1958 - Eisenhower Orders Troop Removal at Little Rock

On May 8, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the removal of the federalized Arkansas National Guard from Central High School in Little Rock. The troops had been deployed the previous fall to enforce the desegregation of the school and protect the “Little Rock Nine”—a group of nine Black students who integrated the previously all-white institution. This marked the end of a pivotal federal intervention in the civil rights movement, but the struggle in Little Rock continued. That fall, Governor Orval Faubus closed all public high schools in the city to resist integration, igniting the “Lost Year” of 1958–59. Eisenhower’s decision to withdraw federal troops was symbolic of the delicate balance between federal authority and states’ rights during one of the most volatile chapters of American education history.