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Eisenhower & Race · Saberian History Lectures

0:00
So you have the beginning of a type of integration into American society by way of music, by way of art,
0:10
but there are still parts of the United States where people of color and the white populations live in very separate spheres.
0:19
This becomes more stridently obvious in the American South.
0:23
So, but what's interesting is when I'm talking about Eisenhower and race, there are a couple of things I maybe want to go back to.
0:44
First of all is, and I don't want to talk about Eisenhower per se, I'm going to get to that one when I get to the politics of it,
0:55
but when you look at desegregation in American life, in the 20th century, okay,
1:02
and I ask you to pay close attention because this will be one of your broad essays on the final exam.
1:07
I'm talking race in the United States from 1876 until 2008, which you can write a broad essay about if you think about it.
1:18
But if I look at it, when I look at desegregation and how it is achieved, how the civil rights movement,
1:27
as we call it as a single and unified movement, because by the way, would we call it a single and unified movement in 1885?
1:36
Why would I call it not a single and unified movement in 1885?
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1885 into 1890 into the early 1900s, there is a debate between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.
1:53
But if I look at desegregation as a long and protracted struggle, I see three elements of it originating with W.E.B. Du Bois' organization.
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What did W.E.B. Du Bois actually create?
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NAACP.
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NAACP.
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And so if I look at the NAACP and what it is able to achieve as a political action group,
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you achieve the beginning of the equality by three means. Agitation, litigation, and legislation.
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Now I can appreciate that if I'm talking about desegregation with agitation, litigation, and legislation,
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I know that sounds a little bit of an alliteration, but that should make it stick in your head a bit choppier and better.
2:57
Alright, so agitation. What is agitation?
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Say it again?
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Getting angry or getting driven, yes?
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From the Latin ago agre agi actum, it spurs you to act.
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Now, when we talk about the agitation of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s,
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are we talking about what Ferguson and Baltimore looked like in this past couple of years where you're having stones and molotovs being thrown?
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No. It is a very different type of agitation.
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How does the agitation of the 1950s take, what does it look like?
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Sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.
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Now later on, and I need to dig this out, I have this somewhere in a PowerPoint that I did back when I taught American Government at the high school level.
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I had an entire lecture on the freedom of speech and how to make sure that you know the difference,
4:11
whether you're in a peaceful protest or if you're about to be in a riot.
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Fire is usually a dead giveaway that this is not going to end well.
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Unless it's candles.
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Candles, usually peaceful.
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Torches, not so much.
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Also masks.
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Masks are usually not a good sign.
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Also usually the absence of daylight.
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If you look at the marches that you saw in the period of the 1950s and 1960s,
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there were American flags, people in dress suits, and no weapons.
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Litigation.
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What is litigation?
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Legal action.
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Legal action, specifically lawsuits.
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When I look at litigation, there are some cases you need to think about.
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The first was not Brown v. Board of Education, but rather Sweat v. Painter.
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Sweat v. Painter, 1950.
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And then Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
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Now I'm underlining these cases.
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Why am I underlining these cases?
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Because Supreme Court cases, or rather court cases in complete generality
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when you're writing an essay, should be underlined.
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And if you're typing an essay, they should be italicized.
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They're like ship's titles or book names.
5:37
Some of you lost points on the last test on mechanics because you did not underline the court cases.
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Do not make that mistake again.
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Yes?
5:46
You're supposed to underline the names of ships?
5:48
Yes.
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Underline or italicize.
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Good to know.
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Some of you lost points when you didn't underline the Lusitania.
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All right, now you know.
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Again, I do take off from mechanics.
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Not much, but it's worth something.
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I thought the proportions were fair.
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And so far nobody's argued with me about it.
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I don't know if it's because you all find me intimidating or what.
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Okay.
6:16
Legislation.
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Making law.
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The Civil Rights Acts.
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Now, right now I'm just going to talk about the ones under the Eisenhower administration.
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You have in the Eisenhower administration two Civil Rights Acts.
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One was in 1957 and one was in 1960.
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There are more Civil Rights Acts that occur in the 1960s under President Johnson
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that we will get into when we get into the 1960s.
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There's also a Voting Rights Act of 1965, which is again President Johnson,
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that I will get into but not yet.
