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Fifty years after President Dwight D Eisenhower ordered troops to Little Rock Arkansas to enforce a federal court order desegregating the citys Central High School a leading authority on Eisenhower presents an original and engrossing narrative that places Ike and his civil rights policies in dramatically new light Historians such as Stephen Ambrose and Arthur Schlesinger Jr have portrayed Eisenhower as aloof if not outwardly hostile to the plight of African-Americans in the s It is still widely assumed that he opposed the Supreme Courts landmark Brown v Board of Education decision mandating the desegregation of public schools that he deeply regretted appointing Earl Warren as the Courts chief justice because of his role in molding Brown that he was a bystander in Congresss passage of the civil rights acts of and and that he so mishandled the Little Rock crisis that he was forced to dispatch troops to rescue a failed policy In this sweeping narrative David A Nichols demonstrates that these assumptions are wrong Drawing on archival documents neglected by biographers and scholars including thousands of pages newly available from the Eisenhower Presidential Library Nichols takes us inside the Oval Office to look over Ikes shoulder as he worked behind the scenes prior to Brown to desegregate the District of Columbia and complete the desegregation of the armed forces We watch as Eisenhower assisted by his close collaborator Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr sifted through candidates for federal judgeships and appointed five pro-civil rights justices to the Supreme Court and progressive judges to lower courts We witness Eisenhower crafting civil rights legislation deftly building a congressional coalition that passed the first civil rights act in eighty-two years and maneuvering to avoid a showdown with Orval Faubus the governor of Arkansas over desegregation of Little Rocks Central High Nichols demonstrates that Eisenhower though he was a product of his time and its backward racial attitudes was actually more progressive on civil rights in the s than his predecessor Harry Truman and his successors John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson Eisenhower was more a man of deeds than of words and preferred quiet action over grandstanding His cautious public rhetoric -- especially his legalistic response to Brown -- gave a misleading impression that he was not committed to the cause of civil rights In fact Eisenhowers actions laid the legal and political groundwork for the more familiar breakthroughs in civil rights achieved in the s Fair judicious and exhaustively researched A Matter of Justice is the definitive book on Eisenhowers civil rights policies that every presidential historian and future biographer of Ike will have to contend with.



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