DAY IN HISTORY-SEPT. 24, 1957

Eisenhower Federalizes National Guard and Sends Soldiers to Arkansas

Action taken to protect the “Little Rock Nine”

“Operation Arkansas”: Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division escort African-American students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in Sept. 1957, after the governor of Arkansas tried to enforce segregation. Photo courtesy of National Archives. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Southern states in the U.S. chafed at the 1954 unanimous decision by the Supreme Court indicating state-sponsored racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional (Brown v. Board of Education). Some Southern governors had no intention of abiding by that ruling.

On September 4, 1957, Orval Faubus, Arkansas Governor, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block nine Black students — six girls and three boys — from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. This action violated a federal order to de-segregate schools nationwide following the above-referenced Supreme Court ruling. The students, known as the “Little Rock Nine,” fled after they were met by an angry mob of hundreds of White citizens who threatened to lynch them.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was having none of it. He first warned Governor Faubus to follow the federal order, but the president increased the pressure when Little Rock mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann requested federal assistance. Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, enabling him to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and order 1,000 troops from the Army’s 101st Airborne…