50 years
(AP) Fifty years after federal troops escorted Terrence Roberts and eight fellow black students into an all-white high school, he says the struggles over race and segregation still are unresolved.
“This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society,” said Roberts, who is a faculty member at Antioch University’s psychology program.
He and the other students known as the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe Central High School’s 50th anniversary this week with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton.
For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 - and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate - Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.
The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds. It was the first time in 80 years that federal troops had been sent to a former state of the Confederacy.
So, it’s been 50 years, are we any better at race relations? To some extent yes, and to another…..we have a long way to go. I remember when my Mom told me that there weren’t any blacks in her school for a long time when she grew up. She said they had to drink out of a different water fountain and sit in a separate place. I thought, ‘How weird is that? I go to a school that has lots of blacks and whites and mexicans and we all seem to get along fine.’
It’s strange to think that it really hasn’t been that long since schools were integrated, people of color couldn’t sit wherever they wanted and we couldn’t all share the same fountain. How could a society function like that, or for that matter go back a little further when slaves were considered less of a person and counted less than a whole person for a vote.
I hope that we learn from the past and that the future looks brighter for everyone no matter what their color.
I grew up in Louisiana in a little town where if they could have gotten away with it, they would have continued segregation forever. What used to be the White school was turned into the High School and what used to be the Black school (which was noticably newer meaning they had to build it!) was turned into the Elementary school…due to the number of students they had to build a Jr High school.
Many people chose to send their students to the Private School in the next town over sending them to be in “non-segregated” schools. I say that in quotes because the schools were still segregated, we were just in the same building. They just had a plan. The white students were in the “advanced learners” class with the white teachers and the black students were in “slow learners” class. Poor white kids and rich black kids were in the middle class. It was so incredibly silly.
When I was in the 4th grade the Jr High was burned down. The story went that a black man who was drunk came in and accidentally burned it down. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s what I was taught.
My father and the school tried to teach me that there was something different about the black students. My mother and the students taught me that they were just the same as me. I grew up with lots of black friends (our school was 85% black students.)
Comment by Renee - September 26, 2007 12:09 am