The Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine Being Escorted to School by the 101st Airborne Division

Dig if you will the picture of being fifteen years old.  You're young, you're bright, and the adults around you tell you that you are going to make a difference.  You're about to start a new school.  This school is huge - your old school would fit on the first floor of one wing of your new school.  You have a friend or two joining you at the new school.  Some went to a school even older than your old school - yours was the "new school" by comparison.  This new school takes up two full city blocks for the building alone.  The stadium and recreation areas take up another two blocks.  The school has a north wing, a south wing, and the center.  It has three full floors, a basement that runs beneath the south wing and center section, and two top floors that sit atop the center section.  Everything at this school is state-of-the-art.  You will get an education here that isn't available anywhere else.  There's just one problem.  The governor of the state has decided that you and your friends cannot go to school here.  He's gone so far as to activate the National Guard to prevent your entrance.  

That's right.  The governor himself is taking heavy-duty measures to keep you and your friends out of this school.  You're not troublemakers, hoodlums, or slackers.  In fact, you're among the best and brightest of your peers.  You'd like to say you don't understand what the commotion is all about, but unfortunately, you do.  You've been on the receiving end of similar treatment before.  Not on this scale by any stretch of the imagination, but nonetheless, you've had a taste of this at some point in your life and more than once. 

Your crime...

...you are black.  Not only are you black, you are trying to attend school with white children. 

This is what greets you in the front lawn of the school as you try to enter the building.  You are turned away.  The President sends in the 101st Airborne Division to escort you into the building everyday.  Unfortunately, they can only do so much.  They can keep the unruly mobs of adults outside and they can keep those unruly ones from preventing you from entering the building, but once you're inside, you're on your own.  It's you and your eight friends and everyone else.  Some of the other kids try to be your friend, but they, too, become the object of name-calling, ridicule, scorn, and other such things.  You and your friends are spat on, tripped, pushed, your feet are stomped on, food is spilled on you, you are called names, and it is done if not right in front of the faculty, within their sight and earshot.  You dare not stand up for yourself lest you be thrown out of this school, as actually happened to one of your friends.  You now understand what your elders meant when they said you would be making a difference, but you're thinking that maybe this making a difference business isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Sometimes you think maybe someone else can make history and you can go back to your old school.  Maybe it's old and the equipment is outdated, but you wonder if you're actually getting an education here.  Then you realize that you have to keep going.  People have died to ensure your right - not privilege - RIGHT to be here.  What you might not realize at the time is that in a few short years, more will die to ensure that people who look like you are no longer deprived of their rights because of the color of their skin.  

You make it to the end of the school year.  Sadly, next year won't happen at this school for you or anyone else.  The school is closed.  In fact, every public school in town in closed because the white people would rather their children be uneducated than attend integrated schools.  You got the last laugh, though.  Your name and your eight friends' names are in the history books.  You and your friends are known as The Little Rock Nine. You are synonymous with Little Rock Central High School.  When people think of Central HIgh School, they think of you and your eight friends.  People worldwide make pilgrimages to Central High School in honor of your bravery and dignity.  Yearly ceremonies are held to commemorate your courage in the face of mob cowardice.  I, my husband, our children, and people like us owe you a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.  We met at Central.  Without your acts, he wouldn't have been at Central.  Without the acts of you and those who came after you, marriages like ours would still be illegal in the state of Arkansas.  

Of course, some of those in positions of power had less than kind words regarding President Eisenhower's use of the 101st Airborne Division to keep the mob in check and escort the nine children into the building.  You can read the opinion of one such Federal Judge here.  Unfortunately, this rhetoric is starting to reappear under the guise of "taking back our country", otherwise known as teabaggers.  They're spouting the same crap today that they did fifty-three years ago, and for the same reason.  A person of color has invaded what they considered to be theirs and theirs alone.  

I hope the people spouting this drivel will stop and think for a moment.  Little Rock Central High looked like this for the 1958-59 school year. 

This is Little Rock Central High today. 

This school is a scholarship factory.  It is a haven of tolerance.  I cannot fully quantify what it means to have been a student here, or what it means to know that two generations of our family are LRCHS alum.  Not only did we not go to hell in a handbasket after integration, we thrived and are so much better than we were. 

Today's blog is written in memory of Jefferson Thomas.