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Why did President Dwight D. Eisenhower send federal troops to Little Rock Central High School?
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Little Rock Nine
Members of the Arkansas National Guard escorting the Little Rock Nine into Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas, September 1957.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock Central High School to ensure the safety and entry of the Little Rock Nine. This action was a response to the intense harassment and violence directed at the nine Black students by white mobs, and the obstruction by Arkansas Governor Orval Eugene Faubus, who had deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the previously all-white school. Eisenhower mobilized U.S. Army paratroopers to escort the students into the school, asserting federal authority over state defiance of the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.1234