Summary Of Crisis In Little Rock By William Doyle

In the essay, Crisis in Little Rock, author William Doyle reveals a country at war with itself. Polarized over the morality of segregation, the United States’ federal and state powers found themselves in a deadlocked over the interpretation of African American constitutional rights. Doyle depicts the citizen outrage over the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School, the attempts of state officials to circumvent Supreme Court orders, and the bravery of the ten students who volunteered to be Central High’s first African American pupils.

The dismantling of Reconstruction efforts in 1876 led to the establishment of Black Codes and Jim Crow law throughout the South. These laws blatantly disregarded the freedoms afforded to African Americans

Doyle depicts African Americans demanding equality and white sympathizers breaking social constraints by comforting and even threatening to physically defend a black girl from enraged whites. The division in government was made apparent in the following the dismissal of the students, the “Little Rock Nine”, when intense negotiations between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Governor Faubus commenced. Governor Faubus was considered a moderate on racial issues. However, he was up for election and willing to resort to unsavory political maneuvers to retain favor in the public eye. President Eisenhower left negotiations with the understanding that Faubus would deploy the National Guard on September 23rd to maintain the peace for the Little Rock Nine’s second attempt to attend classes. Faubus instead left the protection of the Little Rock Nine to the ill-prepared Little Rock police department. The children briefly made it inside the school on September 23rd, however the furious mob’s frustrations reached a climax outside the school, they chanted for the white children to walk out, an African American journalist was viciously attacked, and a white police further enticed the crowd’s rebellion by throwing down his billy club and badge in defiance to integration. The children had to be removed from the school for their own

Eisenhower was not an advocate for African American civil rights nor was he sympathizer for the African American plight. The President was however, a strict defender of American Institutions. He believed in the finality of the constitution and rulings of the Supreme Court. He believed an affront on either as an attack on American values and tradition. For the first time since Reconstruction the ruling hand of the federal government was pushed to deploy troops to the South for the protection of African American freedom and