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Unlock This CourseRemember, in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown case that segregated schools broke the Constitution, but it set no deadline. Three years later most Southern schools had not changed at all.
Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, was thought to be a fairly moderate Southern city. Its school board agreed to obey the ruling, slowly. Its plan began with one school: Central High School, which had about 1,900 students, all of them white. Black students would join in September 1957.
Nine black teenagers were chosen. They became known as the Little Rock Nine. Among them were Elizabeth Eckford, aged 15, and Ernest Green, the only one in his final year. They were guided by Daisy Bates, the president of the NAACP in Arkansas, who met them, advised them and spoke for them to the press.
Key terms:
The Governor of Arkansas was Orval Faubus. He had not been known as a strong supporter of segregation, but he faced an election in 1958 and wanted the votes of white people who opposed mixed schools.
Eisenhower did not want to act. He had never praised the Brown ruling in public, and he believed that laws alone could not change how people felt. In July 1957 he had said he could not imagine sending troops to enforce a court order.
The events of 23 September left him little choice. A state governor and a mob had defied a federal court, and the Mayor of Little Rock sent a telegram begging for help.
On 24 September 1957 he sent more than 1,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. He also put the 10,000 men of the Arkansas National Guard under federal control, so Faubus could no longer give them orders. On 25 September soldiers with fixed bayonets walked the nine into Central High.
On the evening of 24 September Eisenhower spoke to the nation on television. He said: 'Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.' He also warned that the USA's enemies were using the events to damage the country's good name abroad. His reasons were about law and order, not about support for mixed schools.
The soldiers could get the nine through the doors, but they could not protect them inside every classroom and corridor. All year the students were tripped, kicked, spat at and insulted by some white students. One of the nine, Minnijean Brown, was expelled in February 1958 after she answered back. The other eight finished the year. In May 1958 Ernest Green became the first black student to graduate from Central High. Martin Luther King came to watch.
The struggle was not over:
For the first time since the 1870s, a president used federal troops in the South to protect the rights of black Americans. It showed that, when pushed, the federal government would use force to make a state obey the Supreme Court. Cooper v Aaron confirmed that states could not pick which rulings to follow.
It took soldiers to get nine students into one school. This showed how determined white resistance was, and that a court ruling changed nothing unless the government was ready to back it. Faubus's election win told other Southern politicians that resistance was popular. School integration stayed very slow.
Television pictures of a mob screaming at schoolchildren shocked many Americans and won sympathy for civil rights. They also embarrassed the USA abroad during the Cold War, because the Soviet Union used them as proof that American talk of freedom was false.
Little Rock also showed campaigners that the president would act only when a crisis forced him to. That lesson shaped the protests of the 1960s.
Don't mix up the two sets of soldiers. The Arkansas National Guard, under Faubus, kept the nine out. The federal troops of the 101st Airborne, sent by Eisenhower, took them in. And don't write that Eisenhower acted because he believed in integration: he acted because a governor and a mob had defied a federal court.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
For nearly three weeks Eisenhower dithered while armed guardsmen kept nine children out of school. He had never spoken up for the Brown decision, and when he met Faubus he let himself be fooled. Only when a howling mob made the United States look foolish on the world's television screens did he finally send soldiers. Even then he talked of law and order, not of the rights of black children. This was no champion of civil rights. It was a president shamed into action.
What impression does the author give about President Eisenhower's handling of events at Little Rock? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that Eisenhower handled Little Rock weakly and unwillingly. The language is critical: he 'dithered' for nearly three weeks, which suggests a leader who could not make up his mind, and he 'let himself be fooled' by Faubus, which makes him seem easily tricked. The phrases 'only when' and 'finally' stress how late he acted, and 'shamed into action' suggests he was pushed by embarrassment, not by principle. The author has also chosen what to stress. The extract dwells on the delay and on his motives, and says he spoke of 'law and order, not of the rights of black children'. It passes quickly over the fact that he did send troops and says nothing of what they achieved, so the reader is left with a picture of a reluctant president.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations and what they suggest, and then explains what the author chose to stress and to leave out.
You do not need your own knowledge here, so don't tell the story of Little Rock. Pick out loaded words such as 'dithered' and 'shamed' and say what each one makes the reader think about Eisenhower. Then add one sentence on what the author has left out.