people in little rock, and the night before school was to open, the good governor orville faubus comes on television and says that he s calling out the national guard to keep out out of school. and i m thinking oh, my goodness, you know, i m a senior. i want to graduate, and i m walking into this huge unknown. and that first day the pictures on the brochure of elizabeth and the mob behind her, it dawned on me that maybe this was something other than my going to school, that there s some other issues going on here, and that i said i wanted to be a part of the change in the south. well, my moment came. and for three weeks, in fact, most people didn t think eisenhower was going to step forward and do anything. i don t think up until the last month we were talking earlier, i had an opportunity to sit with herbert brownell back in the 80s, we were at the eisenhower eisenhower library. and i said, you know, eisenhower really didn t need to send 1,000 paratroopers with the 101st airborne. he could have sent 50, 100 or 200, that they would have done the job, but he said that eisenhower, he had just won world war ii, he was the president of a major university without a phd. he was the darling of both political parties to be the standard bearer for president and he wanted to show faubus who was in charge that he was tired of having the second-rate governor, as he saw him, push him around, and and so on the 25th of september when they finally sent the troops, and we went to school with, you know, a convoy of jeeps and army, station wagons and helicopters flying over, you got the feeling that you would get into school that day. but but but i i i think, again, unintended consequences that that was really, at left in my mind, the first time that the federal government had really stepped forward to support that decision and to show african-american communities that they were uphold their rights, so when i bumped into people like john lewis and others, you know, they said little rock was an important part of their consciousness, so each of these steps and places became, you know, kind of stepping stones. one led to the other, and we never expected, any of us, the nine of us, that what we were doing was was going to be earth-shattering and that 56 years later i m still talking about getting to high school. but the the interest of all nine of us was really to pursue the best education, public education we thought that was our right, and we had came from families that education was important and that they thought we had the right to be there. right. and that that was really what i think eisenhower i never had a chance to meet him, never, you know, looked beyond that year of the presidential politics, but one important thing was at my graduation, there was a young minister from montgomery, alabama, speaking in pine bluff, arkansas, and the night that i graduated, dr. king came up, sat with my family and was in the audience, so, you know, this all of this connection connectivity of the charlene story and others, and we all, you know, were doing our individual thing, trying to improve what we thought was the best options for us. now understanding it s 56 years later and you have the benefit of hindsight, let s go back to your young self and for history sake in this conference you have to answer the question of were you frightened? sure, i was fright new england. now there s a situation that now all these troops are up to protect. you we weren t frightened. we were frightened on the side of the unknown. when the governor called out the national guard to keep us out, yeah, we were frightened, and and the unknown was, you know, will i complete school that year? i didn t know whether it was going to collapse on me, but when president eisenhower sent the troops, i mean, that sent one hell of a message. the most difficult times for us is when we withdrew the troops from his side, and then we had to deal with students and harassment and the throwing of food and cursing and locker room being steamed up and glass being broken, and, you know, i mean, but, again, it came something in the back of my head said, you know, if they want to fight this hard to keep you out, something else is going on here. yes. and and giving up on it at this point is not not an option, and that i think is really the nine of us, we worked with each other. we became a close-knit unit, a family, and that was really what helped us get through that year. little rock nine, ernie green, thank you so much. [ applause ] i m going to move over thank you. i will add one other thing, that during that period one of louis armstrong spoke out strongly. the singer. the singer. the musician. the trumpet player, the musician, and he spoke out and add monished eisenhower to send some protection in to help us. he did indeed. there weren t a lot of people standing up at that point, and i really think the image that we have of somebody like armstrong, that he would step out of character and stand up. david nichols, i want you to pick up the thread. ernie talked to herbert brownell who worked with president eisenhower quite closely so many years and said why so closely. why did he decide to intervene the way he did and why so many troops? permit me a personal privilege for a second. mr. green, have you my enormous respect, and your store set real story about this. i ve written about president eisenhower and i ll talk about that, but yours is the great story that my book doesn t pretend to address, and it s the story of great courage and great importance. thank you. and i have