Executive order · 1957

Executive Order 10730

After Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the state National Guard to keep nine Black students out of Little Rock’s Central High School and a mob later gathered at the school, President Eisenhower placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and sent about 1,000 paratroopers of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to enforce federal court orders for desegregation. The next day, the “Little Rock Nine” entered Central High under military protection.

“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…”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, September 24, 1957

Why it matters

The order affirmed that states could not defy federal court rulings enforcing Brown v. Board of Education; in May 1958 Ernest Green, one of the nine, became the first Black student to graduate from Central High.

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Primary Source

The original record, reproduced or linked from the institution that holds it. Primary sources show what people said and did in their own words.

Subjects

civil rights desegregation executive power education

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