eral troops
in the celebrated cases of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oxford,
Mississippi, and by federal marshals in New Orleans, Louisiana,[19-9]
elimination of segregated public schools was painfully slow. As late
as 1962, for example, only 7.6 percent of the more than three million
Negroes of school age in the southern and border states attended
integrated schools.

[Footnote 19-8: 349 U.S. 294 (1955).]

[Footnote 19-9: For an outline of the federal and
National Guard intervention in these areas, see
Robert W. Coakley, Paul J. Scheips, Vincent H.
Demma, and M. Warner Stark, "Use of Troops in Civil
Disturbances Since World War II" (1945 to 1965 with
two supplements through 1967), Center of Military
History Study 75.]

The executive branch also took up the cause of civil rights, albeit in
a more limited way than the courts. The Eisenhower administration, for
instance, continued President Truman's efforts to achieve equal
treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. Just before the
_Brown_ decision the administration quickly desegregated most
dependent schools on military bases. It also desegregated the school
system of Washington, D.C., and, with a powerful push from the Supreme
Court in the case of the _District of Columbia_ v. _John R. Thompson
Co._ in 1953,[19-10] abolished segregation in places of public
accommodation in the nation's capital. Eisenhower also continued
Truman's fight against discrimination in federal employment, including
jobs covered by government contracts, by establishing watchdog
committees on government employment policy and government contracts.

[Footnote 19-10: 346 U.S. 100 (1953).]

Independent federal agencies also began to attack racial
discrimination. The Interstate Commerce Commission, with strong
assistance from the courts, made a series of rulings that by 1961 had
outlawed segregation in much interstate travel. The Federal Housing
Authority, following the Supreme Court's abrogation of the state's
power to enforce restrictive covenants in the sale of housing, began
in the early 1950's to push toward a federal open-occupancy policy in
public housing and all housing with federally guaranteed loans. (p. 477)
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an investigatory agency appointed
by the President under the Civil R