Little Rock: The Nine Students Who Changed Federal Law

Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas is a National Historic Site. It is also still a functioning high school, which is the point. In September of nineteen fifty-seven, nine Black students attempted to enroll at Central High after the Supreme Court's Brown v.

Board of Education decision had declared segregated public schools unconstitutional. The Arkansas Governor, Orval Faubus, ordered the National Guard to block them from entering. The students, Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Gloria Ray, Thelma Mothershed, Carlotta Walls, and Jefferson Thomas, became known as the Little Rock Nine.

President Eisenhower, who had personally expressed ambivalence about Brown's timeline, found himself with no choice but to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and send the one hundred first Airborne Division to escort the students into the school. It was the first time since Reconstruction that the federal government had sent troops into a Southern state to enforce civil rights. The students completed the year under conditions that included daily harassment, physical attacks, and sustained psychological pressure.

Minnijean Brown was expelled after she poured chili on a student who had been harassing her. Ernest Green graduated in May of nineteen fifty-eight, the first Black graduate of Central High School. Governor Faubus then closed all four Little Rock public high schools for the following school year, the nineteen fifty-eight to nineteen fifty-nine year, rather than allow integration to proceed.

Students in Little Rock had no public high school for a year. The building is unchanged. The students are still alive.

The integration of Central High took years after that first year to actually proceed.