How the Little Rock 9 Impacted the Civil Rights Movement | The American Presidency w/ Bill Clinton — Transcript

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1. 0:00you
2. 0:00[Music]
3. 0:01like the eisenhower do solemnly swear
4. 0:04i dwight d eisenhower do solemnly swear
5. 0:08that i will faithfully execute the
6. 0:10office of the president of the united
7. 0:12states
8. 0:14eisenhower's presidency is a really
9. 0:16important one in the history of race
10. 0:18relations in america
11. 0:20as we move through the mid to late 1950s
12. 0:24the period he becomes president
13. 0:26america had come out of world war ii
14. 0:29feeling confident and powerful
15. 0:33had conquered fascism
16. 0:36incomes were increasing a growing middle
17. 0:38class lots of things were getting better
18. 0:40for
19. 0:41a number of people which is in part also
20. 0:44why the civil rights movement is so
21. 0:45important because there were things that
22. 0:47weren't getting better for a whole
23. 0:49number of people
24. 0:51[Music]
25. 0:53eisenhower grew up in abilene kansas
26. 0:59he had no black friends
27. 1:01[Music]
28. 1:04he then went on to
29. 1:06a career in the segregated u.s military
30. 1:12so in a sense he really had no
31. 1:14notion of what it was like to be black
32. 1:17in america
33. 1:19what we have to consider about
34. 1:20eisenhower
35. 1:22is that eisenhower doesn't really
36. 1:23understand the lengths that the south
37. 1:26will go to to preserve
38. 1:28segregation
39. 1:31he wasn't looking to make civil rights
40. 1:33his main issue in the 1950s
41. 1:36he wanted to build the interstate
42. 1:38highway system he wanted to get the
43. 1:40economy humming he wanted to help
44. 1:42corporate america
45. 1:44and suddenly civil rights has dumped on
46. 1:46his desk daily through his eight-year
47. 1:48presidency
48. 1:50dwight eisenhower might not have been
49. 1:52interested in claiming civil rights as
50. 1:53his own issue but civil rights was
51. 1:55interested in eisenhower and it came to
52. 1:58him in 1957 at the town of little rock
53. 2:01arkansas
54. 2:08this was a explosive moment in the
55. 2:10modern civil rights movement
56. 2:12in order to understand little rock you
57. 2:14have to start
58. 2:16in 1954 with brownview board of
59. 2:18education
60. 2:21now brown v board of education rules
61. 2:23that separate but
62. 2:25equal
63. 2:26is in fact not equal
64. 2:29and ends segregation in education
65. 2:32this becomes the law of the land
66. 2:36it's one of the most important decisions
67. 2:38of the 20th century and it would shape
68. 2:40race relations in america for the rest
69. 2:42of the century
70. 2:44it was a direct existential threat to
71. 2:47the southern way of life
72. 2:52eisenhower wanted things to go slow
73. 2:57he feared
74. 2:58that all of his southern friends would
75. 3:00stand up and say this is an outrage the
76. 3:03is an invasion of our state's rights
77. 3:05this is going to set off racial conflict
78. 3:07this is going to be destabilizing
79. 3:09and as it turned out eisenhower was
80. 3:10right
81. 3:15eisenhower really didn't want to be
82. 3:17involved in trying to solve the
83. 3:18country's racial problems
84. 3:21but in assessing the situation
85. 3:22eisenhower was animated by the fear of
86. 3:26chaos if he did not bring the full
87. 3:28authority of the federal government to
88. 3:29play
89. 3:30in this particular crisis
90. 3:34now increasingly what we end up seeing
91. 3:37is that
92. 3:38schools become contested spaces of
93. 3:41segregation and inequality
94. 3:45and this is the case
95. 3:46in little rock arkansas
96. 3:49little rock prides itself on being
97. 3:51essentially a moderate city where people
98. 3:55have gotten along
99. 3:58but things are very different when we
100. 4:00get into the intimate space of the
101. 4:03school
102. 4:04now predictably round v board of
103. 4:06education it creates an explosive
