Little Rock AR Negro Students In 1957...

THE TIMES PICAYUNE, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 26, 1957.

* Little Rock Arkansas
* Civil Rights Movement
* Central High School
* Negro Students In 1957

This 82 page newspaper has a two line, three column headline on the front page: "NEGROES COMPLETE FULL DAY IN CLASS" with subhead: "Nime Pupils Escorted by Army Paratroopers" with more on the inside pages. Other news of the day with several interesting advertisements as well. Nice to have from a Southern newspaper. Little browning.

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: "LRCHS was the focal point of the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. Nine black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, were denied entrance to the school in defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering integration of public schools. This provoked a showdown between the Gov. Orval Faubus and PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower that gained international attention.

On the morning of September 4, 1957, the nine black high school students faced an angry mob of over 1,000 whites protesting integration in front of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. As the students were escorted inside by the Little Rock police, violence escalated and they were removed from the school. The next day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered 1,200 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell to escort the nine students into the school. As Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the nine students, remembered, and quoted in her book, "After three full days inside Central [High School], I know that integration is a much bigger word than I thought."

This event, watched by the nation and world, was the site of the first important test for the implementation of the U.S. Supreme Courts historic Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Arkansas became the epitome of state resistance when the governor, Orval Faubus, directly questioned the authority of the federal court system and the validity of desegregation. The crisis at Little Rock's Central High School was the first fundamental test of the national resolve to enforce black civil rights in the face of massive southern defiance during the years following the Brown decision." source: wikipedia