Executive Order 10730

Desegregation of Central High School

By: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Date: September 23, 1957

Source: Eisenhower, Dwight D. "Executive Order 10730: Desegregation of Central High School." National Archives, September 23, 1957.

About the Author: Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969) was a decorated United States Army General who led the Allied Forces in North Africa during World War II and acted as Supreme Commander of forces on D-Day during the same war. He was the 34th President of the United States, serving from 1953–1961; during his tenure in office, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision triggered a new era in civil rights in the United States.

INTRODUCTION

The 1954 United States Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine of the 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson; in the 1955 court decision known as Brown II, the Supreme Court required all school districts throughout the United States to desegregate all public schools "with all deliberate speed." While the court did not give a specific time table, the Brown decision was clear: desegregation was now the law of the land.

Seventeen U.S. states required segregated public schools, while sixteen prohibited segregation; throughout the southern United States, governors and citizens reacted to the Brown decision with derision, anger, and fear. The Sons of the American Revolution declared the decision a "communist plot," while the New York Times declared that "The folkways in southern communities will have to be adapted to new conditions if white and Negro children, together with white and Negro teachers, are to enjoy not only equal facilities but the same facilities in the same schools." Many southerners expressed fears of miscegenation and interracial relationships should desegregation occur; white enrollment in private schools increased dramatically in parts of the south, and new, whites-only private schools formed in some areas as a direct response to the Brown decision.

By 1956, the Topeka city schools were completely integrated, though many southern districts blocked integration by filing lawsuits, filling the courts with challenges to Brown. In 1956, riots broke out at the University of Alabama when Autherine Lucy attempted to attend classes; university officials asked her to withdraw. While violence in the south erupted, desegregation continued quietly in such states as Arizona, Delaware, Maryland, and in Washington D.C.

Three years after Brown v. Board of Education, in Little Rock, Arkansas, nine black children were selected to attend the all-white Central High School. A federal court ordered the school district to comply with the desegregation. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus refused, and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to Central High School to prevent the "Little Rock Nine" from attending classes on September 3, 1957. On September 4, Daisy Bates, the president of the local NAACP, organized eight of the nine students at her home to arrive at the school together. The ninth student, Elizabeth Eckford, did not have a phone and did not learn of the gathering; when she attempted to enter the school through the front entrance she was met by angry protestors and the National Guard, all blocking her. A white woman in the crowd, Grace Lorch, helped Eckford to safety.

Governor Faubus met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 14, and as a result of that meeting agreed instead to use the National Guard to protect the African-American students. Upon his return to Little Rock, however, Faubus dismissed the troops, leaving the nine students, Thelma Mother-shed, Elizabeth Eckford, Melba Pattillo, Jefferson Thomas, Ernest Green, Minniejean Brown, Carlotta Walls, Terrence Roberts, and Gloria Ray, exposed to an angry mob of white citizens. Local police officers helped the students to leave the building as rioters attacked reporters, threw bricks through windows, and destroyed school property.

For the next week large crowds of white citizens physically blocked the school entrances, parents withdrew white students from the school, and the "Little Rock Nine" were unable to attend classes. On September 20, NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton received a court injunction prohibiting Governor Faubus from using the National Guard to block the students from attending classes; Faubus complied, but warned the black students to stay at home.

On September 23, 1957, President Eisenhower issued the following Executive Order, sending in federal troops and placing the Arkansas National Guard under federal command to enforce the desegregation order.

