For Max Brantley:

Below is a memo I wrote concerning the legacy of Senator Fulbright in the context of the debate regarding proposals to remove the statue from the University of campus and his name from the U of A College of Arts and Sciences. I emphasize that I am a critic of Fulbright's civil rights record. I knew him for 20 years and argued with him on many occasions about civil rights. My 550-page biography of Fulbright, J. William Fulbright and His Time (foreword by President , 1995) contains many chapters that are sharply critical of his civil rights record. There are several other books about Fulbright so mine is certainly not the only one.

I am also of the minority opinion that we should not erect statues to any politicians, because by definition they have to make political concessions at times in a democracy and all of them will have flaws in their records. Statues should be reserved for philosophers, great writers, or activists like Martin Luther King. With a juris doctorate focusing on civil rights and constitutional law at the University of Virginia Law School and graduate degree in recent US political history from the University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I can attest along with many others that even Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Kennedy and all of our political leaders had weaknesses in their legacies, and if we are going to judge them by their most glaring errors none will withstand the scrutiny.

I do believe that Fulbright's legacy should be judged in its entirety. Along with the weak civil rights record in having voted against most of the major civil rights bill during his career, signing the and evading the issues when Gov. tried to block the desegregation of Central High, he held major accomplishments in the fields of foreign policy and civil rights. Regarding civil rights, the historical context of the times in which he lived should be considered, and even there he did have some constructive actions: he worked behind the scenes to help desegregate the Law School in the late 1940s, later in his career he was one of only six Southern senators who supported the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the US Supreme Court, voted in favor of re-extending the Voting Rights Act in 1970, and played a crucial role in defeating President Nixon's nomination of the racist Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court.

Fulbright deserves sharp criticism for his civil rights record. My father, the late Arkansas Gazette editorial editor James O. Powell, and I were exasperated by Fulbright's defensiveness regarding his civil rights record and his grave disappointments in this field. The last thing I would do is be perceived as a supporter or apologist for his failings regarding race.

My father was involved as an adviser to both Fulbright and the University of Arkansas in the naming of the Fulbright College as editorial editor of the old Arkansas Gazette from 1959 to 1987. Ironically, at one point Fulbright did not want the college named after him because he thought he would be required to do a lot of fundraising and promoting for the college, and he was also not enthusiastic about having monuments or other honors that might be seen as overdone bestowed upon him or other political leaders. My father helped resolve the issue with the then dean Jack Guilds. My father of course, was sharply critical of Fulbright on civil rights and saw the naming of the college (and the later statue) as recognizing his great achievements in the fields of education and foreign policy.

My goal here is to help inform people. It is surprising in discussing Fulbright even with well- educated people I get the question, "Did Fulbright demagogue the race issue like Faubus or George Wallace?" Of course he never did that. While not backing off from deserved criticism on civil rights, it would be historically inaccurate to lump Fulbright in the same category with Confederate traitors or demagogues like Faubus or or Wallace. We would do well to avoid all or nothing, simplistic views of our past.

As director of the Delta Grassroots Caucus--an economic equality and justice advocacy organization for the Greater Delta Region--I deal with civil rights issues and the unjust economic fate of too many African Americans, and 40% or more of our members are African Americans. I have discussed this with them, and while there is a range of views about Fulbright and some are fine with moving the statue, all of them recognize that Fulbright had many beneficial accomplishments in the entirety of his record.

Some of my African American colleagues have suggested an alternative approach: placing a large marker with the Fulbright statue discussing the strengths and weaknesses of his record, moving the statue from the west entrance to the Fulbright College to the front of the Institute of International Relations to underscore that the reason for honoring him focuses squarely on his education and foreign policy accomplishments, and placing a very prominent statue of the prominent African American civil rights leader and lawyer, and one of the first black graduates of the U of A Law School on the campus as well. It would not need to be next to the Fulbright statue or be seen as "balancing" it, but this entire debate about our past has led us to thinking about who in our history deserves recognition. As an African American born in the height of the Jim Crow era who rose to national prominence, Branton is as deserving of major recognition as Fulbright. These are just the suggestions of some of our African American colleagues.

