The Little Rock Nine

From the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act, our home we call America has revealed a past that’s inevitably unforgetful. The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine black students who attended at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.The group consisted of Minnijean Brown, Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Thelma Mothershed, and Gloria Ray they became the centre of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, especially in the South.

The Little Rock Nine and their struggle, has changed America for the better.

During the summer of 1957, the Little Rock Nine enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which then had been all white. By the time the Little Rock Nine became icons on that September Wednesday in 1957, it had been three years since the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” in America’s public schools unconstitutional. In the American heritage and main structure of government, it says that all men are created equal, as stated in the declaration. But perhaps equal wasn’t really equal. According to History.com, the event showed the South’s opposing public sentiment toward the new law. In its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, issued May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of America’s public schools was unconstitutional. The court issued a second decision in 1955, known as Brown II, ordering school districts to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”In response to the Brown decisions regarding the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board adopted a plan for gradual integration of its schools.

Prior to the new school year starting the students participated in in counseling sessions helping them and providing them with guidance as to what to expect once classes began and how to respond to anticipated hostile situations. First days of schools students were being chased home and the governor at the time, Orval Faubus, did not like this. And the mobs showed this as well. They threatened to kill them in any way , for example hanging and bombing their victims. Melba Beals says that “Governor Orval Faubus announced his refusal to support the integration of our state’s schools” (1994). To keep the nine students out of Central High School, he calls in the Arkansas National Guard, which is commanded by the State of Arkansas.

Watching the standoff between the federal judiciary and also Faubus , King sent a telegram to President Eisenhower urging him to “take a strong forthright stand in the Little Rock situation.” King told the president that if ourfederal government did not take a stand against the injustice it would “set the process of integration back fifty years.

Works Cited

1. Editors, H. (2010, January 29). Little Rock Nine. Retrieved May 2, 2019.
2. Jaynes, G. D. (2019, January 14). Little Rock Nine. Retrieved May 2, 2019

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