Eisenhower and Little Rock
One of our favorite contributors, Chester Pach of Ohio University, has written an interesting post over at the Milestone Documents blog about Dwight Eisenhower’s handling of the Little Rock school crisis of 1957. (Tomorrow is the anniversary of Eisenhower’s executive order ordering troops to protect African American students trying to attend Central High School; it will be the Doc of the Day at the Milestones blog tomorrow.) Among other things, Chester points out that one of Eisenhower’s motivations was appearance: He thought the crisis was making us look bad compared with our cold war enemy, the Soviet Union. I wonder what students today would think of a president using such seemingly superficial matters to justify–at least in part–a critical decision? I wonder what other major decisions might be seen in the same light? Of course, Eisenhower at the time probably viewed “appearance” as anything but superficial.
I love how studying primary sources allows you to delve into such questions. And how great is it that the Internet provides access to so many primary sources? All of us who are involved with history education, whether publishers or educators or librarians, need to find fresh new ways to take advantage of these digital history tools.