E-mail a friendDavid Nichols
airdate September 25, 2007
A former academic dean at Kansas' Southwestern College, David Nichols is an authority on the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. His new book, A Matter of Justice—the release of which coincides with the 'Little Rock 9' 50th anniversary—is a new interpretation of the Eisenhower administration's record in civil rights. Nichols is also the author of Lincoln and the Indians, which remains the authority on Indian policy during the Civil War. He has a Ph.D. in history and retired from academia in '03.
David Nichols
Tavis: I hope you'll join us in prime time this Thursday night right here on PBS for our Republican "All-American Presidential Forum," live from Morgan State University in Baltimore. Our forum comes on the heels of events today in Little Rock, Arkansas, honoring the nine students who integrated Central High School 50 years ago.
It is unfortunate, I think, on this day in which we honor the lasting legacy of a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, that some of the leading Republican candidates 50 years later have chosen not to reach out to African American voters Thursday night. Perhaps they could take a cue from the new book about Eisenhower's civil rights record by David Nichols.
The book is called "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution." David Nichols joins us tonight from Topeka, Kansas. Professor Nichols, nice to have you on the program.
David Nichols: It's an honor to be with you.
Tavis: Let me start by asking whether or not were Dwight Eisenhower running for president and the agenda had to do with issues of importance to Black and Brown voters, as a Republican, would he have agreed to appear on the stage this Thursday night?
Nichols: Oh, I think he would have, but you know, those kind of iffy questions about what he'd do now is hard to answer. But I think he would have.
Tavis: But he certainly, as I read your text, would not have had as a candidate any qualms about showing up at a forum with people of color to stress his record, his views, his beliefs about issues that matter to them, since clearly the point of the book is that he had something to stand firm on.
Nichols: Yes, I think he would have done that, and I personally regret that those candidates aren't showing up for you so far.
Tavis: I appreciate that. (Laughs) Let me switch now directly to the book. Who knew that Dwight Eisenhower had a civil rights record, beyond, of course, sending in the troops to protect these Little Rock Nine on this day 50 years ago?
Nichols: Well, the historians have neglected it, and for the most part his record has been neglected for 50 years, and that's a complicated story about why that happened. Mostly it's because the research wasn't done, but the research wasn't done partly because of some political bias against him, and also the sixties were so dramatic.
And I'm a child of the sixties, and the sixties were so dramatic. We tended to look back at the fifties as kind of a sleepy time. And then a final reason is because of the kind of guy that Eisenhower was. He was a man of deeds, not a man of words. He hadn't won the war in Europe by making speeches. And as you know so well, sir, we live in a sound byte culture, and Ike was not a good sound byte man.
Tavis: Yeah. I want to go back to two things you said already, Professor Nichols. One, the political bias against Dwight Eisenhower, where his record on civil rights is concerned - we'll get to that in a second - but tell me more about this political bias that you think existed against Eisenhower on these issues.
Nichols: Well, it's - I don't want this to sound too political, because I'm really not political; I'm a scholar. But most of the histories were written by people who were inclined in a liberal-Democratic direction, and therefore, appropriately treasured Truman and JFK and Lyndon Johnson.
And so in a lot of cases, the professors, the people who wrote the history books, just didn't even encourage their graduate students to go do this research. Somebody could have had this book many years ago, but the researches involved in looking at documents, not just public statements, that's the problem with Eisenhower, because people were, I think legitimately, disappointed in how passionate or how lacking in passion his public statements were.
But he did important things. For example, he desegregated the District of Columbia - that hadn't been done by his predecessor. He finished desegregating the armed forces when most of the textbooks give Harry Truman credit for that, but Truman issued the executive order and didn't enforce it very well.
Eisenhower engineered the passage of the first civil rights bill in 82 years. He above all appointed important judges. He appointed five men to the Supreme Court, all of whom were pro-civil rights, pro-Brown appointees.
Tavis: Is it true, though, all that said, that Eisenhower wasn't altogether jumping up and down about having to send in those troops to protect the Little Rock Nine?
Nichols: Yeah, he didn't want to send troops, but he and his attorney general, Herbert Brownell, had planned ever since the Brown decision, and my book shows some of this, they engaged in contingency planning for the possibility of needing to use troops to deal with unrest due to school desegregation. See, in those days, the government had no authority to do anything in the states.
We're used to being able to withhold funds due to discrimination and all that kind of thing; none of that kind of authority existed at that time. Strangely enough, the one authority they were sure they had out of precedent, going clear back to George Washington, was to use troops to take care of violent unrest. And so they made those kind of contingency plans, so it wasn't a last-minute thing.
It is kind of a myth that Eisenhower was so indecisive about this. In fact, on September 3rd, when Faubus deployed the National Guard at Central High School in Little Rock, the following day Eisenhower's attorney general, Herbert Brownell, issued a public warning to Governor Faubus that the president might use troops to enforce the federal court order for desegregation.
Tavis: Governor Faubus, of course, was the governor of the state of Arkansas at that time - Orval Faubus.
Nichols: Right, yes.
Tavis: Since you mentioned the Brown v. Board decision, of course those who know their history and those who are learning more about history today, because of the courage and conviction and commitment of those Little Rock Nine know that this was the first school, really; the first real tests of integrating school following the order of Brown v. Board to integrate education, integrate schools across America.
