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Little Rock Nine

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File:AR Little Rock Nine.jpg
Bottom row, left to right: Thelma Mothershed, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Gloria Ray; Top row, left to right: Jefferson Thomas, Melba Pattillo, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Daisy Bates (NAACP President), Ernest Green

The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Dwight Eisenhower, was an important event in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

History

Brown v.Board of Education

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17 1954. The decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation.[1] After the decision the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, the capital city of Arkansas, the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the high court's ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the 1958 school year, which would begin in September 1957. By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance.[2]

The entrance blocked

Several segregationist "citizens' councils" threatened to hold protests at Central High and physically block the black students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the segregationists on September 4 1957. The sight of a line of soldiers blocking nine black students from attending high school made national headlines and polarized the city. On September 9, "The Council of Church Women" issued a statement condemning the governor's deployment of soldiers to the high school and called for a citywide prayer service on September 12. Even President Dwight Eisenhower attempted to de-escalate the situation and summoned Governor Faubus to meet him. The President warned the governor not to interfere with the Supreme Court's ruling.[3]

Federal intervention

Attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department requested an injunction against the governor's deployment of the National Guard from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock. Judge Ronald Davies granted the injunction and ordered the governor to withdraw the National Guard on September 20.[4]

File:Little Rock Nine Escorting.jpg
Members of the 101st US-Airborne Division escorting the Little Rock Nine to school

The governor backed down and withdrew the National Guard, and the Little Rock Police Department took their place. Hundreds of protesters, mostly parents of the white students attending Central High, remained entrenched in front of the school. On Monday, September 23, the police quietly slipped the nine students into the school. When the protesters learned that the nine black students were inside, they began confronting the outnumbered line of policemen. When white residents began to riot[5], the nine students were escorted out of the school.[6]

Armed escort

The next day, Woodrow Mann, the Mayor of Little Rock, asked President Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce integration and protect the nine students. On September 24, the President ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 member Arkansas National Guard, taking it out of the hands of Governor Faubus. The 101st took positions immediately, and the nine students successfully entered the school on the next day, Wednesday, September 25, 1957.

An ad hoc unit, Task Force 153rd Infantry, was hastily organized at Camp Robinson from guardsmen drawn from units statewide. The bulk of the Arkansas Guard was quickly discharged from federalized status, but Task Force 153rd Infantry remained, taking over the entire operation when the paratroopers left at Thanksgiving, and remaining on duty until the end of the school year.

A tense year

cool placeBy the end of September 1957, the nine were admitted to Little Rock Central High under the protection of the U.S. Army (and later the Arkansas National Guard), but they were still subjected to a year of physical and verbal abuse (spitting on them, calling them names) by many of the white students. One of the students, Minnijean Brown, was verbally confronted by a group of white, male students in December 1957 in the school cafeteria during lunch. She had dropped her lunch tray, including a bowl of chili, on the ground, and was expelled as a result.

She later transferred to New Lincoln High School in New York City.[2]

1958-1959

The citizens' council continued to protest and pressured the Little Rock School Board into reversing its decision to desegregate the public schools. In August 1958, with support from Governor Faubus and the Arkansas State Legislature, the school board canceled the entire 1958-59 school year for its three high schools rather than integrate them. Thousands of high school students left the city to attend high schools in other school districts, or enrolled in all-white private schools. One year later, additional federal court rulings and the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce pressured the school board into reopening the school system. By the fall of 1959, Little Rock public schools had reopened as an integrated school system.[2]

Names

The Little Rock Nine were:

Green, a senior, became the first African-American to graduate from Central High.

Analysis

Governor Faubus

File:Little Rock Nine thedance.jpg
The Little Rock Nine depicted in Testament, a 2005 sculpture by John and Cathy Deering, on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol[7]

Governor Faubus's opposition to desegregation may have been politically and racially motivated.[8] Faubus had indicated that he would consider bringing Arkansas into compliance with the high court's decision in 1956. However, desegregation was opposed by his own southern conservative Democratic Party, which dominated all Southern politics at the time. Faubus, a conservative, risked losing political support in the upcoming 1958 gubernatorial primary if he showed support for integration.

