Little Rock Crisis 37But the networks knew a good story when they saw one, and television
boosted the movement as a moral crusade.
Stung by Faubus’s duplicity and the resulting violence, Eisenhower grudg-
ingly took the side of integrationists, if only to uphold federal power against
a wayward lieutenant. Moreover, the president had to defend the United States
from harsh international criticism. Nigerian newspapers asked, ‘What moral
right have Americans to condemn apartheid in South Africa while still main-
taining it by law?’ The Soviet Union attacked the ‘white-faced but black-souled
gentlemen [who] commit their dark deeds... then these thugs put on white
gloves and mount the rostrum in the UN General Assembly, and hold forth
about freedom and democracy.’ Although Eisenhower worried that the South
might end public education if force were used, he crushed this insubordination
with 1,200 paratroopers from the famed 101st ‘Screaming Eagles’ airborne
division. It was the first time since Reconstruction that a president sent troops
to protect black civil rights. Eisenhower’s chief of staff remarked that the pres-
ident carried out ‘a constitutional duty which was the most repugnant to him
of all his acts in his eight years at the White House.’ Eisenhower also ordered
10,000 Arkansas National Guardsmen back to Central High, this time to
protect the black students. Angry segregationists compared the soldiers to
‘Hitler’s storm troopers’ and called for their states to secede from the Union.
As the troops arrived on 24 September, Daisy Bates waited for super-
intendent Blossom’s assurance that the black students would be protected.
When the harried superintendent called after midnight to say that the stu-
dents should come the next day, Bates replied that the parents left their tele-
phones off the hook to avoid harassment while sleeping. Blossom insisted
that the students come to school anyway, so Bates and two black school prin-
cipals went door-to-door, knocking on each house after 1 a.m. The first stop
was Gloria Ray’s house. After repeated knocking, Gloria’s father aimed a shot-
gun at the unwelcome visitors. ‘What do you want now?’ he growled. When
Bates explained that the desegregation of Central High would begin in a few
hours, he replied, ‘I don’t care if the President of the United States gave you
those instructions! I won’t let Gloria go. She’s faced two mobs and that’s
enough.’ At the appointed time, however, Ray brought Gloria over: ‘Here,
Daisy, she’s yours. She’s determined to go. Take her.’
As morning broke, the children were taken to Central High in a convoy
of jeeps carrying machine guns. When the convoy approached the school,
a mob blocked its path. An army major ordered the mob to disperse, but a
man yelled, ‘They’re bluffing. If you don’t want to move, you don’t have to.’
The army was not bluffing, and the mob scattered. As the students ascended
the school steps, paratroopers surrounded them on the ground and helicop-
ters hovered overhead. Faubus told a televised audience that ‘we are now an
occupied territory. Evidence of the naked force of the federal government is