EDITOR'S NOTE: "Where are They Now? How the Little Rock Nine Have Fared" is the second in BlackAmericaWeb.com's five-part 50 Years After Little Rock series. Coming Wednesday: Is school integration still necessary?
Click here for "Retelling, Revisiting and Reliving the Crisis at Central High."
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Their names might not be as well known as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks, but their actions were just as valiant.
They were teenagers -- six girls and three boys -- who would become faces of a movement. They are the Little Rock Nine, and the 50th anniversary of their refusal to let the Jim Crow status quo go continue is being celebrated this week.
The pictures of white students spewing racial epithets at them are forever etched in American history, yet the Little Rock Nine -- like so many brave, unlikely heroes -- did indeed survive that torment, eventually growing up to become successful career men and women, parents and role models for generations to follow.
Today, many of those whose hateful words and evil actions made it necessary for those fateful black students to need National Guard escorts to attend Central High School have expressed regret for their ignorance and consider the Little Rock Nine to be heroes -- even celebrities.
“Everywhere we go and pretty much across the board, people do treat us pretty nicely,” Terrence Roberts told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Let’s just say we don’t have to buy lunch when we come back (to Little Rock).”
Roberts, now 65, was a junior in September 1957 when he and eight other students volunteered to help the NAACP desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School. His emotions ranged from scared of what may happen to excited about the possibility of receiving a quality education. While the all-black schooling he had up until 1957 was a great experience, Roberts said everyone knew there was no such thing as “separate, but equal.”
“(My education) was a situation that was intolerable because of the enforced racial segregation,” Roberts said, scoffing at those who still wonder if segregation would a good thing to return to. “Those types of suggestions come from misinformation. How can you be totally happy when your life chances are so totally truncated?”
Roberts, like four other members of the Little Rock Nine who were juniors that year, did not graduate from Central High School because the school board decided to shut down the schools in 1958 rather than allow desegregation to continue.
He finished his senior year in Los Angeles, where he had family. He stayed out west, earning degrees from California State at Los Angeles and UCLA. A psychologist, he earned his Ph.D. at Southern Illinois. Married with two daughters and two grandchildren, Roberts now lives in Pasadena and understands that there’s an entire generation of children who may not grasp the significance of the Little Rock Nine’s stand.
“The truth is there are many, many people whose awareness is very low level about anything,” said Roberts, who is joining the other eight members of the Little Rock Nine in Little Rock for a week-long commemoration of the historic act. “America is typically a throw-away society, and people who are interested in learning will find a way to make that knowledge available to them. But I don’t push anybody to take an interest in our story.”
What the Nine have done is work to provide young people with opportunities greater than the ones they had a half-century ago. They are all involved with the Little Rock Nine Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to principles of excellence in education for young students of color. This week, nine students received $10,000 scholarships during a black-tie event featuring former president and Little Rock native Bill Clinton and PBS anchor Gwen Ifill.
The foundation, Roberts said, is the main source of communication for the Nine. In addition to the scholarships, they all offer advice to school districts throughout the nation on how to implement diversity programs for children of all ages.
Ernest Green, the eldest of the Nine and the first black to graduate from Central High, said the foundation is the Nine’s way of giving back. Plans for the nine winners include a mentoring relationship with the "original" Nine.
“I’m going to roll up my sleeves, be available and have face to face meetings (with the students),” said Green, who now lives in Washington, D.C. A former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs during the Jimmy Carter administration, Green is now an executive with Lehman Brothers, a Washington, D.C.-based financial services company.
A graduate of Michigan State University, Green, now 66, had faced the possibility of missing his history-making commencement exercises when school administrators told him to stay home and receive his diploma via mail. However, the young man was just as headstrong at the end of that tumultuous school year as he was when it started. He refused to stay home, and, when his name was called during the ceremony, the only applause came from his family and their special guest -- a young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr.
Like Roberts and Green, all of the Nine went on to college and developed successful careers. Gloria Ray Karlmark, 65, graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics. She has worked as an executive officer for a Dutch company and publisher of a European computer magazine and now resides in Sweden.
Three of the Little Rock Nine live in the city where they changed the course of civil rights history: Minnijean Brown Trickey, Thelma Mothershed Wair and Elizabeth Eckford, who recently received an honor from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
During a ceremony commemorating the 220th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Eckford recalled those harrowing days in 1957 as she was inducted into the American National Tree.
“We were assaulted in school everyday,” Eckford said as she described feeling “totally alone,” despite having National Guardsmen trailing 11 paces behind her. “The principal told us to report to the vice principal, but would not act on anything unless a teacher was involved.”
Of the Nine, Eckford is probably one of the more reclusive. While Melba Patillo Beals is an author and journalism professor in northern California, Eckford appears almost uncomfortable before large crowds, despite the fact that she does find time to make public speeches about her ordeal and the need to have justice for one and all.
The Jena Six controversy is further proof to Eckford, now 65, that things are not necessarily much better than when she and eight other young people fought to knock down prejudicial behavior.
"True reconciliation cannot happen until we honestly acknowledge our painful but shared past," said Eckford, who is a probation officer in Little Rock.
Jefferson Thomas, the third male member of the group, also graduated from Central High in 1960, after the schools reopened after the failed attempt to boycott desegregation efforts. After retiring as an accountant for the United States Department of Defense, Thomas now lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Carlotta Walls LaNier, one of the Little Rock Nine Foundation, said she didn't know any of the other students when they integrated the school in 1957 but said they are now her lifelong friends.
"Many have called our actions courageous, but we simply wanted to go to school," LaNier said.
After graduating from Central High, LaNier attended Michigan State University for two years before moving with her family to Denver. In 1968, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State College. In 1977, she founded LaNier and Company, a real estate brokerage firm.
For Roberts, returning to the scene of his unforgettable moment is something he can’t fully summarize. However, he considers the actions of he and his eight fellow trailblazers something that can enlighten people of all races and backgrounds for years to come.
“It’s definitely an lesson,” Roberts told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “In the moment, we felt like we had to take a stand. And for anyone in that position, you do what you must to take that stand, or otherwise, you will regret it.”
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Associated Press and BlackAmericaWeb.com's Jackie Jones contributed to this story.