Most histories of the crisis conclude that Faubus, facing pressure as he campaigned for a third term, decided to appease racist elements in the state by calling out the National Guard to prevent the black students from entering Central High.

Harry Ashmore, the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, won a 1958 Pulitzer Prize for his editorials on the crisis. Ashmore portrayed the fight over Central High as a crisis manufactured by Faubus; in his interpretation, Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to keep black children out of Central High School because he was frustrated by the success his political opponents were having in using segregationist rhetoric to stir white voters.

Congressman Brooks Hays, who tried to mediate between the federal government and Faubus, was later defeated by a last minute write-in candidate, Dale Alford, a member of the Little Rock School Board who had the backing of Faubus's allies. A few years later, despite the incident with the "Little Rock Nine", Faubus ran as a moderate segregationist against Dale Alford, who was challenging Faubus for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1962.

Eisenhower's deployment of federal troops was charactered by some white southerners as a "second invasion", in reference to the Civil War and Reconstruction. This accusation was repeated in other federal interventions, such as the U.S. Marshals who escorted James Meredith to University of Mississippi in 1962. As such, segregationists were just as hostile and confrontational with the "invaders" as they were to the black students.

Legacy

During their ordeal, the Little Rock Nine were advised by Little Rock journalist and activist Daisy Bates. Bates and the Little Rock Nine received the Spingarn Medal in 1958. The Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on November 9 1999.

Little Rock Central High School still functions as part of the Little Rock School District, and is now a National Historic Site that houses a Civil Rights Museum, administered in partnership with the National Park Service, to commemorate the events of 1957.[9]

In 1981, the TV movie Crisis at Central High dramatized the events of the crisis.

In 1996, seven of the Little Rock Nine appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. They came face to face with a few of the white students who had tormented them as well as one student who had befriended them.

In 2007, the United States Mint made available a commemorative silver dollar to "recognize and pay tribute to the strength, the determination and the courage displayed by African-American high school students in the fall of 1957." The obverse depicts students accompanied by a soldier, with nine stars symbolizing the Little Rock Nine. The reverse depicts an image of Little Rock Central High School, circa 1957. Proceeds from the coin sales are to be used to improve the National Historic Site.[10]

See also

References

  • [1] "Through a Lens, Darkly," by David Margolick. VAnity Fair, Sept. 24, 2007
  • The Tiger, Student Paper of Little Rock Central High.
  • "Civil Rights", Kids Discover, Volume 16, Issue 1, ISSN 1054-2868, January 2006.
  • Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High. (ISBN 0-671-86638-9)
  • Branton, Wiley A. "Little Rock Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation." Journal of Negro Education 1983 52(3): 250-269. Issn: 0022-2984 Fulltext in Jstor
  • Faubus, Orval Eugene. Down from the Hills. Little Rock: Democrat Printing & Lithographing, 1980. 510 pp. autobiography
  • Elizabeth Jacoway. Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation (2007)
  • Kirk, John A, Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970 (University of Florida Press, 2002)
  • Roy Reed. Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal (1997).
  1. ^ Warren, Earl, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Cornell Law School. Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.
  2. ^ a b c Craig Rains. Little Rock Central High 40th Anniversity.
  3. ^ "Retreat from Newport," Time. Monday, 23 September 1957.
  4. ^ "Case No. 3113," Time. Monday, 30 September 1957.
  5. ^ Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience Page 573
  6. ^ Front pages of the Arkansas Democrat and Arkansas Gazette. Little Rock 1957.
  7. ^ "Secretary of State Hosts Little Rock Nine Civil Rights Monument Unveiling at the Arkansas State Capitol". Arkansas Secretary of State. Press Release. 26 August 2005. URL retrieved 4 April 2007.
  8. ^ Bentley 2007
  9. ^ United States National Park Service, Little Rock Central High School, National Historic Site.
  10. ^ "Little Rock Central High School Desegregation Silver Dollar Program". United States Mint. Retrieved 2007-05-19.
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