President Eisenhower (Courtesy: Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower Address to the Nation on the Little Rock Integration Crisis (September 24, 1957)
Following the decision to desegregate public schools (Brown v Board of Education, 1954), there was widespread resistance to the orders. In 1957, the integration crisis came to a head in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus challenged efforts by the school board to institute a gradual school desegregation process. He ordered state National Guard troops to defy Federal law and stop nine African-American students from attending an all-white high school.
Images of the subsequent mob violence directed towards the “Little Rock Nine” were seen around the world. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on September 24, 1957, announced he would send in federal troops to defend the court ruling and protect the children.
“In that city, under the leadership of demagogic extremists, disorderly mobs have deliberately prevented the carrying out of proper orders from a Federal Court. Local authorities have not eliminated that violent opposition and, under the law, I yesterday issued a Proclamation calling upon the mob to disperse.
This morning the mob again gathered in front of the Central High School of Little Rock, obviously for the purpose of again preventing the carrying out of the Court’s order relating to the admission of Negro children to that school.
Whenever normal agencies prove inadequate to the task and it becomes necessary for the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to use its powers and authority to uphold Federal Courts, the President’s responsibility is inescapable. In accordance with that responsibility, I have today issued an Executive Order directing the use of troops under Federal authority to aid in the execution of Federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas. This became necessary when my Proclamation of yesterday was not observed, and the obstruction of justice still continues.
….The interest of the nation in the proper fulfillment of the law’s requirements cannot yield to opposition and demonstrations by some few persons.
Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.”
Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library
Although the nine students enrolled, resistance to desegregation continued as Faubus closed Little Rock high schools the following year and the number of desegregated schools in the South dropped precipitously in the ensuing years.
Eisenhower later described this as the toughest decision he had made since D-Day. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, usually an Ike supporter and powerful head of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, protested what he called:
“the high-handed and illegal methods being employed by the armed forces of the United States… who are carrying out your orders to mix the races in the public schools… by applying tactics which must have been copied from the manual issued [to] the officers of Hitler’s storm troopers.”
Source: Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace, pp. 716-727
The video of Eisenhower’s televised speech is available at C-Span Video Library. Transcript of address
More material on the crisis can be found at the Eisenhower Presidential Library archive.
Read more about Eisenhower, his administration and the Little Rock crisis in these books.
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents-now available in hardcover and eBook and audiobook
Don’t Know Much About History (Revised, Expanded and Updated Edition)
