Orval Eugene Faubus, Governor of Arkansas 1955 – 57

Faubus’s name became internationally known during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, when he used the Arkansas National Guard to stop African Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School as part of federally ordered racial desegregation.

Arkansas governor Orval Faubus enlists the National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.

The armed Arkansas militia troops surrounded the school while an angry crowd of some 400 whites jeered, booed, and threatened to lynch the frightened African American teenagers, who fled shortly after arriving.

Faubus took the action in violation of a federal order to integrate the school. The conflict set the stage for the first major test of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in educational facilities is unconstitutional.

Source: history.com for the complete article