With the Supreme Court in favour of desegregation of schools it was up to the Congress to pass a law against segregation, however they did not since they were not prepared to support desegregation. This caused desegregation to slow down a lot because it was implying to schools that they did not have to desegregate right away. Congress should have pushed desegregation forward instead of leaving it and creating more problems for schools desegregating.
Southern State governors were outraged with Brown vs. Topeka case because they thought it was changing southern way of life. When in 1957 Little Rock Central High School was chosen to have nine grade-A black students to be allowed to integrate with the white students there was chaos at the school. Governor Orval Faubus opposed the integration because he was coming up for election and most people living in Arkansas approved of segregation so he wanted to keep his job as Governor. Therefore Orval Faubus sent troops to Little Rock Central High School to prevent the nine black students from entering the building. The Supreme Court insisted that Orval Faubus remove the national guards because the federal law was being broken, so President Eisenhower had a meeting with Orval Faubus but in doing so it left the nine black students defenseless against the angry crowds of white people which were mainly white supremacist groups. For example a well known group was called the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that threatened black people and black communities and also went around killing them. They also started lynching which means taking the law into their own hands when a black person did something wrong. These people threatened black students so they wouldn’t attend white schools. They made sure the black students felt intimidated by them and made sure they felt inferior to them. The Federal Government got involved again to bring troops in to protect the nine students.
Another reason why the Federal Government got involved at little Rock Central High School was because the USA was meant to be a country of freedom so the President would feel embarrassed about it because the black people weren’t being treated fairly so that would reflect on USA being the country of freedom and other countries would see that they actually treat people there badly. But even though President Eisenhower did send the troops to Little Rock Central High School in some of his speeches he wasn’t 100% behind desegregation. President Eisenhower said in appointing Chief Justice Warren “was the biggest damned fool mistake I ever made” he didn’t think Chief Justice Warren would make such a big move in desegregation and put pressure on President Eisenhower to back up desegregation. Even though the nine black students faced abuse from white student’s everyday they still managed to go through the school years and passed their exams.
Southern school boards didn’t encourage schools to desegregate or integrate. They even told the parents that the school is going to be desegregated and it’s their choice if they want to move their children to a private school, another school which hasn’t desegregated or let their children stay at the school they are at. They also tried to go against the law to prevent desegregation
The schools still tried not to accept black students and the schools were always trying to find loop holes. It still took 10 years for schools to desegregate.
Desegregation was a major problem because of the white supremacy groups trying to prevent it from happening. They did this in different ways, like preventing black students from entering white schools, some of the school boards told parents to move their children to other schools that had not been desegregated which led to the process of desegregation taking along time.
By Amajo Ujah 11A
History
