I normally react negatively to a group name with a number appended. Except in the case of the Little Cyclone five (my high school basketball team), this naming convention normally connotes a number of individuals who have done something illegal or socially unacceptable but are being treated as a group so as to avoid individual accountability, often at the behest of third parties with a separate agenda.
Not so the Little Rock Nine. This group of nine young black Americans, who played such an important role in changing the face of public education in America had dropped from my consciousness due to the passage of time, events and, I guess, apathy. Jim Lehrer correctly surmised a substantial latent interest in the events surrounding the Little Rock Nine and Central High School in Little Rock in September 1957, almost exactly 50 years ago, and brought them back in my consciousness as well.
I was just fourteen years old and had personally encountered a Negro (as they were referred to then) only twice. Both encounters touched and informed me and even shaped my future views without me really knowing it. Neither encounter seemed particularly meaningful at the time, but the fact that I can recall the details of events which occurred over fifty years hence, suggests meaning that I didn’t then fully comprehend .
Trace was in my 3rd grade class at Talkeetna Elementary in Anchorage, Alaska. We had just moved there to be with my father who had been transferred to yet another military assignment. It was the first day of school, and I was in a state of excitement that perhaps only nine year old boys can generate. A new school in the shadows of the Talkeetna Mountains on the outskirts of Anchorage, new kids to know, brilliant sunshine with only the barest of hints of the the winter to come. I noticed Trace (last name forgotten) almost immediately as he, too, was new , and obviously black, and alone. While the other kids approached me easily wanting to take my measure, no one approached Trace. He stood alone in the back of the room. This aloneness continued during recess and for the days to come. I spoke to him and tried to engage in him schoolyard play, but he shied away.
That night, as I was recounting the days events to my mother, I mentioned that I had met a new boy, Trace, but that he was kind of sad, and none of the other kids had much to do with him. It finally came out that he was the lone black child in my class, indeed in the school. My mother said, “it’s all right to be nice to him, but you shouldn’t play with him”. That seemed a very strange thing to say, but sensing even then the presence of things not to be discussed, I chose, as young ones often do, to hear but ignore. My mother was a kind, god fearing woman trying to teach her child as she herself had been taught. She was not a racist by any definition that she could understand, but yet she was leading me, albeit gently, to another generation of of racial ignorance.
The second encounter was almost exactly five years later, just as the Arkansas National Guard was preventing nine young black Americans from entering the front door of Little Rock Central High School. That summer, because my Junior League baseball team (thirteen and fourteen year olds) had won the City of San Angelo tournament, we were allowed to select two additional players at large to continue on to regional and hopefully state tournament play. My father, who was the head coach and a pretty good eye for baseball talent selected Roy F. as one of the two. Roy was a catcher, and a really good one. Ultimately Roy played professional baseball at the AAA level, but never made it to the big show. I played maybe twelve tournament games and several practice games and enjoyed many hours of practice with Roy. I never saw Roy strike out. Nor did I ever see anyone steal a base on Roy, nor did I ever see him angry. Roy only had one unusual characteristic. He was black.
The sectional and regional tournaments were in San Angelo, so we didn’t have to travel, and we won. We made it through both tournaments without a loss and barely a run scored on us. Roy was hitting about .750. The state tournament was in Pasadena, near Houston, and the eight hour bus ride was only a part of a grand adventure. Our joy was momentarily interrupted as we tried to check in to a Pasadena motel near the ball parks. My father came back to the bus after an inordinately long time in the motel office and said we weren’t going to stay there, saying, “I don’t really think this is the kind of place for us”. Making a few hurried calls, he was able to arrange accommodations for us in the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters at nearby Ellington Air Force Base. I’m not sure if Roy ever knew that he was the reason that the motel was “not the kind of place for us”. We lost in the finals and Roy was not selected to the all tournament team even though he was clearly the best player in the field. I was selected. Dad tried to explain all of this to me after we got home, but he didn’t quite have the words, and I still didn’t have the whole picture.
On May 17, 1954 the US Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education 307 US 483. In this ruling the court determined that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. This ruling at once turned the social structure of public schools and wiped out over fifty years of the “separate but equal” doctrine that was ushered in to American life by a previous court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537, 1896.
Not many school boards rushed to implement the court’s new order as those of my generation can attest. My middle school, Robert E. Lee Jr. High School and San Angelo Central High School where I began the 10th grade in 1959 were both still segregated when the Little Rock 9 were being spat upon in the halls of Little Rock Central High. The school board in Little Rock did agree to a plan of gradual integration which was scheduled to start in September 1957. The Little Rock Nine, the actual parties at interest, were selected by the local chapter of the NAACP based on their character and intellect, and as you will see, the selections were sound.
The school board and and the NAACP did not reckon on Arkansas governor Orval Faubus and the deepness of the shade of red on the necks of many of the local citizenry. In anticipation of the enrollment the next day, the governor called up the national guard and the local “white citizens council” whipped up the local yahoos to a high dither. On September 23rd, the nine youngsters, the oldest of which was Earnest Green, seventeen, slipped in the side door of the school, choosing not to run the gauntlet of enflamed citizens braying on the front steps. Upon learning the young negros were inside the school, a near riot erupted, and more cautious heads spirited the kids away from the school before physical mayhem ensued.
At the urging of the U.S Attorney’s office in Little Rock President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division into the fray. The next day, the 25th, all nine were escorted by soldiers with bayonets drawn were escorted into the school. Gov. Faubus in one of his more lucid moments stood down the national guard and an angry status quo was achieved. Suffice it to say that this was to be a difficult school year for the Little Rock Nine.
The school board in another of their many undistinguished actions, closed all Little Rock public schools for the 1958/59 school year, but at the urging of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, (free enterprise capitalism at work) and some of the more enlightened local citizenry reopened their schools the next year. Versions of this same scenario were played out all over the south for the next decade.
As I said, Ernest Green was the first and only one of two of the nine to graduate from Little Rock Central. He went on to graduate college and became Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration and later became a vice-president and managing director of Lehman Brothers. In fact, all of the Little Rock Nine went on to not only graduate high school, but also all earned university degrees and lived and are living full and productive lives. My favorite of the group, however, is Minnijean Brown Trickey who was expelled from Little Rock Central for dumping a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who had used the wrong racial epithet to describe her. She later became a social worker and writer and the subject of a highly regarded documentary.
I couldn’t help but juxtapose the behavior and impact of those brave young ones, the Little Rock Nine, who helped initiate a new era in public education and paid and overcame a difficult personal price to do so to the so called Jena Six of recent infamy. I think it might be worthwhile for the Jena Six to meet the Little Rock Nine. Perhaps then they would have some worthy role models of character, integrity, personal responsibility, and humanity. And the good Revs. Al and Jesse can go on about their other business.
I also wonder what Trace and Roy would think about it all.
nb. The Jena Six refers to six black teenagers who were charged and convicted of beating a white student at Jena High School in Jena, La.
