The Modern Presidency and Civil Rights: Rhetoric on Race From Roosevelt to Nixon.

• Author: Zarefsky, David
• Position: Book Reviews

The Modern Presidency and Civil Rights: Rhetoric on Race From Roosevelt to Nixon. By Garth E. Pauley. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2001; PP. vii + 259. $39.95.

No American social problem has been more intractable than race. During the mid-20th century, responsibility for leadership on this problem passed to the President, who discharged it primarily through public discourse. Rhetorical leadership on civil rights, from its advent to its zenith, is chronicled and assessed in Garth Pauley's careful analysis. Although the book is based on his doctoral dissertation and although earlier versions of two chapters have been published previously, there is ample new material, the presentation hangs together well, and the hook is free of most traces of dissertation style.

The book's subtitle is more accurate than its title. This is not a broad sweep of the modem Presidency. The seven most recent Presidents are not considered in any detail. Rather, it is a thorough examination of four key Presidential speeches on matters of race: Harry Truman's address to the 38th annual conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on June 29, 1947; Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech of September 24, 1957 announcing the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock; John F. Kennedy's speech on the occasion of the integration of the University of Alabama, June 11, 1963; and Lyndon B. Johnson's March 15, 1965 address to a joint session of Congress urging the speedy passage of a voting rights act. Instead of being disappointed at the book's failure to fulfill the promise of a misleadingly broad title, the reader should be pleased and impressed with the quality of those four analyses. For each speech, Pauley provides historical and biographical context. He then engages the te xt in a close reading that seamlessly blends interpretation and assessment. He provides a rich selection of domestic and international responses to the speech and then offers his concluding thoughts.

The historical and biographical treatments are accurate. Beyond that, they convey the complexity of each of these four situations: the interplay of personal values and politics in Truman's case, the incongruity between Eisenhower's previous statements and his decision to send troops, the effect of Kennedy's 1960 campaign rhetoric on expectations of his performance, and the dilemmas Johnson faced because of the growing distrust of moderate black leaders by more...