(4 of 7)
On the Monday morning that integration began at Central High School, President Eisenhower flew to Washington for a speaking engagement before the International Monetary Fund, then held a brief, tense conference with Brownell. Barely back in Rhode Island that afternoon, Ike heard from Brownell over the maximum-security telephone in his personal quarters. The news was all bad. A mob ruled at Central High. School Superintendent Virgil Blossom (voted the city's Man of the Year in 1955, now vilified for backing a gradual integration plan) had excitedly called the Justice Department: "Mayor Mann wants to know who to call to get federal help."
To Dwight Eisenhower, the issue was not integration v. segregation; it was the integrity of the U.S. Government and its judicial decisions. Orval Faubus had left him no choice. Said he to Brownell: "I want you to send up that proclamation. It looks like I will have to sign it, but I want "to read it again." That evening, on the sun porch of his living quarters, President Eisenhower signed the proclamation commanding all persons obstructing justice in Little Rock "to cease and desist therefrom and to disperse forthwith."
Only one hope remained for avoiding the use of U.S. troops in Little Rock: obedience next morning to the proclamation. The President, walking to his office just before 8 a.m., noticed that "there's a cold wind blowing up." There was indeed: the reports from Brownell began flooding in. The mob had not dispersed. Shoving and shouting outside Central High School, it refrained from violence only because the Negro children did not appear. A telegram came from Little Rock's Mayor Mann: the situation was beyond the control of local authorities. Then President Eisenhower signed the order that sent the Screaming Eagles to Little Rock.
"Hello Defiance." Only a handful of people stood outside Central High School that night as the troops hove in sight. The paratroopers spilled out of their trucks, formed smartly on the school grounds. Field telephone lines were strung from the trunks of the high school's lordly oaks. Jeeps moved around to the rear of the school, parked in a line along practice-football charging machines. Pup tents blossomed in back of the school's tennis courts. Colonel William A. Kuhn, smart and salty, swung a swagger stick as he examined a map of the school grounds.
By 5 a.m. Wednesday, combat-ready paratroopers lined the two blocks of Park Avenue in front of the school, stood with fixed bayonets on corners a block away in each direction. Radio patrol jeeps sped back and forth. A walkie-talkie crackled: "Hello Defiance, this is Crossroads Six." A crowd began gathering a block east of the school, where "Roadblock Alpha" had been thrown up at an intersection. Major James Meyers, a thin, hard man with the glint of a hawk in his eyes, ordered up a sound truck. "Please return to your homes," said he, "or it will be necessary for us to disperse you."