Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  The decisive battle in the struggle to desegregate the schools in the South was fought at Little Rock in 1957. Following the decision in Brown II, the Little Rock school board adopted a plan for the gradual integration of the city’s schools over a seven-year period. The first step was the admission of a handful of carefully selected black students to Central High School in September 1957. But in late August a group of white parents (the Mothers’ League of Little Rock Central High) brought suit in state court to block the school board’s plan and appealed to Governor Orval Faubus to intervene. Faubus testified in court that gun sales in Little Rock had increased rapidly, and he feared violence when school opened. Based on the governor’s testimony, Judge Murray Reed of the Pulaski County Chancery Court issued an injunction on August 29 to delay the integration of Central High. At that point Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s legal counsel who had argued both Brown cases before the Supreme Court, rushed to Little Rock to place the issue before the federal court.

  After a brief hearing on August 30, Judge Ronald N. Davies of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ruled that the state chancery court had no jurisdiction and ordered desegregation to proceed as planned. Schools in Little Rock were scheduled to open on Tuesday, September 3. On Monday, Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to active duty in Little Rock. “The purpose of the state militia,” said Faubus, “is to maintain or restore order and protect the lives and property of citizens.”28 h The following day, Central High was ringed by 250 guardsmen in battle dress, and an even larger crowd of white demonstrators determined to prevent the black students from entering. But the nine black students who had been selected to attend Central High did not appear. Rather than confront the angry mob, NAACP officials and the school board chose to return to federal court for further instructions. When they did, Judge Davies ordered the school board to proceed with integration. “This is an obligation from which I shall not shrink,” said the judge.29

  On Wednesday, September 4, the nine black students attempted to enter Central High. The Arkansas National Guard blocked their way while an unruly mob of more than five hundred white demonstrators shouted obscenities. Judge Davies responded by requesting the Justice Department to investigate Faubus’s claim that an imminent threat of violence justified his use of the Guard to thwart integration. Davies’s request landed on Herbert Brownell’s desk at the Justice Department on Wednesday afternoon. The attorney general, who had been following events in Little Rock closely, immediately dispatched a team of FBI agents and federal marshals to Little Rock pursuant to the judge’s request. The following day Governor Faubus sent an angry telegram to Eisenhower protesting the intervention of federal authorities. Faubus said the government agents were plotting to arrest him, claimed his telephone was being tapped, and blamed federal authorities for any future violence at Central High. Eisenhower backed Brownell to the hilt. “When I became President,” Ike fired back, “I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The only assurance I can give you,” he told Faubus, “is that the Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.”30 i

  Orval Faubus was not a racist, in the sense of Mississippi’s Theodore G. Bilbo or Eugene Talmadge in Georgia. He was more of an opportunist, akin to Louisiana’s Huey Long, a southern populist from what one knowledgeable observer called the “Snopes school of politics.” Shrewd and earthy, Faubus was determined to win a third term as governor in a state where third terms were rare. And in 1957 it was clear that the path to electoral victory lay in opposing desegregation.

  On September 9, federal agents in Little Rock reported to the court that there had been no increase in the sale of guns in Little Rock, and that Faubus’s orders to the Guard were designed to prevent the black students from entering the school building. Upon receiving the report, Judge Davies asked the Justice Department to enter the case and file a request for a preliminary injunction against the deployment of the Arkansas National Guard at Central High. Brownell did so on September 10. Judge Davies set the hearing on the government’s motion for September 20, and ordered Faubus to appear in court and defend his actions.31 The battle was joined. As Eisenhower wrote later, “The United States government and the Governor of Arkansas were now heading toward a collision.”32

  Faubus recognized he had overreached. His popularity among Arkansas’s white voters stood at an all-time high, but he faced a possible contempt citation from Judge Davies and all the consequences that might entail. As Brownell observed, “The governor’s action represented an attempt to nullify the Constitution and the laws of the United States and to disregard the orders of the federal court.”33

  Eisenhower, who was summering at the naval base in Newport, Rhode Island, was determined that whatever the district court in Little Rock ruled, that decision would be enforced. At the same time, he wanted to give Faubus the opportunity to make “an orderly retreat.”34 When Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas, the longtime liberal congressman from Little Rock, suggested that the president meet with Faubus at Newport to work out a peaceful settlement, Eisenhower was initially reluctant. The president, said Sherman Adams, would not meet “with a state governor who was standing in open defiance of the Constitution.” When Hays persisted and said Faubus “realizes he has made a mistake and is looking for a way out,” Eisenhower agreed to meet with the governor, providing that Faubus announce beforehand his willingness to comply with the orders of the district court. That statement should be “crystal clear,” the president told Brownell.35 Adams and Hays drafted a statement for Faubus that was consistent with Ike’s wishes, and assumed they had an agreement. But when Faubus released the text in Little Rock, he added a proviso. He would comply with the court order “consistent with my responsibility under the Arkansas constitution,” in effect negating his commitment. Brownell told Eisenhower that this was typical of Faubus and that it was pointless to meet with him, but Ike chose to do so anyway.

