“Little Rock School Integration Crisis ”
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education that
segregated schools are "inherently unequal." In September 1957, as a result of that ruling, nine African-American students
enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The ensuing struggle between segregationists and integrationists,
the State of Arkansas and the federal government, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus has become
known in modern American history as the "Little Rock Crisis." The crisis gained attention world-wide. When Governor Faubus
ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High School to keep the nine students from entering the school, President
Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to insure the safety of the "Little Rock Nine" and that the
rulings of the Supreme Court were upheld. The manuscript holdings of the Eisenhower Library contain a large amount of documentation
on this historic test of the Brown vs. Topeka ruling and school integration.
Letter, Jackie Robinson to President Eisenhower, May 13, 1958