How Did Eisenhower Contribute To The End Of Desegregation?

When Eisenhower was inaugurated on January 20, 1953, he took control of a country that faced many challenges in the upcoming years. Having to manage a growing economy, develop the nation’s infrastructure, and tackle Cold War pressure, Eisenhower’s administration handled many daunting tasks during its eight years (Miller Center). Among these challenges, many consider the most serious challenge to be “the question of civil rights and equality of African Americans” (Smith 706). The biggest civil rights issue during the Eisenhower years would be that of segregation. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruled that segregation was inherently unconstitutional, leading to many to call for the end of desegregation. The topic of Eisenhower’s overall impact on the state of civil rights and desegregation has sparked a large
Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, “refused to cooperate” with the court and positioned “National Guard troopers” in order to stop them from interfering (Somerlott 58). In order to ensure that Central High (and to an extent, the entirety of the South) complied with the court’s orders, Eisenhower “authorized calling the Guard and regular Federal forces to remove obstructions to justice” in order to protect African-American during the desegregation of Central High (Lewis). This intervention is significant because it was the first time since the Reconstruction era that the federal government utilized “its ultimate power to compel equal treatment of the Negro in the South” (Lewis). Historians believe that if Eisenhower had not made the choice to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling then “desegregation in the South would have been set back at least a generation” (Smith xiv). Eisenhower’s involvement in Little Rock was a key element in the revolution for civil rights and the fight for racial equality in