In mid-March 1953 Eisenhower was asked at a press conference by an African American journalist, Alice A. Dunnigan, if he was aware that the army continued to operate white-only schools, which seemed incompatible with his declared policy of eliminating segregation in areas of federal responsibility. The question caught Ike off guard. “I haven’t heard it; I will look it up,” he replied. But he went on to say, “Wherever federal funds are expended for anything, I do not see how any American can justify—legally, or logically, or morally—a discrimination in the expenditure of those funds among our
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