Chapter Seven: The  Eisenhower-Nixon Years

By 1952, the United States had gone through a tumultuous twelve years from 1940 to the date Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in as president on January 20, 1953. World War II was behind Americans and the demoguguery of the late Truman years from politicians like Senator McCarthy (Rep. Wisc.) and Senator William Jenner (Rep. Ind.) was on the horizon. Eisenhower's Vice President Richard Nixon (Rep. Calif.) had earned his spurs as a demogogue in the 1950 campaign against Helen Gahagen Douglas, the Pink Lady he defeated in the California elections of that year. She was no more a Communist than Nixon himself.

dem•a•gogue n., v.,
-gogued, -gogu˜ing -- n.1. a person, esp. an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people. 2. (in ancient times) a leader of the people. -- v.t.3. to treat or manipulate (a political issue) in the manner of a demagogue; obscure or distort with emotionalism, prejudice, etc. -- v.i.4. to speak or act like a demagogue.

Eisenhower gave the public what it wanted -- freedom from public concerns -- at least for two years. Eisenhower also gave the public the feeling matters were in his capable hands, the hands that had directed the Allies in a successful war against Nazi Germany and Italian Fascism. His Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles, his brother, Allan Dulles was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, created a few years earlier to replace the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) . Eisenhower had kept his campaign promise by settling the Korean War albeit with some 40,000 American armed forces stationed south of the DMZ. They are still there. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) was in the demonic hands of General Curtis LeMay who was satirized in the great film Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Nuclear Bomb. LeMay should have been court-martialed for insubordination. He was reluctant to and even opposed to Eisenhower's wait-and-see policies. When LeMay was asked in 1962 what he would do in Vietnam he replied "I'd bomb them back to the stone age."

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) established the firm principle of civilian control of nuclear weapons, but the policy didn't quite work out the way Congress intended, at least not while General LeMay was still around. His SAC was authorized to plan for preemption -- for beating the Soviet forces to the punch if intelligence indicated they were beginning a first strike against the United States. The CIA was entrusted with the virtually impossible task of determining when the Soviet Union began assembling its nuclear weapons, and it estimated a month's lead time would be enough. LeMay had other plans. He believed that with simultaneous attacks from three sides; the SAC could deliver some 800 nuclear weapons and destroy Russia before any of their aircraft could even get off the ground. In 1954, neither side had intercontinental ballistic missiles, so air power was the weapon of choice. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes published in 1995 is recommended reading for those who would have been terrified by what LeMay wanted to do, had they known of this critical doomsday debate behind closed doors.

Not everything was secret enough to debate behind closed doors. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance was lifted by the Atomic Energy Commission headed by Eisenhower's appointee as its chairman, Lewis Strauss in 1953. There was a hearing that filled some 800 pages of hearing transcript. The prosecution had evidence from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI that Oppenheimer's attorney was not allowed to see. There were other irregularities, but the lifting of Oppenhermer's security was lifted, and Edward Teller's testimony against his colleague was possibly the key. The entire sorry episode split the scientific community. He had opposed development of the nuclear bomb, and that was enough for Lewis Strauss.

In the same year, the House was getting into high gear for the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearing. Television was really still in its infancy, but Edward R. Murrow of radio fame was a war correspondent in London for CBS. In the early 1950s, CBS offered Murrow and his colleage Fred Friendly a new television program, "See It Now." They did some fine television reporting from Washington or Korea or wherever the news was, and "See It Now" became one of the early news shows backed by the expanding reach of CBS television. During the Army-McCarthy hearings, Murrow put his career on the line to speak out against what is now referred to as McCarthyism. CBS itself had retreated from the political front in some respects. In 1950, it had required its employees to sign loyalty oaths and blacklisted some performing artists as security risks because of their political views. Murrow was uncompromising on "See It Now:"

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in to our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, or from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and defend causes which were for the moment unpopular...We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and have given considerable comfort to enemies, and whose fault is that? Not really his, he didn't create the situation of fear, he merely exploited it and rather successfully. Cassius was right. 'The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in your stars.'

According to Jeff Kisseloff's book, The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961, CBS was so fearful of political fallout from this program, it refused to advertise it. The program was cancelled by CBS. However in 1954 the country had other problems. A year earlier, the Supreme Court held that the Montgomery, Alabama rules requiring segregation in buses were unconstitutional. Rosa Parks, the first black women to refuse to move to the back of the bus was vindicated, and the Montgomery bus boycott was settled with the participation of a young black minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Desegregation of restaurants and other public facilities required a great deal of courage from otherwise obscure people over a period of years.

