Prejudices will always be prevalent in some way, shape, or form. If feelings of racial superiority are allowed to fester, eventually they can become strong enough to push people to radical actions. The Little Rock Nine is a group of nine African-American students who decided to make a stand and make a large step towards breaking down the walls of segregation. Despite evident opposition, their determination and fortitude set in motion a series of events that have accelerated the progress of integration within the United States. The lessons learned from those young children will forever be applicable to our lives in the past, present, and for what is to come.
In the town of Little Rock, Arkansas, nine African-American children from similar walks in life were bound together by destiny. They would embark on the hardest journey life could throw at them. They would be united together by one common goal, to be part of the NAACP’s plan to integrate the Little Rock Central High School and receive a high school education from school just like any other white person. They would face hatred and prejudice in its cruelest form. All these things can be depicted by the short video. However, by enduring these atrocities, these children would learn and teach lessons that will never be forgotten.
Melba Patillo Beals was one of the Little Rock Nine. Throughout her first semester at Little Rock Central High School, she was constantly harassed physically and verbally. She became numb to reality as the girl inside her was to afraid to face reality and she became a warrior. During one instance of being harassed, Melba remembered the words her mother said about not retaliating but saying thank you to the students harassing her. This idea of turning th...
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[Untitled Photograph of Soldiers blocking Little Rock Nine]. Retrieved April 4, 2011 from: http://www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/currentprojects/TAHv3/Content/Graphics/Little_Rock_Nine_Blocked.jpg
[Untitled Photograph of Elizabeth Eckford alone among a mob]. Retrieved April 4, 2011 from: http://abagond.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/1957-09-04.jpg
Tiger, G. D. (1957, September 19). Central high thrown in national spotlight as it faces integration. the Tiger, p. 1.
Burks, B.M. (1957). Journal
Unknown, . (Photographer). (2007). Little rock nine (cbs news). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyM5MFZ3ciI
Unknown, (2007). The Little Rock Nine From Little Rock Central High School In Arkansas [Web]. Available from http://www.5min.com/Video/The-Little-Rock-Nine-from-Little-Rock-Central-High-School-in-Arkansas-119996038
Melba Pattillo Beals book, Warriors Don’t Cry, is a memoir about her experience as one of the Little Rock Nine. From a very young age Melba sees the many problems with segregation. Throughout the book she recalls several memories involving the unfairness and struggles that her, her family, and other African Americans had to go through in the South during the time of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement.
Throughout his preface of the book titled Why We Can’t Wait, which entails the unfair social conditions of faultless African Americans, Martin Luther King employs a sympathetic allegory, knowledge of the kids, and a change in tone to prevail the imposed injustice that is deeply rooted in the society—one founded on an “all men are created equal” basis—and to evoke America to take action.
The Jim Crow Laws were the basis of everyday interactions between black and white people in the South. Melba Beals and the other “Little Rock Nine” braving the walk towards the doors of Central High School and several other landmark events spearheading the demise of these laws. In the book “Warriors Don’t Cry”, Melba Beals recalls her life during the 1950’s in America. In the south, more specifically Little Rock, the Jim Crow laws were no longer contested.
Board of Education, Melba Pattillo Beals will always be known as one of the first black students to go to a white school. Her race have hoped of this for years now, and the Little Rock Nine had made it with the support of the general army. People went as far as to hurt them, resulting as far for the government to support nine black students. This is what it takes to charge forward, or to hit a home run like Jackie Robinson.
