The Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment XVI states that: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States of America, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make ore enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The United States government obliged all public schools to let black people join in. Apparently a man named Faubus wasn't following the law. About fifty years ago in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, a govern called Orval Faubus separated nine black students from a high school, for no apparently reason, besides their black color. This action turned into a crisis. According to what Faubus said which you can look at the site npr.com, "the maintenance of the peace and order of a community is paramount to other considerations. And I found it necessary in order to preserve the peace and order in the community, and to protect the lives, even of the Negro students and the Negro people, to take the actions which I did." He also proclaimed that "if the black students attempted to enter Central, "blood would run in the streets." The school began to get national attention and the students were labeled as the Little Rock Nine.
Imagine is going to be your first day at school. There are many questions in your head. Will the teachers be friendly?
Will the students like you? Children can think about many things, but I believe the black ones were not expecting all that was due to happen in that school year.
The white population of Little Rock was furious that they were being forced to integrate their school, but after all the students were able to stay at the school. After the troop’s intervention and federal issues, the government understood that the constitution of the country is more powerful than the state. The idea of an all-white school is wildly unreasonable, illogical and very inappropriate. Faubus was essentially saying that blacks are not up to any objective measure of value.
Segregation was also present on the buses; blacks had to sit on the three back seats and if the bus was full and a white person got on the bus the black person had to give up his/her seat. There was an incident that sparked the whole pacifist movement from Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks was going home from a day shopping, the bus she was on was packed. A white person got on the bus and told her to get up and let him sit down. She refused profusely and was physically thrown of the bus. She was then arrested and imprisoned. This caused a boycott of the bus service from the black population. Many businesses went out of business and the segregation on the buses came to an end. This forced a bill to be passed, denouncing this kind of treatment of blacks and were ordered to stop this system.
According to the site www.philorum.org "racism derives from ignorance, fear (stemming from a socialized identity) or psychological inferiority (low self esteem)". The same source explains that Faubus was elected governor of Arkansas six times and served in the post for twelve years. Some people would think how come he was in charge for so long? Since when I was sixteen years old I went to live in Arkansas for six months as an exchange student, I can understand. The reason is that most of the Arkansas population is racist, black people there are set apart from the whites. Is not like California, Georgia or New York. It is very segregated. Also, people are very religious there, so I remember my step dad saying that “God did not create black people”, which I totally disagreed.
Melba Pattillo Beals was one of the nine students who attended Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. She wrote a book, called Warriors Don't Cry, which is the story of her when she was a child, who was one of the first who forced racial integration into the Little Rock school system. According to the book, during the crisis, Beals was assaulted and at risk: "[People yelled] 'get her,' 'kill her,' 'hang her,' 'we got us a nigger' . . . Parents were hitting, parents were throwing things. You would get tripped. People would just walk up and hit you in the face." On one occasion, Beals had acid sprayed in her eyes by a white student. I can imagine a black children going to school and being stop from a guard for the reason of her skin color. It doesn't make any sense. The guards wouldn't let black children inside the school to study? Segregation is unlawful and unconstitutional. According to the book, she lived with her family in a religious household. Her family had come to accept the fact that they would always be mistreated because of their color, this was seen as normal. Melba did not want to accept this as many others, and she was in a war against color discrimination. At the end of the school year, the black students moved out from Central High triumphantly. They had survived one year in the hostile territory of the school. They went through a lot of cruelty, but in the end the opened the doors for other black students, not only in Arkansas but in the whole country, to attend white schools. Melba was revolutionary. This was a huge victory for the entire African-American society.
Melba and the other students were people trying to find integration in America. They demonstrated bravery when they decided to proudly fight segregation and end the oppression of the white people. Their story is an inspiration to anyone who finds it hard to stand up for their beliefs. According to the site http://www.centralhigh57.org/The_Little_Rock_Nine.html, today Melba is an author and former journalist for People magazine and NBC and lives in San Francisco, and the other eight students are still alive and they all graduated from college and are successful. I believe that after everything they went through nothing in the world would stop them. They are example of perseverance. I admire them for outstanding achievements and their noble qualities.
There is a foundation called Little Rock Nine. According to their site, http://www.littlerock9.com, the foundation "was created to promote the ideals of justice and equality of opportunity for all. Forged in the crucible of fierce opposition to the educational pursuits of nine young black children, the Foundation is dedicated to the proposition that racist ideology will not dictate educational policies and practices in the twenty-first century." Their mission is an important assignment carried out for political purposes. People can help by supporting, buying a cap, which is a tax-deductible contribution, and help to make it possible for young people of color to go against ignorance and lack of skills. They all deserve a good opportunity.
There are still some traditionalists today who still believe that the races should not integrate. This story shows you how hard whites would work to stop Blacks from integrating and how far Blacks will go until equality win. There are scores of racist groups out in the world today. They mostly have the same belief, which is, that white people are the superior race. Americans eliminate the problem, but the fact is segregation and discrimination is unavoidable in every society in the world. This event helped settle new systems of integration, while fixing an example to the rest of the world, that old forms of segregation would no longer be accepted or prevalent. The valorous actions of the Little Rock Nine had made easier for the next generations’, without giving up; they opened the door of education for African Americans all across the nation.
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