On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court held in a unanimous opinion that separate but equal public school facilities in the United States were inherently unequal. Brown v. Topeka, Kansas Board of Education (I) 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Giving interested school officials a year to develop an approach, the Supreme Court issued its order to the states to "proceed with all deliberate speed" to desegregate the nation's public schools. Brown v. Board of Education (II) 349 U.S. 294 (1955). These cases didn't reach the Court by levitation; it took real courage in the white South to make a simple request, a bus to transport black children to school in Summerton, South Carolina. Even so, a black college-educated minister, J. A. DeLaine, ran the risk of losing his job as a school teacher during the week if he continued trying to get a bus. Finally, he filed a class action in the U.S. District Court in Columbia, South Carolina. This challenge to the all-white public schools was heard by a three-judge panel with Judges Parker and Dobie as Circuit judges and Judge Timmerman. Plaintiffs were denied an injunction abolishing segregation. Briggs v. Elliott, 103 F. Supp. 920 (ED S.Carolina 1952) and took a direct appeal to the Supreme Court where it was reversed and remanded to the District Court for further action consistent with Brown v. Board of Education (I). Briggs v. Elliott, 349 U.S. 295 (1955).

Davis v. County School Board Prince Edward County, Virginia decided in 1951 was still another of those cases leading to Brown v. Board of Education. Black students wanted facilities equal to those for white students. After a trial before Dobie, and two Virginia District Court Judges, the court held segregation in Virginia schools rested on the mores and traditions of the South. The Attorney General of Virginia argued that segregation was "morally and legally defensible," This decision was reversed and sent back to the District Court for further proceedings. Brown v. Board of Education had another fortuitous feature. The Supreme Court expressly overruled Plessy v. Ferguson decided in 1896.

By 1956, television had reached out to cover more news than ever. Consequently, the entire nation could see the explosion of anger in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus had scarcely mentioned the race issue during the election campaign in which he was reelected. The court-ordered desegregation plan began with high schools. Initially, only nine black students were selected for admission to high school. Labor Day, 1957 was the day the rednecks of Little Rock went ballistic in their anger at desegregation, and they took it out on nine teen-agers who only cared about school. John Chancellor, a relatively junior NBC reporter was in Little Rock and got it all on film. President Eisenhower had failed to provide any sort of moral leadership, but there was national television doing it for him. A white mob encouraged by a state governor was tormenting nine black children who only wanted to go to school. Eisenhower was finally driven to send the 101st Airborne to stabilize a situation where rioting had become more widespread. But every evening of this crisis saw Chancellor on television and the Little Rock rednecks saw themselves and they knew the images projected nationally were making them look like what they were, an angry, hate-filled mob on the brink of anarchy in Little Rock. Eisenhower had no real choice; he had to send troops or be found guilty of allowing terrorism in the court of public opinion. Harry Ashmore, then the editor of the Arkansas Gazette was with Chancellor watching the story unfold when both got the news that Russia had launched Sputnick orbiting overhead. The Russians were the first in space, and no one knew then what this scientific success might mean for the future.

Reaction was not long in surfacing. The nation's schools had to be improved with special emphasis on components of the science and math curriculum. In 1955, Harper & Row, now HarperCollins, published a book by Rudolf Flesch entitled Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do About It. Suddenly, it began to sell nationally. It's still a strong backlist book. In the meantime, Eisenhower designated the Navy to build a rocket for use in launching a satellite. Werner von Braun had already designed the Redstone and objected strenuously to this diversion of funds and talent from his work in Huntsville, Alabama. Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense -- "What's good for General Motors," he testified at his confirmation hearing," was good for the country" -- wanted nice tidy defense systems he could understand. And Eisenhower had the answer to Sputnik, photo reconnaissance, the U-2, a spy aircraft that was to get Eisenhower in trouble in 1960. Then in 1959, Bernard Brodie of the Rand Corporation wrote a book, Strategy in the Missile Age, published by the Princeton University Press. Brodie talked about the future and missiles under development, like the Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman missiles. The latter were finally installed in silos around the country. But Brodie was really talking about airpower -- the B-52 -- as a delivery system for nuclear weapons. In the meantime, Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, invented the policy of massive retaliation, a policy he later thought might have gone too far. In 1978, Herman Kahn wrote On Thermonuclear War published by Greenwood Press. Civilians who read this book were horrified by the possibilities so dispassionately discussed by Kahn. One thermonuclear blast with New York City at ground zero would kill over three million people. Followed as it was by the end of the Vietnam War, Kahn may have added a new anti-war dimension to the American culture. In any case, Eisenhower was caught flatfooted by Sputnik and had no real understanding of its potential.