an african-american daughter who is better off because of what you did, and i appreciate that. [ applause ] so if i may, for people who need resources on this, pbs has just aired daisy bates. it s an hour or a 90-minute documentary produced by sharon le cruz once an employee of black side incorporated where i worked on with eyes on the prize which is a very fine resource for this story as well, so there s a couple of there s many, many books on the subject so people can follow up. david nichols. the intervention. yes. you want me to talk about eisenhower s troop desgligs yes. i talk about little rock as the tip of the iceberg and we already talked about the judicial appointments. eisenhower and his attorney general herbert brownell anticipated violence from almost the moment the brown decision was made and early on, the 101st airborne division sent into little rock in 1957 was trained in riot control. this was not for riots in europe. they anticipated this, hoped not. one reason that brownell could persuade eisenhower to propose legislation was he convinced eisenhower it might be an alternative to using the one legal out that he had which was to use the troops, hoping not to do it. but he did. but little rock is the tip of the defense of brown ice berks and i would point out to you that eisenhower could have chosen not to send troops. people assume he was forced to. yes. he was chose to, and he chose to very quickly, and he didn t craven around about it as much as some of the half informed commentaries say. the timeline was very shortstop as you mentioned, ernie, the faubus announced the national guard to to patrol the school on the night of september 2nd. they were there in the morning of september 3rd. on september 4th herbert brownell held a news conference and indicated specifically with the president s approval that one of the option ofs the president could use was to use troops to enforce the supreme court decision. faubus sent a hot wire to eisenhower who was on vacation in new port, rhode island. eisenhower sent a telegram right back that was made public that said i will do whatever is necessary to upheld the constitution, they clear, now, they did meet and try to negotiate an arrangement on september 14th in newport, and that did not work out, and faubus did not keep his word. so eisenhower eventually on september 24th, when violence erupted again, mobilized the 101st airborne division, and he did he said to herbert brownell at that time. he believed in overwhelming the force. you don t do these kinds of things halfway. you send the message, and i think what you said was appropriate. it was several kinds of messages, but i would pointous it s the tip of the iceberg because remember about these federal judicial appointments, the judge, the federal judge who issued the court order to faubus to cease and desist was ronald davies, an eisenhower appointee, who opened the door for the justice department to intervene, which opened the door for sending troops to enforce the federal court order. eisenhower was a typical politician. in some ways he could be very cute about this saying i didn t send the troops to enforce desegregation. i sent them to upheld a federal court order. well, a federal court order about what? brown! that s what. and so ike would sometimes be cute too cute by half which was one reason why people looked at what he said publicly. sometimes they don t know where he s coming from because he d be very politically cute about it. it is the first time that the troops were called in in this way. this was the first time first time that the federal troops were sent in to particularly a former confederate state since reconstruction after the civil war so this is not small potatoes. it s a big deal. but more important more important than the judicial appointments that lasted after little rock. all right. we ve got some questions from the audience. these are good once. dr. carol anderson, i once heard you say when you visited simmons college when you spoke of president truman and the conflict underscored when the naacp leader such as a. philip randolph wanted to go to the u.n. and file human rights violations against the u.s. and mrs. roosevelt and mrs. roosevelt forced them not to, asked by truman. you said your friends can only go so far. can you say more about this? yes. and what i m talking about there is as allida black has so wonderfully laid out, eleanor was an ally, but one of the things about these alliances, and that is absolutely essential in understanding movement, and understanding these these freedom strategies, is that your allies can take you so far, they can only go so far, and if you re relying upon your ally to go this far, because what the naacp was counting on, because she was a member of the naacp board of directors, and w.e.b. dubois had pulled together a fabulous petition to the u.n. called an appeal to the world, where he pulled together top school ears, legal school ears, socialists, his tore tans to document the systematic violation of human rights for african-americans since the founding of this nation, and because no government entity within the u.s. was willing to fully address these issues, the naacp took it to the u.n. this is 1947. this would be the beginning of the cold war, and in that cold war frame, eleanor roosevelt was not about to allow this dirty laundry to be aired before the soviet union because the soviets are sitting there on the commission of human rights seeing this powerful document from the naacp, a legitimate organization, right? and this