The following are some questions for classroom discussion to help students connect the history presented in this website to their own lives and the choices they make everyday.
Use the menu below to jump to each Connection Question:
In the end, the law could not [integrate the schools]. A group of very dedicated people, women marshaled grassroots support to take back the schools and work on the desegregation problem. The lesson is that people themselves had to take responsibility for what they wanted their community to be. They had to rally the good forces in the community to take back the schools, do more than a lackluster desegregation effort by some edict. This was work that should have been done prior to desegregation.
What is integration? What does he suggest is needed to integrate the schools?
Joe took a rough piece of paper from the factory and wrote a request to the President of the United States to use his federal and military powers to keep open the doors of the high school to the Negro children. Joe then asked the 60 workers in his shop to sign their names to the request. About 40 of them signed. Then Joe put the whole thing in an envelope and sent it to President Eisenhower. Joe is a white worker. Can you imagine the effect in the White House if other Joes in thousands of other factories and offices all over thenation would have done the same? Enough said.
How would you answer Colon’s question? How do you define the word bystander? Research suggests that the responses of bystanders give an event meaning. Television dramatically increased the number of people who were bystanders to the riots in Little Rock. What is Colon suggesting about the ways they could give meaning to the event?
The nine African American students all lived in the Central High school district. As a result, they knew a number of white students in the school. Yet Elizabeth Eckford recalls, "Some of the students I’d known since I was ten years old, who were white, were afraid to speak to me in school. It’s true there were only about 50 students who were actively harassing us. But some of those other students, it was my feeling, were cooperating in that violence through their silence." How does one cooperate through silence? What is she suggesting about the role of the bystander?
There is an old saying that "sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me." Is it true? What is the hurt that comes from words? From silence? From "just being ignored"? How might the situation at Central High School have been different if Webb and other white students had regarded black students as "kids" much like them?
As the mob harassed Elizabeth Eckford, Grace Lorch decided that she could not remain a bystander. (Click here for more about Grace Lorch's story.) She braved the crowd to help Eckford reach safety. The white ministers who accompanied the African American students to school that day also took a stand. How important were the choices they made to the black students? To the community as a whole? To themselves? What if others had supported the "Little Rock Nine"? For example, what if the principal or a group of teachers had opened the doors of the school and escorted the nine into the building? How might that decision have altered the outcome of that day?
Harry Ashmore, the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, said of the crisis in Little Rock, "Orval Faubus was the hero to the mob; the nine courageous black children he failed to keep out of Central High were heroes to the world." To whom was Eisenhower a hero? How does Ashmore seem to define the word hero? How do you define it? Who do you think the heroes were in this story?
Aside from the death of [actor] James Dean and the struggle to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, no public event had so fully engaged my private emotions. To challenge the president of the country, to berate angrily a governor I had never heard of from a place I did not know, was for me an immense expansion or political consciousness. It was a turning point or, at least, the start of a turning point.
What do Doris Goodwin’s remarks suggest about the way TV expanded her “universe of obligation”—the circle of individuals and groups “toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for amends”? To what extent does TV expand your “universe of obligation”? The video Eyes on the Prize, available from the Facing History Online Campus, shows some of the images she saw on TV in 1957. How do those images help you understand why Goodwin views the crisis in Little Rock as a turning point in her political consciousness?
When he and Terry were alone, he said: “You don’t know me but you would if I told you my name. I was one of those boys who harassed Alvin. I hadn’t thought about how it made him feel until I heard you talking today. Please tell him I’m sorry I did it.” “I certainly did remember his name when he gave it,” Terry said later, laughing. “He made Alvin’s life miserable but I can’t get over what he said today. I was really moved to know he finally understood what he had done.”
In 1997, when Elizabeth Eckford was asked why she returned to Central High after her experience with the mob, she replied, “Somewhere along the line, very soon [staying at Central] became an obligation. I realized that what we were doing was not for ourselves.” What was that obligation? For whom do you think she and the others were enduring the harassment, if not for themselves? What does Sara Murphy’s story suggest about the way communities can break isolation? About the way we as individuals expand our “universe of obligation”?
