But that’s not what with all deliberate speed meant to segregationists. Deliberate in this context meant slowly and carefully. To them, “With all deliberate speed” meant integrate schools at a snail’s pace. As they were creating plans for the legally required school integration, civil rights activists and lawyers made various proposals, which were rejected time after time. One lawyer, exasperated, basically asked school officials, “Well, what do you think would be a reasonable timeframe?” The other lawyers came back with: “2020.” This was in 1955. Segregationists proposed integrating schools in 2020. That’s what with all deliberate speed meant to them.
But to some segregationists, there was no distant future in which integration would occur, because they decided to close schools entirely. Led by Virginia senator Harry Byrd, some states engaged in a movement they deemed “Massive Resistance.” They started by passing state laws that penalized schools that integrated, removed their funding, and closed public schools that dared a desegregation attempt. Some states gave out private school tuition vouchers so white parents who opposed integration could send their child to a private religious school. They established “pupil placement boards” that had the power to force students to attend the school the board decided upon.
And they were just getting started.
Twenty-five
Teenagers in the American South1950s
Arkansas governor Orval Faubus was at the helm of a state that did not want to integrate, and he soon found himself at the center of a national firestorm of his own creation. Faubus became a symbol of either what was right or what was wrong with America, depending on your perspective. Even though Brown v. Brown of Education II was decided in 1955, by 1957, Arkansas had failed to integrate its schools. Determined to make headway on school integration, the NAACP had been working hard to select and prepare nine students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock by that September.
The parents of Carlotta Walls, the youngest of the Little Rock Nine, bought her a new dress for school integration day, a dress that now belongs to the Smithsonian. Her mother told her, “Be prepared to go through the door, whether there is a crack in the door, or the door is flung wide open.”[1] Carlotta nodded, not knowing for sure what she might face at the school.
One of the most enduring images of that morning was of Elizabeth Eckford, carrying a notebook and wearing sunglasses, trying to enter Central High School alone. Her family didn’t have a phone, so when the other students made plans to carpool and arrive together, she wasn’t notified. She arrived on the city bus and was immediately surrounded by an angry mob of armed guards and segregationists.
“I stood looking at the school—it looked so big!” she remembered. “Just then, the guards let some white students through. The crowd was quiet. I guess they were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I was able to steady my knees, I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in. He didn’t move. When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards moved in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look, and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me. They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling ‘drag her over this tree, let’s take care of that n****r!’ ”[2] These were ordinary white Arkansans whose vitriol was such that they were suggesting that a child seeking an education deserved to be lynched.
Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering, all the while making wild accusations claiming he was being persecuted by the federal government. The next day, President Eisenhower sent a telegram to Orval Faubus. It said, in part, “When I became President, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The only assurance I can give you is that the Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.”[3]
Faubus continued to send the National Guard to prevent integration, claiming that it was for everyone’s safety and refusing to comply with court orders requiring that the Nine be admitted to school.
Eisenhower was not known to have a quick temper. But he was a career military man, and he did not appreciate Faubus’s insubordination. He summoned Faubus to come see him at his vacation home in Rhode Island, where he calmly explained that he was at the top of the command structure, and that Faubus was duty bound to follow the laws and his direct orders. After the meeting, Eisenhower issued an official statement confirming that Faubus stated his intention was to respect the decisions of the United States District Court and to give his full cooperation in carrying out his responsibilities in respect to these decisions. Faubus also issued an official statement indicating his agreement. Eisenhower’s presidential diary said that he understood that moving forward, Faubus knew what his assignment was, and would follow the law.[4]
One guess what happened next. Just one.
Congratulations, you win our fabulous prize package! Faubus did not follow through and integrate schools. Another court hearing occurred, during which all of the lawyers representing Faubus got up and walked out. “Now begins the crucifixion,” Faubus seethed. “There will be no cross-examination, no evidence presented for the other side.”[5]
The writing was on the wall: Eisenhower was going to have to use his authority to force compliance.
Once they were turned away from the school, the Little Rock Nine and their families were harassed everywhere they went. Multiple parents were fired, including from government jobs, because their children were integrating schools in Little Rock. Integration was the word on everyone’s lips—demonstrations and riots erupted from white segregationists who felt their moral and religious beliefs, their way of life, and their power, was under attack.
On September 23, 1957, two things happened: nine children felt the fear and did it anyway, and Dwight Eisenhower said “Enough.”
Faubus had withdrawn the Arkansas National Guard, which created a security disturbance so large that it overwhelmed local police. The mayor of Little Rock, Woodrow Mann, urgently telegrammed Eisenhower. He said that the mobs that were gathering in Little Rock were “agitated, aroused, and assembled by a concerted plan of action.” Mann told Eisenhower that the violent uprisings were preplanned, and that Faubus was in on it.[6]
Eisenhower issued a proclamation. It said, “Whereas, the 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…”[7] But what it meant was: “If y’all don’t stop this immediately, I’m going to do what I need to do.”
Mann sent another telegram the following day, saying essentially, “PLEASE SEND FEDERAL TROOPS TO LITTLE ROCK, IT IS REALLY BAD.”[8] Eisenhower, man of the military, placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control. And then, thinking ahead, he realized there was a good chance that the Arkansas National Guard wouldn’t be loyal to his command. Eisenhower decided to send federal troops.
