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on this day ~ Civil Rights Act of 1957 ~ In the Library Sept 9, 1957


In 1957, President Eisenhower sent Congress a proposal for civil rights legislation.

The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. It also established a federal Civil Rights Commission with authority to investigate discriminatory conditions and recommend corrective measures. The final act was weakened by Congress due to lack of support among the Democrats.

Cabinet Paper – The Civil Rights Program – Letter and Statement by the Attorney General, April 10, 1956 [19 pages] [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12090725]

Press Release, Statement of the Attorney General on the Proposed Civil Rights Legislation Before The Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee, February 14, 1957 [22 pages][E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12167080]

Fact Paper – The Administration and Civil Rights Legislation, March 27, 1957 [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12167051]

Memorandum, E. Frederic Morrow to Sherman Adams, July 12, 1957 [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12167063]

Letter, Val Washington (RNC) to DDE, July 18, 1957 [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12023121]

Press Release, Republican National Committee, August 7, 1957 [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12023122]

Letter, William P. Rogers to Joseph P. Martin, August 9, 1957 [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12090722]

Press Release by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, August 30, 1957 [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12167069]

Civil Rights Act of 1957 [Record Officer Reports to President on Pending Legislation, Box 111, Civil Rights HR 6127; NAID #12171136]

Report, Executive Branch Cooperation with the Commission on Civil Rights, February 27, 1959 (outlines the Commission’s authority, duties, responsibilities and actions) [19 pages] [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 10, Civil Rights Commission; NAID #12171139]

Pamphlet, The Commission on Civil Rights [E. Frederic Morrow Records, Box 9, Civil Rights Bill; NAID #12167074]

Photographs:

Images in the audiovisual collection

Additional Information:

Civil Rights Act of 1957 Subject Guide

resources ~ eisenhowerarchives.gov

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on this day … 9/9


490 B.C. – The Battle of Marathon took place between the invading Persian army and the Athenian Army. The marathon race was derived from the events that occurred surrounding this battle.

1776 – The second Continental Congress officially made the term “United States“, replacing the previous term “United Colonies.”

1836 – Abraham Lincoln received his license to practice law.

1850 – California became the 31st state to join the union.

1898 – In Omaha, NE, Tommy Fleming of Eau Claire, WI won the first logrolling championship.

1893 – U.S. President Grover Cleveland‘s wife, Frances Cleveland, gave birth to a daughter, Esther. It was the first time a president’s child was born in the White House.

1904 – Mounted police were used for the first time in the City of New York.

1911 – Italy declared war on the Ottoman Turks and annexed Libya, Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica in North Africa.

1919 – The majority of Boston’s police force went on strike. The force was made up of 1,500 men.

1919 – Alexander Graham Bell and Casey Baldwin’s HD-4, a hydrofoil craft, set a world marine speed record.

1926 – The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was created by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

1942 – Japan dropped incendiaries over NE in an attempt to set fire to the forests in Oregon and Washington. The forest did not ignite.

1943 – During World War II Allied forces landed at Taranto and Salerno.

1948 – North Korea became the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.

1950 – Sal Maglie (New York Giants) pitched a fourth consecutive shutout. Only four other pitchers in the National League had ever accomplished this feat.

1957 – The first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction was signed into law by U.S. President Eisenhower.

1965 – French President Charles de Gaulle announced that France was withdrawing from NATO to protest the domination of the U.S. in the organization.

1965 – Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched the eighth perfect game in major league baseball history.

1971 – Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings retired from the National Hockey League (NHL).

1979 – Tracy Austin, at 16, became the youngest player to win the U.S. Open women’s tennis title.

1981 – Nicaragua declared a state of economic emergency and banned strikes.

1983 – The Soviet Union announced that the Korean jetliner the was shot down on September 1, 1983 was not an accident or an error.

1984 – Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears broke Jim Brown’s combined yardage record when he reached 15,517 yards.

1986 – Frank Reed was taken hostage in Lebanon by pro-Iranian kidnappers. The director of a private school in Lebanon was released 44 months later.

1986 – Ted Turner presented the first of his colorized films on WTBS in Atlanta, GA.

1986 – Gennadiy Zakharov was indicted by a New York jury on espionage charges. Zakharov was a Soviet United Nations employee.

1987 – Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer aired for the last time on CBS.

1993 – Israeli and PLO leaders agreed to recognize each other.

1994 – The U.S. agreed to accept about 20,000 Cuban immigrants a year. This was in return for Cuba’s promise to halt the flight of refugees.

1994 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off on an 11-day mission.

1995 – Amtrak’s Broadway Limited service made its final run between New York City, NY and Chicago, IL.

1997 – Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political ally, formally renounced violence as it took its place in talks on Northern Ireland’s future.

1998 – Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr delivered to the U.S. Congress 36 boxes of material concerning his investigation of U.S. President Clinton.

1998 – Four tourists who had paid $32,500 each were taken in submarine to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The ship is 2 miles below the Atlantic off Newfoundland.

1999 – The Sega Dreamcast game system went on sale. By 1:00pm all Toys R Us locations in the U.S. had sold out.

2008 – The iTunes Music Store reached 100 million applications downloaded.

2009 – The iTunes Music Store reached 1.8 billion applications downloaded.

2014 – Apple unveiled the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch Edition.

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The end of the Truman era and the beginning of Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil rights Act


Civil Rights Under Truman and Eisenhower
As the Cold War raged during the late 1940s and 1950s, great changes occurred in American society, especially concerning civil rights. The civil rights movement gathered strength and momentum during the postwar years.
Truman and Civil Rights  See the source image
In efforts to preserve the support of southern whites, Truman at first avoided issues of civil rights for blacks. But he could not stay removed for long.
In 1947, the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights, created a year earlier, produced a report, To Secure These Rights, calling for the elimination of segregation.
In 1948, Truman endorsed the findings of the report and called for an end to racial discrimination in federal hiring practices. He also issued an executive order to end segregation in the military, an initiative that would be completed by Eisenhower. Although these moves cost Truman the support of many southern whites, the increased support of black voters made up for the political loss.
Eisenhower and the Civil Rights Acts Image result for eisenhower and the civil rights movement
Eisenhower backed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The former created a permanent Civil Rights Commission, as well as a Civil Rights Division within the Justice Department aimed at combating efforts to deny blacks the vote. The latter granted the federal courts the authority to register black voters.
Brown v. Board of Education
The fight for civil rights took a major leap forward in May 1954, when the Supreme Court, under the leadership of liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren, handed down one of the most famous decisions in American judicial history. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision and ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional, arguing that separate schools are inherently unequal. The Court demanded that the states desegregate immediately. Eisenhower ordered the desegregation of Washington, D.C., schools but at first refused to force southern states to comply with the Court’s ruling. Encouraged by this lack of federal backing, southern state governments engaged in “massive resistance” by choosing not to desegregate schools and by denying funding to districts that attempted desegregation. The resistance to integration was so fierce in Arkansas that Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to Little Rock to force desegregation of public schools there.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. In 1957, federal troops were called into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce integration of public schools.
The Civil Rights Movement Takes Shape
Amid the conflict over Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a strong civil rights movement began taking shape in the South. In December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man. Led by a minister, Martin Luther King Jr., Montgomery blacks organized a boycott of the bus system. Despite violent attacks on black leaders, the boycott continued, reducing bus revenue by over 60 percent. In 1956, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision outlawing segregation on buses.
The success of the Montgomery bus boycott inspired civil rights leaders to adopt Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience. To direct his followers in a campaign against segregation and discrimination, King and other black ministers established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. The SCLC soon found an ally in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which formed after a number of sit-ins at businesses that discriminated against blacks.
The civil rights movement gained strength by employing the doctrine of nonviolent civil disobedience during the 1950s. Led by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, southern blacks staged direct acts of defiance against segregation.
source: sparknotes.com
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on this day … 9/8


1565 – A Spanish expedition established the first permanent European settlement in North America at present-day St. Augustine, FL.

1664 – The Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to the British, who then renamed it New York.

1866 – The first recorded birth of sextuplets took place in Chicago, IL. The parents were James and Jennie Bushnell.

1892 – An early version of “The Pledge of Allegiance” appeared in “The Youth’s Companion.”

1893 – In New Zealand, the Electoral Act 1893 was passed by the Legislative Council. It was consented by the governor on September 19 giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.

1935 – U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, “The Kingfish” of Louisiana politics, was shot and mortally wounded. He died two days later.

1945 – In Washington, DC, a bus equipped with a two-way radio was put into service for the first time.

1945 – Bess Myerson of New York was crowned Miss America. She was the first Jewish contestant to win the title.

1951 – A peace treaty with Japan was signed by 48 other nations in San Francisco, CA.

1960 – NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, was dedicated by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The facility had been activated in July earlier that year.

1966 – NBC-TV aired the first episode of “Star Trek” entitled “The Man Trap”. The show was canceled on September 2, 1969.

1971 – In Washington, DC, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was inaugurated. The opening featured the premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.”

1973 – Hank Aaron hit his 709th home run.

1974 – U.S. President Ford granted an unconditional pardon to former U.S. President Nixon.

1975 – In Boston, MA, public schools began their court-ordered citywide busing program amid scattered incidents of violence.

1999 – Russia’s Mission Control switched off the Mir space station’s central computer and other systems to save energy during a planned six months of unmanned flights.

2015 – British researchers announced that evidence of a larger version of Stonehenge had been located about 2 miles from the Stonehenge location. There were 90 buried stones that had been found by ground penetrating radar.