Open-Ear Policy

Visiting with President Eisenhower for 45 minutes one day last week were four top U.S. Negro leaders: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of Montgomery, Ala.; N.A.A.C.P. Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins, A. (for Asa) Philip Randolph, founding (1925) boss of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Lester B. Granger, executive secretary for the National Urban League. The four were mindful of the President's recent exhortation to Negro publishers that Negroes be "patient" in their quest for full civil rights, and Wilkins, for one, had criticized Ike roundly. As a result, both the Negro leaders and the President kept their guards up and their tempers down.

Randolph read to the President a nine-point demand for executive programs ranging from a White House conference between Negro and Southern leaders, to handing out special aid to schools that might lose state funds under Southern anti-integration statutes, to stiffer Justice Department action on cases where Negroes have been denied voting rights.

The President omitted the irritating word "patience" but frankly pointed out that "violent" federal actions would aggravate racial situations. Said he: "We are doing our best." Announced Union Boss Randolph approvingly after the meeting: "You remember Mr. Roosevelt? You must remember that he did most of the talking. He was a glamorous personality, and it was difficult to get a word in edgewise. Well, this man [Eisenhower] listened."

Last week the President also:

P: Asked Congress to approve an "agreement for cooperation" between the U.S. and the Euratom nations (France, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg) that offers U.S. financial aid, designs for five to seven nuclear reactors, engineers and scientists and a 20-year supply of reasonably priced U 235 for a new $350 million European power grid that will generate a million kilowatts of power. Since Europe needs cheap nuclear power more than the hydroelectric rich U.S., Ike believes the U.S. can use Euratom experience to study problems of nuclear-power development, will benefit even more because Euratom will inevitably pull European nations toward a healthy European unity.

P: Held a state luncheon for visiting Sardar Mohammed Daoud, fierce-eyed, austere Prime Minister of neutral Afghanistan, while the U.S. firmed up plans to give Afghanistan $26 million more in aid. The money will be used to fix the roads so that the U.S.S.R.'s landlocked southern neighbor can ship its Persian lamb pelts to free-world markets.

P: Sent his annual report to Congress on U.S. participation in the U.N., credited the world organization with "solid achievements" during 1957. After Russia charged that the U.S. was urging Turkey to attack Syria, wrote the President, the U.N. Assembly's open discussion "demonstrated to the world that Syria and the Soviet Union had manufactured the 'crisis' as a propaganda maneuver against the West."

P: Got from U.S. Information Boss George Allen a formal report on his investigation of American tourist complaints that the U.S. missed the propaganda boat with its exhibits, particularly abstract art, at the Brussels World's Fair (TIME, June 30). Allen diplomatically suggested some changes but generally gave the U.S. exhibit high marks: "Europeans are particularly impressed by the absence of heavy-handed propaganda and by the fact that the U.S., which they know to be powerful industrially and economically, has not attempted to overshadow the fair with a show of industrial might."

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