This Time, ‘Little Rock Nine’ Get VIP Treatment on Entering School

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. —  Four decades after their bid to enter an all-white school sparked the most volatile state-federal conflict since the Civil War, nine middle-aged black men and women scaled the steps of Little Rock Central High once again Thursday.

But unlike the day in 1957 when the “Little Rock Nine” were greeted by a hostile, spitting mob outside the school, the mayor, governor--and president of the United States--showed up to welcome them as heroes.

“Forty years ago, they climbed these steps, passed through this door and moved our nation,” President Clinton told cheering onlookers, most born long after an Arkansas governor had deployed the National Guard in a futile effort to block integration of the imposing, five-story school. “And for that we must all thank them.”

At the emotional ceremony, Clinton--himself a former Arkansas governor--and others tried to sum up the lasting significance of the students’ efforts.

“If one young person out there has seen the story of the Little Rock Nine and can take from it a belief that he or she can open a door, succeed against the odds . . . then the Little Rock Nine become the Little Rock 10, the 10 hundred, the 10,000, the 10 million,” said Ernest G. Green, who, after entering Central, went to college at Michigan State and today is managing director of the Lehman Brothers investment firm in Washington.

With obvious emotion, he paid tribute to the family members of each of the nine, whose households suffered the wrath of employers and angry whites. “There are no words to express fully the sense of respect and reverence I feel then or now for my parents,” he said.

In 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval E. Faubus temporarily blocked the nine from enrolling at Central by calling out the National Guard, an act of brazen defiance that prompted President Eisenhower to respond with 1,200 federal paratroopers from Ft. Campbell, Ky.

On Thursday, current Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee blasted the actions of his predecessor and the mob that supported Faubus. “I think today we come to say, once and for all, that what happened here 40 years ago was simply wrong,” Huckabee said. “It was evil. And we renounce it.”

Huckabee also took the unusual step of singling out white churches in the South as having fostered racist attitudes, a role that he described as tragic. “And today we call upon every church, every pulpit, every synagogue, every mosque, in every part of Arkansas and the rest of the world to say never, never, never, never again will we be silent when people’s rights are at stake.”

Clinton cautioned that the nation’s schools are resegregating and lamented that students voluntarily separate themselves by race in cafeterias and at sporting events. Calling for reconciliation, he cited the example of Nelson Mandela forgiving his jailers in South Africa as proof that people can cross racial lines to “seek and give forgiveness.”

Clinton was an 11-year-old boy living in Hot Springs, Ark., he recalled, “self-absorbed” in his own life, when the explosive events 50 miles away forced him to think seriously about civil rights because “we saw what was happening in our own backyard and we all had to deal with it.”

“It was Little Rock,” Clinton went on, “that made racial equality a driving obsession in my life.”

“I want all these children here to look at these people,” he continued, nodding toward the nine guests of honor, all in their mid-50s, who were seated near the president. “They persevered. They endured. And they prevailed. But it was at great cost to themselves.”

Most of the nine trailblazers left Little Rock long ago, seeking lives where they would be sheltered from threats and reprisals.

What has become clear in this extraordinary week has been the enduring burden felt by many in Little Rock who participated in the events of 1957, as well as how inflammatory the symbol of Central High remains for some who were not even alive at the time.

Members of local NAACP chapters boycotted Thursday’s event, claiming that a festive flavor was inappropriate in light of continuing problems for African Americans in Little Rock. At Central High, which now is a majority black school, honors classes are predominantly white, they pointed out.

“We have a lot of problems . . . that need to be addressed and these problems are racial problems,” said Diane Davis, whose placard read: “From school segregation to economic segregation.”

Clinton seemed to agree. “Forty years later, we know there are still more doors to be opened, doors to be opened wider, doors we have to keep from being shut again. . . .

“For the first time since the 1950s, our schools in America are resegregating,” he said in reference to areas where whites have concentrated in affluent suburbs, leaving minority students in urban schools. “The rollback of affirmative action is slamming shut the doors of higher education on a new generation, while those who oppose it have not yet put forward any other alternative.”

“Segregation is no longer the law, but too often separation is still the rule. And we cannot forget one stubborn fact that has not yet been said as clearly as it should: There still is discrimination in America.”

And, alluding to a goal that many in the civil rights movement no longer emphasize, he said: “Americans of all races have actually begun to give up on the idea of integration and the search for common ground.”

* LITTLE ROCK ECHOES: Ex-soldier recalls escorting nine black students. B1