Was watching PBS yesterday evening and caught their latest documentary on the forced integration of a public high school in Arkansas (Little Rock HS) and a state university in Mississippi (Ole Miss).
Fascinating documentary...presidents Eisenhower and JFK had to send in the military to force federal law on the states. In the case of integrating Ole Miss in 1960, riots broke out in which two people were killed. The streets of Oxford, MS looked like a riot in Paris...burned out cars and buildings.
Was it right for the federal government to impose its law on states to integrate, even when polls said the vast majority of citizens in those states didn't want integration? Do you think we would still see legal segregation today in the southeast if the federal government hadn't forced it to happen?
Interviewers at the time asked a black leader if he thought he was causing a big ruckus and trying to change the south too quickly. His response: "I too, sir, am a gradualist. The emancipation proclamation was given over 90 years ago, and I guess I'd say that's gradual enough".
This should generate some interesting opinions, particularly from a certain confederate OT poster.