The roundtable discussion organized by NBC (Click here for full story) was one of the few opportunities Central High students had to talk about their concerns. In that conversation, students raised all of the issues that there were parts of the debate on integration—questions of equality vs. state’s rights, fear of “race mixing,” and the conflict between free speech and free association and individual rights. None of these issues were discussed at school. How do you think the students learned about them? What did the roundtable discussion add to their understanding of these issues? To the understanding who heard their discussion?
Suppose a community group, the school, or the students themselves had organized informational conversations like NBC’s roundtable discussion. Who might have benefited? What might the students have learned from one another? How important is that learning? How else can individuals and groups bridge the differences that separate them?
In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to move to the back of the bus as required by law. Her arrest prompted other African Americans to boycott the city buses. For twelve and a half months, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they walked, carpooled, and rode in taxis rather than sit at the back of the bus. Their commitment inspired the "Little Rock Nine." Melba Pattillo later wrote that she experienced a "surge of pride when I thought about how my people had banded together to force a change. It gave me hope that maybe things in Little Rock could change." What connected African Americans in the two cities? How do you think the "Little Rock Nine" may be connected to students like Marian Wright Edelman who registered black voters in the South or sat-in at lunch counters in the 1960s? To those who took to the streets to demand laws that guaranteed equal rights for all Americans?
In 1957, Doris Kearns Goodwin attended high school in Rockville Centre, New York. She had two teachers who “thought much more could be learned from the drama in Arkansas than from the prescribed textbooks.” In both her social studies and English classes, those teachers chllaneged her biases and encouraged her to think independently. They were teaching how to be a citizen in a democracy. How is democracy taught in your school today? How are you learning to be a citizen in a democracy?
(Check out Expanding Citizenship from the Choosing to Participate Study Guide to learn about how some young Americans answered this question.)
Expanding Citizenship
from Choosing to Participate Study Guide
The crisis in Little Rock was a turning point for many Americans—particularly young Americans. It raised their political consciousness and expanded their "universe of obligation." It also revealed the power and the responsibilities citizens have in a democracy.
By 1960, some young Americans, both black and white, were heading to southern states to register black voters, integrate public facilities, or participate in civil rights marches. Others tried to make a difference by getting involved in politics. Many young people, like Doris Kearns Goodwin, were no longer satisfied to be "observers of injustice." They undertook to right wrongs both at home and abroad. Their idealism came at a time when a new president was taking office.
John F. Kennedy succeeded Dwight Eisenhower as President of the United States in 1961. From the start, he inspired the enthusiasm of young people by urging them to take action. In his inaugural address, he admonished them and other Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," and urged his "fellow citizens of the world" to "ask not what America can do for you, but together what we can do for the freedom of man."
A new idea exemplified the spirit Kennedy celebrated in his address. That idea is said to have had its beginnings in an off-hand remark he made on the campaign trail. When Kennedy arrived at the University of Michigan late one October night, he was greeted by 10,000 students who had waited for hours just to see him. Speaking without prepared notes, Kennedy issued a challenge: "How many of you are willing to spend two years in Africa or Latin America or Asia working for the United States and freedom? How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana; technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the foreign service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness . . . to contribute part of your life to this country will depend the answer as to whether we as a free country can compete."
Graduate students Alan and Judith Guskin were in the crowd that night. Several days later they heard Chester Bowles, Kennedy’s foreign policy advisor, speak of the work that his son and daughter-in-law were doing in an African village. Alan Guskin later wrote, "Kennedy had inspired us, and we were ready to make a commitment. Perhaps others were, too. Still, we never expected what was about to happen."
In a letter to the student newspaper, the Guskins expressed their willingness to serve abroad and urged others interested in doing so to contact them. Alan Guskin recalls:
The phone in our apartment rang constantly, spontaneous discussions dominated the campus, and we did what we could to organize a response. We founded a group called Americans Committed to World Responsibility. In less than two weeks, 800 students had signed petitions committing themselves to spend several years of their lives serving in developing countries, most of them students who had never previously been involved in campus activism of any kind.
