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Intergration In Little Rock, Arkansas and The Deep South

Uncle Tom's Cabin

or Life among the Lowly

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Local customs, however hardened by time, are not decreed in heaven. Habits and feelings they engender may be counteracted and moderated.

Select Here: Experience attests that such local habits and feelings will yield, gradually though this be, to law and education.

And educational influences are exerted not only by explicit teaching. They vigorously flow from the fruitful exercise of the responsibility of those charged with political official power, and from the almost unconsciously transforming actualities of living under law.

Select here: The Southern National Anthem, Dixie

EISENHOWER WAS RELUCTANT to act in the nation’s growing civil rights crisis, even to use federal soldiers to enforce civil rights law. He thought the Supreme Court’s school integration decision was premature. He wanted to uphold the court’s ruling, but he did not want to offend his Southern friends; he wanted to enforce the law, if he had to, but he did not want to use force to do so. His basic belief was that the right to attend an integrated school was not nearly as important as the right of Southern blacks to vote. Confusion over where he stood led many segregationists to convince themselves that Eisenhower, faced with a showdown, would not act.
       On Sept. 4, 1957, Eisenhower, weary from a bruising fight with Congress over passage of a civil rights bill, flew to the naval base at Newport, R.I., for vacation and golf.
       
In the end, Eisenhower had to be pushed hard before he would act. But, at the critical moment, he lived up to his oath of office.

       Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, immediately presented Eisenhower with the problem he most dreaded — outright defiance of a court order by a governor. Faubus had called out the Arkansas National Guard and stationed troops around Little Rock’s Central High School to prevent the entrance of black pupils. Faubus, who knew of Eisenhower’s Southern sympathies, counted on the president to stay out of the situation. And clearly Eisenhower wanted to stay out. He had told a news conference a month earlier that he could not imagine circumstances that would induce him to use federal troops to enforce a court order.
       Brooks Hays, an Arkansas congressman, talked to Faubus and informed Eisenhower that Faubus wanted a way out of the situation. Attorney General Brownell told Ike not to talk to Faubus. But Ike said he’d talk. The governor flew north to Newport. The president told Faubus to change the National Guard’s orders, directing it to keep the peace while black students enrolled at Central High. Faubus agreed, or seemed to agree. When he returned to Arkansas, he did nothing.
       Brownell told Eisenhower he might now have to use federal troops. The president said he was loathe to do this as it might only spread violence.
       On Sept. 23, a mob gathered around Central High. Nine black students were spirited into the school by a side door.
       It was a nasty scene.
       
EISENHOWER FORCED TO ACT
       Brownell told Eisenhower he had to act; the mayor had ordered the black students removed from the school.
       Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor wanted to use the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the law. Eisenhower agreed. He did not want to return to Washington, feeling it might only magnify the crisis. The mayor of Little Rock sent Eisenhowre a telegram saying that there was urgent need for federal troops.
       Eisenhower realized his strategy had broken down. He had no options, changed his mind and requested federal troops. The army called in the 101st Airborne; 500 troops arrived at the school within six hours, another 500 by nightfall.
       The president changed his mind about returning to Washington and went on the air from the White House that night with an address saying he was not sending the army into the South to integrate schools but to maintain the law. His conciliatory approach had little effect, but the action convinced most white Southerners they could not use force to prevent school integration. The crisis faded away.
       In the end, Eisenhower had to be pushed hard before he would act. But, at the critical moment, he lived up to his oath of office. He told a friend that Little Rock had been “troublesome beyond imagination.”

 

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