The Arkansas National Guard

For 17 days, the Arkansas National Guard kept the "Little Rock Nine" from entering Central High, but did nothing to disperse the crow of angry whites that gathered outside the building. Perlesta Hollingsworth, an African American who lived near Central High, told a reporter many years later, "The shocking thing to me in 1957 was the number of whites who didn’t participate in the aggression, who wouldn’t do anything but look. Neighbors would express dismay, but wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t speak out against it, would go ahead and close their doors to it."

Marcia Webb was among those whites. She was a student at Central High at the time and a bystander the day the mob harassed Elizabeth Eckford. She was also a witness to the crowds that surrounded the school in the days that followed. As an adult, she reflected on the choices she made then:

The things that I thought about when I was in high school were the things that most kids did in the 50s. . .the football team. . .dances. . . .I think it was a white person’s world—probably a white man’s world. Most of the blacks you had any contact with in 1957 were your household workers, sanitation department helpers, and that would be the only contact you would have. But I remember the picture in the newspaper of Elizabeth Eckford with the jeering there and you never once thought about what was going on with Elizabeth Eckford. You were glad there weren’t any violent demonstrations, you were glad no one was hurt physically. But then I realized what hurt can come from words, from silence even, from just being ignored. And when I think about it now I think about it with regret. I’m sorry to say now looking back that what was happening didn’t have more significance and I didn’t take more of an active role. But I was interested in the things that most kids are.

A Federal Court Order

On Friday, September 10th, U.S. District Judge Ronald N. Davies ruled that the state could not continue to block integration. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus responded to the court order by withdrawing the Arkansas National Guard.

The following Monday, about 100 Little Rock police officers placed wooden barricades around Central High as over a thousand angry white men and women from Arkansas and surrounding states gathered in front of the building. To avoid the mob, the African American students entered the school through a side door. After learning the students were in the building, the crowd went on a rampage.

By midmorning, the mob had attacked both black and white journalists, broken windows and doors in the school, and come close to capturing the “Little Rock Nine.” The police had to smuggle them out of the school for their own safety. Melba Patillo later said of that day:

The first time I was able to enter Central High School, what I felt inside was stark raving fear—terrible, watching, awful fear….There are no words for how I felt inside. I had known no pain like that because I did not know what I had done wrong. You see, when you’re fifteen years old and someone’s going to hit you or hurt you, you want to know what you did wrong. Although I knew the differences between black and white, I didn’t know the penalties one paid for being black at that time.

President Eisenhower's Response

The next day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, outraged by the violence, ordered the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. On September 25th, American soldiers not only dispersed the mob but also escorted the "Little Rock Nine" to school. This time, Melba Patillo recalls, "I went in not through the side doors, but up the front stairs, and there was a feeling of pride and hope that yes, this is the United States; yes, there is a reason I salute the flag; and it’s going to be okay."

Eisenhower's decision surprised many Americans. He did not favor integration. Born in 1890, he grew up in a segregated society and served for over 30 years in a segregated army. Not long after the Brown decision, he remarked, "You can’t change people’s hearts merely by laws." He also told reporters that he could not imagine a situation in which he would use federal troops to enforce integration. Yet after watching events in Little Rock, he ordered federal troops to the city to enforce the law. He told the American people: "Our personal opinions about the [Brown] decision have no bearing on the matter of enforcement…Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts."

The First African American Graduates from Central High

In the weeks that followed, the 101st Airborne restored order in the streets. But neither the soldiers nor school officials had much effect on the small but determined group of white students who insulted, humiliated, and physically threatened the “Little Rock Nine” day after day. Still, all but one of the students made it through the year. And in May, Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Central High.

Singer/actor Paul Robeson was one of many Americans who followed the crisis in Little Rock. In his autobiography, he says of Green and the other eight African American students:

Dear children of Little Rock—you and your parents and the Negro people of your community have lifted our hearts and renewed our resolve that full freedom shall now be ours….You are our children, but the peoples of the whole world rightly claim you, too. They have seen your faces, and the faces of those who hate you, and they are on your side. They see in you those qualities which parents everywhere want their children to have, and their best wishes…go out to you.

Yes, America—these are your children, too, you ought to be very proud of them. The American dream—the spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln, of Emerson and Twain—is given new life by the children of Little Rock. These children must ever be cherished, for they are not only the hope and the promise of my people: with them stands the destiny of democracy in America.

The Next Fall...

Despite such praise at home and abroad as from Robeson, the crisis did not end with Green’s education. Reporter Joan I. Duffy of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, explains:

That summer, Faubus and the segregationists had pushed through the legislature a new law allowing school districts to close schools rather than integrate.

The Little Rock School Board voted to close the city’s four high schools for the 1958-59 school year, sending thousands of families scrambling to find alternative education for their children….

No one knows how many students, unable to find an alternative school after the closure, dropped out and never came back. Newspaper accounts of the time described a rash of moving vans taking families out of Little Rock in search of schools.

“Some 3,700 children of high school age have been affected by closings, 100 of them Negroes,” a United Press International dispatch reported….

Several churches cobbled together classes and a private, all-white school enrolled 917.

Closing the schools and the “purge” of 44 teachers by the school board for perceived support of integration ignited the outrage of Little Rock’s moderates. They were led by 76-year-old Adolphine Fletcher Terry, a civicly active society matron who had organized the city’s public library system. She organized an army of 2,000 women—all of them white. By the Spring of 1959, a recall movement ousted three segregationists from the school board and replaced them with moderates. The schools re-opened in the fall of 1959.