The 60^th Anniversary Of The Struggle To Desegregate Little Rock, Arkansas Central High School-Honor The “Little Rock Nine”

By Frank Jackman  

The 1950s in America, in the American South especially, were a time, like today it seems, when black people and their allies were amping up the struggle for black civil rights. First more publically and graphically in the South and then in the North as a result of the landmark United States Supreme Court  decision in 1954 in Brown v. Topeka Board Of Education (Kansas). (A legal decision that very well may have not been decided the same way by today’s court given its current composition) One of the first big tests of that decision concerning public school desegregation was the attempt to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School. That as it turned out was no easy task between then Governor Faubus’ attempts via the Arkansas National Guard to prohibit that attempt to the vicious violent reactions of whites, including a large majority of their fellow students, to President Eisenhower’s federalizing of the National Guard and sending in the 101^st Airborne to insure their safety. Yes, no question we today should continue to honor the bravery and tenacity of the Little Rock Nine (eight of whom are still alive to commemorate their brave actions).        

Of course everybody recognizes, to some degree, that race relations in America are not the same as back in the 1950s (although the bar is pretty low if that is the benchmark) but here is a cause for pause. Increasingly public school in the cities, including in Little Rock, are becoming “re-segregated. The struggle continues but thanks Little Rock Nine you led the way.