No doubt, invoking and utilizing the Constitutional authority imbued upon him, POTUS Dwight David Eisenhower, sought by Executive Order to fulfill Section 1 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act with what he deemed the best legal action by which to do it, that being equal educational opportunities for the Subject Beneficiaries, i.e., chattel slave descendant, black citizens’ school children.
The first and most famously significant 14th Amendment-1866 Civil Rights Act (The Act) to begin fulfilling section 1, was/is the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 for the purpose of desegregating and integrating the nation’s public schools, allowing black citizen children equal education “as is enjoyed by white citizens”…of which he was successful.
In response to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas’s denial of black students from attending its classes, because of state, Jim Crow laws of segregation, Mr. Eisenhower executed Sections 8 and 9 of The Act, they being:
Sec 8 – “…whenever the President of the United States shall have reason to believe that offences have been or are likely to be committed against the provisions of this act…it shall be lawful for him, in his discretion…for the purpose of the more speedy arrest and trial of persons charged with a violation of this act;
Sec. 9 – “…it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, or such person as he may empower for that purpose, to employ such part of the land or naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, as shall be necessary to prevent the violation and enforce the due execution of this act.”
Upon hearing of the matter in Topeka, Kansas, and believing that school segregation was in violation of Section 1, and based on Section 2 combined with that of eight, after stringent negotiations with the governor of Arkansas failed, in his role role as Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces, President Eisenhower activated the State National Guard into federal jurisdiction and enforced the Constitutional law and Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs, the Board of Education.
Also, in the same vein, according to Sections 3, 4, 5, Mr. Eisenhower sent US Marshals, et al, to infiltrate and destroy the growing Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Among other actions of POTUS Eisenhower, he authored the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which was watered down to being essentially “toothless”, which led to the 1960 and 1964 Acts.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pub.L. 85–315, 71 Stat. 634, enacted September 9, 1957, a federal voting rights bill, was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875 during the post Civil War Reconstruction era which lasted from 1866 to 1877.
The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote, and also established the Civil Rights Commission and Criminal Division.