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And so you would incorporate material from that into a broad essay or into a unit essay,
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especially if I wouldn't be surprised if I had a unit essay about this period in particular on y'all's test,
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which I believe is not next week but the week after.
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Coming up.
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Yes.
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Probably essay briefings will be shot sometime next week.
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And we have an early release day next week, which is annoying.
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So bad.
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Bad for me.
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It's less airtime with y'all.
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But anyway.
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So I think I should like to start with segregation itself.
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You have in the late 1940s, early 1950s, you have a migration of African American peoples once again
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from the rural areas of the American South into the cities of both the South and the North.
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So African American populations that previously made a living as sharecroppers
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are now moving into the cities and working in industries.
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Okay?
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Now, if I'm an industrial worker before many of the Civil Rights Acts and the employment laws of modern times,
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can I pay people of color less than I pay a white person?
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Yes.
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And if I'm a factory owner, being able to pay people less is good for me, yes?
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Yes.
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Now, if I'm a person of color moving to a city after getting away from the dirt poverty of sharecropping,
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even if I'm making less than a white dude in a factory,
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am I still coming out ahead better than the alternative of making a living as a sharecropper?
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Now, who might not like the fact that a person of color is being paid less than they are
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and might be taking their job?
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The white people.
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White people in some of the American cities.
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And so one of the things that you have happening is you have two types of segregation emerging.
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You have de jour segregation in the American South.
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De jour means, okay, where are my French speaking people?
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De jour, en français?
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Of the city?
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Of law.
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By law, like by jury.
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By law, and so you have segregation by law and by custom in the Jim Crow South.
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De facto, as a matter of fact, or by fact, in the cities of the American North.
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Now, what do I mean, okay, so how would you have segregation, as a matter of fact, in the cities of the American North?
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If you pay people of color less, are they going to be able to afford to live in the same places as their white counterparts?
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No.
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So what you wind up happening is you have black communities emerging in cities.
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They're living together not just because they're trying to recreate a community sense,
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although some of them did migrate from the South as communities,
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but also they're being priced into black neighborhoods in Chicago, black neighborhoods in Philadelphia, black neighborhoods in Boston.
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You get the idea.
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But do they have to live in those places?
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As a matter of necessity, but not as a matter of law.
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Does that make sense?
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And are the real estate developers kind of promoting a type of residential segregation anyway?
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Yes, you have the people who got their GI bill money and now they're, you know, buying homes out in the suburbs,
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and then you've got people who didn't get their GI bill money because there was rampant discrimination of soldiers who served in the Second World War
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not getting their GI benefits if they were people of color, not moving out to the suburbs.
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Now, in the American South, now also just before I get to that,
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had the cities of the North been segregated previously not just by race but also by ethnicity?
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Yes.
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If you were Irish, did you want to associate with the Pollocks?
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No.
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No, I mean, you know, it wasn't just racism, it was ethnocentrism.
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Ethnocentrism abounded. And, you know, and anti-Semitism abounded.
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Because people like people like us.
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We like us, we're all we've got. It's those other people we can't stand.
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Now, we kind of see that in the sort of ethnocentrism that peppers American schools today.
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Oh, how many of you know people who've talked crap about one of our neighbor schools to the South?
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You have, and you know, and some, but, and I mean, you've competed against them in sport.
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They're amiable opponents. They're not unlike ourselves.
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How many of you have actually gone to a sporting event and kind of met your evil twin from the other school?
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It is one of the creepiest things in the world, isn't it?
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Actually, the only thing that, the only thing that's even more often than that is as an instructor,
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when you meet the kid who is as you were.
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That's just, it, yeah.
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But anyway, okay, so here you have neighborhoods being segregated in the North.
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So as a matter of fact, you have jobs being segregated.
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Now, in the South, what was segregated?
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Pretty much.
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You have the public segregations, which that would be your schools, your bus state, your bus,
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your buses both on the bus and your trains, train terminals, bathrooms, water fountains.
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We'll just say plumbing.
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So parks and pools.
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Now, kind of interesting,
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what, why would you, and I kind of want to get into this because, and this is not an apology,
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but I kind of want to get you in the head of these people and what they're thinking for a moment.
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And then you have segregation in private life.
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And so this is private-public, let's try this on for size.