carefully documented going sweet, i mean, just tears of joy. granted, these are soviets but they are like thank you, god, and and eleanor is like, no, we must defend the united states. we cannot have our dirty laundry aired, and so part of that was the pushback in terms of burying this petition deep within the bowels of the u.n., but it was also in sending the signal to the naacp that all of this international stuff about human rights was not going to be tolerated, particularly in terms of human rights in the united states. we can talk about human rights that the polls aren t able to have democracy. we can talk about human rights that the east germans don t have freedom of speech, but we cannot talk about human rights in terms of what s happening in the united states, and so she resigned from the board of directors of the naacp, and it took all of walter white s efforts. i liken it to almost doing a james brown please, please, please. don t go. don t go. eleanor, please, don t go. yeah. that s what i mean about your allies can only take you so far. there are things that she could do. there were things she could not do and would not do and the naacp needed to understand that as it was crafting its strategy. all right. are there any examples or any documentation of truman experiencing personal turmoil, threats to his personal safety because of his participation in matters of civil rights? oh, yeah. particularly in after his message to congress in february 1948, his state of the union address, and in it a state of the union address part of what he does is he lays out that this has got to be a nation that is committed to civil rights. this is a nation that has to be committed to fairness, to justice and to the bill of rights, and so he said in his message before congress i am going to issue two executive orders, one desegregating the federal bureaucracy and one desegregating the military, and and i you know, it s almost the black community goes wild. i mean, this is what they needed to hear from the president of the united states. you read the black press, it s like tears ecstatic, just ecstat ecstatic. the southern democrats were like oh, oh, no, oh, no, and so part of what you see going through when you go through the document in the truman library, folks are like, you know, truman, you re going to have to die. you have to go. we ll have to get rid of you some way or the other. you ll have to go. for the southern democrats, the politicians themselves were saying, unless you get back on this track, we re going to bury you. you will not see the white house again. you see this then in the democratic national convention in philadelphia in 1948 in july where when hubert humphry gets up a speech and says we ve been in the shadow of states rights for too long and it s time for us to walk within the bright sunshine of human rights and the crowd goes wild and the southern democrats are going up saying oh, really and they walk out and form the dixieocratparty with strom thurmond, as the dixieocrat s presidential nominee. this was he faced when you read through, you get the sense of anger with him, the sense that you are a traitor, that you don t deserve to be in the white house, so he faced a lot of pressure for his stance on on trying to move the u.s. forward. could this could the same question be asked of eisenhower, but because there has been this long feeling that he was, as i said, operating behind the scenes,ent is for little rock did, he get the same kind of threats? i don t have documentation of threats against eisenhower s personal safety. those may exist. scholars always have to limit what we do, and i didn t look at the secret service records that carefully. okay. i m sorry, i don t have anything to share with you. i m not aware of any specific threats to him. ernie green, and i know the answer to this, but this is going to be a great question for you to answer. some saw the pbs documentary we just referred to first lady of little rock, daisy bates, and did you meet her, yes, you did, but tell that story please. i said one of the great things about that documentary is daisy had great style. she looked good, you know. she wore great sunglasses. her hats were impeccable, but she was also taking on the and i think the film makes a nice mark on this. she was taking on men in the african-american community, asserting leadership. how did you know her? you ve got to tell this. mrs. bates was president of the arkansas naacp. she was the state president. mm-hmm. we knew her because the family had the weekly newspaper, the arkansas state press, and it was it was a journal that we all read, and so when time came, she had sootued the littl rock school board the year before that we were admitted to adhere to the 54 decision, and when we were finally admitted to central, mrs. bates sort of served as the mentor and the her house was the focal point where we gathered. she had the flow of information from all the journalists from around the world and she helped to keep us grounded. we didn t know all this was swirling around us. we were trying to stay focused on our studies and make sure that we would finish out that year. and us is the little rock nine of which you are a part. yes. okay. here s a question. dr. martin luther king said we can pass all the laws we want. we still have biases and prejudice. how with reeducating the heart to recognize humanity in all people? ernie green, i ll let you have that final word. i think we re educating the heart by events like this that really we begin to peel back the cover