When another reporter asked him if he had any message about the civil rights crisis for the nation’s young people who were just about to start the school year, Eisenhower fell back on his usual platitudes: “It is difficult through law and through force to change a man’s heart.” He denounced the actions of “extremists on both sides,” thus equating the actions of stone-throwing segregationists with the work of black lawyers and church leaders who, he said, “want to have the whole matter settled today.”
