Rev. Billy Graham Advises President Eisenhower to “Stay Out” of the Civil Rights Controversy
Rev. Billy Graham, a conservative Protestant minister from North Carolina, was just beginning to emerge as the unofficial “minister” to U.S. presidents. On this day, he advised President Dwight D. Eisenhower to “stay out” of the growing civil rights controversy.
Eisenhower did not need much persuading, as he did not support the Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education decision of May 17, 1954.
Eisenhower did send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 25, 1957, to ensure the integration of Central High School, but as material in his Presidential Papers make clear, he did so reluctantly. And it was mainly because the anti-integration demonstrations and violence were violating a lawful court order.
Read the Graham-Ike Correspondence: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/civil_rights_eisenhower_administration.html
Read: Stephen Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (2009)
Watch Billy Graham preach in 1958: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MirmwuqPeCQ
Learn about Rosa Parks and the early years of the civil rights movement: Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2013)
And about the sit-ins and SNCC: Clayborne Carson, In Struggle, SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)