This is really the first test of that ruling by the court. I raise that, professor, because we know those famous words connected to the Brown case; those famous words "with all deliberate speed;" "with all deliberate speed." I raise that because there are many who have studied the record of Eisenhower, perhaps not to your satisfaction, but have come to believe that at best, on these kinds of issues, Eisenhower was a gradualist.
That he may deserve some credit for some things he did, but that he wasn't iconic in that regard, that he was gradualist.
Nichols: That's undeniable, that he was gradualist, but almost everyone was. Even a number of the NAACP leaders were gradualists in the sense that they knew things couldn't be changed immediately. But having said that, in the Brown decision, Eisenhower actually edited - this is unusual - he actually edited the brief that the government presented for Brown II - that's the one you're talking about, the all deliberate speed -
Tavis: Absolutely.
Nichols: - which Thurgood Marshall appropriately characterized as meaning S-L-O-W - slow. (Laughter) And Eisenhower and Brownell actually didn't like the Brown II decision - this is the 1955 one that talks about all deliberate speed - and they proposed, and Eisenhower signed off on this, that every school district be required to submit a desegregation plan within 90 days, and if they did not do so to the satisfaction of the appropriate federal court, they would have to go ahead and desegregate immediately.
And the Supreme Court did not like that, and you'll find in my book an account of how the court was really upset about that proposal, because Earl Warren and the court didn't want to have all these cases coming back to them. They wanted to do it from a distance, and delegate it all to the local federal courts so the poor NAACP people had to do it school by school and district by district, because the court didn't allow any kind of trigger mechanism like the Eisenhower 90-day plan.
Tavis: I'm not certain there is any value in comparing presidents, but I am curious about it. That said, how would you rank Eisenhower's record on civil rights with JFK, LBJ? Because to your earlier point in this conversation, when we think of grand civil rights legislation, for some reason, we think of JFK, LBJ. Where would you put Ike at on that list?
Nichols: Well, we think of them legitimately because the acts of 1964 and '65 are monumental. There's no question of how important they are. And so I guess the distinction I would make is in the 1950s - not the 1960s - in the 1950s, Eisenhower was more progressive than Kennedy or Johnson or Truman in civil rights.
Now, when we get to the sixties, they are different about it. But I would point out that Eisenhower supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in fact put strong public pressure on Barry Goldwater to support that act and repudiate his vote against it after he was president. And he supported it and he urged Republicans to support it, so it's hard to make that comparison, Tavis, exactly, because they're in different eras.
The fifties were not like the sixties, and nobody - people do criticize Eisenhower for not speaking out more forcefully, but he was a military man. He hadn't won the war in Europe by making speeches; it was not his temperament to do that. but neither in the fifties did JFK or LBJ speak out on these matters, and when it came to sending the troops into Little Rock, the Democrats were highly critical of him for doing that.
Tavis: I don't think Mr. Romney, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. McCain, Mr. Thompson, whether they show up Thursday night or not, I don't think they need my talking points or my suggestion for talking points, but I am curious as to why you think that Republicans who often, when they want to make the case to Black and Brown that they believe in reaching across the aisle to have some conversation, so to speak, when they want to make the case that they're open and that they want our attention, they always say they are the party of Lincoln.
Maybe now with this book do you think that they won't just be saying they're the party of Lincoln but also the party of Eisenhower?
Nichols: I would hope so, because he's an interesting model to look at. I do not make him into a saint. He did not understand, in his gut, what it felt like to be Black and American; he didn't understand how his lack of rhetoric failed to inspire people. But he did - his judicial appointments are so important; I think of Frank Johnson in Alabama who made the decision on the Montgomery bus boycott and made the decision in 1965 to force Governor Wallace to allow the march to Selma, and Frank Johnson, an Eisenhower appointee, spent 44 years on the federal bench and rendered such great service.
And Eisenhower just would not appoint segregationists to those positions. He refused to do so, whereas when Kennedy came into office - this is back to your comparison - Kennedy came into office in '61 and '62 and he began appointing segregationists again. Now, Kennedy did change directions in 1963, and he deserves credit for that. But up to that point, Eisenhower was really ahead of them in many regards, and above all with his judicial appointments.
Tavis: Finally, Professor Nichols, since you raised the Montgomery bus boycott, but for that boycott we would never have known of a man named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, the flip side is also true; but for Dr. King leading it, the Montgomery bus boycott might never have been as successful as it was, really kicking off, in a real way, the civil rights movement as we know it.
Did I read somewhere correctly that you have a daughter that you named after Dr. King's first child?
Nichols: That's right, yes - Yolanda King. She was named for Yolanda King.
Tavis: Wow.
Nichols: And that's because I was deeply involved - I don't want to pretend involvement that was intimate, but I marched with Dr. King in Chicago in 1966 as a young graduate student, and so he's kind of the hero of my life, to be honest with you, and he did, as a very young man, 28 years old, communicate with Eisenhower and eventually met with him with other civil rights leaders in 1958 in the White House.
Tavis: When you close on a love note, a love supreme note like Dr. King, I can't argue with you on that. I have said many times I think he's the greatest American we've ever produced, and I'm glad that you feel at least similarly about his contribution to America. The new book by Professor David A. Nichols is "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution." Professor, thanks for your work, nice to have you on the program for this conversation.
Nichols: It's been a pleasure, thank you.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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