Fifty years ago today nine black students entered Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, for the first time — in defiance of then Governor Orval Faubus but with the support of the U.S. Army and the national government. You have to be a certain age to remember this as a pivotal point in our country’s desegregation process. I am of that age.
In addition, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Little Rock one year later. I was a sophomore. No, I didn’t enroll in Central High; instead my Mother registered me at the local Catholic girls’ school, which — for the record — was segregated too. Being a private school, it could make its own rules and wasn’t under the jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court that had ruled against “separate but equal.”
I learned quickly that my views on black people and how to treat them were not the views held by my classmates, their parents, or the community at large. In the North, I’d gone to school with black people all my life; in Little Rock, that was seen as an aberration. I wanted to fit in, so I kept my opinions to myself. After a week in school, I was voted treasurer of my class.
The year I moved to Little Rock, 1958, Governor Faubus closed the city’s three high schools rather than continue desegregating them. So I wasn’t the only new student at Mount Saint Mary’s Academy, as other parents — Catholic and non-Catholic alike — sought to keep their children not only in school, but in a segregated classroom.
The year I was a junior, the public high schools opened again but not without a battle between the local integrationists who wanted to comply with the federal laws and the segregationists who didn’t. Ultimately, the former won, but it wasn’t until 1972 that all grades in Little Rock’s public schools were integrated.
Today is a special anniversary, no doubt, but it was hardly the end of segregation in our educational system. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be called, attended a special commemorative ceremony today to mark their place in history. One of them said from the podium that he felt more advances needed to be made. I tend to agree and am now at an age in my life where I wouldn’t keep opinions to myself.
For the record, I took this photo last spring when my son Keith and I returned to Little Rock for a visit. It really is an imposing building, even after all it’s been through.
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