Despite his deep-seated aversion to social movements and to the increasingly urgent demands for action on civil rights, he presided over two enormously important developments that would shape the history of race in America. He lent support to Attorney General Brownell’s strenuous efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957; and he used the power of his office to enforce court-ordered school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, overcoming the resistance of the demagogic governor, Orval Faubus. Eisenhower may at times have been an unwilling combatant in these struggles, yet in the end he did
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