In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

61 7 A MEANINGLESS GESTURE The ink on the Civil Rights Act of  was barely dry when racially motivated violence threatened to erupt in Little Rock, Arkansas, in late September. Only weeks earlier, Russell had worried aloud that President Eisenhower might dispatch federal troops southward to desegregate public schools. Now the atmosphere of racial unrest in Arkansas barreled down a slippery incline toward Russell’s once-implausible scenario. By year’s end, the unrest in Arkansas would further polarize southern and northern members of Congress over civil rights, and much of the progress achieved by the century’s first civil rights act would be lost in a dark cloud of bitterness and suspicion. In early September, following a court-ordered plan to desegregate the city’s public schools, the Little Rock school board prepared for the uneventful enrollment of nine black students at the city’s Central High School. Sensing an opportunity to make political hay, Governor Orval Faubus— running for reelection the following year—elbowed his way into the controversy just as the school year began. Under the pretense of preventing violence, Faubus pandered to the most racist of Arkansas’s white citizens when he ordered the state’s National Guard to surround the school to bar the black students’ entrance. Overnight, Little Rock became the next potential flash point in the nation’s civil rights struggle. Eisenhower initially refused to intervene. He calmly continued his vacation in Newport while aides kept him informed of all developments. But the president’s indecision only allowed the crisis to worsen. By the time he became involved, nothing short of the U.S. Army could restore order in Little Rock. Ten days into the tense standoff, Eisenhower reluctantly agreed to negotiate with Faubus. Their meeting in Newport, however, produced nothing but ambiguous and insincere promises by the governor that he would diffuse the situation. He removed his troops only when ordered WHEN FREEDOM WOULD TRIUMPH 62 by a federal judge and did nothing else to bring calm to the city. And he recklessly fanned flames of racism in Little Rock with extreme and demagogic language. On September , the passions he had exacerbated finally boiled over. An angry, screaming mob of several thousand white racists converged on Central High School to protest the scheduled enrollment of the black students. In the melee, two black reporters were attacked. As the mob spewed racial slurs and epithets, authorities quietly ushered nine terri fied black children into a side door of the school to begin classes. When the crowd realized that the students were safely inside, they became even more enraged and rushed the building. Reporters heard cries of “lynch the niggers” from the mob. Finally, fearing for the black students’ safety, Little Rock mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann ordered city police to remove them from the school. The next morning, a troubled Mann wired Eisenhower: “The immediate need for federal troops is urgent . . . People are converging on the scene from all directions. Mob is armed and engaging in fisticuffs and other acts of violence. Situation is out of control and police cannot disperse the mob.” Several hours later, Eisenhower resigned himself to the inevitable: he would order federal troops into Little Rock to restore order. It was the first time a president had sent the U.S. military into the South for such purposes since Reconstruction. By day’s end, forty-six giant transport planes roared into Little Rock Air Force Base, carrying more than a thousand paratroopers of the Army’s st Airborne Division—the “Screaming Eagles.” The next morning the troops, assisted by a federalized Arkansas National Guard, began dispersing the mob. Southern senators reacted with fury. South Carolina’s Olin Johnston declared: “If I were governor and he [Eisenhower] came in, I’d give him a fight such as he’s never been in before. I’d proclaim a state of insurrection and I’d call out the National Guard and then we’d find out who’s going to run things in my state.” Russell’s junior Georgia colleague, Herman Talmadge , seemed equally disrespectful of the commander-in-chief, whom he compared to the Soviet communists who invaded Hungary in : “We still mourn the destruction of the sovereignty of Hungary by Russian tanks and troops in the streets of Budapest. We are now threatened with the spectacle of the president of the United States using tanks and troops in the streets of Little Rock to destroy the sovereignty of the...

Share