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of black side incorporated where i once worked on with eyes on the prize which is a very fine resource for this story as well. so there s a couple of there s many, many books on the subject so people can follow up. david nichols. the intervention. yes. you want me to talk about eisenhower s troop decision. yes. i talk about little rock as the tip of the iceberg and we already talked about the judicial appointments. eisenhower and his attorney general herbert brownell anticipated violence from almost the moment the brown decision was made. and they early on, the 101st airborne division that was sent into little rock in 1957 was trained in riot control. this was not for riots in europe. they anticipated there it might be an alternative to using the one legal out that he had which was to use the troops, hoping not to do it. but he did. but little rock is the defense of the brown iceburg. and i would point out to you that eisenhower could have chosen not to se ....
of two veterans and two women in monroe, georgia, where they were taken out to a clearing and then lined up and just slaughtered. when you read the autopsy reports, they talk about at least 60 bullets in each body. it it just kept and this was what was driving, part of what was driving the black community as they are looking, and i go to the frederick douglass quote, that power concedes nothing without a demand. it never has, and it never will, so when we talk about the presidents in this civil rights struggle, it s also important to understand that they are in complete conversation with a completely mobilized black community that refuses to take it any longer. [ applause ] so i said at the beginning there s the civil rights the thought process and what was happening with the presidents, both truman and eisenhower were informed by two wars. the first was world war ii. the second is the cold war. we don t think about that in terms of civil rights, and carol ander ....
yes, exactly. but it was all of this that we were looking at. it just didn t i mean, part of the problem today is that everybody thinks that dr. king made the speech on the steps. and that was it? that was it. everybody held hands. and my hope is that events like this get people to bore down deeper to understand what else was going on and why, you know, we felt we could step forward, and we had the support of family, that we could do something different. well, we re going to get to your moment big moment in the sunshine in just a minute, ernie green, but did i want to highlight something for people who don t know, because i don t assume everybody knows. emmett till was 14 years old. he s part of the whole lynching thing that was going on. he was lynched in mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. those people that lynched him later said that they did it, but it was, of course, after the trial, and it was a rigged trial, but this was a sign ....
william brennan, potter stewart, charles evans whittaker is probably his weakest appointment. all five of them committed to the enforcement of brown. and william brennan, any of you know your supreme court history, was not a far right conservative in any way, shape or form. eisenhower actually nominated him when he was in the midst of an election campaign in the fall of 56, and he did that partly for political reasons, too. he wanted a catholic, so a catholic democrat, but eisenhower s judicial appointments lasted decades later, and felix frankfurter said that the supreme court during this era was the eisenhower court. we all know it as the warren court, but it was the eisenhower court, and i ll tell you one of the great myths was that eisenhower didn t know what earl warren stood for. that is factually incorrect. he knew him well. his attorney general brownell socialized with warren and had run two presidential campaigns for him. he knew exactly who he was. and these ....
that this was going to be a good thing. the summer occurs, and it s kind of bumping along, and i get an invitation, my mother and i, to go down to the superintendent s office to indicate that i ve been accepted as one of the students to transfer to central that fall. i thought it was going to be a fairly quiet day. and up until and so did most people in little rock, and the night before school was to open, the good governor orville faubus comes on television and says that he s calling out the national guard to keep us out of school. and i m thinking oh, my goodness, you know, i m a senior. i want to graduate, and i m walking into this huge unknown. and that first day the pictures on the brochure of elizabeth and the mob behind her, it dawned on me that maybe this was something other than my going to school, that there s some other issues going on here, and that i said i wanted to be a part of the change in the south. well, my moment came. and for three weeks, in fact, ....