28 Days of American History

Feb 11, 2010

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I almost wanted to post this picture and not one word further. Looking at it just gives me motivation. Sometimes I fight to get up in the morning and take the bus to class with not a care in the world and I often take that for granted. I just wonder what was going through the mind of the young girl in this picture and the other 8 African American students (known as the "Little Rock Nine") the day that they stepped into an all-white school for the first time faced with all that hatred??

If y'all aren't familiar with the story, basically, after the Supreme Court made segregation of public schools illegal following Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) a lot of schools in the south still didn't follow suit. Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was one of those schools that turned a cold shoulder to the newly passed desegregation laws. The Governor at the time had won the election by a landslide due to the fact that he was in heavy opposition to desegregation and he was doing nothing to help change the state of these schools. So, it took a federal order from President Dwight Eisenhower himself and 1,000 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne division to enforce the integration of Central High School....a nationally televised event showing angry mobs of white supremacists relentlessly opposing these little black children. It is truly an emotional day in American history in my opinion. Peep the vid below for a little story on it:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

damn i needed this this morning..lol
but you are so right. we take our education for granted so many days when there were so many (publicized & not) that went through HELL just so we could enroll in a school of our choice.

Love your Black History Posts! great idea :)

Anonymous said...

Looking at that picture above makes me really sad, imagine if that happened to me? I mean that girl above must've been really confident and strong to walk past those whites, while they were being violent to her.

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. said...

Learnt about this last year for history.
I have so much respect for the "Little Rock Nine" - it takes so much courage to endure all of that.

Love the blog btw :)

 
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