  Faubus arrived in Newport on September 14. He and Eisenhower met privately for twenty minutes, and then were joined by Brownell, Sherman Adams, and Congressman Hays. At their private meeting, Eisenhower offered Faubus a face-saving solution. Keep the Arkansas National Guard in place at Central High, but change their orders. Instead of preventing the black students from entering, instruct the Guard to continue to preserve order and allow the children to attend school. “You should take this action promptly,” said Ike. No one would benefit from a trial of strength between the president and a governor, he told Faubus. “Where the federal government has assumed jurisdiction and this is upheld by the Supreme Court, there can only be one outcome: the state will lose. I don’t want to see any governor humiliated.”36

  As Eisenhower recalled, Faubus “seemed to be very appreciative of this attitude. I definitely got the understanding that he was going back to Arkansas and would act within a matter of hours to revoke his orders to the Guard to prevent re-entry of the Negro children into the school.”37 At the subsequent meeting with Brownell, Adams, and Hays, Eisenhower said that Faubus had agreed that the black children would be admitted to Central High, and Faubus did not dispute the president’s statement. “I knew Eisenhower was a persuasive person,” said Brownell later, “but I was incredulous at Faubus’s ostensible capitulation and the seemingly abrupt end of a constitutional crisis of such impact.”38

  Brownell’s skepticism proved correct, and Ike was wrong. When Faubus returned to Arkansas, nothing happened. The governor remained silent and the Arkansas National Guard stayed at Central High preventing the black students from entering. Eisenhower was furious. “Faubus broke his word,” the president told Brownell. According to Brownell, Ike’s voice was tense. “He was acting as a military commander-in-chief, dealing with Faubus as a subordinate who had let him down in the midst of battle.”39 Eisenhower wanted to issue a statement immediately denouncing Faubus. Brownell and Adams urged Ike to hold his fire. Faubus was due to appear in court before Judge Dav
ies on Friday, September 20. There was little doubt that Davies would order Faubus to admit the black students, and it was equally clear that the governor would refuse. Let Faubus overplay his hand. Once he was in defiance of a court order, Eisenhower would be justified to use whatever means were necessary to compel compliance.

  On September 20, Judge Davies called his court to order for the hearing on Civil Case 3113, a motion by the United States for a preliminary injunction enjoining “all persons” from interfering with the integration of Central High. Faubus was represented by lawyers from the state attorney general’s office in Little Rock, who immediately moved that Judge Davies disqualify himself because of prejudice. The judge denied the motion, at which point Faubus’s lawyers packed up their brief cases and walked out. Judge Davies said the hearing would continue without them.

  The Justice Department lawyers presented a convincing case. The mayor of Little Rock, the chief of police, and members of the school board presented unchallenged testimony concerning Little Rock’s history of peaceful race relations for the past twenty-five years. “Jim Crow” seating on the city’s buses had been discontinued in January without incident. The witnesses were unanimous that there had been no evidence that the desegregation of Central High would produce disorder. The mayor and the chief of police also testified that Faubus had not asked for a police report on the possibility of danger before he mobilized the Guard. It was also their view that the Little Rock police department had been fully capable of maintaining order.

  When the government concluded its case, Judge Davies spoke in measured tones. “It is very clear to this court,” said the judge, “that the plan of integration adopted by the Little Rock school board and approved by this court and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has been thwarted by the Governor of Arkansas. It is equally demonstrable from the testimony here today that there would have been no violence in carrying out the plan of integration and that there has been no violence.” Judge Davies thereupon granted the injunction and ordered Faubus and the commander of the Arkansas National Guard to cease further interference with the court’s orders.40

  Three hours after receiving the court’s ruling, Faubus removed the National Guard from Central High. That evening he went on statewide television to announce his compliance with the injunction. He said the court’s order would be appealed with the Eighth Circuit, and in the meantime he asked black parents not to send their children to the high school until tempers cooled. Faubus thereupon departed Little Rock for the Southern Governors’ Conference in Sea Island, Georgia. Aprés moi le déluge.

  On Saturday, September 21, Eisenhower issued a brief statement announcing that Faubus had withdrawn the Arkansas National Guard from Central High. He did not praise Faubus’s action, he simply announced it. But he did praise the nine black children who had been denied admission by the Guard. “They and their parents have conducted themselves with dignity and restraint. I am confident that the citizens of the City of Little Rock and the State of Arkansas will welcome this opportunity to demonstrate that in their city and in their state proper orders of a United States Court will be executed promptly and without disorder.”41

