The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed just a few weeks before the situation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas at the time, ordered the National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School. After Elizabeth Eckford, a fifteen-year-old African American student, was verbally harassed a few blocks from the state capital, local authorities took the nine students out of the school in hopes of protecting them from abuse. Federal troops were requested by the mayor to help put an end to the white mobs. As a result, Dwight D. Eisenhower, although reluctant, placed a thousand paratroopers at the high school to escort the black students inside.
Eisenhower was the president …show more content…
The whites did not want anything to do with them. Eisenhower placed paratroopers in the school hoping to help the black people gain equality. His view on the idea of segregation was not a good one, meaning he was not too fond of the idea. He did not care about whether or not the African Americans were equal with whites. He did not support the blacks. All he had cared about was the image other countries had of America. “Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation.” He wanted America to be the ideal country. He wanted to gain allies of other countries, whose population was African American, by showing those countries that America could take care of their own black population. If America did not treat their black population with respect, how could America gain respect from other countries made up of African Americans? The answer simply was that America could not gain their respect. “In the South, as elsewhere, citizens are keenly aware of the tremendous disservice that has been done to the people of Arkansas in the eyes of the nation, and that has been done to the nation in the eyes of the world.” Therefore, Eisenhower had to step in and use his executive power to give America that ideal reputation.
Once the African American students were enrolled into the school, whites started to form mobs. They did not want their children attending the same school as black children. The black students were being harassed by the white students and could not walk down the halls or public streets without having a nasty comment from whites. They could not go anywhere in peace. Because of this, Eisenhower placed troops in the schools to protect the black students as they walked in. The troops remained at the school escorting the children for the rest of the