but one argue for more Federal aid to education; all parties but one want segregation ended--but a bill embodying these ideals fails. The tragedy is not simply that the bill was murdered but that everyone can argue that someone else was the culprit.
...and wrong.
It's just not that simple.
Like I said, it's an interesting article, but you should read it like you would historical fiction. And you should remember reinterpreting that stuff back then doesn't change the actual impact of what people are doing now.
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Ike Also Liked
to give labor unions a pass on enforcing JOB Discrimination laws.
Famous Ike Quote
Appointing Earl Warren to the Supreme Court: Biggest Damn Fool Mistake I Ever Made.
Oh yeah, he liked Civil Rights...NOT.
Nichols conveniently fails
Nichols conveniently fails to mention that Eisenhower claimed that nominating Earl Warren to the Supreme Court was the biggest mistake he ever made. Ike was fully sympathetic to the opinions of white southerners who, in his words, did not want their white daughters being forced to attend school with some "black Buck." He was against the integration of the armed forces during the Truman administration. As an army official, he believed that black soldiers were not up to the task of performing the same duties as white soldiers and felt that they were not fit for combat. He only called out the national guard during the Little Rock crisis because he wanted to protect the prestige of the federal courts. He did not object unequivocally to the watering down of his civil rights legislation in 1957 and believed that the milder the bill the better. He was not even aware of the provisions contained in the bill and admitted this to the press. Even his admiring biographer, Stephen Ambrose, argued that Eisenhower's actions concerning civil rights were a stain on his legacy. I don't know what possess Nichols to think that Eisenhower was a central leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, it seems to be a habit of many historians of American history to decipher which white men were responsible for "delivering" freedom and civil rights to African Americans. In this case, it seems Nichols has chosen to honor someone who never wholeheartedly endeavored to make racial equality a reality by an streatch of the imagination. It will be interesting to see the ways in which conservatives use Nichols' book to claim moral authority on the issue of race relations.
I don't know what possess
He's a Black Conservative®.
Interesting. Why do you
Interesting. Why do you think Ike has become an icon for so many Black Conservatives?
This is the first I've heard
This is the first time I've seen it, actually. It's just consistent with they tactic of trying to associate Republicans with Black advancement and civil rights while spitting on them day-to-day. It's exactly what they tried with their "Party of Lincoln" rhetoric.
Black Conservatives Icons
I think it is instructive that black conservatives want to embrace Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower but keep their distance from Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and Earl Warren. Even the disgraced Richard Nixon, despite his feelings of racial antipathy toward black folks, did more to assist African Americans on an individual and group basis than Dwight Eisenhower.
I have seen it used before.
I have seen it used before. For instance, a black guest on the 700 Club a couple years back lectured on how Eisenhower's use of federal troops to integrate Central High School proves that Republicans have been stalwarts on civil rights. Shelby Steele, more recently, argued that Eisenhower's racism was no more egregious than Bill Clinton's dishonesty about his sexual infidelity, and asserted that if Clinton had been caught using the N-word he would have been driven from office just as surely as Eisenhower would have been if the public in the 50's had known about his marital infidelities.
Given that Nichols' book will be appealing to white conservatives, do you think that a book by a black Conservative honoring Nixon for approving the Philadelphia Plan or for campaigning for a guaranteed national income would go over as well? Nixon was the architect of the "Southern strategy," but his administration did propose policy that would be looked at as anathema to most Republicans nowadays. It seems that conservatives would relish Eisenhower's "statesmanship" on the issue of civil rights but would like to forget that it was Tricky Dick who proposed "quotas" and "handouts."
I have seen it used
Steele really said the President being a racist is not worse than the President getting a little ass on the side.
Obviously a hormonal imbalance of some sort is affecting his thinking.
I think a book by a black Conservative honoring Nixon for the Southern Strategy would be a best seller...and this is not strictly facetiousness on my part. I'm sure you could recruit four or five BCs willing to put their name on it in less than a week.
Yes. In his book, White
Yes. In his book, White Guilt, published last year, Steele made these remarks as part of his argument that white guilt was part of an irrational fixation on Puritanical modes of morality.
I am soooo sorry you had to
I am soooo sorry you had to read that.
Shelby Steele, more
Shelby Steele, more recently, argued that Eisenhower's racism was no more egregious than Bill Clinton's dishonesty about his sexual infidelity,
This reveals, in my opinion, the essential cold hearted dishonesty that lies at the center of the beliefs and causes espoused by the likes of Shelby Steele and his fellow travelers. Eisenhower's racism is not and never was the real issue. The real issue was the denial of legal and civil rights to all Black Americans and the use of the coercive power of the state at all levels and other institutions to reinforce and enshrine these practices.
