Who were the Little Rock Nine? Top Row, left to right: Ernest Green, Melba Pattillo, Jefferson Thomas, Carlotta Walls; Daisy Bates (President of the Arkansas NAACP and advisor to the Little Rock Nine), Terrence Roberts. Seated, left to right: Thelma Mothershed, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford; Gloria Ray.

What were the responses to the proposal to desegregate Central High School, Little Rock? Carlotta Walls LaNier was one of the first African American learners to attend Central High School. She explained to a reporter why she had applied to go the school. “I was supposed to go to school there,” LaNier said. “I passed it every day on the way to junior high school. I played baseball with the white kids all summer long. It seemed like a natural progression to go to school with them. No one expected all this.” “I knew it was important, but I didn’t know what it would become,” LaNier said. “I knew it was a step in the right direction. But I credit my parents for having those dreams — for having dreams and grasping opportunity….In my family it was expected you would reach for an opportunity,” LaNier said. “This was a gold ring.”

What were the responses to the proposal to desegregate Central High School, Little Rock? A photograph by John T. Bledsoe, ‘Rally at State Capitol’, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1959 (two years after Central High was first desegregated). The placards read ‘Race mixing is Communism’ and ‘Stop the Race Mixing’. Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas holding a sign saying “Against Racial Integration of all schools within the Little Rock School District”

President Eisenhower’s radio and television address on 24 September 1957 Despite his disapproval of the Brown decision, President Eisenhower, couching his address in the language of law and order, Cold War propaganda, and national pride, became the first president since Reconstruction to send Federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans. “Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.”