FYS The Fifties

My understanding of this incredible group of students occurred in middle school when I was assigned to read Warriors Don’t Cry, written by Melba Patillo Beals. Melba was one of the students in this group of nine kids and in this book she provides a recount of her experiences being one of the first to integrate into the Little Rock Central High School in 1957. After reading this book it sparked my interest on this group and how the Brown vs. Board of Education case influenced this integration of this high school.

After the Brown vs. Board of Education was passed in 1954, it declared that the segregation of schools was unconstitutional and so the superintendent of schools in Little Rock submitted a plan to integrate in 1955. This plan was going to be set in motion during the fall of 1957. Nine African American kids were enrolled into this all white high school that fall. Those kids were Ernest Green, Melba Patillo Beals, Thelma Mothershed, Minijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, and Jefferson Thomas. The superintendent Virgil Blossom had originally tried to set a plan to integrate the schools pretty quick, but it was refined into a more gradual plan of integrating the schools. The original way the schools were separated, the NAACP did not agree with the plan because it was still favoring those students who were white. Because they decided to place students in the high school they lived closest to, providing certain racial majorities in school. Due to the NAACP’s hard work to fight to become integrated they filed a lawsuit in 1956 which then resulted in these nine students going to Little Rock Central High School.

Although it would seem that because this plan was very gradual and slow, there would be less of a fuss by segregationists, but that was not the case. The Governor actually ordered the National Guard to stand in front of the school and block them out. This scary scene was seen nationwide and President Eisenhower called Governor Faubus for a meeting, ordering him not to go against the ruling by the Supreme Court. President Eisenhower also ordered that the students have escorts to bring them around the school safely. Regardless of these escorts though, the students were consistently physically and verbally beat down. In the book Warriors Don’t Cry, I recall reading about the horrors that Melba Patillo Beals encountered. She recalled a scene where she had acid thrown at her as well as firecrackers being thrown in the hallway. Minijean Brown was suspended for spilling her lunch on boys that taunted her at school and was eventually no longer allowed at the school, and transferred. At the end of this school year, Governor Faubus requested a delay in the integrating of schools he argued, in order to decrease the violence, but his request was shot down. Faubus to prevent the integrating of schools, closed them, causing more people to become bitter and hating of the African American community. So after this “lost year” when the schools were closed, the African American students were not warmly welcomed back into school, but they still attended. Even though all nine of the students did not graduate from Central High School, all nine were seen as heroes in integrating public schools.

— Julia D.