Eisenhower Civil Rights Analysis

In the years 1953 to 1963 two presidents were in office; Dwight Eisenhower assumed office in 1953 and left in 1961, he was succeed by John F Kennedy in 1961 who was then assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Both Presidents are credited with some major advancements in civil rights.
One way the presidents didn’t do much for civil rights was that JFK did not want to interfere in the freedom rides. In 1961 CORE organised the Freedom Rides to challenge two Supreme Court rulings on interstate travel: Morgan Vs Virginia (1946) and Boynton Vs Virginia (1960) however they were met with a lot of white backlash from groups such as the KKK. President Kennedy was reluctant to get involved with the violence happening to the integrated group of Freedom Riders

While Eisenhower did pass the Civil Rights Act in 1960 the bill was a very shallow and superficial bill as it did not do much to improve rights for civil rights for example the bill only added 3% of blacks to the electorate role in 1960. This showed the weakness of the bill and proved Eisenhower did not seem to care about Civil Rights but instead cared more about pleasing the public with some sort of legislation which resulted in the watered down bill of 1960.
A further way it didn’t do much for civil right was in the form of JFKs gestures. JFK was criticised for not doing enough for civil rights as he only seemed to do symbolic gestures such as he left a country club that did not take blacks and he invited more black people to the white house than any president did in the past. This shows the Kennedy did not do much for civil rights as while JFK is thought to have done a lot the majority of these acts were symbolic and didn’t do much in improving black lives at all; the black population was not better off after these

After Brown Vs Board all southern schools were ordered to desegregate “with all deliberate speed” and many schools did not desegregate such as the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas; nine black students wished to attend and were harassed by whites including Melba Pattillo who had acid poured on her face and was stabbed. After the white resistance would not disappear, partly due to Orval Faubus’s lack of support for the black students, Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the black students to and from class. This showed involvement as this was the first time a president had directly got involved with the civil rights campaign and showed he public and the rest of the south that racism would not be tolerated and desegregation needed to happen.
Another way president showed support was JFK. In 1963 JFK addressed Civil rights in a speech calling it a moral issue. This was the first time civil rights was addressed in a speech which drew attention to civil rights and was especially important due to the fact the northern states were somewhat unaware of the racism and segregation that was going on in the