Ike’s troop surge

Back-to-school: Mobs tried to stop some students from going back to school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957. Author Kasey S. Pipes on the commander in chief's historic response | Marvin Olasky

Next month brings the 50th anniversary of the showdown that desegregated at gunpoint Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. The U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously struck down in 1954 the concept of "separate but equal" education, and three years later the school became desegregation's first major battlefield: Nine black students tried to enter the all-white institution on Sept. 3, 1957, but not until Sept. 25 were the students able to stay—with protection by the 101st Airborne Division that President Dwight Eisenhower ordered there.

Kasey S. Pipes brings that story to life in Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality (World Ahead, 2007). Pipes is a former student of mine at the University of Texas, but I've never taught writing to anyone who had less to learn. Pipes worked in the Bush White House, was chief author of the 2004 Republican Party National Platform, and now runs his own corporate communications consulting firm. He describes Eisenhower's tough decision regarding Little Rock as the culmination of a racial education that began during World War II.