'18 History Discussion Piece
- Sundry Fires In Rain
- Dec 25, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 18
I remember being specifically appreciated for putting in the hours. This was more than a reading exercise prior to class. "It probably took more than 2 hours". Previously, I saw what happened during World war history topic reviews and half of the time went into the issues in sources. I was disturbed by the lack of accurate detail. Sharing the piece here.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In reality, many Southern states resisted the implementation of the ruling and one of the most famous examples of that resistance occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1957, it was pivotal in the fight for civil rights. Black American students were chosen to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High School as part of the school board’s gradual desegregation plan.
On September 2nd 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus announced that he was calling out the Arkansas National Guard, claiming the Guard was there to prevent violence. When ten Black American students approached Central High on September 4, Guardsmen blocked them. Jane Hill’s father told her to return to Horace Mann High School. Elizabeth Eckford didn’t receive the changed meeting plans and arrived apart from the others. She was surrounded by a hostile white mob. She walked past National Guardsmen who denied her entry as a white crowd trailed her and abused her on her way to a bus stop. Photographs of the 15 year old surrounded by the mob were some of the defining images of the crisis. The teens faced intense physical harassment and violence. The students and their families received death threats.
The conflict went beyond who could enter one school. It became a confrontation over whether a state government had the power to obstruct federal court orders and constitutional rights. On September 20th, a federal court barred Faubus and the Guard from obstructing integration. Later that day, Faubus removed the Guard from Central High. On September 23rd, the Little Rock Nine entered the school as around 1,000 white segregationists gathered. The crowd attacked journalists, and local police lost control. The teens were taken out of the school that day.
On September 24th, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730, putting the Arkansas National Guard under federal authority and permitting the use of federal troops. He sent the 101st Airborne, a combat division that fought in WWII, including during D-Day, to Little Rock to protect the students. This was the first time since Reconstruction that a president sent federal troops into the South to enforce federal law in a civil rights confrontation.
The Little Rock Nine entered the school on September 25th under military escort and started attending school. This was not the end. Harassment, verbal abuse, isolation, and physical intimidation from white students persisted through the school year, although there were Guards inside the school. In December 1957, Minnijean Brown was suspended for six days after a cafeteria incident. In February 1958, a different confrontation led to her expulsion from Central High for the rest of the school year. Segregationist students wore cards reading ‘One Down, Eight to Go.’ In May 1958, Ernest Green became the first Black American student to graduate from Central High School. His graduation was a victory, but the nine were put through what no young person, a school-going adolescent, deserves to experience.
In 1958, when the school board sought to postpone desegregation, the dispute reached the Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron. On September 12, 1958, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that desegregation in Little Rock was to proceed. Faubus closed Little Rock’s four public high schools beginning September 15. Full opinion of the court was on September 29. Around 3700 students were kept from attending the schools during the Lost Year. Many transferred to schools elsewhere or used correspondence courses and makeshift classes.
Sources
Comments