Executive Order 10730: Little Rock Desegregation

Impact

On the evening of September 24, Eisenhower gave a televised address to explain why he had issued his executive order. He said that he had no alternative to sending in troops because of the “disorderly mobs” led by “demagogic extremists” and the failure of local authorities to restore law and order. If he had not acted in these “extraordinary and compelling circumstances,” the result would have been “anarchy.” Eisenhower emphasized that the troops' mission was not to speed integration but to make sure that “mob rule” would not “override the decisions of our courts.”

Eisenhower did not say that school desegregation was a matter of civil rights or equal rights. Instead, he complained that events in Little Rock had damaged America's international prestige in the cold war competition with communism. “Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation,” he asserted. “We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations.” He called on the people of Arkansas to help in ending the trouble at Central High so that the federal troops could be withdrawn and the “blot upon the fair name and high honor of our nation in the world will be removed” (Eisenhower, vol. 1957, pp. 689–694). While some Americans praised Eisenhower's actions, there was also furious criticism. Faubus maintained that Arkansas was “occupied territory.” Senator Richard Russell, a Democrat from Georgia, claimed that the soldiers in Little Rock were using the same tactics as “Hitler's storm troopers” (qtd. in Pach and Richardson, p. 154).

The troops restored order, but the situation did not return to normal at Central High during 1957–1958. Troops escorted the African American students to class. The soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division left Central High in late November, but National Guard troops under federal command remained until the end of the school year. The Little Rock Nine, as the black students were known, attracted international attention for their courage and commitment. In May 1958, Ernest Green, the only senior in the Little Rock Nine, became the first African American graduate of Central High.

Central High and all the other public high schools in Little Rock were closed during the 1958–1959 school year. The local school board asked for a delay of two years before continuing its desegregation plan. In Cooper v. Aaron the Supreme Court unanimously rejected its petition for delay on September 29. Faubus instead closed all four Little Rock high schools during 1958–1959. His decision helped him win reelection in 1958 and again in the next three elections. Eisenhower took no action to reopen the schools because there were no disorderly mobs or angry protests. Once more his goal was to preserve public order, not to promote integration. The Little Rock schools reopened in September 1959, and a few African American students attended two local high schools. Some parents, however, enrolled their children in a new, private all-white high school. The pace of school desegregation in Little Rock and in the South was extremely slow while Eisenhower was president. When he left the White House, less than 1 percent of African American students in the Deep South attended integrated schools. The percentage did not rise significantly until the last half of the 1960s.

It is ironic that Eisenhower used federal troops to enforce a court order concerning school desegregation. Eisenhower was not a vigorous supporter of civil rights. He had lived much of his life in states where racial segregation was common. Until the very end of his military career, the U.S. Army had separate black and white units. Eisenhower was uncomfortable in dealing with racial issues. He never spoke out in favor of civil rights as an urgent national issue; he thought the federal government had only limited powers to eliminate racial injustice. He was sympathetic to white southerners who said that advocates of equal rights under the law were demanding too much too soon. In the fall of 1956, when the governor of Texas used the National Guard to remove African-American students from previously all-white schools in Texarkana and Mansfield, Eisenhower condemned “extremists on both sides” but refused to take further action. When discussing civil rights at a news conference in July 1957—just weeks before the Little Rock crisis—Eisenhower declared, “I can't imagine any set of circumstances that would ever induce me to send Federal troops … into any area to enforce the orders of a Federal court, because I believe [the] common sense of America will never require it” (qtd. in Pach and Richardson, p. 150).

Still, by issuing his executive order, Eisenhower became the first president since Reconstruction to do precisely that. He took this step because he knew that he had taken an oath as president “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” Although he had reservations about the Brown decision, he understood that the Supreme Court was the final authority in interpreting the Constitution. Failure to abide by the Supreme Court's decision would produce chaos. He issued the executive order not to promote desegregation but to insure that the order of a federal court and the laws of the land were faithfully executed.