Wayne's Response to Brown v. Board of Education (PJW)

"Wayne's Response to Brown v. Board of Education" is an excerpt from Frontier Spirit: An Unauthorized History of the Wayne Administration written by an anonymous White House insider.

Wayne's Response
The 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education caused an uproar across the nation. While there were those that supported it, such as the liberals in the northeast, there was a storm of controversy elsewhere, and the White House was not immune to the storm. Of course, publicly Wayne couldn't just go out and say "the negros don't belong in the same schools as whites". When he addressed the Washington Post, the President stated that the ruling was "historic" and that he hoped it would help "create unity and bring the nation closer together".

Behind locked doors, however, it was a much different story. The ruling had angered the President, but unlike the tirades of some other opponents of the ruling, Wayne's anger spilled out in blunt and to-the-point phrases. "Whites and blacks are not equal," he told me privately after his speech to the Post. "Maybe one day they can be, but not right now. The difference in education is too much of gap to mix races right now."

"How long, then, until they're ready?" I asked him. As for my personal opinion on the ruling, I couldn't really say. I had no children that needed schooling so I didn't really have a dog in the fight.

"I couldn't tell you. In 1896 they ruled that schools should be separate but equal, and I believe that is the correct course. But we need to stay on that course until whites and blacks are actually equal. And even if we kept them separate but equal I don't think the two races would be equal even by the end of my term.

"I knew I was making a mistake when I listened to Eisenhower and appointed Warren as Chief Justice." At this point the President had poured himself a glass of whiskey and stared out the window at the White House's lawn. "Warren made this decision - let him enforce it."

I nodded in agreement. Of course, we had little idea at the time of how costly this court ruling would ultimately have on the administration and the United States.