Vacation Recap Part II / The Little Rock Nine



"The courts can't change how white people think about blacks,
they have to change themselves." - Daisy Bates

This was definitely the most interesting and emotional story I've heard about for the first time during my tripo to Arkansas:

The Little Rock Nine

"The Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students 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 Eisenhower.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 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.

 

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 fall of the 1957 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.

 

The nicknamed "Little Rock Nine" consisted of:

• Ernest Green (b. 1941)
• Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941)
• Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010)
• Terrence Roberts (b. 1941)
• Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942)
• Minnijean Brown (b. 1941)
• Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942)
• Thelma Mothershed (b. 1940)
• Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941)

 

Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School."

(via Wikipedia)

____________________________

 

Now, in 2013, there are still too many people out there, who think this is wrong:

 

 

I love my man. I love our clash of cultures. And I'm looking forward to teach our kids one day, that the only thing that matters, is the heart and soul. Not the way people look on the outside.

And not the color of their skin.