Wotboa recently created a poll about the evolving nature of the accusation of racism. He added a Library of Congress image of a 1959 protest on the steps of the State Capitol in Little Rock with signs printed up saying “Race Mixing is Communism” (Three years before Barack Obana Sr would father his son)
In 1957, Dwight Eisenhower was President and Richard Nixon was Vice President. Democrat Orval Faubus was the Governor of Arkansas and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the steps of the Little Rock Central High School to prevent 9 black students from entering the school to comply with the unanimous ruling of the US Supreme Court in Brown v Board of Education that racially segregated schools were a violation of the Constitution. Did I mention Faubus was a Democrat?
Republican Martin Luther King Jr appealed to President Eisenhower to send in Federal troops to confront the Arkansas National Guard and force Little Rock to end school segregation. Governor Faubus then responded by trying to close all four Little Rock high schools.
http://libinfo.uark.edu/specialcollections/research/lessonplans/FaubusSpeechLessonPlan.pdf
He was reelected until 1967, when he was replaced by New York Republican Winthrop Rockefeller.
My next door neighbor claims a connection to this story. He was 18 years old and had signed up for the Mississippi National Guard. His version of events was that his unit was activated and told to be ready to move quickly to Little Rock. Eisenhower’s thinking was that sending in troops from the North might cause a military confrontation – and that Arkansas soldiers would not fire on fellow Southerners.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0925.html
President Eisenhower ultimately took Federal Control of the Arkansas National Guard and brought in about 1000 members of the 101st Airborne under the command of Edwin Walker, who would later lead protests against integration in Mississippi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Walker
The sainted Robert F Kennedy Jr tried to have Walker involuntarily committed to an insane asylum and Lee Harvey Oswald tried to kill him
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20130511-before-gunning-for-jfk-oswald-targeted-ex-gen.-edwin-a.-walker–and-missed.ece
Yes indeed. Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican and Orval Faubus was a Democrat.
Rand Paul is trying to reverse polarity again and got an ovation at UC Berkeley.
Amazing what paying single women to have children outside of marriage can do to political alignment after 5 decades. Obamacare was indented to extend that but seems to have backfired on him and the Democrats.