They appointed five moderately progressive jurists to the U.S. Supreme Court and ushered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through a skeptical Congress. The Act was a landmark only because it was so rare: the first civil rights law since Reconstruction. Eisenhower took an enormous risk, and one that was deeply uncharacteristic, when he ordered federal troops to surround Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure that court-ordered desegregation proceed despite the hostility of local authorities.
