On February 9, 2010 Marquette University will confer the Pere Marquette Discovery Award, the university’s highest honor on the Little Rock Nine in a special ceremony in the Varsity Theatre, 1324 W. Wisconsin Ave.
This is only the fifth time Marquette has presented the Discovery Award, which was created in 1969 as part of the Tercentenary Celebration of the exploration and discoveries of Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary in America. The award honors those who achieve an extraordinary breakthrough that adds to human knowledge or the advancement of humanity. Previous recipients include the crew of Apollo 11, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin and Michael Collins, in 1969 German theologian Rev. Karl Rahner, S.J., in 1979 Mother Teresa of India in 1981, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa in 2003.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African American Civil Rights Movement.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. The decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation.
After the decision the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register Black students in previously all-White schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, the capital city of Arkansas, the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the high court’s ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the 1958 school year, which would begin in September 1957. By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine Black students to attend the previously all-White Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance. The nicknamed “Little Rock Nine” consisted of Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Jefferson Thomas (b. 1942), Terrence Roberts (b. 1941), Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942), Minnijean Brown Trickey (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Thelma Mothershed Wair (b. 1940), and Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School.
Several segregationist councils threatened to hold protests at Central High and physically block the Black students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the segregationists on September 4, 1957. The sight of a line of soldiers blocking nine black students from attending high school made national headlines and polarized the city.
Regarding the accompanying crowd, one of the nine Black students, Elizabeth Eckford, recalled “they moved closer and closer”. “Somebody started yelling, ‘Lynch her! Lynch her!’ I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd — someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”
On September 9, “The Council of Church Women” issued a statement condemning the governor’s deployment of soldiers to the high school and called for a citywide prayer service on September 12. Even President Dwight Eisenhower attempted to de-escalate the situation and summoned Governor Faubus to meet him. The President warned the governor not to interfere with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The next day, Woodrow Mann, the Mayor of Little Rock, asked President Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce integration and protect the nine students. On September 24, the President ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 member Arkansas National Guard, taking it out of the hands of Governor Faubus. The 101st took positions immediately, and the nine students successfully entered the school on the next day, Wednesday, September 25, 1957.
By the end of September 1957, the nine were admitted to Little Rock Central High under the protection of the U.S. Army (and later the Arkansas National Guard), but they were still subjected to a year of physical and verbal abuse (spitting on them, calling them names) by many of the white students. Melba Pattillo had acid thrown into her eyes. Another one of the students, Minnijean Brown, was verbally confronted and abused. She said “I was one of the kids ‘approved’ by the school officials. We were told we would have to take a lot and were warned not to fight back if anything happened.
One girl ran up to me and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here. Won’t you go to lunch with me today?’ I never saw her again.” Minnijean Brown was also taunted by members of a group of White, male students in December 1957 in the school cafeteria during lunch. She dropped her lunch – a bowl of chili – onto the boys and was suspended for six days. Two months later, after more confrontation, Brown was suspended for the rest of the school year. She transferred to New Lincoln High School in New York City. As depicted in the 1981 madefor- TV docudrama Crisis at Central High, white students were only punished when their offense was “both egregious and witnessed by an adult”.
Little Rock Central High School still functions as part of the Little Rock School District, and is now a National Historic Site that houses a Civil Rights Museum, administered in partnership with the National Park Service, to commemorate the events of 1957.
Two made-for-television movies have dramatized the events of the crisis: the 1981 CBS movie Crisis at Central High, and the 1993 Disney Channel movie The Ernest Green Story.
In 1996, seven of the Little Rock Nine appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. They came face to face with a few of the white students who had tormented them as well as one student who had befriended them.
In 2007, the United States Mint made available a commemorative silver dollar to “recognize and pay tribute to the strength, the determination and the courage displayed by African American high school students in the fall of 1957.” The obverse depicts students accompanied by a soldier, with nine stars symbolizing the Little Rock Nine. The reverse depicts an image of Little Rock Central High School, circa 1957. Proceeds from the coin sales are to be used to improve the National Historic Site.
On December 9, 2008 the Little Rock Nine were invited to attend the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, the first African American to be elected President.