This memo is short by academic standards (a lot shorter than the 550-page biography!!) but admittedly long by journalistic standards. I would hope this would help inform the debate. I believe we should see both the greatness and the tragic flaws of J. William Fulbright. People who read the memo will inevitably draw different conclusions about the statue and the naming of the college. Lee Riley Powell, executive director, Delta Grassroots Caucus (202) 360-6347

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT’S LEGACY June 30, 2020

(Introductory note: By way of full disclosure in the context of African American students' complaints of tolerance for racial discrimination at the University of Arkansas, my biography of Senator J. William Fulbright criticizes his civil rights record but recognizes his impressive achievements in the fields of foreign policy and education. I will address the foreign policy and civil rights records according to the different subject matter in two parts.

We are obviously passing through a painful re-examination of statues, naming of institutions and other monuments to our past. I would argue that Confederates and demagogues like Orval Faubus or George Wallace should not be recognized, but Fulbright is clearly in a different category. My purpose here is not to advise anyone as to whether his statue should be removed or the college re-named, but to present the facts about the entirety of his legacy. I would hope we can see both the greatness and the tragic flaw of J. William Fulbright. Please examine the facts and draw your own conclusions.)

Foreign Policy and Education

The post-World War II order—Fulbright first attracted national attraction in 1940 for a series of speeches taking a stand as the young president of the University of Arkansas against the dominant isolationism of the time, calling for Americans to wake up to the dire threat to American and world peace in Hitler’s insatiable campaign of military conquest. He followed up as a freshman congressman in 1943 in working with President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in passing the Fulbright Resolution placing the Congress on record as favoring the creation of a postwar United Nations organization. He supported the key building blocks of the postwar era as a freshman senator in the later 1940s for NATO, President Truman’s Point Four program for technical assistance to developing countries, and the Marshall Plan for economic rebuilding of Europe after the war.

Fulbright Scholarship Program: Fulbright worked with President Truman’s administration in passing the Fulbright Act creating the international educational and cultural exchange program. The Fulbright Program has granted awards to 390,000 American and foreign students and professors in more than 160 countries from its inception in 1946 to the present. Fulbright Scholars have won 60 Nobel Prizes, 86 Pulitzer Prizes, and 37 became heads of state, most of them in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Currently the program awards 8,000 grants annually. President Kennedy praised the Fulbright Program as “the classic modern example of beating swords into plowshares.”

Opposition to Joe McCarthy and other Cold War extremists: Fulbright became deeply concerned about Joe McCarthy and other extremists who denounced loyal, distinguished Americans on false charges of communist sympathies and having “lost” China to communism. In 1951, he opposed General Douglas MacArthur’s call for air strikes against China after the general was removed for insubordination by President Truman in the Korean War. Fulbright warned that the air strikes would be the inevitable prelude to combat troops in China and posed a grave risk of igniting World War III. Throughout the early 1950s he lambasted McCarthy for smearing loyal officials in the State Dept. and elsewhere as having communist affinities without presenting any evidence for his claims. He blocked McCarthy’s effort to cut funding for the Fulbright Program on the bogus grounds that many Fulbright Scholars were communists or communist sympathizers. In February, 1954 he was the only senator to vote against funding for McCarthy’s Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, which passed 85 to 1 with Fulbright casting the lone dissenting vote. This vote shocked the conscience of many thoughtful senators and in retrospect was crucial in beginning strong opposition to McCarthy. Fulbright was one of the leaders in the drive that finally led the Senate to censure McCarthy in late 1954.

Dissent against John Foster Dulles policies and the Bay of Pigs: Fulbright opposed the rigid Cold Warrior policies of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the Eisenhower administration’s interventionism in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere. When President Kennedy planned to continue the Dulles policies of overthrowing Fidel Castro in Cuba, Fulbright was the only one of senior US officials at the final strategy review session before the Bay of Pigs invasion to warn the President that such a military strike would “nullify the work of 30 years in trying to live down” earlier US interventions in Latin America. Kennedy rejected his advice, but the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs proved Fulbright right. Kennedy and Fulbright collaborated during the short-lived détente in 1963 and the passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty intended to slow the arms race by eliminating atmospheric nuclear testing.

Opposition to the Vietnam War: Fulbright seriously erred in 1964 when he accepted President Lyndon Johnson’s depiction of himself as the candidate of peace and moderation as against his opponent Barry Goldwater, who had called for defoliating jungle trails in Vietnam with low-yield atomic bombs. The Foreign Relations Committee chairman (by his own later admission) should have investigated Johnson’s claims about alleged North Vietnamese aggression against US vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin in August, 1964, and only later realized that the President had grossly exaggerated the incidents to show during the election that he could “be tough against the communists as well as Goldwater,” and to strengthen his authority to order military escalation.