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So you're talking lunch counters, diners, or we'll just say restaurants.
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Yeah, we'll just say restaurants.
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Hotels.
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What's different about a restaurant or a hotel versus a school or a bus terminal?
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They are privately owned.
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So this is law.
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The public stuff is law.
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This is custom.
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Now, so in the American South, you had segregation both as a matter of law and custom.
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So let's get to the D, segregation.
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So segregated schools.
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Schools have always been the educational frontier.
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Now, one of the things that I think is kind of interesting,
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and I think we as 21st century humans do not appreciate, is in the United States in the 1950s,
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what was the cultural significance of school?
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Do you have everyone going to college?
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No.
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It is where you get an education, but what else is school?
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Social. Very much social.
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And in the world where you have socialization as especially in the United States,
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especially in the rural and not densely populated country in complete generality,
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what do you have in school as part of your social rituals?
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Oh, shoot, some of you just picked up tickets for one of those social rituals in April.
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Dances, proms, freaking mating rituals.
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No. In the 1950s, what percentage of people married someone they met in high school?
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A large number.
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Whereas nowadays most of you, yes, you might be dating in high school,
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but most of you know you're not getting married until you get out of college.
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In the United States in the 1950s, there were plenty of people who got married,
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who exited high school so that they could get married because a shotgun and a pregnancy were involved.
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But no, you don't suppose that part of the vehement southern defense of segregation in the schools
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had to do with the southern antipathy towards mixed-race relationships?
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Yes?
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What's antipathy?
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Opposition, anti-against, pathos, feeling against.
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Very good.
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Okay. Now, let's get to the meat and potatoes of it, shall we?
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So, kind of interesting, by the way, is first case, Sweat vs Painter.
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1950. Haman Sweat was an African American who wanted to attend law school at the University of Texas.
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By the way, in 1950, did you have to worry about sexual tension in a law class at UT?
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No.
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What's the crux of it? It's UT law.
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So, Haman Sweat was admitted to UT because even back then UT was progressive,
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but they still had a whole legal issue.
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So, how do you educate the one African American student in the law class if you have to teach segregated classes?
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Get him his own class.
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All by himself at night.
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That sucks.
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Now, actually, okay, now, it's kind of funny because some of the histories of the Sweat case talk about
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and these noble professors who taught this guy all by himself at night.
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I was thinking, no, if I'm a law school professor, if it's one kid or a hundred, I get paid the same.
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So, I'm, no, too crass.
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All right, there's the part of me that's like, no, knowing how profs are at universities,
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they got one undergrad class and one grad class in the academic subjects,
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and I don't know how many classes they have to teach in law school,
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but the one class of the one dude at night is a whole lot less work than the one lecture hall with like 200 kids.
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So, you know, I'm not that crass today.
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All right, so, UT law.
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And what the Sweat case posits is that the previous doctrine regarding segregation,
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the previous legal justification was Plessy versus Ferguson.
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Plessy versus Ferguson was separate but equal.
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Said that you could segregate trains provided you made equal accommodation for the other race.
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So, this is where you get the doctrine of separate but equal.
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Now, here's the thing.
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In the case of the dude who's going to law school by himself, is he separate?
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Yes, but is going to law school all by yourself the same as going to law school
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in a class of intelligent human beings where you discuss the matter with great gusto?
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Part of the didactic experience of being in a college class is not only your interlocution with me,
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but also the interlocution with your classmates.
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And believe it or not, your classmates are actually quite intelligent.
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But anyway, this one basically said that the presence of peers changes the education environment.
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Now, here's the thing.
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In grad school, does that work?
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Where it's a small seminar?
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Where it's discussion?
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Does that fit?
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Does that make sense?
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Okay, which also means, by extension, and I don't want to sound like a humanist psychologist,
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but I'm going to do that.
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That means even here, every moment that you spend with these nice people is decidedly different
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than the experience of your friends who are taking regular US history
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and then the experience of your friends who are taking the other history course,
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not just because they don't have me, but because they don't have you.
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Does that make sense?
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Yes.
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Each of you matters.
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Now, here's the thing.
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Four years later, yes, I was meaning to edify you all.
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Four years later, you have the case of Brown versus Board of Education.
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1954.
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What's different about Brown versus Board of Education?