While Sanders’ narrative primarily focuses on the Child Development Group of Mississippi, Black Mississippians historically valued education and focused careful attention to the construction of education systems that empowered Black children in disenfranchised social systems. Their vision was clear; Black students should have access to high quality, free education that exists outside of white supremacist regulations, but also empowers those students to navigate the volatile systems of power that pervade American society. According to Sanders, “Black parents focused not on the idea of their children sitting in classrooms with white students, but rather on their children’s right to an equal education,” (2016, p. 12). Thus, Black communities in Mississippi understood “good education” not as integrated schools, but schools that directly served the various needs of the children in their
“It takes a warrior to fight a battle and survive. This here is a battle if I’ve ever seen one” (Beals 113). In the novel Warriors Don’t Cry, nine students from Little Rock Arkansas are set out on the battlefield for integration. Melba Pattillo and eight other friends are challenged with starting off the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School. The students were signed up and asked to attend the high school in hopes of getting rid of segregation. Although entering high school may seem as easy as signing in and going to class, the test and trials the Little Rock nine went through shows a true test of determination. Comparatively, the “Arab Spring”, a movement of protests in the Middle East, has caused controversy all over the world. Citizens are rebelling against an unfair government in hopes of create a new way of life. Tired of all the disrespect, unjust, and oppressive government Muslims and Middle Easterners have created a battle of their own. While trying to create a better life for themselves, the Little Rock Nine and those involved in the Arab Spring uprisings have stepped on to the battlefield for fair human rights.
In conclusion, African American children face unwanted obstacles that prevent them from getting the equal education opportunities that they deserve. These children face problems everyday regarding crime, poverty and the school system not providing the right supplies for them to become effective members of their communities. When these children grow up in the high-poverty areas, they are already being set up as a failure. The time for equal education opportunities may not come due to the lack of funding, poverty levels and the way they are looked at through societies eyes. It is up to the black community to fix what they need to succeed.
Throughout Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, we see the long-term effect of generations of prejudice and abuse against blacks. Over time, this prejudice manifested itself through the development of several social classes within the black community. Hughes’, through the eyes of young Sandy, shows us how the color of one’s skin, the church they attend, the level of education an individual attained, and the type of employment someone could find impacted their standing within the community and dictated the social class they belonged to. Tragically, decades of slavery and abuse resulted in a class system within the black community that was not built around seeking happiness or fulfillment but, equality through gaining the approval of whites.
Chalmers, David. And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Also, although Little Rock was seen as a success, as the President was behind the blacks, after the incident was over, Governor Faubus closed all schools in Little Rock until 1959 as he would prefer there to be no schools than desegregated schools. This shows that there was always a way for the whites to get around desegregation without much attention being paid to it.
Racism isn’t a subject that appears in every day conversations. Although most people try to ignore its existence, it’s quite obvious that it marked the lives of a lot of people and it has now become an essential part of our history. As a student who has lived in the valley all her life, I’ve been taught about the hardships African Americans had to endure while obtaining their freedom, becoming eligible to vote, being segregated, but never did I stop to think that the people who shared my culture and walked the streets of the Valley and San Antonio were going through a similar experience. Throughout the years it has become apparent that African Americans weren’t the only people who had been mistreated.
In the book Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals, the author describes what her reactions and feelings are to the racial hatred and discrimination she and eight other African-American teenagers received in Little Rock, Arkansas during the desegregation period in 1957. She tells the story of the nine students from the time she turned sixteen years old and began keeping a diary until her final days at Central High School in Little Rock. The story begins by Melba talking about the anger, hatred, and sadness that is brought up upon her first return to Central High for a reunion with her eight other classmates. As she walks through the halls and rooms of the old school, she recalls the horrible acts of violence that were committed by the white students against her and her friends.
The documentary film Bully (2011) – directed by Lee Hirsh – takes the viewer into the lives of five families that live in various, predominantly remote, towns across the United States. All families presented have been affected by bullying, either because their child was at the time being bullied by peers at school or the child committed suicide due to continuous bullying. The film also profiles an assistant principle, Kim Lockwood, whose indiscreetness makes the viewer...
The Little Rock Nine were part of a broad movement for civil rights that started in 1865 with the 13th amendment and still continues today. Many prominent figures emerged at the forefront of the cause such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but the Little Rock Nine advanced civil rights in education by beginning the effort to desegregate schools. Their legacy still lives on as one of bravery and perseverance.
Throughout the American South, of many Negro’s childhood, the system of segregation determined the patterns of life. Blacks attended separate schools from whites, were barred from pools and parks where whites swam and played, from cafes and hotels where whites ate and slept. On sidewalks, they were expected to step aside for whites. It took a brave person to challenge this system, when those that did suffered a white storm of rancour. Affronting this hatred, with assistance from the Federal Government, were nine courageous school children, permitted into the 1957/8 school year at Little Rock Central High. The unofficial leader of this band of students was Ernest Green.