Woodrow
Wilson Mann, the son of a businessman, was born in Little
Rock, Arkansas, on 13th November, 1916. After graduating from
the University of Illinois, he joined the United
States Navy and
served on the staff of Admiral Chester
Nimitz in the Pacific.
In
1945 went into the insurance business. A member of the Democratic
Party, he was elected as mayor of Little
Rock in 1955. A supporter of reform, Mann installed a new integrated
bus system within six months of gaining office. He also overturned
Jim Crow rules that forced blacks to
use cups at the City Hall water fountains and doubled the number of
black policeman in the city.
The
Supreme Court had announced in 1954 that
separate schools were not equal and ruled that they were therefore
unconstitutional. Some states accepted the ruling and began to desegregate.
However, several states in the Deep South refused to accept this judgment.
On 3rd September 1957, the governor of Arkansas, Orval
Faubus, used the National Guard to stop black children from attending
the local high school in Little
Rock.
Mann disagreed with this decision and on 4th September telegraphed
President
Dwight Eisenhower
and asked
him to send federal troops to Little Rock.
On 24th September, 1957, President Dwight
Eisenhower, went on television and told the American people: "At
a time when we face grave situations abroad because of the hatred
that communism bears towards a system of government based on human
rights, it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being
done to the prestige and influence and indeed to the safety of our
nation and the world. Our enemies are gloating over this incident
and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed
as a violator of those standards which the peoples of the world united
to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations."
After trying for eighteen days to persuade Orval
Faubus to obey the ruling of the Supreme
Court, Eisenhower decided to order paratroopers of the 101st Airborne
Division, to protect black children going to Little Rock Central High
School. The white population of Little
Rock were furious that they were being forced to integrate their
school and Faubus described the federal troops as an army of occupation.
Elizabeth
Eckford and the other eight African American students that entered
the school suffered physical violence and constant racial abuse. Parents
of four of the children lost their jobs because they had insisted
in sending them to a white school. Eventually Orval
Faubus decided to close down all the schools in Little Rock.
Mann and his family received death threats and Klu
Klux Klan crosses were burnt on his front lawn. When his term
as mayor ended in 1958 he was forced to leave Little
Rock and
moved to Dallas where he returned to the insurance business. Woodrow
Wilson Mann
died on 6th August 2002.
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