Fifty years ago, nine black students, escorted by federal troops under the orders of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. The Little Rock Nine have become icons of the modern civil rights movement; President Eisenhower has not. How is it that, at the same time we honor and celebrate the dignity and heroism of the Little Rock Nine, we overlook or - even worse - forget Eisenhower's role in this historic event? In "A Matter of Justice" David A. Nichols aims to redress this state of affairs, indicating through the double entendre of his title not only the timeliness of the struggle for civil rights during this pivotal decade, but also the need for a more searching and just appraisal of Eisenhower's legacy.
An inside look at Eisenhower's civil rights record
Nichols is determined to chip away at the enduring myth of Eisenhower's "moral failing and . . . lack of vision" about civil rights, as one writer put it. He was much more complex, Nichols argues, than his chorus of critics is prepared to acknowledge.. Moreover, the author charges, "many documents revealing Eisenhower's leadership have either been unavailable or neglected" - a sweeping claim that seems to dismiss the considerable research and ink devoted to Eisenhower's record on civil rights, particularly over the past two decades. Presidential rhetoric is important, Nichols acknowledges, but a single-minded focus on Eisenhower's words distorts his legacy. Aided in part by thousands of pages of documents released from the papers of Eisenhower's chief White House aide on civil rights, Maxwell Rabb, Nichols hopes to set the record right.
Although Eisenhower was a "nineteenth-century man, raised in an era of blatant white supremacy in American life," Nichols maintains that he brought to his presidency in 1953 a deep commitment to egalitarian values, nurtured by his heartland upbringing, and an abiding belief in the law of the land, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. It was Eisenhower who implemented Truman's Executive Order 9981, requiring equal opportunity for African-Americans in the US military, thereby achieving "in less than two years what President Truman had failed to accomplish in seven" - even though Truman is routinely credited for this achievement in American history textbooks. Most important, Nichols insists, to understand Eisenhower's legacy, you must pay close attention to the staffing appointments that made his achievements in civil rights possible, including the appointment of five justices to the Supreme Court, none of them Southerners, none of them segregationists - an enviable record by contemporary standards.