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Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality

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by: Kasey S. Pipes

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Edition: Hardcover
Availability: March 13, 2007


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When Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101 st Airborne into Little Rock to integrate Central High, he didn’t know that he was fighting the last, great battle of his career…one that would change the nation. Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality tells how one of America’s greatest leaders finally confronted America’s greatest sin. Here, for the first time, is the unlikely tale of how Ike became a civil rights president.

The road to Central High actually began the moment Ike sent black troops to the front during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Their heroic performance formed a connection between Eisenhower and the civil rights movement that reached its zenith when he deployed the U.S. Army to Little Rock.

Scrupulously researched, and utilizing never-before-released material, author Kasey Pipes details…

• Eisenhower’s belief in his black troops during WW II led to Truman’s executive
order desegregating the military
• Ike’s personal thoughts on the crisis in Little Rock
• The legacy he left John F. Kennedy on civil rights
• Ike’s concerns about the GOP and its future

What better way to commemorate the 50 th anniversary of Little Rock than by revisiting Ike's Final Battle, the last priceless nugget of civil rights history yet to be mined.

• Format: Hardcover: 6x9 inches;
• Publication Date: March 13, 2007
• ISBN 10: 0-9778984-5-8
• ISBN 13: 978-0-9778984-5-9

“Beginning with the Battle of the Bulge, Dwight Eisenhower breached the rules limiting opportunities for black servicemen to serve. As president, he fought an internal battle, educating himself even as he educated his countrymen on their moral obligations. At Little Rock he upheld simple decency in the face of mob rule... None of this was easy, and little about Ike was as simple as it appeared on the surface. Kasey S. Pipes takes us further beneath that surface than anyone has to date. His portrait of an incrementalist caught up in a social and legal revolution is groundbreaking, and almost painfully intimate. It is also a hugely important contribution to our understanding of Eisenhower, America in the Fifties, and ourselves.”

—Senator Robert J. Dole

“The nation liked Ike because it saw so much of itself in him. Like the nation when it was forced to face its racial dilemma, Eisenhower also had to face the tension between his unanalyzed assumptions and the better angels of his nature. How he struggled to do so is a fascinating story, sensitively told by Kasey S. Pipes. This mind-opening book shows that Eisenhower’s coming-to-terms with the coming civil rights revolution was, like the man himself, more complex and admirable than has hitherto been appreciated.”

—George F. Will, Syndicated Columnist