LONOKE Ark.
When young Bob Evans was ordered to report to guard duty one September night, he had no idea why.
The Arkansas National Guard had been called out before to help after natural disasters like the 1952 tornado that blasted the town of Judsonia to smithereens.
But now Evans could think of no state emergency that would require Gov. Orval Faubus to send them to Little Rock Central High School in the dark of night.
“We were just told to go guard the school,” Evans recalled 50 years later. “I didn’t know why I was there.”
Faubus provided an explanation on Sept. 2, 1957, announcing on television that he was sending the guard to all-white Central High to prevent violence. Days earlier, an angry Faubus had complained that the federal government was trying to force integration on the public with no offer of help in keeping the peace as nine black students prepared to attend the school.
In the days that followed, the governor’s actions would fail to keep a bullying white mob from the school and would lead to a showdown with President Eisenhower over court-ordered integration.