In 1965 Fulbright became increasingly critical of Johnson’s policy in Vietnam, contending that no American vital interests were involved there and calling for a negotiated settlement. He excoriated Johnson for an intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 based on a similarly exaggerated claim of communist aggression. In early 1966 he initiated the Vietnam and then the China hearings that eventually culminated in a powerful anti-war coalition. He was in a small minority, sadly—when he called for repeal of the administration’s pro-interventionist Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1966, he was one of only five senators voting to oppose the Vietnam War and lost by a vote of 92 to 5.

Nixon administration--Throughout the late 1960s and through President Nixon’s lengthy continuation of the Vietnam War, Fulbright continued to relentlessly decry the tragic folly of America’s lost crusade in southeast Asia. He finally joined with other senators in taking the highly unusual step of threatening to cut off the funds for the war. Despite his decades of disagreement with Nixon and his opposition to the southeast Asia intervention, he worked with the President and Henry Kissinger for the détente with the Soviet Union and China in the early 1970s that sought to reduce Cold War tensions, reduce the nuclear arms race, and take steps toward peace. Fulbright also worked for a more even-handed policy in the Middle East that would recognize the legitimate problems of Palestinians and other Arabs, along with support for Israel’s security.

Fulbright's foreign policy positions often defied conventional wisdom and were lonely and unpopular at the time he created them, but after the passage of time most scholars as well as participants in the great political debates of his day have found them to have been wise and at times even prophetic. He would eventually win the unusual distinction in retrospect of gaining the Presidential Medal of Freedom in America and the high honor in Egypt of that nation's Order of the Republic. He was defeated for re- election in 1974, ironically by his former ally Dale Bumpers, who had once praised Fulbright's foreign policy leadership by saying, "Fulbright turned me against the Vietnam War long before he ever heard my name." Civil rights

Votes against civil rights bills and the segregationist era: There is much less to say about the specifics of his civil rights record, simply because he avoided the issue as much as possible and often remained silent. Fulbright voted against the major civil rights bills for most of his career and carefully avoided antagonizing the dominant segregationist status quo in the South. The record includes some constructive actions: he worked behind the scenes to desegregate the University of Arkansas Law School in the late 1940s and the graduate schools shortly afterward. In 1948, he supported President Truman against the hard-core “Dixiecrat” insurgence led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In 1954-55, he encouraged his constituents to accept the Brown decision as the law of the land and expressed his appreciation for the early desegregation in Fayetteville and Charleston, Arkansas.

Southern Manifesto: However, when the Southern segregationist reaction against Brown gathered formidable power in the mid to late 1950s, Fulbright failed to meet the challenge. The Southern Senate bloc in 1956 pressured all of its members to sign the Southern Manifesto, a bitter attack on the Supreme Court. Fulbright privately pleaded with his colleagues to not delude their constituents into believing that they could overturn Brown, which was the law of the land. While the Senators led by Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia deleted a few of the most incendiary passages in the original draft, the Southern Manifesto was nonetheless a right wing denunciation of the Supreme Court. Fulbright’s private hand-wringing had accomplished nothing, and the final published document would list the name of J. William Fulbright along with hard-line segregationists like Strom Thurmond, Byrd, and James Eastland of Mississippi.

Central High crisis: When Gov. Orval Faubus attempted to block the desegregation of Little Rock Central High, Fulbright stayed in Great Britain for a lengthy period in an obvious effort to avoid taking a stand on this historic crisis. When I would press him over the years about such gravely disappointing decisions, he would explain his votes against civil rights bills and silence in the Central crisis by saying that if he had gotten out too far in advance of his constituents he would have destroyed his career and been replaced by a demagogue (most likely Faubus) in the Senate, he would not have accomplished anything on civil rights, and would not have been there to make his constructive stands on McCarthyism, the Cold War, Vietnam and détente. I never saw the slightest hint of racism in any of his comments both publicly or in lengthy conversations over 20 years. While there was certainly some stress at times in our debates, I never had the sense that he was telling me to stop pressing him.

