Today is an important day in the history of education in the United States. Federal courts had ordered the schools of Little Rock to admit nine black students. Crowds of white supremacists gathered to block their entry. On this day, Governor Orval Faunus called up the National Guard to prevent the black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School.
From Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac”:
It was on this day in 1957 that Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to bar nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to make sure they could enroll. A few days later, Eisenhower made a prime-time, live televised speech to the nation in which he said, “Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.
President Eisenhower proceeded to nationalize the…
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essayist, and literary critic; known for his stylistic and technical abilities, as well as his wide range of themes, including politics, morality, love, and religion. He moved to the U.S. in 1939, and became an American citizen in 1946. His books of poetry include Poems, published when he was 23 years old, The Orators,The Age of Anxiety, and The Dyer’s Hand. From 1956 to 1961 he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty. After his death at age 66, his poems became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime because of their use in films, broadcasts, and popular media.
dean ramser 