Introduction (continued)

During those years Americans who opposed segregation concentrated on providing young African Americans with the skills necessary to openly challenge discrimination. They founded a variety of vocational schools, colleges, and universities open to young people of all "races" and ethnicities. In time, a number of lawyers trained at these institutions began to chip away at segregation in court. With the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), they attacked "Jim Crow" laws—particularly laws that affected educational opportunities—case by case. They began with state-supported universities and then focused their attention on segregation in the nation’s public schools. 

On May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in their favor. The justices decided that separate schools for black and white children were not and could never be equal.

As fall neared, however, resistance to integration became more vocal in Little Rock and elsewhere. A number of African American students responded by withdrawing their applications. By the time school opened, only nine were prepared to attend Central High School—Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls. They became known as the "Little Rock Nine." Despite the talk on TV, over the radio, and in the newspapers, they did not believe that integration would lead to violence in Little Rock. Ernest Green recalls:

There hadn’t been any trouble expected, given the fact that there had been other schools in Arkansas that had been integrated—Fort Smith, Arkansas, and some others. The buses in Little Rock had been desegregated without any problem. The library was integrated, the medical school, and the law school at the University had admitted some blacks. So there was an expectation that there would be minimal problems, but nothing major that would put Little Rock on the map. The first indication that I had of it was the night before we were to go to school, the Labor Day Monday night. [Governor] Orval Faubus came on TV and indicated that he was calling out the [Arkansas] National Guard to prevent our entrance into Central because of what he thought were threats to our lives. He was doing it for our own "protection." Even at that time that was his line. He said that the troops would be out in front of the school and they would bar our entrance to Central—for our protection as well as for the protection and tranquility of the city.