Executive Order 10730: Little Rock Desegregation

Context

Racial segregation and discrimination were common and ugly realities of American life when Eisenhower became president in January 1953. In most southern states, African Americans could not register to vote or serve on juries. Laws and customs barred African Americans from all-white restaurants, hotels, or swimming pools. Public schools were for blacks or whites only. In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that these racially separate facilities were constitutional, provided they were equal. Rarely if ever, however, were they equal. Outside the South, racial discrimination was also common, even though it was usually the result of long-standing practice rather than legal requirement. There were segregated schools in Kansas, Delaware, and Massachusetts, just as there were in Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas. In his first State of the Union address in February 1953, Eisenhower declared that “discrimination against minorities” was a national problem arising from the “persistence of distrust and of fear” (Eisenhower, vol. 1953, p. 30).

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court struck a major blow against racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. In a unanimous ruling, the Court reversed the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson and declared that “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional (qtd. in Pach and Richardson, p. 141). A year later, in May 1955, the court issued a second ruling, popularly known as Brown II, which called for the desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed” (qtd. in Pach and Richardson, p. 143). This instruction was confusing and contradictory, since “deliberate” contradicts “speed.” The language was the result of an uneasy compromise among the justices, who hoped that by not imposing a deadline for compliance, they would encourage communities with segregated schools to accept their decision and carry it out within a reasonable period of time.

Despite this hope, many white southerners were furious. On March 12, 1956, nineteen U.S. senators and seventy-seven members of the House of Representatives signed the “Southern Manifesto,” which condemned the Supreme Court for using “naked power” to intervene in a matter of states' rights and called for the reversal of the Brown decision. The Southern Manifesto also asserted that the Court's decision was “destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through ninety years of patient effort by the good people of both races.” White citizens councils organized throughout the South to mobilize resistance to the Court's ruling and to intimidate local officials who did comply. As a result, most local school boards emphasized “deliberate” rather than “speed.” They moved slowly, if at all, to desegregate all-white schools.

Little Rock, Arkansas, was one community that did comply, by preparing a plan for the gradual integration of its schools. In 1955 the local school board proposed to admit blacks to previously all-white schools in stages over a period of five to seven years. The first step would be the desegregation of Central High School in September 1957. The board members hoped that this plan for gradual action would satisfy African Americans, who wanted an end to racial discrimination, as well as most whites, who said they needed time to adjust to a major social change.

The plan, however, produced opposition. The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a lawsuit to force more rapid integration of Little Rock's schools. On August 28, 1956, a federal district judge ruled against the NAACP. A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision on April 26, 1957. As the beginning of the school year approached, a local citizens council charged that “white and Negro revolutionaries” from the NAACP were responsible for the plan to desegregate Central High and threatened to “shed blood if necessary to stop this work of Satan” (Freyer, p. 81).

Governor Orval Faubus met secretly with the leaders of the citizens councils and decided to support them. Faubus had been a moderate on racial issues, and he said publicly that school issues were local matters. But he concluded that he could not win a third term as governor in 1958 without the support of white segregationists, whose voices were increasingly prominent in the aftermath of the Brown decisions. The governor maintained that he was concerned about the possibility of violence at Central High and so favored a delay in implementing the Little Rock desegregation plan. But after a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas rejected that argument, Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to Little Rock. On September 4, the troops prevented the nine African American students who were supposed to start classes at Central High from entering the school.

The governor's actions created a constitutional crisis. Faubus was a state official who had defied a federal court. Eisenhower informed the governor that he had taken an oath when he became president to defend the Constitution and would do so “by every legal means” available (Eisenhower, vol. 1957, p. 659). Eisenhower, however, wished to avoid a showdown. Although he believed in the principles of equal opportunity and equality before the law, he did not support the Brown decision. He thought that the Supreme Court, in trying to achieve “school integration,” might also cause “social disintegration” if white supporters of segregation resorted to violence (qtd. in Pach and Richardson, p. 143). He insisted that segregation and discrimination could not be eradicated by government action; what was necessary instead was a change in people's hearts and minds. Because of this outlook, Eisenhower offered very limited support to the civil rights movement. Because of his commitment to gradual change, he wished to avoid a confrontation in Little Rock between federal and state authorities.

Faubus, too, sought a negotiated solution to the crisis. On September 14, he met with Eisenhower, who was vacationing in Newport, Rhode Island. The president knew that federal authority would ultimately prevail over state power, but he thought the crisis could be resolved more easily if Faubus avoided a humiliating, public defeat. He suggested that the governor change the orders of the National Guard from preventing desegregation to preserving public order at Central High. Faubus seemed to accept this solution but, after returning to Arkansas, decided instead to remove the National Guard from the school. Eisenhower was irate that Faubus appeared to have broken his word. The police in Little Rock were no match for the angry mob of over a thousand people that gathered at Central High on September 23. The mob forced the nine black students, who had entered through a side door, to return home because of the danger of violence. Later that day, Eisenhower released a proclamation requiring the members of these “unlawful assemblages” to “cease and desist.” But the next morning, an even larger mob surrounded Central High. Eisenhower then issued Executive Order 10730 authorizing the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock.