Letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower from Seventeen Year Old Elaine Atwood In Favor of School Integration
10/1957
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education that segregated schools are "inherently unequal." In September 1957, as a result of that ruling, nine African-American students enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The ensuing struggle between segregationists and integrationists, the State of Arkansas and the federal government, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, has become known in modern American history as the "Little Rock Crisis."
The crisis gained world-wide attention. When Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High School to keep the nine students from entering the school, President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to insure the safety of the "Little Rock Nine" and that the rulings of the Supreme Court were upheld.
Transcript
Anchorage, Alaska
Honorable Dwight D. Eisenhower
The President of the United States
Washington, D.C.
My dear Mr. President:
I want to applaud you on your actions concerning the Little Rock integration problem. I support you completely. Noone [sic] can be allowed to take the law in their own hands and noone [sic] can ever be allowed to go against the constitution and the President of the United States. What you did in calling in Federal troops and federalizing the Arkansas National Guard is what you had to do. You are the choosen [sic] leader of our country. Your authority must never be challenged. I think you took the only course left open to you.
I am 17 years old and graduated from an integrated public high school in Anchorage, Alaska, last May.
After all the attacks on your actions, I wanted you to know I am just one more who support [sic] you completely.
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