Fifty years after nine black students broke the color barrier at Little Rock Central High School, there remain two schools in the building, separate and unequal. The black students, for the most part, are underperforming, have little hope beyond finishing high school and are in largely segregated classes while the white students largely populate advanced placement (AP) classes, live in nicer sections of town with more affluent parents, and, if they feel any pressure at all, it is to see how far they can succeed, not whether they will.

The school is the subject of a documentary, “Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later,” that will air Tuesday on HBO at 8 p.m. There are a few bright spots in the story. The student body president is a black male. Unlike most of the black students at the school, however, he is growing up in a mostly white, affluent community. There are a couple of black females in AP classes, one of them from a more economically depressed part of town, who looks at education as her ticket to a better life.

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 -- and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate -- Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds.

This week, the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe the 50th anniversary of Central High School's integration with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton, who declared the school a historical landmark during his presidency. Central is now the only school in the country designated as a landmark and under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

A federal judge ruled this year that Little ROck's 27,000-student district was unitary, or substantially integrated, and ordered the end of federal desegregation monitoring. The school now has a nearby museum for the Little Rock crisis, and statues of the nine brave students stand on the grounds of the state Capitol.

Still, there is a great deal of division and turmoil at the school, which essentially operates as two separate institutions.

The school has received a lot of money and resources over the years because of its place in history. In fact, many of the white students attend because Little Rock Central is among the top 20 schools in the country with strong advance placement programs. Students who do well at the school go on to Ivy League universities and other prestigious colleges. But “Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later" revealed that students tend to segregate themselves in groups of black and white, and each group sees its members’ lives as very separate from the other group. Some of the white students said many of the black students were indifferent to education, while some of the black students said white students don’t appreciate the challenges black children face and that white children are guaranteed a big head start in life on the basis of race.

“We didn’t know exactly what this film would be about,” said Brent Renaud, who with his brother Craig, filmed the documentary.

The brothers, who are white, were raised in Little Rock. Craig attended Little Rock Central, while Brent went to another high school in the city. In the 1990s, they began working with award-winning documentary filmmaker Jon Alpert and were part of a number of programs for HBO, Discovery, CNN, PBS, MTV and ESPN. Their groundbreaking specials about college football rivalries for ESPN became the series, “The Season.”

They also won critical acclaim for “Dope Sick Love,” a film about two drug-addicted couples they followed on the streets of New York for 18 months, and for “Off To War,” which followed a single unit of soldiers throughout its entire deployment.

The Renauds are known for their “cinema verite” style, meaning they let the story unfold as it goes along, rather than trying to steer the story in the direction in which they hope it would go.

Brent Renaud said he and his brother spent two to three months hanging out at Little Rock Central before they began filming, to get a sense of what was happening at the school.

“A couple of things emerged,” Renaud told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “First, the teachers wanted to talk about how great a school it is: 'It is in the Top 20 of AP programs,' 'The teachers are dedicated,' and all. After a while, a number of the teachers began taking us aside, and the way they did it, they wanted us to see there were two schools in one here. Rather than take one of these positions, we took a cross-section of these people who are actually living it.”

Asked if Little Rock Central was significantly different since they were in high school, Renaud said he actually found the situation little changed from what brother Craig experienced.

“Basically, all the wealthiest folks in Little Rock want to send their children there” because of the AP program. The division of students, not just by race, but by wealth and access to resources beyond school actually intensified the differences over the years, Renaud said.

Only one of the original Little Rock Nine is seen in the video. Minniejean Brown, now Minniejean Brown Trickey, is seen in the documentary. She was the only one not to graduate from the school. She was expelled for "verbal retaliation" toward white students who were harassing her. Trickey’s daughter, Spirit, is now a Park Service ranger who gives tours of the school.

Renaud said Trickey, who works as a gender and social justice consultant, was perfect for the film because she understood the students’ frustration, has worked to overcome it and still has a visceral reaction to what she sees as a lack of significant change over the years.

“She has made this work, and the legacy of the Little Rock Nine her life’s work. She was the perfect link to the past,” Renaud said.

“It’s the sense of hopelessness (in the black students) that she finds so frustrating,” Renaud said. “She is upset by the notion that black kids who excel have internalized this thing that they are the exception.”

At the beginning of the film, Trickey stands outside, emotions welling up, shakes her head and says, “It’s not supposed to be like this.” She says she should be past such a strong reaction 50 years later. Near the end of the documentary, she tells the students she is disappointed that they see themselves as victims, unable to transcend challenges thrown their way.

“On any given day, I can walk into Central High with little emotional reaction. Yet, on another day, especially if I am asked to describe the first day, all of the emotions flood back -- the feelings of fear and rejection. I have spent a lifetime working to resolve the emotional turmoil,” Trickey said in a Q&A with HBO. “I guess the strong feelings I experienced on that day were about how my reaction comes, unbidden, without my permission. It just happens. I meant that my feelings should not be so haunting after such a long time, but they are. The other part of my reaction is about knowing too much about how segregation prevails in this country. And being disappointed and saddened about that.”

In 1957, Trickey, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Jefferson Thomas and Thelma Mothershed Wair were determined to get a good education.
 
"I really didn't understand at 14 we were helping change the educational landscape here in America," LaNier recalls. "All we wanted to do is go to school."

Green, the first black person to graduate from Central, said he had studied the history of other black trailblazers at the time but didn't think he would join their ranks.

"We saw ourselves as groundbreakers in breaking tradition," said Green, who served as an assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs under President Jimmy Carter. "But I don't see that any of us thought we would be part of the civil rights legacy."

When Faubus pulled Arkansas National Guard members from blocking nine students from entering the school, an inflamed crowd gathered to keep the black students out.

Relman Morin, an Associated Press reporter standing outside the school at the time, described the chaos as a "human explosion" when the nine students were slipped inside during a melee.

Eisenhower was shocked at the outbreak of violence.

"Cruel mob force had frustrated the execution of an order of a United States court, and the governor of the state was sitting by, refusing to lift a finger to support the local authorities," Eisenhower later wrote, according to David A. Nichols, author of "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution."

Eisenhower signed a proclamation approving the use of federal troops to enforce U.S. District Judge Ronald Davies' desegregation order and the students entered Central High under armed escort Sept. 25, 1957.

"That was a turning point in history because it said that, when push comes to shove, two of the three branches of American government will respond on behalf of integration as part of the fundamental American heritage," said historian Taylor Branch, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of "Parting the Waters" and other books about the civil rights movement. "It said that segregation is not compatible with American ideals."

Even with the 101st Army Airborne escorts, however, the harassment continued, though some students and teachers did make efforts to reach out to them. LaNier said a chemistry teacher flat out told her classmates he didn't want black students in his class. The school later dismissed the teacher, LaNier said.
 
Asked how she feels about Central 50 years later, Trickey told HBO, “The entire nation exists as a segregated society: housing, employment, recreation, schools. Fifty years ago, I thought, with my teenage mind, that all we needed was to get to know each other, and things would even out. I, too, had the problem with the ‘freedom’ rhetoric that was so powerful, against the reality of unequal funding, unequal opportunity, etc.  The rhetoric blinds us all from the truth.”

Renaud said he and his brother planned to attend a series of viewings of the film at schools around the country. HBO has created an education packet, which includes a DVD of the documentary, for teachers.

“The 50th anniversary has really forced discussion in Little Rock, talking openly in a way they usually don’t talk,” Renaud said. “Hopefully all these things (including the situation in Jena, Louisiana) will come together in a way that will spur more understanding.”

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Associated Press contributed to this article.