Little Rock Nine Case

On May 17, 1954 the case of Brown v. Board of Education, “declared that segregation in schools of black and white students would no longer be constitutional.” After this law was passed, in 1957 nine African American students enrolled in a predominantly white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. When word got out that, nine students, Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed were attending Little Rock Central High School, the governor of Arkansas sent the Arkansas National Guard to the school. Many of the students that already attended the school also barricaded the doors so they would not enter the school. The students started “throwing stones, spat on them, shouted and yelled death threats.” The situation was soon brought to the public’s

Several days later the Little Rock nine “returned back to the school, and entered through the side door so they can avoid the crowd of rowdy students and the press.” That same day they were found by more students whom “violently attacked them and innocent bystanders.” In 1958 the first African American, Ernest Green, graduated Little Rock Central High School, and the governor got “reelected and shut down all schools” in Little Rock, Arkansas because he did not want to integrate the schools of Little Rock, Arkansas.

The legacy of The Little Rock Nine has set the bar for African American students who has to fight for equality at predominantly whites schools today. The schools cannot be legally segregated, but they can enforce their own rules to justify the way African Americans students present themselves. If an African American student attended school or class with an Afro, Dread Locks, or