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What type of education is it?
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Public.
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Public, and at what level?
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The Brown case was much younger.
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I want to say she was middle school, but we'll just say it's K-12,
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because in its ramifications, it desegregates schools from kindergarten into high school.
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What's different about K-12?
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It's government funded, but also government controls the curriculum.
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Could you make the argument that if I'm in a K-12 class,
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I'm learning more from the curriculum or more from the books
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than I am from the people next to me in the stack?
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What was interesting is the sweat case, they allude to, sorry,
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in the Brown case, they use the sweat case as precedent,
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but what's different about the Brown case is now the scope.
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I'm not just talking about desegregating in highly prestigious graduate school.
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I'm talking about desegregating everywhere.
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It also speaks to another idea.
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And so you have the Plessy precedent of separate but equal tossed out,
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saying separate is not equal,
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and you have the court ordering desegregation with all deliberate speed.
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Now it's interesting,
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what was the third word in the phrase with all deliberate speed?
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Deliberate. Deliberate has two meanings.
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What does deliberate mean?
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On purpose.
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But what's the other meaning of deliberate?
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What is deliberation?
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To contemplate.
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To contemplate, to read about, to argue about.
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If you're having deliberations in a courtroom, you're arguing about it.
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So is that immediate?
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Who has to then enforce the desegregation prima facie in this case?
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Who had to enforce the desegregation?
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The Board of Education.
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Yes?
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That in the immediate case,
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you have the Board of Education having to desegregate its schools.
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And so who then has to desegregate their school under pain of law?
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Well, UT Law already happened.
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There's a myriad of school districts throughout the United States.
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How many school districts are we talking here?
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Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.
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The Texan state has 1,078 school districts in and of itself.
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I know I applied to 300 of them, but anyway.
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But you're here.
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I am here.
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No, I mean, when I was first looking for my first teaching job coming out of A&M,
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I applied to 300 school districts.
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I didn't even get an interview.
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It was really quite insulting.
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Here I was, had a master's degree in history, wanted to teach social studies,
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and it's because I couldn't throw a catch-worth anything.
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And so I had to live nine years as a math teacher.
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Yes?
24:05
Didn't Texas also segregate against Hispanics?
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Yes.
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Yes.
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We will get to that.
24:13
I kind of want to start with the 1950s case because the legal precedents...
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There's like five cases in the...
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In the StarCard.
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Yeah, in the StarCard, and actually there's still desegregation being litigated.
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Here's the thing that most of you don't appreciate.
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Brown v. Board of Education is 1954.
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You are still having court battles about forced busing when I graduated high school in 1998.
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Y'all don't have a schema for this.
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Why don't you have a schema for this?
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Because here is the only school within 20 miles of anywhere.
24:52
Yes?
24:53
We do not have high multitudes in this particular land.
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It's going to get interesting.
24:58
Now, if you go into San Antonio, how many different school districts do you have?
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A lot.
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Part of that was because people voted themselves out of one school district
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so they wouldn't have to have their kids go to school with those people.
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There is a reason why Alamo Heights is surrounded by San Antonio ISD on four sides.
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There is a reason why Westlake is surrounded by the Austin ISD on three sides.
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Not for cost-effectiveness, but for the preservation of an elite cultural identity.
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And so some of you whom I've had in other classes see the crossover from sociology.
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Yes?
25:41
Okay, so let's get to the bit because I went longer on this bit.
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So court desegregation with all deliberate speed,
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which means there was some deliberation going on.
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And were there some people who thought no?
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So let's get to the bit.
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And then I am going to get to the Montgomery boycott,
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but I want to hit the little rock nine and then I'll get back to the bus boycott.
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So if I'm looking at my model of agitation, litigation, legislation, which one is this?
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Litigation.
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Litigation in this case leads to legislation.
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There is a Civil Rights Act of 1957 that is passed by Congress.
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Where, oh that's not where I want to be, which created a Civil Rights Commission.
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And the task of the Civil Rights Commission was to see that the court orders were being implemented.
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Now here's the thing, let's go back to the electoral politics of this for a moment.
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Whose electoral coalition would be really pissed off at desegregation?
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Southern Democrats.
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Southern whites in the Democratic Party.