Fulbright’s explanation of his record: When I suggested alternative strategies to strenghen the moderates, he replied that “Integration had to come,” but for his political situation in Arkansas he had no political alternative. He would most often cite the defeat of his moderate friend in Arkansas, Congressman in 1958 after having merely asked for supporting the rule of law during the Central crisis—but it was just not that simple. Hays in fact defeated a segregationist in the Democratic Primary in 1958 that was usually tantamount to victory in Arkansas at that time, but was surprised when Faubus and the segregationist resorted to a stratagem of a write-in campaign that clearly involved a substantial amount of fraud. Even with the extraordinary circumstances and widespread evidence of fraud, Hays lost by the tiny margin of 1,200 votes. When I stated that stronger support from the moderates in Arkansas—most notably from Fulbright—he said with resignation, “Well, you could speculate about that but I had no desire for martyrdom.” Yet this was not a liberal vs. conservative political question but one of supporting the rule of law and opposing incitement to mob violence.

Fulbright was President-Elect Kennedy’s first choice for Secretary of State: Again as another argument regarding the lack of any alternative, it is a fact that Fulbright was a rising star of the Democratic Party and could have expected an appointment as Secretary of State or another high-level foreign policy position. As a matter of favt, President Kennedy’s first choice for a Secretary of State when he was elected in 1960 was none other than Fulbright, but he ultimately decided he could not appoint him to the post because of his weak civil rights record. While Fulbright could not have definitely known that Kennedy would be the next President in the late 1950s, a statesmanlike stance on civil rights would have greatly enhanced his credentials for a foreign policy post. The basic point is that there were alternatives to his troubling decisions on civil rights.

Steering a more moderate course in his later career: By the late dates of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Arkansas politics was gradually moving in a more moderate direction. The moderate would become governor in January, 1967. He was not up for re-election until 1968. To be fair, he did move in a much more constructive direction over the latter part of his career, supporting Thurgood Marshall’s elevation to the Supreme Court in 1967, voting for the extension of the Voring Rights Act in 1970, and above all playing a crucial role in defeating President Carswell’s nomination of the racist Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. Even by the late 1960s and early 1970s, these votes were still controversial—if not as bitterly so as in the earlier era—and the most powerful politician in Arkansas at that time continued to be a staunch segregationist—Sen. John McClellan; as one example McClellan fought for Carswell’s nomination. Fulbright’s African American aide in Little Rock, Ben Grinage, wrote to Fulbright after the vote that “I am more proud than ever to be a member of your team,” but sadly added that many white constituents had called to say they would never vote again vote for Fulbright.

Tremendous variations in the verdicts on Fulbright’s legacy: We have a dilemma in understanding and assessing such a conflicted, complex and gigantic legacy. Assessments of Fulbright vary tremendously across the philosophical spectrum. General Alexander Haig privately denounced Fulbright as a “traitor” because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, and of course Presidents Johnson and Nixon bitterly criticized him. Walter Lippmann called him "the bravest and wisest of counselors," and John Kenneth Galbraith said, "Of all persons who, for their foreign policy, I've wished might be president, Bill Fulbright stands first." dismissed his defense of his civil rights record as a “rotten argument.” The Times similarly gave sharp criticisms of his civil rights record, but provided a more balanced overall account in concluding that “most congressional careers featured the same sellouts without rising to the heights in a transcendental issue… Fulbright challenged powerful enemies and bad ideas at the flood tide of their power. His courage saved lives. Few politicians can lay claim to that epitaph.”

An accolade from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: Ironically, the greatest accolade Fulbright ever received came from one of world history’s most profound champions for racial justice in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The famous civil rights leader and the Southern senator obviously held sharply divergent views and different constituencies in the realm of civil right. Nonetheless, in a late 1965 letter to Fulbright, King praised his dissent against America’s military crusade in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam: “I know the tremendous price you pay for your outspoken critique of administration policy, and I write to you these few words simply as personal encouragement and to let you know that there are many of us who admire and respect your role in our nation’s international affairs… Yours is one voice crying in the wilderness that may ultimately awaken our people to the international facts of life. I trust that you will not let any pressure silence you.”

Lee Riley Powell, Executive Director, Delta Grassroots Caucus economic equality and justice advocacy organization; Presidential appointee in the Clinton administration focusing on policy for economically distressed populations; former Congressional aide and federal law clerk for the Eastern District of Arkansas; author, J. William Fulbright and His Time (1995); Juris Doctorate, University of Virginia Law School, focusing on constitutional law and civil rights; postgraduate degree in recent US political history; Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes College. His late father James O. Powell, editor of the old Arkansas Gazette from the late 1950s to the late 1980s, was a staunch opponent of Gov. Faubus when Lee Powell was growing up in Little Rock. He is a graduate of the Little Rock public school system.