So, just to make it crystal clear: the president of the United States, a man in charge of the entire U.S. invasion at Normandy, realized that some Americans, including members of the military, had such an intense commitment to white supremacy they were likely to disobey his lawful, direct order. Just like they had been disobeying the orders of federal courts. Orders to allow Black children to receive the same education as their white peers.
Eisenhower called up the 101st Army Airborne Division to go to Little Rock, and within hours they were in the air, winging their way to Arkansas. The commander told his men to remember that no matter their personal feelings, they had to obey their commander in chief, and there would be no sloppy soldiers on the streets. Uniforms needed to be starched and pressed, and everyone had to maintain the highest level of professionalism.
The morning of September 25, 1957, dawned, and again, the Nine got ready for school, impeccably grooming themselves, steeling their nerves against the fact that what they represented was so hated that the president had to send a thousand soldiers to their school to quell the violence.
The first order of business was to get the children into the school safely. And then they had to keep it that way.
Some soldiers remained outside the building, while others were assigned to the Little Rock Nine inside the building. More than three years after Brown was decided, and three weeks since the school year had begun, the Little Rock Nine integrated Central High School. Despite the presence of troops, which gradually diminished over several months, the Nine endured physical and emotional violence at school.
Some of them were pushed down the stairs, one was locked in a bathroom stall and had burning pieces of paper thrown on her to try and catch her clothes and hair on fire. Another had acid thrown in her face. Faubus gave press conferences where he solemnly held up newspapers with headlines that shouted guns force integration. He decried the “iron fist in free America,” and said that the raw federal power Eisenhower was exerting was inappropriate.[9]
As the year wore on, the federal troops were drawn down as the local law enforcement’s capacity to handle the situation increased. Not all of the Nine remained at the school. One had to leave because of harassment, another because their parents couldn’t find work due to their role in the integration plan.
Eisenhower addressed the nation, calling the segregationists “demagogic extremists.” He said, “During the past several years, many communities in our Southern States have instituted public school plans for gradual progress in the enrollment and attendance of school children of all races in order to bring themselves into compliance with the law of the land. Thus, they demonstrated to the world that we are a nation in which laws, not men, are supreme. I regret to say that this truth, the cornerstone of our liberties, was not observed in this instance.”
He continued, “Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent 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.’ ”[10]
The United States has a slow history, but a solid one, of adding to the liberties of its citizens over time. By 1957, you can see evidence of this evolution: the president of the United States, a man who grew up with segregation, was heralding the UN Charter’s commitment to human rights that affirmed the dignity and worth of all people. But secretly, he resented Earl Warren for putting him in this position to begin with.
Faubus smoldered. At the end of the school year, he could stand it no more, and decided to take matters into his own hands. A sign appeared outside the high school with the lie: this school closed by order of the federal government.[11]
The high schools in Little Rock would be closed altogether the following school year. Rather than having troops at the school every day, Faubus decided that they just wouldn’t have school. Closing school for everyone was better than sharing the white schools with Black children, he reasoned. (Except football—that was allowed.)
Other private religious schools for whites only popped up—locals called them “segregation academies.” Many of the United States’ private religious schools in the South were founded during this time, for exactly this purpose: providing a haven for white parents to protect their children from students of other races. (For real, though…if your southern religious school was founded in the 1950s, chances are extremely high it was a segregation academy. They may have failed to mention that in the brochure.)
The “Mothers’ League” was also instrumental and active in working against school integration. They educated voters on which school-board members supported their segregationist beliefs and which didn’t. Their fliers read: “Do you want negroes in our schools? If you do not, then go to the polls this coming Monday and VOTE. PLEASE VOTE RIGHT!!!! Join hands with us in this fight—send your contributions to THE MOTHERS’ LEAGUE.”[12]
Closing the schools only further deepened the racial and socioeconomic divide, as the overwhelming majority of white students were able to obtain other schooling. They could go to private school, drive to suburban schools, or stay with relatives elsewhere. The number of Black students who were able to obtain some kind of education was about half that of white students.
Toward the end of the school year, the Little Rock school board purged dozens of teachers from their midst who were deemed too sympathetic to the NAACP.[13]
Today, it’s shocking for us to even think about a governor closing a school for a year, their prejudice so deep that they refuse to entertain the idea of Blacks and whites sharing a common space. But in Prince Edward County, Virginia, it was even worse.
Farmville, Virginia, had two high schools: a school for Black children and a school for white children. The white school had a gymnasium, a cafeteria, an infirmary, and other resources. Moton High School, reserved for Black students, had none of these things. A building designed for 180 students held 450. Two or three classes were always being held in the auditorium at one time. Some classes were held in tar-paper shacks and school buses.[14]
Members of the Black community in Farmville and the local NAACP chapter worked hard to get a new school built, but the powers that be refused to allocate land or money to make it happen.
This was frustrating to everyone, but most especially to a sixteen-year-old girl named Barbara Johns. Barbara voiced her frustration to one of her teachers: How was it that the school she attended did not even have a single microscope to use in biology class?
