Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10730 the night of September 23, 1957. Twelve hours later, one thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne had landed at this field.
A Pirep featured story · KLIT Bill and Hillary Clinton National (Adams Field), Little Rock, AR
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were inherently unequal. Three years later, nine African American students enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock. The state's governor, Orval Faubus, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block them from entering. On September 4, 1957, the photograph that would define the crisis was taken: Elizabeth Eckford, fifteen years old, walking alone past a line of soldiers and a screaming mob.
Three weeks of standoff followed. The mayor of Little Rock cabled the White House asking for federal intervention. On the evening of September 23, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10730, federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and authorizing the 101st Airborne Division to deploy.
By dawn on September 24, they were here.
The Army flew the 1st Airborne Battle Group of the 327th Infantry Regiment out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, into Adams Field, Little Rock's municipal airport. One thousand paratroopers, on the ground in less than twelve hours. They moved by convoy from the airfield to Central High, sealed off the school, and on September 25 escorted the Little Rock Nine inside under a guard of soldiers with fixed bayonets.
The Army had been integrated since 1948. The first U.S. Army unit ever desegregated, in 1947, was an airborne battalion. Black paratroopers flew in with the 101st that morning. The command, reading the mood of the city, kept many of them on reserve at the airfield.
The 101st stayed on station through the fall. The federalized Arkansas Guard relieved them by December. The students were verbally and physically abused inside the school every day; one of them was nearly attacked with acid before a soldier pushed her face into a drinking fountain. The next year, the governor closed every public high school in Little Rock to prevent further desegregation. The schools reopened in 1959 under federal court order.
Adams Field kept that name for another fifty-five years. In 2012, the field was renamed Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport. The original name was preserved in parentheses on the official designation. The identifier stayed KLIT.