Eisenhower, Education, and Civil Rights: a Reassessment of the Eisenhower Administration's Contribution to School Desegregation...

In the small town of Mansfield, Texas, 1956, three African-American children were prevented by state troopers from enrolling in the local school. Despite the ruling of the Supreme Court known as Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954, declaring school segregation unconstitutional, the Governor of Texas took the dramatic step of inviting armed officers to block the enrolment of the African-American children, and to stop the desegregation of Mansfield's Central High. The same happened in the subsequent year in Little Rock, Arkansas,where the State Governor used the National Guard to prevent school desegregation. Yet, the Federal Government's reaction in these two instances was markedly different. In Little Rock, the Eisenhower administration sent Federal troops to ensure school desegregation -an action not taken in Mansfield. As the events in Little Rock suggest,the lack of Federal intervention in Mansfield was not the result of an inability to act; rather, it was the outcome of a decision not to act.