A few weeks later, the group presented Kennedy with the petitions. Just weeks after his inauguration, on March 1, 1961, he responded by issuing an executive order establishing the Peace Corps. He named Sargent Shriver its first director. In the months that followed, thousands of young people enlisted, including Alan and Judy Guskin.
Both Kennedy and Shriver were aware of the growing civil rights movement in the United States. They knew that the Peace Corps would have to take a stand on an issue that was polarizing the nation. They chose to support equality for all Americans by recruiting volunteers from "every race and walk of life." In her history of the Peace Corps, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman notes that "the Peace Corps actively sought to hire as many qualified African Americans as would apply, and to convince many who might never have considered applying to do so. It did so as much for the sake of young white Americans as for young black Americans: experiencing one another as equals was prerequisite to accepting the essential equality of all humankind and proving that America could live up to its ideals."
As part of that commitment to equality, Shriver announced that the Peace Corps would train volunteers only at integrated colleges and universities. It would not bring volunteers to schools where "off-campus racial attitudes" would limit their freedom. For Shriver, these policies were essential to achieving the goals of the Peace Corps. He later wrote:
When the Peace Corps goes abroad, it spreads the ideal of a free and democratic society Its strategic premise is the sense of concern that every member has shown by the act of volunteering. The Peace Corps’ secret weapon is example. This example proclaims that in America, the color of a volunteer’s skin, or a human’s religious or political beliefs, do not determine personal dignity and worth. We have sent black Americans to white men’s countries, white Americans to black men’s countries. We were told that we could not send Protestants to certain parts of Catholic countries in Latin America, and that we could not send Jews to Arab countries. But we sent them. Rarely have these decisions spawned discontent.Thomas J. Scanlon served in the Peace Corps in Chile from 1961 to 1963. In recounting his experiences organizing cooperative development projects there, he suggests how he and other volunteers tried to reflect the nation’s democratic ideals:
We never meant for Peace Corps volunteers to go abroad as promoters of a particular political theory or economic system, much less a religious creed. But that did not mean they were without a mission. The volunteer goes overseas as a willing and skilled worker. He also goes as a representative of the ideals that America, with all its imperfections, embodies better than any society in our time. It is the idea that free and committed men and women can cross, even transcend, boundaries of culture and language, of foreign tradition, and great disparities of wealth and culture, to work in harmony with one another. The Peace Corps has a commitment to overcome old hostilities and entrenched nationalisms, to bring knowledge where ignorance has dominated, to challenge traditions that may enslave, even as it respects the societies from which they emerge. The Peace Corps was designed for different cultures to meet on the common ground of service to human welfare and personal worth, so that men and women might share what is valuable in the spirit of each.
. . . .There is need for a democratic approach from the very beginning. You must listen patiently to the people, wait for them to make their own judgments and respect these judgments even if you feel they’re about to make a mistake. If this mistake would be from ignorance, you can try to educate. If from stubbornness, you can try to demonstrate results. But if their decision is in full view of the facts and in good faith, there is only one thing to do and that is to let them go ahead and do it their own way. You shouldn’t interfere by dictating. Perhaps they will prove you wrong.
For a Peace Corps volunteer, democracy is more than an ideal or a political system. You can have both without real democracy. For you, democracy must be an approach to development. It must be an attitude you maintain when dealing with the people which assures them that the problem is theirs to solve. For the people, democracy is their ability to determine their own future. It is a fragile plant which can grow steadily if it’s cultivated, or be damaged dangerously by a major act of impatience.
Since the establishment of the Peace Corps in 1961, over 150,000 Americans have volunteered for service in the 132 countries that have participated in the program. Many of them returned some with a new commitment to democracy and a deeper understanding of their links not only to other Americans but also to people in other parts of the world. They remained eager to make a difference in the world. A number of them have taken a leadership role in a variety of non-profit groups, education, government, and the foreign service—in fact, about ten percent of each class of foreign service officers are returned volunteers. The successes of these volunteers gave rise to the idea of a "domestic Peace Corps." In 1963, Kennedy proposed such a program of voluntary service at home. Known as VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), it became part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s "war on poverty" program in 1964. What ideals and values prompted the establishment of the Peace Corps? What role did ordinary citizens play in making the Peace Corps a reality?
