Eisenhower (30 page)

What all the justices also knew, however, was that Warren’s view would decide the matter. With Vinson gone, even if Jackson and Frankfurter continued to harbor reservations about the propriety of striking segregation by judicial fiat, only four justices remained in that column. So, as Warren began to speak that morning, he chose his words and tone carefully. The men around him were smart, successful jurists, but no one at the table was Warren’s equal as a politician. He understood that his vote would decide the matter, but he was after something more than victory. He wanted a decisive ruling that would send a unifying national message.

The time had come, Warren said, to decide this matter. And in his view there was only one way the Court could continue to sanction separate-but-equal schools: it would have to rely on the “basic premise that the Negro race is inferior.” That was a startling assertion, and it forced Jackson and especially Frankfurter into an awkward bind. Both had reservations about overturning decades of precedent in order to reach the result that Warren was proposing, but Frankfurter in particular had a long record of enlightened views on race (among other things, he had represented civil rights organizations and had hired the Supreme Court’s first black law clerk). To be allied with such naked racism would deeply offend him, and Jackson too, even if it were in defense of a judicial principle.

And yet as Warren staked a hard position on the substance of the ruling, he also offered a gentle approach to presenting and implementing it. He did not blame the South for its construction of separate institutions—that system had, after all, been sanctioned by the Court itself. He did not propose to overturn all segregation in a single opinion, but rather offered to confine the Court’s attention to public schools. And he did not suggest a sweeping or immediate order. He was open to remedies that would give the South time to adjust. Finally, he made a crucial tactical decision: contrary to custom, Warren asked that the justices not record their tentative votes that day. Doing so, he feared, would lock them into positions rather than allow them to consider the issue openly.

Then it was time for the other justices to offer their views. Black was absent, but all the justices knew he favored desegregation. Stanley Reed, who had declined to attend a Court Christmas party a few years earlier if blacks were invited, offered a thin defense of segregation as preserving differences, not establishing superiority or inferiority; he was inclined to uphold
Plessy
and segregated schools. Frankfurter then delivered ambiguous observations about the applicability of
Plessy
and the language of the Fourteenth Amendment. Douglas said he would strike down school segregation. Jackson followed Frankfurter’s ambivalent lead, seeming to say that the Court should eliminate segregation and simply admit that it was doing so despite questionable legal authority. Burton fell in with Douglas, Clark worried about how any desegregation order would be received in places such as his native Texas. Minton joined Burton and Douglas. The tally then, on December 12, 1953, stood as follows: Five justices—Warren, Black, Douglas, Burton, and Minton—solidly favored the end to public school segregation. Two, Frankfurter and Jackson, wanted to agree but were struggling with the law. Two more, Reed and Clark, were inclined to uphold segregation but were painfully aware that they were in the minority.

For the next three months, Warren methodically worked his colleagues. He lunched with wavering justices, drew out their concerns, paired them in congenial combinations. On January 15, he treated his colleagues to a duck and pheasant lunch (eight justices chose duck; Frankfurter preferred pheasant). In those conversations, Warren subtly shifted the discussion from whether to strike down segregation to how to do it. One at a time, the justices fell in line behind their new chief as he patiently guided them away from the tangle of the Vinson Court.

The Court’s work occurs in splendid remove from daily politics, and Warren’s leadership was invisible to the public in those months. That was fortunate since Warren had good reason for moving cautiously: as a recess appointment to the Court, he still had not received his Senate confirmation and would not until after first enduring a nasty committee investigation overseen by the irascible William Langer. Finally, on February 24, the committee voted out Warren’s confirmation on a 12–3 vote, with Langer oddly voting in favor of Warren. Eisenhower lobbied hard for Warren’s confirmation—notwithstanding his brother Edgar’s disdain for the chief justice. Ike tracked the
Brown
deliberations, meanwhile, from a discreet distance, receiving Brownell’s tip early in the year that a decision was likely in the spring.

