Posted on 10/05/2007 6:54:06 AM PDT by Nextrush
After getting the Supreme Court of Earl Warren on its side, the NAACP legal team rolled from victory to victory including changing the bus seating rules in Montgomery, Alabama and integrating Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
Martin Luther King was embarking on an economic boycott and civil disobedience path while the NAACP would continue its efforts in the federal court system to integrate southern educational institutions including the Meredith vs. Fair case involving the University of Mississippi.
President Eisenhower and the GOP hoped that their intervention in the Little Rock case would keep northern black votes in the GOP column (60 percent for Ike in the 1956 election).
But John Kennedy would run in 1960 to appease both sides telling white Democrats it was wrong to send federal troops to Little Rock and he wouldn't do it as president in a similar situation.
And people entering black churches in northern cities were given blue flyers the Sunday before the 1960 election reminding them that JFK had called Coretta Scott King when Martin Luther King was jailed in Georgia a few weeks before the election.
Kennedy picked up 60 percent of the black vote in 1960 beginning a trend towards the Democrat party.
Vice-President Richard Nixon pounced on Governor Faubus for blocking the integration of Centrral High and causing the Army intervention.
But Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus got what he wanted by forcing federal invervention to enforce the integration.
He could blame the federal government and its "occupation forces" for everything and he did riding his way to re-election in 1958 and beyond.
New laws of resistance to integration were also passed in Arkansas in 1958 leading to a one year shutdown of public high schools in Little Rock for the 1958-59 school year.
The 101st Airborne troops remained at Little Rock Central High School until Thanksgiving 1957, then federalized Arkansas National Guard troops took over.
Of the nine black students, one was expelled from school. Minnijean Brown responded to name calling from white students by dumping a bowl of chili on one and calling a white girl "white trash."
Another, Ernest Green, graduated from Central High in 1958.
I will wrap up the Ole Miss story from 1962 on Sunday.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.