Connections questions for this reading
NBC Roundtable Discussion with Central High School Students
Moderated by Jorunn Ricketts, 1957
from Choosing to Participate Study Guide
In reflecting on what he learned from the crisis, the Reverend Colber Cartwright observed, "The lesson is that people themselves had to take responsibility for what they wanted their community to be. To do so. they had to talk about the issues that divided them." Many Americans in the 1950s had never spoken at length to people from other ethnic and racial groups. Sociologist David Schoem has called that kind of isolation a "human and national tragedy"—one that encourages a "heavy reliance on stereotypes, gossip, rumor, and fear" to shape one's lack of knowledge. How do people then (or now) break that isolation and learn to walk even briefly in someone else's shoes?
That was a question few people in Little Rock or elsewhere asked in the 1950s. As a result, black and white students at Central High had few opportunities to express their fears, hopes, or concerns. They received dozens of memos from school officials urging them to be "good citizens." But their teachers avoided any discussion of what it meant to be a good citizen in Little Rock in 1957. In class, teachers followed the curriculum. They avoided talking about the mob outside the building or the harassment of the "Little Rock Nine" within.
The most famous photograph taken at Central High that year showed a white student screaming at Elizabeth Eckford on the day she confronted the mob. Elizabeth Huckaby, the vice-principal at Central High, said of the photo:
No one seemed to be able to identify the girl—and small wonder. We were not used to seeing our students look like that. But by noon on Firday, I discovered she was someone I knew, and I sent for her in the afternoon. When she readily admitted she was the screaming girl I told her how distressed I was to hear it since hatred destroys the people who hate. She shrugged. Well, that was the way she felt, she said. Undeterred by her shrug, I said that I hoped I'd never see her pretty face so distorted again, that I never would have recognized the ugly face in the picture as her's. Wasted breath.A few weeks later, NBC invited students at Central High to participate in a roundtable discussion moderated by Jorunn Ricketts. It was to be aired nationally. A close friend of the girl that Elizabeth Huckaby called into her office took part in that discussion. Her name was Sammy Dean Parker. The excerpt that follows focuses on Sammy’s comments as well as those made by three other white students-Kay Bacon, Robin Woods, and Joe Fox-and two black students-Ernest Green and Minnijean Brown.
MRS RICKETS: Do you think it is possible to start working this out on a more sensible basis than violent demonstration?
SAMMY: No. I don’t because the South has always been against racial mixing and I think they will fight this thing to the end. . . . We fight for our freedom—that’s one thing. And we don’t have any freedom anymore.
ERNEST: Sammy, you say you don’t have any freedom. I wonder what you mean by it—that you don’t have any freedom? You are guaranteed your freedom in the Bill of Rights and your Constitution. You have the freedom of speech—l noticed that has been exercised a whole lot in Little Rock. The freedom of petition, the freedom of religion and the other freedoms are guaranteed to you. As far as freedom, I think that if anybody should kick about freedoms, it should be us. Because I think we have been given a pretty bad side on this thing as far as freedom.
SAMMY: Do you call those troops freedom? I don’t. And I also do not call it free when you are being escorted into the school every morning.
ERNEST: You say why did the troops come here? It is because our government—our state government—went against the federal law. Our country is set up so that we have 48 states and no one state has the ability to overrule our nation’s government. I thought that was what our country was built around. I mean, that is why we fight. We fought in World War II together—the fellows that I know died in World War II, they died in the Korean War. I mean, why should my friends go out there and die for a cause called "democracy" when I can’t exercise my rights-tell me that.
