photograph by AntoniusArmand via Flickr
Little Rock Central High School, AR: On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Secretary of Defense to use the Arkansas National Guard and other troops to permit the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. The following morning, the 101st Airborne Division surrounded the school and escorted a group of nine African-American teenagers through an angry, jeering crowd to begin the fall term. This was the first major confrontation over implementation of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).