PRIMARY SOURCE

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10730

PROVIDING ASSISTANCE FOR THE REMOVAL OF AN OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE WITHIN THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

WHEREAS on September 23, 1957, I issued Proclamation No.3204 reading in part as follows:

"WHEREAS certain persons in the state of Arkansas, individually and in unlawful assemblages, combinations, and conspiracies, have wifully obstructed the enforcement of orders of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas with respect to matters relating to enrollment and attendance at public schools, particularly at Central High School, located in Little Rock School District, Little Rock, Arkansas; and

"WHEREAS such willful obstruction of justice hinders the execution of the laws of that State and of the United States, and makes it impracticable to enforce such laws by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings; and

"WHEREAS such obstruction of justice constitutes a denial of the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution of the United States and impedes the course of justice under those laws:

"NOW, THEREFORE, I, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States, under and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the United States, including Chapter 15 of Title 10 of the United States Code, particularly sections 332, 333 and 334 thereof, do command all persons engaged in such obstruction of justice to cease and desist therefrom, and to disperse forthwith;" and

WHEREAS the command contained in that Proclamation has not been obeyed and willful obstruction of enforcement of said court orders still exists and threatens to continue:

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the United States, including Chapter 15 of Title 10, particularly sections 332, 333 and 334 thereof, and section 301 of Title 3 of the United States Code, It is hereby ordered as follows:

SECTION 1. I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of Defense to order into the active military service of the United States as he may deem appropriate to carry out the purposes of this Order, any or all of the units of the National Guard of the United States and of the Air National Guard of the United States within the State of Arkansas to serve in the active military service of the United States for an indefinite period and until relieved by appropriate orders.

SEC. 2. The Secretary of Defense is authorized and directed to take all appropriate steps to enforce any orders of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas for the removal of obstruction of justice in the State of Arkansas with respect to matters relating to enrollment and attendance at public schools in the Little Rock School District, Little Rock, Arkansas. In carrying out the provisions of this section, the Secretary of Defense is authorized to use the units, and members thereof, ordered into the active military service of the United States pursuant to Section 1 of this Order.

SEC. 3. In furtherance of the enforcement of the aforementioned orders of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the Secretary of Defense is authorized to use such of the armed forces of the United States as he may deem necessary.

SEC. 4. The Secretary of Defense is authorized to delegate to the Secretary of the Army or the Secretary of the Air Force, or both, any of the authority conferred upon him by this Order.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
THE WHITE HOUSE,
September 24, 1957.

SIGNIFICANCE

President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock at the request of Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Mann to protect the nine black students; each student had a guard assigned to them for personal protection. Many southerners resented the federal intrusion into a states' rights issue. The shadow of Reconstruction and federal occupation after the Civil War to enforce black civil rights loomed over Eisenhower's Executive Order.

The students remained at Central High School, with protection, through the end of the school year. One of the students, Minniejean Brown, was suspended for pouring a bowl of chili on a white student who was harassing her. Ernest Green graduated in 1958, the first black student to graduate from the school.

In an address to the public in 1958, President Eisenhower countered criticism and accusations of communism or heavy-handed federal intervention with his explanation that "Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrep-resent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations. There they affirmed 'faith in fundamental human rights' and 'in the dignity and worth of the human person' and they did so 'without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.'" By acknowledging the worldwide attention the Little Rock incident brought to racial affairs in the United States, and connecting it to human rights in general, President Eisenhower brought a global perspective to the civil rights issue.

Governor Faubus received a court injunction allowing him to delay school integration until 1961, but in 1958 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the earlier ruling and enforced the desegregation. In response, Faubus closed all public schools in Little Rock for the 1958–1959 school year. White students flooded private schools, which blocked black student enrollment, and for that year black students in Little Rock created informal study groups and tutoring sessions to fill in the gap in their education; some students enrolled in correspondence courses at the University of Arkansas. In 1959, Faubus was forced to reopen the schools, with two of the original "Little Rock Nine" enrolling and graduating by the end of the year. The standoff over integration at Central High School was the first major test of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and changed the racial balance of public schools and private schools for decades to come, foreshadowing integration issues related to forced busing, housing, employment, and voting in coming years.

The experience at Central High School also motivated nascent civil rights leaders to push for integrated public transportation, public facilities, and to use physical protest as an effective medium for changing public opinion and bringing attention to their cause; the nine teenagers who braved the social conditions of the 1957–1958 school year at central High School provided an example to civil rights protestors of peaceful progress.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Clotfelter, Charles T. After "Brown": The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2004.

Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2001.