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Now, 1957 the Democrats have a majority in Congress,
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but are the majority of Democrats Southern whites.
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Who else is in the Democratic Party?
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Unions, immigrants, and some progressives.
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Some of those progressives might have been reformed socialists.
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Now who is in the Republican Party?
27:36
Industrialists.
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Industrialists, well industrial capitalists, yes.
27:42
Also, not so many socialists, but I'm a socialist,
27:47
so I'm not teaming up with Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy.
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You have some progressives in the Republican Party.
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You have also the Western Libertarians out in California, Arizona, and what not.
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Now if I am a Western Libertarian, do I value equality?
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If I am an industrialist, do I want to desegregate cities and schools?
28:15
Yeah, there's an economy of scales there.
28:19
If I'm a progressive of both parties, do I want to pass things for racial equality?
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And so if I look at civil rights legislation, it doesn't pass by virtue of partisanship.
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It passes by virtue of bipartisanship, with some in the Democratic Party
28:39
voting with some in the Republican Party,
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and some of them just voted for it because who endorsed it?
28:45
Who's president?
28:47
Eisenhower. Who is a what?
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You get what I'm saying?
28:54
So you have the Eisenhower administration cobbling together a bipartisan coalition
28:59
to create legislation to ameliorate the situation.
29:04
Eisenhower was actually purported one of the key American virtues of good American politics,
29:11
and that is pragmatism.
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What is pragmatism?
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If it works, do it.
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Are there ideas, are there pragmatic things that sometimes rub against the ideological grain?
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Yes, but sometimes you, and as I say, sometimes ideas are great,
29:34
but sometimes you've got to buy the stuff that works.
29:37
Okay, so push comes to shove in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Little Rock, nine.
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Little Rock, 1957.
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Governor of Arkansas?
30:01
Who is what party?
30:03
Arkansas is where in the United States, north or south?
30:06
South.
30:07
Democratic state, the democratic governor of Arkansas receives word that nine students of color
30:14
are going to go to Central High School in Little Rock.
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Now, Little Rock is a city.
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Previously, Little Rock had Central High, which was white.
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It also had an African American school.
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Now, by the way, if you're a person of color, why would you want to go to the mostly white school?
30:34
Or rephrase, if you were going to the black school, would you want necessarily to go to the central,
30:41
especially if you're a senior?
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Why?
30:45
Best, new friends?
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I mean, yeah, there's a certain element of, you know, I mean, how many of you have moved schools
30:50
in the middle of your high school career?
30:52
And it wasn't fun.
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I mean, you found new friends, but it was not cool at first go.
30:58
But you get the idea.
31:00
So what happened was as part of the desegregative process, they allowed people to change schools
31:09
according to their will.
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Now, if you're a person of color, do you, and you have the option of going to the all white school,
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do you want to go to the all white school, especially if you're staring down threats of physical violence?
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So there were nine people who had guts.
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And they made the brave decision not only to walk out of their comfort zone, but to walk into the fire.
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Now, the governor receives word that there were nine people who were going to do this.
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And part of his coalition in the southern state of Arkansas was, by the way, if I'm a person of some prominence
31:43
in the Democratic Party in the South, I probably have connections to the Klan,
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either ideologic or as a matter of membership.
31:52
Klan's alive and well in the American South in 1960.
31:55
It doesn't truly become marginalized in the American South until 1986, where it's pursued as a terrorist organization.
32:01
And now it's weirdos on the Internet.
32:03
But anyway, actually it was kind of funny when David Duke made it back into the news.
32:07
I was like, wow, David Duke is still alive?
32:10
I mean, dude is old.
32:12
Anyway, moving on.
32:14
So you have the little rock nine.
32:15
The governor shows up to basically bar the door.
32:18
Now, by the way, when you're the governor of a state, you are also the commander in chief of that state's national guard.
32:24
So the governor shows up with the national guard to block the entry of these students.
32:30
So you're a federal marshal with the Civil Rights Commission.
32:38
You show up to the Central High of Little Rock, Arkansas.
32:42
And you are greeted by national guard troops with M1 Garands and bayonets.
32:47
What are you going to do about it?
32:50
Well, not sneeze, but it's nothing to sneeze at.
32:55
But anyway, what are you going to do?
32:57
Quite literally, yes.
