In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that "separate but equal" public schools were unconstitutional and ordered and end to segregation in schools across the U.S.
In the South there was resistance - too often violent resistance. But desegregation also happened peacefully in many Southern cities. There were plenty of city and school officials, as well a ordinary citizens, who knew segregation couldn't hold out forever. They may not have entirely liked it, but they complied with the law.
That's pretty much what everybody thought would happen in Little Rock. Arkansas' capitol city was seen as a moderate Southern metropolis and Gov. Orville Faubus was regarded as more progressive than the firebrand segregationists who dominated states like Mississippi and Alabama.
In 1955, the Little Rock School Board adopted a plan to integrate the city's schools. It would begin in the fall of 1957, when nine black students would attend all-white Central High. The plan was praised as a model of desegregation.
Things didn't work out like the city planned.
School was to start on Sept. 4, 1957. Opponents of desegregation came out to protest. And Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine black students from entering Central High, setting off a crisis that made national headlines, pitted a governor against a president and is still remembered as one of the defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement.
Faubus may have won the first skirmish, but he would lose the war.
On September 24, 1957 - 64 years ago on Friday - President Dwight Eisenhower sent the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to protect the nine black students. He also federalized the Arkansas National Guard - which meant they no longer answered to the governor.
The students were admitted. But Faubus came back in 1958 and closed the Little Rock public schools for a year. That bought the segregationists some time, but not much.
Because in the end right usually triumphs-at least in this nation. And it did in Little Rock.
Arkansas schools were desegregated and Jim Crow laws cast aside. Central High is now a national Historic Landmark and the site of a civil rights museum.
The sad thing is the whole crisis could have been avoided if the city's desegregation plan had been followed. Little Rock in 1957 would still have made history. But much better history.