Ike's Final Battle - The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality

Ike's Final Battle
The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality

January 30, 7:30 PM -
To RSVP, visit the Hauenstein Center website.
Gerald R. Ford Museum Auditorium (303 Pearl Street NW)

Join Grand Valley's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and the Office of Multicultural Affairs at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum on Wednesday, January 30, at 7:30 PM, to hear author Kasey Pipes's account of Dwight Eisenhower's "final battle." Kasey Pipes worked in the Bush White House, wrote speeches for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was chief author of the 2004 Republican Party National Platform. He now serves as president of The Pipes Company, a corporate communications consulting firm. A commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, he lives with his wife, Lacie, in Fort Worth, Texas.

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To learn more, visit www.ikesfinalbattle.com.

Fifty years ago, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, became desegregation's first battleground after the Supreme Court struck down the concept of "separate but equal." For three weeks in September 1957, Governor Orval E. Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at all-white Central High, forcing a historic confrontation between state and federal authorities.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne in to integrate Central High, he didn't know that he was fighting the last, great battle of his career. Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality tells how one of America's greatest leaders finally confronted America's greatest sin. Here, for the first time, is the unlikely tale of how Ike became a civil rights president.

Dr. Martin Luther King called the Little Rock crisis a "blessing in disguise." It marked the first time since Reconstruction that federal troops had been sent to restore order in the South. Ike established the precedent that racial justice was no longer just a local or state issue. The federal government would intervene, if necessary.