Between a Rock and a Hard Place: E. Frederic Morrow in the White House

President Eisenhower with E. Frederic Morrow, the first African American to hold an executive position in the White House. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

On New Year's Eve 1957, E. Frederic Morrow felt humiliated. Assigned to help write President Eisenhower's State of the Union message, he had been given no chance to contribute, and he hoped not to begin the new year as a mere afterthought on the White House staff.

Morrow was the only African American on Eisenhower's staff and the first ever to serve as a presidential aide. His job was to be the White House's link to Black leaders: keeping it attuned to the Black community, and speaking up for the president and his policies. It grew steadily harder, and he recorded it all in his memoir, Black Man in the White House (1963).

Everyday prejudice

The problems began at once. No one in the White House secretarial pool wanted to work for a Black man, until one woman volunteered, as he put it, out of Christian charity. Decent housing in Washington was nearly impossible: anything open to "Coloreds" was run-down, and anything half-appealing was for whites only.

In January 1957, invited to a pre-inaugural service at the president's church, National Presbyterian, he had his credentials checked again and again by different ushers and was then shown with his wife to a seat at the back instead of the section reserved for the president's staff. One member was overheard remarking that he must be a high official, or he would never have dared enter their church.

The administration did little to tell the public who he was. Sent to speak for the president, he was often treated as a minor underling and asked to cut his remarks to a couple of minutes for the "important" speakers. At the 1956 Republican convention his five-minute speech was cut to two and never aired — the network went to a commercial as he began.

Ignored inside, blamed outside

More troubling, his arguments that the administration should speak out for civil rights were routinely ignored. Early on, Cabinet Secretary Max Rabb told him the administration felt Black Americans were too aggressive in their demands and not grateful enough, and that most senior officials had grown thoroughly fed up with the subject — which Morrow took as a warning to ask fewer questions. That was the root of his inner conflict: loyal to the party and the president, charged with explaining each side to the other, he was also a Black man who felt deeply the wrongs done to his people.

When Black leaders wanted to see the president, Morrow worked tirelessly to arrange it, only to see requests denied as they neared approval — while other staff assured white Southerners they had little to fear on civil rights. It took years, but in 1958 the president agreed to address a summit of Black leaders. Morrow was dismayed when Eisenhower urged them to be patient; he could see from the audience's faces how badly it landed, and imagined the reaction across the Black community.

Eisenhower met civil rights leaders on June 23, 1958; Martin Luther King Jr. stands second from left, Morrow at the back. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

At the same time, Black Americans gave Morrow hell over the administration's indifference. After the Supreme Court ordered Montgomery's buses integrated, Black churches and homes were bombed, and the president said nothing forceful; critics said he cared more for Hungarians oppressed by the Soviets than for Black Americans oppressed at home. Many wrongly saw Morrow as the president's civil rights adviser and blamed him for the president's "blunders." When Eisenhower admitted at a press conference that he did not fully understand parts of his own civil rights bill, then fiercely contested in Congress, calls and letters poured in — including one from Jackie Robinson urging a veto of the weakened bill. Morrow came to dread going to the office.

The 1960 campaign

Vice President Richard Nixon's 1960 campaign ignored him too. When Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Atlanta shortly before the election, Morrow urged Nixon's managers to denounce it; they said nothing. John F. Kennedy phoned Coretta Scott King and wired Atlanta's mayor, King was released within twenty-four hours, and Kennedy won more of the Black vote — and the election.

Respect despite everything

Morrow ended his book heartsick at Eisenhower's lukewarm stand on civil rights, which he called the greatest burden of his eight years in Washington. Yet throughout he showed deep respect for both the president and the vice president — warm, decent, courteous, astute and practical men — and acknowledged that without Eisenhower's character and courage he could never have come to the White House, or stayed.

In an interview, he told a story not in the book. Near the end of his second term, Eisenhower promised to ask his business friends to find Morrow a job. Weeks later, at a dinner, the president told him — with tears in his eyes — that he had failed: corporate America was not yet ready to give a Black man a position of responsibility.

After the White House, Morrow became an assistant vice president at Bank of America and an executive associate at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton. A New York Times review called his memoir a political bombshell. He died in 1994, aged 88.

Sources

• National Park Service, Eisenhower National Historic Site, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The White House Years of E. Frederic Morrow — Morrow's memoir and other words from outside the government paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.