September 24 · This Day in America
Three years after the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, nine Black teenagers in Little Rock, Arkansas, still cannot get through the doors of Central High. A mob blocks them; the governor sends the National Guard to keep them out. On this day President Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10730 and orders the 101st Airborne Division — combat paratroopers — into an American city to enforce the Constitution. For the first time since Reconstruction, federal troops are deployed in the South to protect Black citizens. The next morning soldiers in helmets escort the Little Rock Nine up the steps, bayonets fixed, while the country and the world watch. It should not have taken an army to send children to school. That it did is the point. The federal government had finally decided the promise would be kept by force if it would not be kept by consent.
Source: www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov
Also on this day · 1789
On this day George Washington signs the Judiciary Act of 1789, building the third branch the Constitution had only sketched. It establishes a Supreme Court of six justices, the lower federal courts, and the office of Attorney General. The same young government had no idea this quiet bureaucratic statute was creating the institution that would one day order an airborne division into Little Rock to enforce its own decisions.
Source: www.history.com