32:59
You call Washington, D.C.
33:01
Now, you are Dwight David Eisenhower, president of the United States in the 1950s.
33:05
And you have a governor basically staging at a very least a non-shooting but armed revolt against a federal policy.
33:13
What do you do?
33:15
Send the military in.
33:20
Alright.
33:22
And that is what he does.
33:23
But think about this for a moment.
33:24
Why does Eisenhower do it?
33:26
Because remember, this is kind of an interesting precedent.
33:30
Is a president obliged to execute an order from the Supreme Court?
33:35
No.
33:36
Andrew Jackson.
33:37
Let him enforce it.
33:39
Remember?
33:41
Eisenhower does.
33:42
Why?
33:44
Get stuff done.
33:46
Get stuff done.
33:47
He didn't want people thinking it's okay to revolt against.
33:50
Also, why is it not okay to revolt against federal authority when you're Dwight David Eisenhower, who else is watching the American stage?
33:58
Not just the American people on CBS and NBC.
34:01
Russia.
34:02
Russia.
34:03
You do not want to appear weak in front of the Russians.
34:05
So if you have a wayward governor who is going to get out of line, you send in the 101st Airborne Division.
34:11
Eisenhower sends in the 101st.
34:15
Now, they did not parachute into Little Rock.
34:21
That would have been cooler looking.
34:22
Why do you send an Airborne Unit?
34:24
Intimidation.
34:25
Not just intimidation.
34:26
You've got to move them there in a hurry.
34:28
Those troops as a group are trained to travel light and move quickly.
34:32
An infantry or an armor brigade would take days, if not weeks, to get there.
34:36
You want people that you can put on a plane, land them in, and there you go.
34:40
So they show up with their...I want to say they were armed with carbines, but anyway...
34:45
So the federal troops show up in an American city in the South.
34:50
You have federal troops in the South once again.
34:58
What does that smell like?
35:00
What does that taste like when you have federal troops in the American South telling the Democratic governor...
35:09
Civil war.
35:10
Civil war and reconstruction.
35:14
And so, as the governor steps aside, he makes a really great speech about federal tyranny and states' rights.
35:25
He got his show.
35:28
Now...so that is enforcement of legislation and litigation.
35:35
Now I want to get to the agitation.
35:37
I know this seems a little backwards, but that's okay. I want to get there.
35:40
Okay. Montgomery bus boycott and...
35:45
Montgomery.
35:47
Rosa Parks, who is a political agitator, she is a member of the NAACP, is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus.
35:55
Actually, that one's kind of interesting because customarily would a man ask a woman for her seat?
36:00
No.
36:01
No.
36:02
This pissed people off because it didn't just cross lines of race. It also crossed lines of gender.
36:07
Now here's the thing I haven't figured out because I wasn't in the American South back then.
36:12
Customarily, which trumps which?
36:15
Does gender trump race or does race trump gender?
36:19
Race trumps gender.
36:22
I'm thinking that in some circumstances, gender trumps race.
36:27
And so that was part of the vehemence and part of the offense. If a man of color was arrested for not giving up his seat to a white dude, that wouldn't have been interesting, but it was a woman.
36:39
You get how I'm saying? You see this hits custom in a weird spot.
36:44
Okay. This is Rosa Parks being booked.
36:46
Martin Luther King leads a boycott and was actually arrested for loitering in 1958.
36:53
Now here's the thing kind of interesting and I kind of want to talk to you about sit-ins for a moment, especially when we talk about, okay, bus boycott.
37:03
If you're not buying the bus, what is it an exercise in if you think about it?
37:09
It's not just an exercise in political power. It's an exercise in economic power.
37:14
Hmm. Messing with people economically. What does that almost sound like?
37:19
No. Who does it almost sound like? Who talked about manipulation of the circumstance through economics? Not W.B. Du Bois. Who?
37:26
Booker T. Washington.
37:27
Booker T. Washington. And so you see in this new 1950s civil rights movement a conglomeration of the ideas of both men.
37:35
Okay. Sit-ins and boycotts. We'll get to that more.
37:40
Martin Luther King makes his debut in 1958 and will come to lead the movement of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference into the 60s until his death in 1968.
37:51
Questions, problems, or concerns?
37:54
All right.