Little Rock Boils Over
On this date in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division into action. The enemy was not the Soviet menace in Europe but citizens of the United States—because they were intent on thwarting the court-ordered desegregation of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Images from Little Rock-of the violence that accompanied the crisis, the black youths confronted by hysterical hatred, the fixed bayonets that cleared the way for the children to attend classes-became enduring emblems of the struggle for civil rights.
In 1954, when 10 million children attended single-race schools throughout the South, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” States were ordered to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed.”
Though the Brown decision is now seen as a turning point in race relations, it was received with skepticism at the time. Whites in the South almost universally viewed it as an unjust intrusion into their affairs. Eisenhower refused public comment, but privately he disagreed with the decision, feeling it would retard progress toward racial harmony.
What was more, only 53 percent of Southern blacks favored forced integration. The black author Zora Neale Hurston saw “a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them” as an insult rather than an honor. Few disputed that schools for black children were inferior, but Southern states had tripled spending on them in real dollars since 1940, bringing them close to parity by the mid-1950s.
Little Rock was an unlikely flash point. Arkansas was one of two Southern states that accepted the desegregation ruling as law, and its state universities were already open to blacks. Little Rock’s authorities had drawn up a careful six-year, court-approved plan for the inclusion of blacks in its schools. Central High, in a large, elegant building and attended mainly by working-class whites, was chosen to be the first facility to receive African-American students.
Orval Faubus had been elected governor of Alabama as a reformer and had, in 1956, defeated a staunch segregationist to win a second term. But faced with the first step toward desegregation in Little Rock, he began warning of mob violence. “Blood will run in the streets,” he said. On September 2 he mobilized the Arkansas National Guard “to maintain or restore the peace and good order of this community.” The next day, with school set to open, Mayor Woodrow W. Mann of Little Rock said the governor “had called out the National Guard to put down trouble where none existed.”
Faubus’s alarm was self-fulfilling. A mob of about 400 whites showed up to jeer the nine black students who had been selected to effect the integration. The National Guard soldiers allowed white students in and turned the blacks away. Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, arriving at school alone, had to walk a gauntlet of white adults shouting “Nigger go home!” and “Hang her black ass!” before being turned back and catching a bus out of danger.
The news and pictures flashed around the world, embarrassing the nation at a time when the competition for global prestige vis-à-vis the Soviets was paramount. The scene was “nauseating and pitiful,” a British newspaper said.
On September 14 Faubus met with Eisenhower, who two months earlier had said he couldn’t imagine sending federal troops into the South. Faubus called for a “cooling-off period.” The President stood by his declaration that “the federal Constitution will be upheld.”
Enjoined by a district court, Faubus finally pulled the National Guard from the scene on September 20. On Monday, September 23, at 7 a.m., a crowd of a thousand began to gather outside of Central High. Administrators moved the black children inside through a side door. Word spread through the mob: “The niggers are in our school!” A melee broke out. Reporters, particularly ones from black newspapers, were attacked and beaten. White parents streamed into the school to remove their children. At noon, with the police unable or unwilling to control the situation, the black students were removed for their own safety.
The riot prompted Eisenhower to stop dithering. He federalized the Arkansas Guard and sent in 1,100 soldiers from the regular army. On September 25 the “Little Rock nine” were finally escorted into school by a phalanx of paratroopers.
Troops patrolled the school hallways for months, but they couldn’t prevent ongoing harassment and petty physical abuse. In May 1958 Ernest Green, the only senior among the group, became the first African-American to graduate from Central High.
In the fall of 1958 Governor Faubus closed all Little Rock’s schools for a year rather than allow the integration to proceed. He won reelection with an overwhelming plurality and rode the race issue to six terms as governor.
The Little Rock nine became symbols of dignity and composure in the face of virulent, spitting racism. All of the children went on to college. Forty years later they were honored by President Bill Clinton as “foot soldiers for freedom.”
But the end of the story does not do justice to their courage. Southern schools, under pressure from federal courts, did gradually integrate. But over time the ideological complexion of the Supreme Court shifted. Busing to achieve integration proved contentious and ineffective. Whites fled inner cities for suburbs and enrolled their children in private academies. The goal of full educational desegregation became a mirage.
Today “resegregation” is the trend in American education. Achievement by minority students continues to lag behind that of whites, and the Supreme Court has ruled out forced integration as a way to address the disparity. In the South, 71 percent of black students attend schools with nonwhite majorities, and in urban areas the degree of segregation is even higher. Minority schools continue to offer inferior facilities. The great social experiment of which Little Rock was a hallmark has not yet been successfully concluded.