In 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prohibit nine black children from entering Little Rock's Central High School. Here, editors Jacoway and Williams present a series of original and insightful papers which discuss economic, constitutional, historical, and personal aspects of the crisis and of segregation.

In September 1957 nine black children tried to integrate Arkansas' Little Rock Central High School in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Claiming he was acting to keep the peace, Gov. Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to keep them out of the school. After a lengthy standoff, President Eisenhower called in the 101st Airborne and reluctantly, slowly, but forcibly began to integrate the school. The standoff became a rallying cry for Southern segregationists and a marker of the country's shame.The accounts that have been so mythologized over...