104. 4:09situation
105. 4:11where nine black children go into a
106. 4:14situation
107. 4:16where white segregationists
108. 4:18a white mob
109. 4:20have essentially gotten together to
110. 4:22conspire to prevent these black children
111. 4:25from coming into the schools
112. 4:34so the little rock nine are a collection
113. 4:37of young people and that's really
114. 4:38important to know young people
115. 4:41who were
116. 4:42selected through a vetting process by
117. 4:44the local
118. 4:45naacp
119. 4:47to challenge the or frankly to be the
120. 4:50guinea pigs to integrate central high
121. 4:52school in little rock arkansas
122. 4:56well at this moment the governor of
123. 4:58arkansas a man named orville fabus who
124. 5:00actually was a world war ii veteran who
125. 5:02had served in europe while eisenhower
126. 5:04was the supreme commander
127. 5:07he stepped into the mix
128. 5:09orville fawbus smelled a political
129. 5:12advantage here he figured i'm going to
130. 5:13get on the side of the segregationist
131. 5:15because that's good politics here in
132. 5:17arkansas
133. 5:19orville fabus ordered the arkansas
134. 5:21national guard to come to the school to
135. 5:23stand guard and their role allegedly was
136. 5:26to keep the peace but in fact their role
137. 5:28was to make it impossible for the little
138. 5:30rock nine the nine black students to
139. 5:32come into the school
140. 5:38there must have been a thousand arkansas
141. 5:40national guardsmen
142. 5:44and their job was to keep us out
143. 5:51so the first day
144. 5:53we were born
145. 5:55we didn't go into class
146. 5:58there were people who uh
147. 6:01who wanted to lynch us
148. 6:04they're not simply met with armed forces
149. 6:07or
150. 6:08local police they are met with a mob and
151. 6:10they are met with violence
152. 6:13what the mob is doing is ensuring that
153. 6:16the racial hierarchy of little rock
154. 6:18arkansas is upheld
155. 6:20and it escalates it escalates and it
156. 6:23continues to grow and grow and grow
157. 6:28so eisenhower is certainly being brought
158. 6:30up to speed and i'm sure he's being
159. 6:33shown the movie clips or the film clips
160. 6:36and now eisenhower began to see the
161. 6:38images and there are some searing
162. 6:40photographs
163. 6:41of
164. 6:42white students
165. 6:44their faces contorted in hatred and
166. 6:46anger screaming at
167. 6:48elizabeth eckford and a few of the other
168. 6:50students who were there that day trying
169. 6:52to get into the school so this was an
170. 6:54explosive situation that eisenhower was
171. 6:56profoundly distressed to see it
172. 7:02eisenhower loathed the idea of using
173. 7:05force and he was seeking a way out
174. 7:08so he invited the governor to come to
175. 7:10see him up in newport
176. 7:14eisenhower leaves the meeting thinking
177. 7:16that he's convinced vabus and the thavis
178. 7:18is quite rational and will go home and
179. 7:21you know this all will be nipped in the
180. 7:23bud and what happens
181. 7:25oh fabulous does the exact opposite
182. 7:31he says all right
183. 7:32i'll withdraw the arkansas national
184. 7:34guard but now i'm going to leave it in
185. 7:36the hands of local police and i'm going
186. 7:39to leave it in the hands of the mob and
187. 7:41so
188. 7:42the crisis escalates even further
189. 7:45because now
190. 7:47the mob is unchecked
191. 7:49now they are even more vicious they are
192. 7:51even more dangerous
193. 7:52eisenhower was put in a corner
194. 7:55you know orville faubus pushed him into
195. 7:56a corner and that's not a place you want
196. 7:58to put dwight eisenhower especially when
197. 7:59he's president orville fabus he said
198. 8:02we'll see what happens when those
199. 8:03students come to school now
200. 8:05now that there's no soldiers there to
201. 8:06look after them i sure hope there isn't
202. 8:09any violence he said and i sure hope