  But that did not happen. When school opened on Monday, Central High was ringed by a mob of well over a thousand angry white protestors determined to prevent the black students from entering. Police barricades initially kept the crowd at bay, and the black students entered unseen through a side door. But the crowd continued to grow and was in an ugly mood. Out-of-state newsmen were assaulted, and by eleven-thirty the police lines had been breached. Demonstrators stormed into the school, and Gene Smith, Little Rock’s deputy police chief, decided to remove the black students for their own protection. They left the school under police escort, were placed in police cars, and driven home. The rioting continued. Virgil Blossom, the superintendent of schools, called the Department of Justice to request federal assistance. The crowd had grown to more than fifteen hundred, said Blossom, and local authorities could no longer contain it. An hour later, Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann sent an urgent telegram to Eisenhower in Newport. “The mob that gathered was no spontaneous assembly,” Mann told the president. “It was agitated, aroused, and assembled by a concerted plan of action.” Mann said that allies of Faubus had organized the mob, and that “Governor Faubus was at least cognizant of what was going to take place.”42

  Eisenhower, who had been apprised of the situation by Brownell, acted promptly. Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker was alerted that military force might be required in Little Rock, and at Eisenhower’s direction, Army chief of staff Maxwell Taylor was ordered to prepare the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, for possible movement. “In my career I have learned,” the president told Brownell, “that if you have to use force, use overwhelming force and save lives thereby.”43

  At 4:45 p.m. Eisenhower assumed direct command of the situation in Little Rock with a formal statement putting the demonstrators on notice. “The Federal law and the orders of a United States District Court implementing that law cannot be flouted with impunity by any individual or any mob of extremists. I will use the full power of the United States including whatever force may be necessary to prevent any obstruction of the law and to carry out the orders of the Federal Court.” There were no weasel words or conditional offers in Ike’s statement.44 Judge Davies’s order would be enforced and the black students would be admitted to Central High using whatever force might be necessary. An hour later the White House issued an official proclamation signed by the president calling on the demonstrators to disperse. After briefly detailing the obstruction of justice in Little Rock, and citing the relevant legal authority, the key sentence read:

  NOW, THEREFORE, I, Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States, under and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution … do command all persons engaged in such obstruction of justice to cease and desist therefrom, and to disperse forthwith.45

  Under the relevant federal statutes, issuance of the proclamation was a prerequisite before the president could employ military force to suppress domestic violence.46 When Ike signed the proclamation, the deck was cleared for action. And to be sure the import of the proclamation registered in Little Rock, the document noted President Washington’s use of federal troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, and President Cleveland’s similar action to enforce a federal court injunction during the Pullman strike in 1894.j

  Despite the deliberate effort of the White House to telegraph its intention to intervene, the situation in Little Rock continued to deteriorate. Racial fighting broke out on Main Street, bricks and bottles were hurled through shop windows, and hundreds of cars packed with gun-toting hoodlums cruised ominously through black neighborhoods.

  By Tuesday morning it was evident that federal troops would be required. The question was no longer whether to intervene, wrote Eisenhower, “but what force I should use to insure execution of the court’s order.”47 Ike placed a call to Maxwell Taylor at the Pentagon. Taylor suggested using the Arkansas National Guard before ordering federal troops to the scene. Eisenhower was dubious. He told Taylor he was concerned about pitting “brother against brother.” If they used the Guard, said the president, the units should come from elsewhere in the state, not from Little Rock.

  Before a decision was reached, another emergency telegram arrived in Newport from Mayor Mann. “The immediate need for federal troops is urgent,” said the mayor. “The mob is much larger in number at 8 AM than at any time yesterday. 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 dispense the mob.” Mann asked the president to send the necessary troops as soon as possible.48

  Eisenhower placed another call to Taylor in Washington. The Arkansas Guard, he told the Army’s chief of staff, could not muster soon enough to defuse the crisis. The 101st Airborne Division, which had already been alerted, was ready for action.
Eisenhower instructed Taylor to send the 101st to Little Rock immediately. He also said he was issuing an Executive Order (no. 10730) calling the Arkansas National Guard into federal service. That would deprive Faubus of their use. Taylor put the wheels in motion. By midafternoon on Tuesday, an armada of C-130s was carrying the troops from Fort Campbell to Little Rock.k John Chancellor of NBC News was on the scene when the first contingent of five hundred men of the 101st Airborne arrived. “As they marched in, the clean, sharp sound of their boots clacking on the street was a reminder of their professionalism,” Chancellor recalled. The young journalist (Chancellor was thirty at the time) said he’d never thought much about the Constitution before, but he realized that day he was watching the Constitution in action. “There was something majestic about the scene: it was a moment at once thrilling and somehow frightening as well.”49

  As soon as the 101st was aloft, Eisenhower left Newport for Washington. “Meet me at the White House,” he instructed Brownell. “I am going to address the nation on TV.”50 Eisenhower chose to return to Washington to emphasize the gravity of the situation in Little Rock. He drafted his remarks on the flight from Newport, and worked over them with Brownell in the Oval Office. At 9 p.m. he faced the nation. Ike wore a somber three-piece gray suit, and spoke directly into the camera. He did not use a teleprompter, and only rarely consulted the text in front of him. “For a few minutes this evening I want to speak to you about the serious situation that has arisen in Little Rock,” said the president. “In that city, under the leadership of demagogic extremists, disorderly mobs have deliberately prevented the carrying out of proper orders from a Federal Court.”