The Little Rock 9 Essay

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The Little Rock 9

The little rock 9 was a group of African, American students which were involved in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. In 1957 there entrance sparked a nationwide crisis when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, In defiance of a federal court order called out the Arkansas National guard to stop them from entering the school. The names of these nine are Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed, Terrence Roberts, Minnijean Brown, and Melba Pattillo.
On the 4th of September 1997, nine students were attending Little Rock Central High school for there first time, while a mob of white people gathered around the entrance and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent these nine black people from entering the school. However with the help of police escorts they were successfully escorted in through the side entrance door on the 23rd of September 1957, while the crowd outside chanted, “Two, four, six, eight…We ain’t gonna integrate!” and chased and beat black reporters who were covering the events, fearing mob violence, the nine students were rushed home later that morning.
This happened when in response to Faubus’s action, a team of NAACP lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, won a federal district court injunction to prevent the governor from blocking the student’s entry to the school, so Faubus removed the two guardsmen from in front of the school.
On September the 25th 1957 the nine students were escorted back into the school under federal troop escort for their first full day of classes, This happened after Calling the mob’s actions “disgraceful,” Eisenhower called out 1,200 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division the “Screaming Eagles” of Fort Campbell, Kentucky and placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal orders. Later Melba Pattillo wrote, “After three full days inside Central, I know that integration is a much bigger word than I thought.”
The nine had suffered repeated harassment such as kicking, shoving, and name calling, the guards were assigned to escort them to their classes, but the guards could not go everywhere with them so the repeated harassment continued to happen in places like the locker room and restrooms.
After the 101 airborne returned to Ft Campbell in November, the National guards troops were left in charge, as the other students tried their best efforts to get the nine to leave Central, As the nine students had no classes together they weren’t allowed to participate in activities at Central, But despite all that they still returned every day for school to persist in getting an equal education.
As the nine continued to still get verbal and