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Arkansas National Guard troops and large crowd outside of Little Rock's Central High School, September 5, 1957.
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Eisenhower and the Little Rock Crisis
Can you imagine armed troops blocking you from going to school? That's what happened in Little Rock, Arkansas in the Fall of 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling at Central High School. Governor Faubus was openly defying a 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Topeka, which ordered that U.S. public schools be desegregated "with all deliberate speed." President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, was presented with a difficult problem. He wanted to uphold the Constitution and the laws, but also avoid a possible bloody confrontation in Arkansas, where emotions ran high. What do you think Eisenhower did?
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