The Legacy Of Little Rock

As the only senior, Green was a prominent target.

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"It seemed to me that one of the things that would drive them crazy was if I were to be successful," he recalled. "So I was determined to stick it out that whole year."

Each morning, the black students would gather at one of their homes or at the home of Daisy Bates, the legendary Arkansas NAACP president, and her husband, L.C. Bates, founder of the Arkansas State Press, the state's leading black newspaper.

The hostility didn't subside until the day before Green's graduation.

"There were a number of white kids who got up the nerve to come over and congratulate me for getting through the year," he said.

The principal urged Green to take his diploma and go home without attending the commencement ceremony.

"Local authorities were afraid there would be some attempt to do physical harm to me, but I was convinced that I had angels looking over me," Green said. "I figured I had gone through [too much] not to enjoy the benefits of the service."

As it turned out, Martin Luther King Jr., who had gained prominence with the Montgomery bus boycott two years earlier, was in Arkansas.

"He came up the evening of the ceremony to sit with my mother, aunt and family," Green said. "I didn't know he was in the audience until after the ceremony was over."

The next five decades of Green's life have, in many ways, been defined by that year at Central High.

He devoted himself to civil rights causes. At Michigan State University, which he attended on a full scholarship, he became president of the school's NAACP chapter and often protested the policies of the university's president, John Hannah. Thirty years later, he learned that Hannah had personally arranged for his scholarship.

After earning bachelor's and master's degrees, Green moved to New York and worked with civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin to recruit minorities into the building trades. In 1977, he was tapped by President Jimmy Carter as assistant secretary of labor for employment and training. He later formed a minority consulting company with Alexis Herman, who would be named Clinton's labor secretary.

In 1987, capitalizing on the relationships he made in public service, he took a position with Lehman Brothers as an investment banker; his projects included underwriting municipal debt with governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations. Again, he drew on his experience at Central High.

"It made me a tougher negotiator, able to control my emotions and able to handle the ups and down of business and life," he said.

The years have brought proud moments: In 1999, Clinton awarded Green and the rest of the Little Rock Nine the Congressional Gold Medal. There have also been humbling times: In 2002, Green was sentenced to 90 days of home detention and given a $10,000 fine for failing to declare and pay taxes on income he received as part of a planned business venture.

Today, he works passionately to help young people. He noted that last week, 50 years after he entered Central High, black activists were gathered in Jena, La., to protest the treatment of six black youths arrested after a racially tinged brawl.

"A lot of people don't realize," he said, "that there is still racial injustice in this country."