Proclamation No. 3204 (1-5)
- This section has a lot of "whereases" and "therefores," all for the purpose of establishing the President's reasons and authority for what he's about to do.
- The first part of the order repeats a proclamation Eisenhower had issued the previous day. It describes the situation in Little Rock.
- In case you're not up to speed, Little Rock's public schools are having a little trouble getting integrated. As in, they're still totally segregated and protesters are physically preventing Black students from coming to the historically white school by mobbing the premises and threatening the students.
- In doing so, as Ike points out in his proclamation, they're disobeying the orders of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. The Court had ordered the schools to be integrated pronto.
- Yeah, not great.
- Eisenhower has told the protesters to "cease and desist" and go home because, by law, he had to give them the opportunity to give up peacefully before dispatching the military.
- But the protestors didn't listen to his first notice, so now things are getting real.