203. 8:11nobody gets shot
204. 8:12what orville fabus was doing was ginning
205. 8:14up the hatred in little rock
206. 8:18eisenhower found himself without much of
207. 8:20an option
208. 8:21that the governor in arkansas was
209. 8:24refusing his authority and if he let
210. 8:26that happen so many other southern
211. 8:29governors would then have the precedent
212. 8:31to do the same thing
213. 8:33and
214. 8:35eisenhower wasn't going to let that
215. 8:36happen
216. 8:37it would be chaos and it's not
217. 8:39hyperbolic to say it could lead to a
218. 8:41second civil war
219. 8:48now was the moment eisenhower had to act
220. 8:52we are a nation in which laws
221. 8:54not men
222. 8:56are supreme
223. 8:58mob rule can
224. 8:59not be allowed
225. 9:01to override the decisions of our courts
226. 9:06he decides to send in 101st airborne to
227. 9:09enforce the law
228. 9:11this was one of america's proudest most
229. 9:13storied military units
230. 9:15liberated europe and that was now going
231. 9:17to play a role in defending the
232. 9:19constitution
233. 9:21in little rock
234. 9:23here we have the president of the united
235. 9:25states saying i am fully prepared to use
236. 9:28the full force
237. 9:29of my office
238. 9:31of the federal government
239. 9:33in order to uphold and enforce
240. 9:36the law of the land
241. 9:39we haven't seen these kinds of
242. 9:41deployment of troops used since
243. 9:43reconstruction
244. 9:52we had a real show of force
245. 9:55soldiers that were
246. 9:57rang
247. 9:58all around the school
248. 10:00[Music]
249. 10:02we had helicopter overhead
250. 10:07when we
251. 10:09walked into class we were surrounded by
252. 10:11a cartridge of paratroopers
253. 10:16it took the entire
254. 10:18united states army to get me into high
255. 10:21school
256. 10:28and uh
257. 10:30it made you feel great you felt like you
258. 10:33know
259. 10:34one week
260. 10:35here we had a mob of people who were
261. 10:37trying to keep us out
262. 10:39and that we were now
263. 10:41being able to go into a school
264. 10:44with the support of the
265. 10:46united states army
266. 10:48i'm the first
267. 10:49african-american to graduate from little
268. 10:52rock central high school
269. 10:54may of 1958.
270. 10:56[Music]
271. 10:58that was very heartening in arkansas to
272. 11:00suddenly have eisenhower the hero of
273. 11:04world war ii
274. 11:05on the side of young people integrating
275. 11:09central high
276. 11:10we received the congressional gold medal
277. 11:13the nine of us and
278. 11:15the person who presented it to us was
279. 11:17president clinton
280. 11:19uh an arkansan to another arkansas
281. 11:2740 years later we know there are still
282. 11:29more doors to be opened doors to be
283. 11:31opened wider doors we have to keep from
284. 11:34being shut again now
285. 11:3740 years later
286. 11:39frankly we know we're bound to come back
287. 11:41where we started
288. 11:42after all the weary years and silent
289. 11:45tears
290. 11:46after all the stony roads and bitter
291. 11:48rods
292. 11:49the question of race is in the end
293. 11:53still an affair of the heart
294. 11:57and so we wind up with this
295. 11:58extraordinary story of of a president
296. 12:01who
297. 12:02was not prepared to deal with the crisis
298. 12:04of race in america didn't really
299. 12:05understand it but the crisis came to him
300. 12:08and found him by sending in the 101st
301. 12:12airborne eisenhower sends a signal to
302. 12:15those states that would try and defy the
303. 12:18federal government that oh no i'm going
304. 12:20to preserve the union i'm going to
305. 12:21uphold the law and i'm going to knock
306. 12:24down your disorder
307. 12:26it just so happens that he does it in
308. 12:28defense of civil rights and it's this
309. 12:30moment that helps him understand
310. 12:33what is at stake in the struggle for the
311. 12:35civil rights movement