Little Rock Desegregation

● Photographer: Will Counts

● 1950

In a key event of the American Civil Rights Movement, nine black

students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little

Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, testing a landmark 1954 U.S.

Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools

unconstitutional. The court had mandated that all public schools in the

country be integrated “with all deliberate speed” in its decision related to

the groundbreaking case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. On

September 4, 1957, the first day of classes at Central High, the

Governor of Arkansas called in the state National Guard to block the

black students’ entry into the school. Later in the month, President

Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the “Little Rock

Nine” into the school, and they started their first full day of classes on

September 25. The girl at the front of the photo is Daisy Bates.

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 Another student was Carlotta Walls. During the previous school
year, Carlotta had been a student at an all-black junior high school. One
of her teachers asked the students if they were interested in attending
Central High, the city’s most prestigious high school. Carlotta jumped at
the opportunity and signed up without asking her parents. “I knew what
Brown meant, and I expected schools to be integrated,” LaNier, now 74,
says. “I wanted the best education available.” It wasn’t until her
registration card arrived in the mail in July that her parents found out
she had enrolled.

Though each of the Little Rock Nine was assigned a personal

military escort for the duration of the year, the troops were not allowed
to enter classrooms, bathrooms or locker rooms. As a result, they
endured daily indignities, threats and violence. Students spat on them
and yelled insults like “baboon.” They knocked books out of their hands
and kicked them when they bent down to pick them up.

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