Little Rock Nine

By: Courtney L. Tollison

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Little Rock Nine

The battle to desegregate the public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the crisis that erupted when nine African American students attempted to desegregate Little Rock's Central High School are well known in the history of the civil rights movement. Daisy Bates, co-owner of the Arkansas State Press, and state president of the Arkansas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), coordinated the efforts of the nine children selected and advocated for their protection throughout their time at Central High.

The Little Rock Nine with Daisy Bates, photographed by Cecil Layne c. 1957–1960. The crisis that ensued when the nine African American students attempted to desegregate Little Rock's Central High School was an important episode in the civil rights movement.

Library of Congress

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Efforts to desegregate the school system began soon after the Supreme Court's May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Soon thereafter, the Little Rock School Board publicized its integration plan, which tentatively scheduled the desegregation of senior high schools in the fall of 1957. Since the Brown decision, Bates had campaigned for desegregation in Arkansas schools. She frequently accompanied African American students who attempted to enroll in white schools and made certain those efforts were publicized in the state's newspapers. As a result of the ambiguity of the school board's integration plan, thirty-three African American parents contacted officers of the Arkansas NAACP, including Bates, to organize a suit against the Little Rock School District in the spring of 1956.

When this case failed to win a decisive order, NAACP lawyers appealed the case. In September 1957, a judge from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the school board to implement its desegregation plan. Although the Arkansas State Legislature passed four bills aimed at preserving segregation and an organized segregationist group called the Mothers League of Little Rock Central High School filed an injunction against school integration, the NAACP attorneys succeeded in obtaining a decision that overruled the injunction.

Over the previous months, Daisy Bates had hand-selected Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls from a large pool of students who hoped to desegregate Central High. All nine students were members of Bates's NAACP Youth Council. She tried to prepare them for the open hostility they would undoubtedly encounter. The night before the teens were to enter Central High, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround the school and prevent any of the African American students from entering. Quickly, Bates changed the plan for the next morning and informed all but the parents of Elizabeth Eckford, whose family had no telephone. Bates decided to find her early the next morning. The next morning, however, Bates did not contact Eckford and her parents, and the girl arrived at Central High School alone. Photos of the young African American girl, engulfed in a white mob that threatened to lynch her, appeared in the newspaper headlines across the nation. Like later events in the civil rights movement, the national publicity that resulted from the crisis helped ensure support from citizens nationwide and, indeed, even from the federal government.

Eckford and the other eight students waited until the attorneys for the NAACP could ask the United States District Federal Court on 20 September for an injunction against the interference of the desegregation of Little Rock High School. The judge granted the injunction, and on 23 September, Daisy Bates accompanied all nine children to Central High School, where police escorted them through a side entrance. That night, police prevented a white mob armed with dynamite, guns, and clubs from attacking Bates's home.

The next day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and authorized the secretary of defense to send in one thousand paratroopers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. On 25 September, paratroopers escorted the nine students into Central High School. Throughout the remainder of the year, white students continually harassed the nine students. At the graduation ceremonies in the spring of 1958, over one hundred national guardsmen were in attendance to handle any protest that may have arisen from Ernest Green's graduation.

During the summer of 1958, Governor Faubus announced that the four high schools in Little Rock, three white and one African American, would close for the 1958–1959 school year. His actions were representative of the retaliatory measures some white politicians implemented as a means to discourage those who supported desegregation. Although the battle to achieve integration in the public schools in Arkansas was not without great controversy, the experiences of the Little Rock Nine were invaluable to the modern civil rights movement. They paved the way for thousands of schools across the South to admit African American students.

The legacy of the Little Rock crisis is an important one. A resulting court case, Cooper v. Aaron, mandated that state governments must enforce the Supreme Court's Brown decision. In addition, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, passed after the events in Little Rock, served as a precursor to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Most importantly, however, President Eisenhower's use of army paratroopers and national guardsmen revealed the federal government's willingness to enforce federal mandates above state segregation laws, a component essential to future successes of the civil rights movement.

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