The Little Rock, Arkansas school desegregation case surfaced once more in 1958, almost a year after President Eisenhower had ordered the 101st Airborne withdrawn. John Chancellor, it turned out, had had an informant within the high school, an unnamed student. On the basis of what he learned and told David Halberstam, this fine writer added a new dimension of hate and fear to the Little Rock integration case in his book, The Fifties published by Fawcett Columbine in 1993:

After a few weeks, with the situation seemingly under control, the government pulled out the 101st and put the federalized Arkansas National Guard in charge. With that, the situation began to deteriorate. The mob was no longer a problem, but inside the school there was a systematic and extremely well-organized assault on the nine children by high-school-age segregationists. They not only harrassed the black children but, more effectively, any white child who was courteous or friendly to them. It was a calculated campaign (organized, school officials suspected, right out of the governor's mansion). The school bullies behaving like youthful Klansmen, knew they had behind them the full power of the state ggovernment and the increasingly defiant Arkansas population. That meant the job of protecting the nine fell on a handful of teachers and administrators in the school. The nine students were in for a very hard and ugly year. There was a relentless assault on them -- kicking, tripping, hitting them from behind, harrassing them with verbal epithets as they walked down the hall, pouring hot soup on them in the cafeteria. Their lockers were broken into regularly and their books stolen. The school administrators knew exactly who the ringleaders were but found them boastfully proud.

No one should believe for one second that this ugly scene was recreated out of information from a student informant. The record in Cooper v. Aaron, 163 F. Supp. 13 (CD Ark. 1958) shows beyond any doubt that Halberstam's description was accurate. There, the School Board applied for suspension of the integration, alleging the school was out of control. The District Court agreed and ordered a suspension for 2 1/2 years. The Court of Appeals reversed, at 257 F.2nd 33, and the Supreme Court affirmed. Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958). And there is still another aspect of this defiance of law by Governor Faubus. Faubus v. United States, 254 F.2nd 797 (8th Cir. 1957). In that case, the United States asked for and obtained an order enjoining Faubus and the National Guard from preventing the nine children from entering the school. At no time did Eisenhower condemn the Arkansas obstruction of justice and contempt for the law shown by so many people in Arkansas.

In 1960, Eisenhower was constitutionally barred from a third term. However, he spent a great deal of time and effort with staff and close friends suggesting candidates other than Nixon. One reporter asked Eisenhower what major idea Nixon had contributed to his administration. Eisenhower's response was, "Give me a week and I'll think of one." In fact, Eisenhower and Nixon did not like each other at all, at least not until Julie Nixon married Eisenhower's son. The president had cautioned Nixon about denouncing communism, corruption, controls, and Korea at a time Eisenhower was trying to get the Democrats in Congress to vote for his programs.

In May, 1960 Gary Powers was shot down over Russia while flying the U-2 photo reconnaissance plane. Eisenhower was publicly embarrassed by this incident. Khruschev retaliated by cancelling a meeting in Moscow to discuss pressing problems involving a reduction in nuclear weapons. Then, in the fall, Nixon and John F. Kennedy held the nationally televised debates, the first on foreign policy and the second debate on domestic policy. To observers, Nixon "lost" the first debate because of fatigue and his "five o'clock shadow" picked up by the television cameras. In both debates, Nixon had to defend the Eisenhower record, and it was difficult even for a skilled debater to labor under this handicap. In any case, the election in November was close. Kennedy got 49.7 percent of the popular vote and 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 49.4 percent of the popular vote and 219 electoral votes. In 1962, Nixon tried to make a return to public life by running for Governor of California. He lost this race and made perhaps one of the most famous exit lines in political history at a press conference when he was tired and hung over: "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."





All contents © 1996 William M. Brinton
All photographs © Archive Photos, New York
All film © Archive Film, New York