Little Rock Fifty Years Ago

School Desegregation and the Struggle Goes On

Fifty years ago after federal troops escorted Terrance Roberts and eight fellow black students into the all white high school in Little Rock, he says the struggle over race and segregation is till unresolved. It was fifty years ago today, September 25, 1957

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black and frightened students from enrolling at a high school with 2,000 white students.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 — and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate — Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds. It was the first time in 80 years that federal troops had been sent to a former state of the Confederacy.

In 1957, Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey, and Thelma Mothershed Wair were determined to get a good education.

"I really didn't understand at 14 we were helping change the educational
landscape here in America," LaNier recalls. "All we wanted to do is go to
school." Every child should have the right to go to school.

When Faubus pulled Arkansas National Guard members from blocking nine students from entering the school, an inflamed crowd gathered to keep the black students out.

Relman Morin, at the time, an Associated Press reporter standing outside the school, described the chaos and confrontation as a "human explosion."

Though some students and teachers did make efforts to reach out to them, even with the 101st Army Airborne escorts; however, the harassment continued, LaNier said. A chemistry teacher flat out told her classmates he didn't want black students in his class. The school later dismissed the teacher.

The ride to school often served as a group refuge, Beals recalled Sunday. Sometimes, the students would just sit in silence, whether in a family member's car or an Army jeep, waiting for the torment and for their classmates to turn their backs on them.

Why does fear motivate, otherwise normal people, to be so cruel and why do they think they should be allowed to get away with it?

The following school year, Faubus closed the schools in Little Rock and he, the next month, was re-elected governor.

During the "lost year" of the closed schools, some students studied at home, while others for a time took classes by television. Schools surrounding Pulaski County were jammed with transfer students from Little Rock. That fall 1958 the Memphis Tennessee school board announced that it couldn't take any more transfers from Little Rock.

In 1959 the schools reopened partly because of the efforts by white businessmen, who realized that the crisis was hurting their community and the economy.

The business men wanted two things to get Little Rock off the front pages of the national newspapers and they wanted to salvage the state’s image.

“They weren't interested in justice or racial change," said Elizabeth Jacoway, author of "Turn Away Thy Son," a history of Central's desegregation.

What has really changed?

Trickey and the other nine said they're frustrated with the national school system, not just in Arkansas, that they see it as still widely segregated.

"We're still living segregated lives based on culture, color and language," said
Trickey, a gender and social justice advocate. "Here we are in 2007 and we're still playing the same game."