1. Do Now  Answer the following on your Do Now sheet when you are done with your test.  Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s position that separating children based on color creates a feeling of “inferiority [lower worth]…that may affect their hearts and minds?”  How might this feeling of inferiority affect children later in life?  When you are done answering this question pick up the worksheet located on the podium by my desk. Remember to be quiet if students are still working.

2.  3 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education nine African American students—including Melba Patillo Beal—attempted to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  The Little Rock Nine, were recruited by the Arkansas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  September 4, 1957, the first day of school at Central High, a white mob gathered at the school, and the Governor deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering.  A team of NAACP lawyers won a federal district court ruling to prevent the governor from blocking the students’ entry.  With the help of police escorts, the students entered the school on September 23, 1957. Fearing mob violence, however, the students were rushed home soon afterward.

3.  King’s telegram to President Eisenhower urged him to “take a strong forthright stand in the Little Rock situation.”  King told the president that if the federal government did not take a stand it would “set the process of integration back fifty years. This is a great opportunity for you and the federal government to back up the longings and aspirations of millions of peoples of good will and make law and order a reality” (King, 1957).

4. Results  At the end of the school year, Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Central High School.  Before schools opened in 1958, Faubus closed all 4 of Little Rock’s public high schools rather than proceed with desegregation.  In December 1959, the SC ruled that the school board must reopen the schools and resume the process of desegregating the city’s schools.

5. Hecklers follow Elizabeth Eckford as she walks in front of Central High.

6. The Little Rock Nine being escorted to school