The Little Rock Nine

The civil rights movement was a nationwide political movement, its goals being equal rights for all people. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, African Americans were freed from slavery all around the country. That did not stop racism, however. Even in the north, there were separate water fountains, bathrooms, and even schools for African Americans. In 1910, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was formed to “ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination” around the country. This eventually led to a series of court decisions outlawing segregation in parks, prisons, and other public places. The NAACP helped organize boycotts of segregated services, also. For example, in 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was arrested. The NAACP organized a boycott of the Montgomery bus system after this happened, and won the desegregation of buses. This and other events led to the eventual desegregation of schools. 
In the 1955 court case decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the US ordered the desegregation of public schools. In the court case, Brown accused the school systems that while the US was giving the African Americans a school to be taught in, the treatment, services, and conditions were largely inferior to white schools. In the fall of 1955, Brown won. Two years later, Daisy Bates and others from the NAACP chose nine students to be “Firsts” to enroll in the newly desegregated Little Rock Central High. The nine students were: Ernest Green,Elizabeth Eckford,Jefferson Thomas,Terrence Roberts,Carlotta Walls LaNier,Minnijean Brown,Gloria Ray Karlmark,Thelma Mothershed, andMelba Pattillo Beals. These students had to be able to withstand the racism of the school and keep from losing their temper at the white students. They also had excellent grades and perfect attendance in their previous school. 
On the first day that the students were to enter the schools, there was a line of segregationists and soldiers blocking their way in. The racist governor, Orval Faubus, had called up the National Guard to keep the schools from getting desegregated. The students were forced to go back to their homes for the day. Woodrow Mann, the Mayor of Little Rock, asked President Eisenhower to send federal troops to protect the students. On September 24th, the President ordered the101st Airborne Divisionof theUS Armyto Little Rock andtook control ofthe entire Arkansas National Guard away from Governor Faubus. The army successfully escorted the nine students into the school on the next day, September 25, 1957. The students were put through a school year of physical and verbal abuse. The white students spat on them, called them names, and even threw acid and lit sticks of dynamite at them. One of the students, Minnijean Brown, said, “I was one of the kids ‘approved’ by the school officials. We were told we would have to take a lot and were warned not to fight back if anything happened. One girl ran up to me and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Won’t you go to lunch with me today?’ I never saw her again.” Minnijean was also taunted by a group of white students later in the year in the school cafeteria during lunch. She dropped a bowl of chili onto the boys and was suspended for six days, the other eight students cheering her on. Two months later however, after more fights with white students, she was suspended for the rest of the year. The white students never seemed to get punished for their actions, except when there were lots of adult witnesses around.