Originally aired on November 13, 2007
Tom Fudge: Fifty years ago, nine black high school students attended classes at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students were called the “Little Rock Nine,” and their story is one of the seminal tales of the American Civil Rights movement. Prior to September 1957, the Little Rock school district created a plan to integrate its schools. They did it to be in compliance with the new law of the land, established by the court decision in Brown v. Board of Education . But protests by white city residents prompted then-Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to send in his National Guard to keep the black students out.
By the end of September of that year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower would order the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division to go to Little Rock to enforce the integration of Central High School . That wasn't the end of it for the Little Rock Nine who suffered discrimination and the taunts of the white schoolmates throughout the year. And, as we now know, the prohibition of legal segregation hasn't prevented de facto segregation from being a problem in today's America.
Yet the Little Rock Nine remains heroes in the struggle for equality.
Guest:
- Dr. Terrence Roberts , co-chairperson of the Master's in Psychology Program at Antioch University and one of the original Little Rock Nine.