of the activity that is going on among the presidents and their at administration, and it s important for us to take the story that dr. king s statue didn t appear on the mall overnight, that the number of people who contributed who played a role, the unnamed faces and thousands and thousands of people black and white that had a vision about what this country could could become, that it would be better for its history and that hopefully its history will be brighter than those who played a role in it and i think it really underscores the opportunity for the next generation, kennedy talked about passing the torch. the torch really gets passed because of all of the players that played a role in it, and that would be my last word. and that is the last word here except let me thank our guests, ernie green, david nichols, carol anderson. [ applause ] you re watching american history tv, where every week we feature the lives and legacies of the presidents and first ladies of the united states. sundays at 8:30 a.m., 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. all weekend long american history tv is in oklahoma city, oklahoma to explore its history. you re watching american history tv, 48 hours of people and events telling the american story. at the jewelian p. cantor commercial archive at the university of oklahoma in norman, and my name is terry jordan, the curator archivist here at the archive and welcome to our space. previously the ads were all on analog tape. those were stored here in this room, and you ll note it s a little chilly. we keep the temperature and humidity down for preservation of the analog materials. how far back does your collection date? we have audio material dating back to the 1940s for the radio advertisements and for the 1950s for television advertisements. some of our earliest materials are commercials from the eisenhower campaign. [ no audio ] one of the ways we get ads has been if ad agencies are going digital and wish to get rid of their old analog copies. we re starting to see a lot more donations because a lot of them don t want to throw away a lifetime worth of analog tapes, so they send them to us so that s been a fantastic way we ve gotten donations recently as well. what type of political advertisements do you have in this collection? just about every type. we have ads from positive imagery and negative imagery of candidates, to ads discussing the issues at hand, issues that have changed over the course of many decades, but many relevant patterns still stay the same. negative advertising, concern with quote, unquote flip-flopping positions, establishing a candidate s value and so for. and what type of races? everything from local races all the way up to presidential. we do focus on north american united states ads but we do v some foreign spots as well, but the bulk of the 95,000-plus commercials in our collection are united states political commerci commercials. this is our equipment storage room and this is our refrigerator where we keep our film canisters. i ll just pop that open very briefly so you can take a look inside. what type of commercials would be on these films? these are primarily older presidential campaign commercials. a lot of this is the original material that started the archive when julian cantor began obtaining it and collecting it in the late 50s. he had been volunteering for the adlai stevenson campaign, and during that time he made a lot of political contacts as well as contacts through his television work, and he realized that a lot of these old advertisements and reels were getting thrown out. so he convinced his contacts to give them to him and begin the collection in the 50s and when it was purchased by the university of oklahoma in 1985 it contained about 25,000 commercials, and it s grown today to over 95,000. you had mentioned negative campaigning. when did that become more prevalent in these commercials? that s actually been the case in almost every campaign. a lot of material that we ve got is negative campaigning. we ve got negative ads adlai stichson and the daily girl. it s very difficult in a short television ad to connect things with powerful image. ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one [ explosion ] these are the stakes to make a world in which all of god s children can live. or to go into the dark. we must either love each other or we must die. vote for president johnson on november 3rd. you also see patterns of flip-flopping. we have several commercials from the famous john kerry wind surfing ad through to we have one called the carter cartoon that has a caricature of president carter flip-flopping. he promised to create more jobs, and now there are 8 million americans out of work. he promised to balance the budget what. he gave us was a $61 billion deficit. he promised not to raise taxes, but taxes have risen more than 70%. the time is now for strong leadership. reagan for president. you can see in the changes of political advertisements over time, not just changes in political approaches which actually have pretty continuous patterns, but you also see changes in the culture that is used to to kind of capture people s attention, the old i like ike jingles. we have one that features a lounge singer singing a song, quite a few of the old jingle ads, that are kind of long and wouldn t hold people s attention today but were very popular at the time i have a man who knows what to do when he gets to be the pres i love the gov, the governor of illinois he is the guy that brings the dove of peace and joy when