Central High

President Eisenhower sent in 101st Airborne 63 years ago today

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that “separate but equal” public schools were unconstitutional and ordered an end to segregation in schools across the U.S.

In the South there was resistance — often violent resistance. But desegregation also happened peacefully in many Southern cities. There were plenty of city and school officials, as well as ordinary citizens, who knew segregation couldn’t hold out forever. They may not have entirely liked it, but they complied with the law.

That’s pretty much what everybody thought would happen in Little Rock. Arkansas’ capital city was seen as a moderate Southern metropolis and Gov. Orville Faubus was regarded as more progressive than the firebrand segregationists who dominated states like Mississippi and Alabama.

In 1955, the Little Rock School Board adopted a plan to integrate the city’s schools. It would begin in the fall of 1957, when nine black students would attend all-white Central High. The plan was praised as a model of desegregation.

Then came Sept. 4, 1957. School was to start that day. Opponents of desegregation came out to protest. And Gov. Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine black students from entering Central High. On Sept. 24 of that year — 63 years ago today — President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to enforce the desegregation order.

It was a crisis that made national headlines, pitted a governor against a president and is still remembered as one of the defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement.

Arkansas schools were eventually desegregated and Jim Crow laws cast aside. Central High is now a national Historic Landmark and the site of a civil rights museum. And Faubus’ name is synonymous with racial intolerance to many Americans.

That’s the price for being on the wrong side of equality, justice and freedom for all Americans. That’s the price for being on the wrong side of history.