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Civil Rights, Guide to Studies Of A Guide To Historical Holdings In the Eisenhower Library A Guide to Civil Rights Studies Compiled by Barbara Constable and Linda K. Smith Revised by Barbara Constable (12/03) (Library staff made additional revisions 9/04, 5/05, 4/08) INTRODUCTION The decade of the 1950s was an era of significant advances in the movement for racial equality for black Americans. It was the time of desegregation of the United States armed forces, desegregation of Washington, D.C., Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and the Little Rock, Arkansas school integration crisis. This guide presents a survey of historical materials in the Eisenhower Library that relate to the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and the 1950s. Files documenting African-American experiences during World War II are also included as are collections containing information on civil rights during the 1960s and 1970s. The guide explores the extensive research potential for civil rights topics at the Eisenhower Library. It is not a complete and comprehensive account, but rather a survey of manuscript collections with high research potential, manuscript collections of lesser importance, oral history transcripts, and audiovisual materials. The guide should not be considered definitive, as the search for pertinent materials was conducted primarily at the folder title level and not for individual documents. There are, no doubt, additional references to civil rights topics in the papers of the Eisenhower Library, but locating them will require a visit to the Library and an intensive search by the researcher. A complete list of holdings is available upon request. Copies of finding aids for individual collections are also available through interlibrary loan. Persons who wish to use material held in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library are required to submit an application form stating the scope and purpose of their research. Advance application to the Director facilitates the processing of the request and allows staff archivists time to prepare materials for the research visit. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER LIBRARY Abilene, Kansas 67410 September 2004 MAJOR COLLECTIONS: Students of the civil rights movement during the Eisenhower Administration can find two very valuable sources of documentation in Dwight D. Eisenhower's Papers as President, 1953-61 (Ann Whitman File), and his Records as President, White House Central Files, 1953-61. These two collections contain a variety and a depth of coverage on civil rights topics which can be found in no other collections at the Library. Reflecting President Eisenhower's personal thoughts, as well as private meetings and discussions with staff advisers, the Eisenhower Presidential Papers is the richest historical collection in the Eisenhower Library. The DDE Diary Series is an important body of material for students of civil rights. The series contains diary entries and dictated correspondence which reveal the President's thinking on civil rights topics in general and his private views on the Little Rock situation in particular. There are memoranda of telephone conversations between the President and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, as well as copies of official memoranda of the President's conversations in the White House. The Administration Series is an important source of correspondence between Eisenhower and his attorney general. It also contains several folders which deal exclusively with the Little Rock school crisis. The Ann Whitman Diary Series contains diary entries, letters, memoranda, notes, minutes, appointment records and other material. The series was created by President Eisenhower's personal secretary, Ann Whitman, as a file for her daily diary entries which contain, in many cases, her observations on the highlights of the President's day. In addition, Whitman filed in the diary such varied material as copies of the President's own diary entries, memoranda of conversations, including telephone conversations, and copies of correspondence. The Drafts Series is comprised of drafts of a fairly representative sample of President Eisenhower's letters, messages and statements written during his first administration. Civil rights topics appear frequently, especially in some of the personal correspondence. The Name Series reveals the President's personal views on civil rights through his correspondence with various individuals such as the Reverend Billy Graham, James F. Byrnes, and Swede Hazlett. The Cabinet Series and the Legislative Meetings Series contain material which reflect Eisenhower's views on civil rights as expressed during meetings with members of his Cabinet and with congressional leaders. School construction and the Powell Amendment, voting by racial minorities, racial tensions in the South, and civil rights legislative programs are a few of the topics discussed and documented during the Cabinet meetings of the Eisenhower administration. Virtually all legislative meetings from June 1956 to August 1957 deal with some aspect of the civil rights issues, especially legislative programs. The public side of President Eisenhower's civil rights policies can be seen in the Campaign Series, the Press Conference Series, and the Speech Series. The Campaign Series consists of proposed statements by then presidential candidate Eisenhower on civil rights. The Press Conference Series records not only the President's public statements, but also candid remarks on civil rights made at pre-press conference briefings. The Speech Series contains drafts aid speeches delivered by the President. This includes Eisenhower's famous September 24, 1957, address to the nation on the Little Rock situation. The documentation shows that this particular talk underwent considerable editing prior to delivery. Eisenhower's Records as President (the White House Central Files) comprise the largest single collection in the Library, totaling approximately 6,000,000 pages. As a result it is not surprising that this collection should contain a very substantial quantity of material dealing with civil rights during the Eisenhower administration. The White House Central Files are organized by an alphabetical and numerical coding system which permits the civil rights scholar to go rapidly to those folders which contain large concentrations of materials on his topic. There are five basic series in the White House Central Files which contain civil rights material. The Official File contains by far the highest quality and the largest quantity of materials on civil rights in the White House Central Files. This file contains a substantial quantity of high level materials reflecting the administration's position on civil rights issues. Some of the subjects documented include the President's 1953 declaration that he would use his presidential powers to end segregation in Washington, D.C., the Montgomery bus boycott, integration at the university level in the South, the lynching of Negroes in the South, and the establishment of the Civil Rights Commission. One topic which is especially well documented is the Little Rock school crisis and Arkansas Governor Faubus' use of the National Guard troops. The General File, which consists largely of public opinion correspondence, contains material on the Bi-Partisan Committee on Civil Rights, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and race riots. This correspondence covers a wide range of public opinion in the Eisenhower years. On the whole, the Confidential File contains the highest level of material in the White House Central Files, but civil rights materials are scattered. There is a small amount of correspondence dealing with discrimination in housing and desegregation of the National Guard. The President's Personal File consists mainly of social correspondence and human interest letters. However, there are several folders such as the United Negro College Fund, Little Rock and Racial Affairs which should be consulted as should files for numerous organizations listed in the PPF 47 section of the President’s Personal File. The final central files series which contains documentation on civil rights is the Alphabetical File. This series, which is largely unprocessed, consists of routine letters from the general public, referral sheets indicating that certain letters were forwarded to government departments for reply, and cross reference sheets. Those folders which have been reviewed and are available for research include the names of such important figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., Elbert P. Tuttle, Richard B. Russell, and J. Strom Thurmond. The folder on the Autherine Lucy case is particularly significant because it contains most of the materials available on this case in the Library. A list of reviewed folders, subject to periodic updating, is available at the Library. Files for specific individuals or topics can be reviewed by the Library staff upon request. Although the Bulk Mail segment of the White House Central Files is not clearly a series in its own right, it might be important for some topics. Bulk Mail consists entirely of public opinion correspondence on such general topics as Little Rock, Governor Faubus, segregation and integration. Approximately 68,000 pages could be useful to a student compiling a statistical or demographic study on civil rights. Students of civil rights should by no means confine their research on the Eisenhower Administration to Dwight D. Eisenhower's Papers and Records as President, for a variety of other sources are available at the Library. Of substantial importance are
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