The president did not cut off all contact with Warren. Indeed, their most significant encounter, that February, left a permanent scar on their relationship. Eisenhower established in his first year as president a tradition of hosting stag dinners at the White House—black-tie affairs at which a dozen or two leading men of politics, business, and culture gathered at the presidential mansion to discuss significant world matters. On February 8, 1954, the guest list was typically illustrious: Erwin Griswold, dean of Harvard Law School, and Franklin Murphy, chancellor of the University of Kansas, were among the prominent academics; the executives Ernest Breech of Ford Motor Company and M. M. Anderson of Alcoa represented big business, as did Lucius Clay and Alton Jones, two longtime friends of Ike’s who now headed corporations; Attorney General Herb Brownell and Undersecretary of State Bedell Smith represented the administration. But two of the guests were especially notable for their presence there together. One was Warren, still the acting chief justice; the other was John W. Davis, one of the nation’s most prominent lawyers, who was representing the state of South Carolina in
Brown v. Board of Education
.

Warren, a stern and somewhat prickly man, immediately took offense at Davis’s presence. The two were seated within speaking distance, adding to Warren’s unease. Then, as the men rose from the table and ambled into an adjoining room for after-dinner drinks, Eisenhower took Warren by the arm and nodded at the Southerners. “These are not bad people,” Eisenhower said. “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”

Warren was appalled. He made sure to record Eisenhower’s words in his own memoirs, revealing the exchange to make the point that Ike instinctively sympathized with those committed to segregation rather than with those suffering by its conditions (it hardly needs saying that the stag dinner at which this offense occurred was an all-white gathering). Ike’s defenders have tried to explain away his damaging remark. David Nichols, in his elegantly argued
A Matter of Justice
, suggests that it may not have occurred at all, noting that Warren “alleges” the remark in his memoirs and “is the only source for the story. There are no corroborating witnesses.” Nichols argues that Warren related the story out of resentment toward “the war hero who had destroyed his chance to be president.” But, as Nichols acknowledges, others recalled Eisenhower making similar comments, and Herb Brownell, when he learned of the incident, attempted to reconstruct the evening and concluded that Eisenhower spoke clumsily and was angry with Warren for betraying the confidentiality that was supposed to govern the dinners—not that Warren made up the exchange.

Warren returned to his business, suspecting that he would not have the vigorous support of the White House should the Court strike down school segregation. Nevertheless, on the May afternoon that he announced the Court’s opinion, he spoke evenly and deliberately, reading as reporters, scrambling into the chambers, slipped into their seats and flipped open notepads. For the first few minutes, Warren’s recitation was factual, reviewing the circumstances of the case and the issues the Court had considered. Then he reached the decision’s pivotal passage, and he departed briefly and momentously from the text. “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” the decision read. But Warren interposed a word: “We
unanimously
conclude.” Justice Reed, the Court’s last holdout in
Brown
, wiped a tear from his cheek. Thurgood Marshall, lawyer for the plaintiffs, stood in amazement. Warren himself sensed the power of the moment: “When the word ‘unanimously’ was spoken, a wave of emotion swept the room, no words or intentional movement, yet a distinct emotional manifestation that defies description.”

Troubled by the ruling’s demands and the threat of rebellion from the South—and ever in search of a middle way—Eisenhower elected to regard
Brown
as an order from the Court rather than as a moral imperative to be joined. At a press conference two days after the Court’s historic announcement, Ike conspicuously declined to embrace the rulings (
Brown
was accompanied by
Bolling v. Sharpe
, which desegregated schools in the District of Columbia, outside the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment, since that amendment applies only to the states). Eisenhower formally received the Court’s decisions with studied neutrality. “The Supreme Court has spoken,” he said at a press conference two days after the ruling was handed down. “And I am sworn to uphold their—the constitutional processes in this country, and I am trying. I will obey.” Eisenhower’s discomfort with
Brown
would become more, not less, severe, as southern resistance stiffened and he felt torn between the aspirations of American blacks, few of whom he knew, and the uneasiness of southern whites, many of whom were his closest friends. Seeking his “middle way,” Eisenhower routinely deplored “foolish extremists on both sides of the question,” suggesting moral equivalence between those who sought equality and those who denied it.