Eisenhower's racism may be a moral failing of greater or lesser individual consequence than Br. Bill's sexual dalliance with Ms. Lewinsky. If, however, his racism prevented him from enforcing the laws and carrying out his constitutional duties with respect to the rights of Black Americans then there is no question that his attitude and behavior was a more egregious offense than Br. Bill putting a cigar in a young woman's vagina and sniffing it.
I've never actually read the
I've never actually read the whole book. I read an excerpt containing the Eisenhower/Clinton comparison which was widely used to market the book. When you mentioned that Nichols was a black conservative, I immediately flashed back to reading Steele's downplaying of Eisenhower's racism as just an unfortunate fact of his private life. If you google Shelby Steele and Eisenhower you will find the excerpt.
After a little searching
After a little searching around, I have found that Nichols is the Dean at Southwestern College in Kansas. Do you know any more about him?
I am no longer sure. The guy
I am no longer sure. The guy I had in mind used to do book reviews for the Washington Post. It was long enough ago that he really could be a dean by now. He didn't strike me as the dean-type, though.
P6, you have nailed it
I think a book by a black Conservative honoring Nixon for the Southern Strategy would be a best seller...and this is not strictly facetiousness on my part. I'm sure you could recruit four or five BCs willing to put their name on it in less than a week.
I think it would only take 48 hours...isn't that how long it would take for the check to clear?
We might need to carry on
We might need to carry on portions of this conversation which discuss the career advancement of black conservatives under a different thread. The author of the article is white. While visiting a bookstore, I flipped through portions of his text in which he claimed he was basing his appraisal of Eisenhower on newly released material, his belief that we should not judge the past by the standards of the present, and Eisenhower's aversion to using his support of civil rights for political gain. Eisenhower's good deeds, he claims, were conducted below the radar in which historians base their opinions on leaders. He said right out that his assessment of Eisenhower stands in contrast to the established opinion on the subject, but I doubt from what I briefly glimpsed that he presents any solid arguments which would counter the prevailing understandings on this matter. The book, however, does carry endorsements from established names such as Jonathan Alter and Walter Isaacson, so it will filter into mainstream avenues of thought and may be the subject of a documentary on the History Channel..
We might need to carry on
Well, it's true independent of the article or book.
The most important point, that reinterpreting the past doesn't change what you're going through now, survives. That's what I really care about.
...his belief that we should
...his belief that we should not judge the past by the standards of the present.
If this line of argument has any validity how then do we judge the acts of those who stood by us in some very dark hours? Even leaving aside the dark hours what can we say about the Rockefellers, eminent capitalists and Republicans, who, among other things, purchased and gave the Urban League its headquarters building in New York City and contributed large amounts of money to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? How do we judge these folks if we are urged not to judge the Dwight Eisenhowers?
I always find it interesting that it is usually conservatives who want to employ their misguided understanding of the social science implications of relativity to explain away racism and racist behavior. What Black Americans were facing in America when Eisenhower was president could not be softened or made palatable by acts of kindness done under the radar. As the historical record clearly shows the demise of the system of American apartheid was assured when white Americans openly joined ranks with black folks and began to bear witness in whatever way they could. In this context the actions of Earl Warren, who had been elected three times as the Republican candidate for governor of California, stands head and shoulders above whatever assistance Br. Ike might have rendered to individual blacks who he regarded as deserving. Earl Warren's actions demonstrated to the world that every black person in America was deserving.
I don't think that
I don't think that conservatives want to honor any "judicial activists" in their historical revisions.
Honoring Ike as a civil rights stalwart allows people to think that those who do the very least are deserving of the most recognition.
It Is Not Only Judicial Activists Who Were Members...
of their own political party that they don't want to honor. If black folks and others keep listening to these people they'll have us believing that in Jesse Helms "there flowed the milk of human kindness, a quart in every vein"; that Strom Thurmond's run for the presidency on the Dixiecrat ticket had nothing to do with race; or, better yet, that William F. Buckley, Jr. was not an ardent defender of state sanctioned racial segregation. There is nothing and no one these folks will not lie to about anything. They even lie to themselves.
As far as Strom Thurmond
As far as Strom Thurmond goes, conservatives intent on erasing the history of racism from our national memory have latched onto the subject of his bi-racial daughter as a way of dismissing his role in uniting white opposition to integration in the South and helping to engineer the Southern Strategy of the modern day Republican Party.
"The struggle against
"The struggle against tyranny is the struggle against forgetting."
Milan Kundera