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White, “It would be tragic if the GOP wins with no Negro support. We would be in a very bad bargaining position.” Similarly, as vice president of Chicago’s NAACP, Archibald Carey privately told Wilkins that while “I still love you … you are horribly biased.” Carey was livid over an NAACP report that criticized Sparkman and Nixon as equally unsatisfactory candidates, “leaving the unwary public believing that on civil rights their records were the same.” He continued, “I think you honestly believe that all the Democratic talk for civil rights is genuine, whereas the Republican opposition represents an even deeper sinister and venal attitude.” Carey could understand African American support for Truman, though he believed Truman was more “talk” than action, but it was difficult to comprehend why black leaders would support a ticket that included a southern segregationist. To black Republicans, Democrats were still the party of the South, as proven by Sparkman’s nomination, and could never deliver on empty civil rights promises made by party liberals. White and Wilkins, however, were willing to overlook Sparkman in hopes that Stevenson would continue Truman’s example of supporting both black civil rights and working-class interests.¹²

      Eisenhower welcomed black endorsements, but civil rights were secondary to his emphasis on foreign policy and “honest government.” He also believed he could use his enormous national appeal to make inroads among moderate whites in the South drawn to the GOP’s support of the private sector. He was greeted by a Charlotte, North Carolina, crowd of forty thousand, and his visit marked the first time a presidential nominee had campaigned in the city since 1896. A similar crowd welcomed him in Columbia, South Carolina, where he received the endorsement of the segregationist Democratic governor, James Byrnes, and professed his fondness for the minstrel song “Dixie.” On the other hand, he did not shy away from civil rights, telling the crowd, “We will move forward rapidly to make equality of opportunity a living fact for every American.” In another southern campaign stop, George W. Lee and Benjamin Hooks organized an Eisenhower tour of the heart of black Memphis, Beale Street, and the general made an “impromptu” stop at Lee’s office. Additionally, Jesse Lawrence, Kentucky’s black Republican state representative, joined the Eisenhower train as it moved through Indiana and Kentucky. In Louisville, GOP Congressional candidate John Robinson insisted that African Americans sit on stage with Eisenhower, who told a crowd of ten thousand that his administration would “be guided by one idea … there shall be no second-class citizenship among all Americans.”¹³

      On election day, despite support for Eisenhower among many in the black middle class, more than 80 percent of black voters remained loyal to the party of Franklin Roosevelt. The middle class made up only 10 to 13 percent of the black population in the 1950s, leaving the majority of African Americans impoverished or in the working class. While many prominent blacks were aghast at Sparkman’s nomination, it would take more for most African Americans to leave a party that represented, in their minds, workers like themselves. Those in the middle class could focus on combating Jim Crow through the two-party system, but, in the words of E. Frederic Morrow, “civil rights is not the burning question” among the majority of black voters, many of whom feared “loss of jobs gained under Democrats.” According to Morrow, “this powerful desire to hold on to the status quo was the most difficult problem for Republican campaigners,” as many black workers felt uncomfortable deserting the Democrats after they “had prospered in a fashion never known before the 20 years prior to 1952.” That a majority of black voters cast ballots for a presidential ticket that included an avowed segregationist from Alabama suggests the primacy of economics and New Deal-era government activism to many black voters. Among middle-class Republicans, many of whom were already skeptical of government relief, civil rights and pragmatic two-party politics were essential to their rationale for supporting Eisenhower, who they believed would join with liberals in the Eastern Establishment in combating institutional discrimination.¹⁴

      Among black workers and the poor, Eisenhower faced the same problems as Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey had, in failing to shake the image of the GOP as the party of elites. As one Democratic organizer argued, black voters should not give up the “many basic gains for the common man” by supporting the party of “rich, privileged corporations.” When only nuanced differences exited between the civil rights positions of Eisenhower and Stevenson, the legacy of Roosevelt and Truman outweighed any hypothetical promises Republicans could offer. James Nabrit, Jr., a Republican NAACP lawyer, noted, “as a member of the working class,” most black voters in northern cities would only support candidates “which have as one of their major policies the welfare of workers.” Political scientist Samuel Lubell similarly concluded in the 1950s that “Negro attachment to the Democratic party has been as much economic as racial in motivation. As the lowest-paid worker in our industrial society, the Negro is both class and race conscious.” Thus far, aside from advocating for the creation of a national FEPC, black Republicans had no answer to the question of economic interest.¹⁵

      Though the figures among black voters were disheartening, black Republicans saw Eisenhower’s election as a boon to restoring their influence in federal patronage. E. Frederic Morrow advised Eisenhower’s chief of staff, former New Hampshire governor Sherman Adams, to place “Negroes in positions of responsibility wherever the party has jurisdiction,” and Adams later noted that the president himself “made a point of insisting that he wanted qualified Negroes to be considered.” The Minorities Division became the party’s central funnel for black appointees, and on Val Washington’s watch Eisenhower far surpassed the appointment rates of Roosevelt and Truman. According to Washington, he and his assistant, Thalia Thomas, “cracked job barriers in many departments.” Whenever they were informed of a “lily-white agency,” they would immediately send “a letter prodding them” to hire blacks, and would also “ship a copy to the White House.” Major black appointments included Jewell Stratford Rogers as assistant U.S. district attorney, L. B. Toomer as registrar of the U.S. Treasury, and Scovel Richardson as chairman of the Board of Parole. Robert Church, Jr.’s daughter, Roberta Church, became the highest ranking black woman in the federal government, given a policy-making position in the Department of Labor. Washington also helped secure a sub-cabinet post for J. Ernest Wilkins as assistant secretary of labor, one of the highest positions ever offered to an African American.¹⁶

      To assist Washington’s efforts in securing federal jobs for African Americans, Eisenhower created the President’s Committee on Government Employment Policy. He named Archibald Carey as vice-chairman, and by 1957 Carey had been promoted to chairman, making him the first African American head of a President’s Committee. Through his efforts, the number of blacks employed in white-collar federal jobs nearly doubled, to more than 9,000 by 1960. Segregated offices in Atlanta and other southern cities were eliminated. In New Orleans, the number of black federal employees increased by almost 600 percent. Though some agencies in the Deep South still did not have any black employees, and many offices just hired tokens, Carey was proud of personally overseeing “a manifest rise” in thousands of jobs directed to African Americans.¹⁷

      Eisenhower’s most important appointment, however, was also one of his most bungled. Though Sherman Adams had promised E. Frederic Morrow a position in the new administration, Morrow approached Val Washington months after the inauguration without a job. Washington “probed and probed” the administration on its failure to appoint the outspoken Morrow, and the two deduced that an unnamed “someone of great prominence and power had blocked the appointment.” According to Morrow, Washington launched a “relentless job campaign” that succeeded in “embarrassing the administration into looking for a job for me.” He was eventually given a position in the Department of Commerce, and in 1955 was promoted to administrative officer for special projects on the president’s staff, making him the first African American to have an office inside the White House. Though his office provided access to close confidants of the president, Morrow’s official duties focused on the mundane, replying to letters to the president relating to issues of civil rights, and overseeing office and parking assignments.¹⁸

      In addition to black appointments, Eisenhower amassed a positive record in other areas as well. In his first State of the Union address, he pledged to rid Washington, D.C., of segregation, a change that had long been a goal of black activists outraged by blatant discrimination in the nation’s capital. Weeks earlier, Mary Church Terrell, a lifelong Republican,

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