Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

King wanted to make his case to Eisenhower personally—and to be seen doing so—but the President ducked. Eisenhower supported the basic citizenship rights of Negroes, which was why he allowed the resubmission in 1957 of his proposed voting rights legislation, but he bridled at the company of Negroes. This discomfort extended to school desegregation laws and to any other proposals that would foster more than minimal contact between whites and Negroes, even in public places. Forty years in a segregated Army conditioned Eisenhower to think of Negroes as inherently subordinate. His condescension was so natural and paternal as to seem nearly well-meaning. Only his private secretary winced with embarrassment when he passed along the latest “nigger jokes” from his friends at the Bobby Jones golf course in Augusta. During his vacation at Thomasville, Georgia, where King’s telegram reached him, Ike shot his first wild turkey. His hunting party rode around Treasury Secretary Humphrey’s farm in wicker carriages pulled by white mules and driven by what a friend called “the old colored retainers.” Eisenhower never had received a Negro delegation at the White House to discuss civil rights, and he did not reply to King’s telegram.