The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

Southerners certainly did not see Eisenhower as moving slowly on civil rights. Quite the contrary. Governor Byrnes said he was “shocked” by the Brown decision and asked “how long . . . local government [could] survive” in the face of such powerful assaults on states’ rights. He did urge the public to show “restraint” and to “preserve order,” but his administration had already secured approval from voters to close public schools rather than integrate them. Governor Talmadge considered the ruling tyrannical and unjust and promised that Georgians would “fight for the right under the United States and Georgia Constitutions to manage their own affairs.” He vowed “continued and permanent segregation” in Georgia. Senator Richard Russell, the powerful Georgia Democrat, denounced Brown as a “flagrant abuse of judicial power” and spoke of the “tendency of the Court to disregard the Constitution.” The Court had become nothing more than a “pliant tool” and “the political arm of the Executive branch.” Senators Harry Byrd of Virginia and James Eastland of Mississippi made similar remarks. Southern leaders now saw they could expect no help from the White House.