Ike in office

American Visions, Feb-March, 1995

Photography had been in existence for more than a century before an image was captured of an African American working in the White House in an executive capacity. But it was no fault of American photographers.

Although African Americans worked in the "People's House" or on its grounds from its inception, until the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, they had always served either as domestics or laborers.

Soon after the 1952 election, Eisenhower instructed his incoming White House chief of staff, Sherman Adams, to include qualified African Americans in his new administration. Eisenhower's edict cracked open the door to wider black employment in the federal government and led the Pittsburgh Courier to describe things as "decidedly different from what they were under the Democrats."

Before 1953, the rare blacks who worked in government service generally held either foreign policy assignments in African countries or a few specified posts in domestic affairs that dealt with "Negro matters." Eisenhower continued such appointments by naming African Americans as ambassador to Liberia and as an alternate delegate to the United Nations. At home, he named an African American as an assistant in the Housing and Home Finance Administration.

However, Eisenhower also appointed blacks to positions that in no way concerned racial matters and that previously had been held only by whites. J. Ernest Wilkins, a lawyer from Chicago, for example, was appointed assistant secretary of labor. In that capacity, he made history when, on August 18, 1954, he became the first African American to represent his department at a Cabinet meeting. Another high post in the Labor Department, the assistant to the secretary, went to Samuel R. Pierce Jr. Eisenhower also appointed Samuel Richardson to be chief of the Parole Board, a position Richardson held until the president elevated him to the federal bench. Archibald Carey became chairman of the President's Employment Policy Committee and also served as an alternate delegate to the United Nations. Louis B. Toomer took over as registrar of the Treasury, and Cora M. Brown joined the Post Office Department as associate general counsel. Eisenhower even brought his considerable powers of presidential persuasion to bear to convince his irascible and racially unenlightened secretary of agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, that at least one African American should be given a position of responsibility in the Department of Agriculture.

The Eisenhower administration did not limit the appointment of African Americans to more visible high-level positions. The black press took notice of the increased number of African Americans in the middle levels of government agencies as well: "There are far more Negro faces around here now than at any time in the past 20 years," rejoiced the Courier. One measure of an expanded black presence--and of the intense restrictions of the past--is that, in january 1953, Lois Lippman of Boston became the first African-American secretary to join the White House staff.

But it was the selection of E. Frederic Morrow as the first African American to hold an executive position in the White House that best underscores both the administration's genuine efforts to open federal employment to blacks and the ambiguous attitude of the president and the administration toward African Americans.

A minister's son, Morrow had graduated from Bowdoin College and worked for the National Urban League and the NAACP before entering the army during World War II. After the war, he attended Rutgers University School of Law on the GI Bill before joining the public affairs division of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). In 1952, Morrow took a brief leave of absence from CBS to join Eisenhower's election campaign, then returned to his New York job.

Early in the transition period, Adams queried him about working for the new administration. Then in his forties, Morrow expressed his interest in coming to Washington but stressed that he wished neither to be a black spokesperson nor to handle issues relating exclusively to black Americans. After a second meeting, Adams advised Morrow to resign from CBS, which he did; unfortunately, disagreement over Morrow's salary soon marred his relations with the presidential transition team. Now unemployed, Morrow spent most of his savings while waiting to hear word of his new job, only to learn from Bernard Shanley, Eisenhower's special counsel, that there was no opening for him in the White House.

Finally, through the efforts of Valores Washington, the director of minority affairs for the Republican National Committee, and others, Morrow was offered a position as adviser on business affairs in the Department of Commerce, which he accepted. Almost two years later, Adams called Morrow into his office and told him that he would finally join the White House staff. There, Morrow worked as administrative officer for the Special Projects Group until 1957, when he became an aide to Arthur Larson, Eisenhower's chief speech writer. But Morrow never established a comfortable working relationship with Larson, and in 1958 he returned to his position with the Special Projects Group.