The Legacy Of Little Rock

Green grew up riding past the impressive edifice of Central High School, considered the best school in town. The name was stamped into the secondhand books that taught him U.S. history, algebra and chemistry. As a member of the marching band -- he played tenor saxophone -- at segregated Horace Mann High School, he had marched on Central's field.

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"We didn't have a stadium, so the black schools played on the field one night and the white schools another," he recalled.

Green was 13 when the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on arguments by Marshall, outlawed school segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education case. Even so, many officials in Southern states vehemently refused to carry out the order.

No such sentiment was evident in Little Rock in 1957, which had a progressive reputation, Green said. Blacks owned businesses. There was a thriving black middle class. The public libraries and city buses were integrated, as was the University of Arkansas campus. Several Arkansas school districts had voluntarily integrated.

It was against this backdrop that the Little Rock school board decided to integrate.

"I heard about it on the radio that they were looking for students interested in going to Central," said Minnijean Brown Trickey, another of the Little Rock Nine. "It started off that there were 23 of us, but by the time we got to school that first day, there were only nine."

It was Green's idea to attend Central High, and his mother, like the other parents, supported the decision. "They had some idea of what it would do to change the opportunities for all the black folks in Little Rock if we were able to integrate the school," he said.

Green said they were all thunderstruck by the level of resistance.

"We didn't think there would be a confrontation," he said. "Orval Faubus was regarded as a progressive white Southerner. My mother had voted for him as governor. He didn't have an image of being a firebrand segregationist or racist."

On Sept. 4, the students were denied entry by guardsmen and racists yelling epithets. After the NAACP took the case to court, they were allowed in on Sept. 23 but had to leave early because of fears of violence. Two days later, with an escort from the 101st Airborne, they were admitted.

For four weeks, things were relatively quiet. Soldiers escorted the nine black students to class. Many avid segregationists kept their children at home.

"Once they saw we weren't leaving, they started to trickle back in," Green said. Soon, the harassment started.