Eisenhower Library. For a later and more
comprehensive expression of these sentiments, see
"Extemporaneous Remarks by the President at the
National Conference on Civil Rights, 9 June 1959,"
_Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D.
Eisenhower, 1959_, pp. 447-50.]

Despite the President's reluctance to lead in civil rights matters,
major blame for the lack of substantial progress must be assigned to
the third branch of government. The 1957 and 1960 civil rights laws,
pallid harbingers of later powerful legislation in this field,
demonstrated Congress's lukewarm commitment to civil rights reform
that severely limited federal action. The reluctance of Congress to
enact the reforms augured in the _Brown_ decision convinced many
Negroes that they would have to take further measures to gain their
full constitutional rights. They had seen presidents and federal
judges embrace principles long argued by civil rights organizations,
but to little avail. Seven years after the _Brown_ decision, Negroes
were still disfranchised in large areas of the south, still (p. 478)
endured segregated public transportation and places of public
accommodation, and still encountered discrimination in employment and
housing throughout the nation. Nor had favorable court decisions and
federal attempts at enforcement reversed the ominous trend in black
unemployment rates, which had been rising for a decade. Above all,
court decisions could not spare Negroes the sense of humiliation that
segregation produced. Segregation implied racial inferiority, a
"constant corroding experience," as Clarence Mitchell once called it.
It was segregation's seeming imperviousness to governmental action in
the 1950's that caused the new generation of civil rights leaders to
develop new civil rights techniques.

Their new methods forced the older leaders, temporarily at least, into
eclipse. No longer could they convince their juniors of the efficacy
of legal action, and the 1950's ended with the younger generation
taking to the streets in the first spontaneous battles of their civil
rights revolution. Under the direction of the Southern Christian
Leadership Council and its charismatic founder, Martin Luther King,
Jr., the strategy of massive civil disobedience, broached in 1948 by
A. Philip Randolph, became a reality. Other organizations quickly
joined the battle, inc