Faubus, Orval Eugene

▪ 1995

      U.S. politician (b. Jan. 7, 1910, Greasy Creek, Ark.—d. Dec. 14, 1994, Conway, Ark.), as governor (1954-67) of Arkansas, defied a 1957 federal court order to desegregate schools and called out the Arkansas National Guard to "prevent violence" by blocking the access of nine black students to Little Rock Central High School; his action was countered by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who mobilized 1,200 U.S. Army paratroopers to usher the students into the school. Faubus, the son of a poor farmer, was a southern populist who supported New Deal policies. After his election as governor, he appointed six black men to the Democratic State Committee, a move that triggered a charge during his 1956 reelection campaign that he was "soft" on racism. The following year—after the entire Arkansas legislature signed the Southern Manifesto, which attacked the Supreme Court's desegregation law as "naked judicial power"—Faubus determined that his political survival depended on stopping desegregation. His actions attracted national television attention and set the stage for the South's resistance to integration. After leaving office in 1967, Faubus worked as a bank clerk and made three (1970, 1974, and 1986) unsuccessful bids for the governorship. He defended his record in The Faubus Years (1991).

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