In 1955, Eisenhower was gratified when the Court issued its desegregation order (so-called
Brown II
allowed states to integrate schools with “all deliberate speed,” a formula that permitted much deliberation and demanded very little speed). That announcement was well received in the South, and Brownell remarked to Eisenhower that it “followed the President’s formula almost exactly.” Nevertheless, school integration dominated the civil rights agenda through Eisenhower’s tenure and provided recurring sources of conflict throughout the South. The issue brought out the worst in Eisenhower, making him churlish and defensive. By 1956, his patience was so exhausted on the question that he threatened to boycott his own nominating convention in San Francisco if the GOP leadership insisted on inserting platform language stating that “the Eisenhower Administration” supported the Court’s ruling in
Brown
.

Civil rights confounded and annoyed Eisenhower as a domestic obligation, but it spoke clearly to him as Cold War advantage. Barely had
Brown
been announced than the Voice of America was broadcasting the news around the world. As Eisenhower recognized,
Brown
supplied a powerful counterweight to a mainstay of Soviet propaganda—that democratic capitalism, as practiced by the United States, upheld racist oppression. American apartheid validated that theory, and the Soviet Union exploited it throughout the Third World as it trumpeted the moral superiority of Communism.
Brown
undermined that argument, and the Voice of America made sure the world knew it. International reaction was overwhelmingly positive, especially in Africa (a notable exception being South Africa) and other areas of the Third World. In São Paulo, Brazil, the local municipal council passed a resolution expressing “satisfaction” with the ruling, and in Dakar, West Africa, a local paper proclaimed, “At last! Whites and Blacks in the United States on the same school benches.” The stain of American racism was lightened by
Brown
, and America consequently gained strength in the long battle for international appreciation vis-à-vis the Soviets.

Brown
capped a monumental spring, but as Eisenhower’s unwillingness to associate himself with the decision suggests, it contributed to a trying period for the Republican Party, which was already riven by McCarthy. The controversy over
Brown
now threatened to erode the party’s attempts to gain voters in the South, where Eisenhower believed there was room for political growth. Instead, many Southerners associated the Warren Court with the GOP, and the most ardent anti-Communists regarded Eisenhower with renewed suspicion. Swede Hazlett wrote from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to convey his concern and express precisely the fears that Eisenhower himself harbored regarding
Brown
. “I’m afraid we’ll have plenty of trouble,” Hazlett wrote, “and some bloodshed, if the issue is forced too fast.”

International developments offered no respite. China resumed its episodic aggression toward Quemoy and Matsu during September, and the Joint Chiefs itched for a fight. On September 6, they approved a proposal to allow Chiang to bomb bases inside China and, if that provoked a Chinese attack on Quemoy, to wage all-out war. Six days later, the Joint Chiefs presented their idea to the NSC, meeting in the Williamsburg Room of the Officers’ Club at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, where Ike was relaxing with the Gang.

After a brief presentation of the current situation and a display of maps of the region by the CIA’s Allen Dulles, Admiral Arthur Radford opened the discussion that afternoon, urging support for the more aggressive policy. Bedell Smith objected. John Foster Dulles equivocated but warned that Taiwanese withdrawal from the islands would have implications for Korea, Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines. On the other hand, use of nuclear weapons to defend those same islands would invite the condemnation of the world. But it was Eisenhower himself who spotted the full implications of Radford’s suggestion. The council, he said, needed to be clear about one thing: it was contemplating not a limited war but an all-out attack on China, a conflict in which there would be none of the restraint practiced in Korea. Moreover, he added, the war that Radford proposed, one to defend islands of remote consequence, would grow quickly into one of unimaginable violence. “If we are to have general war,” Eisenhower said, it would not be against just China. The United States would “want to go to the head of the snake” and strike the Soviet Union itself.