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31 August 2007
After Facing Mobs 50 Years Ago, Nine Go Home to Honors
Little Rock Nine became part of civil rights history as teens
Little Rock, Arkansas (August 30, 2007) -- As schools across America begin a new year, Little Rock’s largest high school is planning a 50-year reunion expected to attract presidents and poets.
But all eyes will be on nine professionals in their mid-60s -- a real estate broker, an accountant, an investment adviser, a court probation officer, a psychologist, a journalist and a few teachers. They are the Little Rock Nine, the first blacks to attend all-white Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment sparked resistance and a constitutional crisis that would advance civil rights in America.
After the Little Rock Nine took their stand, school integration advanced in the South, slowly at first, but faster after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. High school graduation rates among blacks went from 18 percent in 1957 to 81 percent in 2006, according to the Census Bureau. (The graduation rate for whites in 1957 was 43 percent; in 2006 it stands at 86 percent.)
Melba Pattillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey and Thelma Mothershed Wair are close. “We have become a tight-knit club,” Green said, “forever sealed at 15-, 16 years old.”
In terms of Southern race relations in 1957, Little Rock was progressive. The bus system and library were desegregated. When city schools moved to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation is illegal, no one expected a struggle.
But on the first day blacks were to attend Central, Governor Orval Faubus, up for re-election and looking for votes from segregationists, sent state National Guard troops to surround the school, allegedly to “maintain the peace.”
“I would have thought he meant my peace,” Wair said. “He didn’t have me in mind. I didn’t know that until I got there.” The guardsmen barred the blacks from entering school, leaving them to face a mob.
“White and black kids played together,” LaNier said. “I did not expect hatred, mob mentality. Even when I saw it, I didn’t think it was going to last long.”
Beals came to school that first day with her mother, and they were chased away. Eckford and Roberts arrived alone. Each walked a gauntlet, Eckford after being stopped by raised bayonets of troops. The blacks were forced to stay home for 19 days, until a federal court ordered the governor to remove the guardsmen. But when the nine finally entered school September 23, police could not cope with a mob outside. The blacks attended a few classes that day, but then were smuggled out -- with blankets and clothes covering them, on the floors of two cars.
Media images from Little Rock, especially those depicting whites beating black journalists, made deep impressions around the world and compelled President Eisenhower to act. According to historian Taylor Branch, Eisenhower was “a segregationist at heart,” but a man sworn to uphold the law. On September 24, he dispatched 1,200 members of the 101st Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles” of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Little Rock. The next day, they escorted the Little Rock Nine to school and protected them in the hallways.
“The real significance isn’t that the Little Rock case produced integration,” said Branch.
“The real significance of Little Rock is that it showed that state politicians couldn’t ultimately defy federal courts. If the president hadn’t sent troops in, the Constitution would have become whatever each governor wanted it to be.”
Again, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy sent troops to enforce a federal court order that the University of Mississippi must accept James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran. And, in 1963, federal marshals confronted Alabama Governor George Wallace as he blocked black students from registering at the University of Alabama. “The courts have no armies,” Branch said. “They can only survive if the executive branch backs them.”
On September 25, 1957, when the 101st drove the Little Rock Nine to school, Wair said, “the crowds parted like the Red Sea.”
Yet after the troops left two months later, the blacks suffered increasing harassment from fellow students who sought to force the Little Rock Nine to quit. “But we all figured it out: Leaving was not an option,” Green said.
The black students had volunteered to go to Central and were chosen from among other volunteers for their academic records and temperaments. “We all felt good,” said Trickey. “We knew that Central High School had so many more courses, and dramatics and speech and tennis courts and a big, beautiful stadium.”
They wanted good educations, but they also sought equality. “What kind of life is there if I stand back?” Karlmark asked herself. “Could there be a God who makes one group of kids better than another?”
Eight of the nine finished the year. One was expelled for reacting to an assault. Green, the only senior, graduated from Central in May 1958. His family came to the ceremony; Martin Luther King Jr. also came.
Scores of events are planned in Little Rock for September. All of the Little Rock Nine will speak the morning of September 25 on the steps of Central High School, remembering the day 50 years ago when they showed the courage to go to school under Army escort.
President Bush also is scheduled to speak that day, and former President Clinton will chair a dinner at which the Little Rock Nine will award scholarships to nine young students. A new center to educate visitors about the Little Rock Nine’s role in the civil rights movement will be dedicated. Expected attendees include Ruby Bridges, who at age 6 was escorted by federal marshals to a New Orleans elementary school where she was the only black child enrolled.
“We had a vision 50 years ago that America can do better in how it recognizes its human resources, in providing greater options, in removing barriers so people can achieve whatever their talents allow them to,” Green said. “I still believe that vision is what this country has to have … to be a leader in the world.”
Read more about Melba Pattillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey and Thelma Mothershed Wair.
Film excerpt of Little Rock Nine in 1957 (1:19)