American Experience

Historian Fred Greenstein on Civil Rights

Requires the RealAudio Player. Download the player from Real.com.

What I would say about Eisenhower and civil rights really is at two levels. One is that he's a conservative who believes in evolutionary change and not revolutionary change. So his impulse to begin with wasn't to state a moral position about civil rights. Secondly, when he does have to state such a position, his impulse is to be more an exhorter rather than someone who engages in substantive arguments. He was able to handle that very impressively at the actual point of Little Rock when he had understood the symbolism of the Presidency enough to go from Newport to the White House to say that he was speaking from the house of Lincoln. But that was really late. He'd allowed the situation to go downhill. With civil rights I think the problem is less that his sort of general inspirational style wasn't suited than that he was after all a "go slow" conservative on domestic social change. He didn't have the theme to advance. He wasn't really thinking about what many of us I think would now say, after the fact, which is that genuine substantive leadership was needed.

Return to Interviews >>