JOE: Well, Sammy, I don’t know what freedom has been taken away from you because the truth there-l know as a senior myself—the troops haven’t kept me from going to my classes or participating in any school activity. I mean, they’re there just to keep order in case—l might use the term "hot-heads"—get riled up. But I think as long as-if parents would just stay out of it and let the children of the school at Central High figure it out for themselves, I think it would be a whole lot better. I think the students are mature enough to figure it out for themselves. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll lay the whole blame of this trouble in Governor Faubus’s lap.
SAMMY: I think we knew before this ever started that someday we were going to have to integrate the schools. And I think our Governor was trying to protect all of us when he called out the National Guard-and he was trying to prepare us, I think.
ERNEST: . . . Well, I have to disagree I know a student that’s over there with us, Elizabeth [Eckford], and that young lady, she walked two blocks, I guess—as you all know—and the mob was behind her. Did the troops break up the mob?
ROBIN: And when Elizabeth had to walk down in front of the school I was there and I saw that. And may I say, I was very ashamed—l felt like crying—because she was so brave when she did that. And we just weren’t behaving ourselves—just jeering her. I think if we had had any sort of decency, we wouldn’t have acted that way. But I think if everybody would just obey the Golden Rule—do unto others as you have others do unto you—that might be the solution. How would you like to have to walk down the street with everybody yelling behind you like they yelled behind Elizabeth?
MRS. RICKETTS: Sammy, why do these children not want to go to school with Negroes?
SAMMY: Well, I think it is mostly race mixing.
MRS. RICKETTS: Race mixing? What do you mean?
SAMMY: Well, marrying each other.
MINNIJEAN: Hold your hand up. I’m brown, you are white. What’s the differences. We are all of the same thoughts. You’re thinking about your boy—he’s going to the Navy. I’m thinking about mine—he’s in the Air Force. We think about the same thing.
SAMMY: I’ll have to agree with you
MINNIJEAN: Kay, Joe and Robin—do you know anything about me, or is it just that your mother has told you about Negroes?
MRS. RICKETTS: . . . Have you ever really made an effort to find out what they’re like?
KAY: Not until today.
SAMMY: Not until today.
MRS. RICKETTS: And what do you think about it after today?
KAY: Well, you know that my parents and a lot of the other students and their parents thank the Negroes aren’t equal to us. But—l don’t know. It seems like they are, to me.
SAMMY: These people are-we’ll have to admit that.
ERNEST: I think, like we’re doing today, discussing our different views. If the people of Little Rock would get together I believe they would find out a different story-—and try to discuss the thing instead of getting out in the street and kicking people around and calling names-and that sort of thing. If people got together it would be smoothed over.
KAY: I think that if our friends had been getting in this discussion today, I think that maybe some of them—not all of them—in time, they would change their mend. But probably some of them would change their mind today.
After the roundtable discussion, life at Central High went on much as it had before. A small group of white students continued to harass the "Little Rock Nine," while the majority looked the other way. Still there were a few signs of change. Terrence Roberts, one of the "Little Rock Nine," was assigned to Robin Woods’s algebra class. Realizing he didn’t have a math book, she made "a gut-level decision" and pulled her desk over to his so they could share her book. There was "a gasp of disbelief." For the rest of the year, segregationists harassed Woods and her family.
"She’s scared," Mrs. Lorch said. "She’s just a little girl." She appealed to the men and women around her.
"Why don’t you calm down?" she asked. "I’m not here to fight with you. Six months from now you’ll be ashamed at what you’re doing."
"Go home, you’re just one of them," Mrs. Lorch was told.
She escorted the Negro student to the other side of the street, but the crowd followed.
"Won’t somebody please call a taxi?" she pleaded. She was met with hoot calls and jeers.
Finally, after being jostled by the crowd, she worked her way to the street corner, and the two boarded a bus.
Seven other Negro students tried to get into the school. They came together, accompanied by four white ministers. Dunbar Ogden, president of the Greater Little Rock Ministerial Association, acted as spokes man for the group.
"Sorry, we cannot admit Negro students," the officers told them. The crowd dispersed slowly. Many of the students who had waited outside the school building to see whether the Negroes would enter, started to go into school. They had said that if the Negroes went in, they would go out.