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The Little Rock Crisis of 1957

Minnijean Brown was one of the Little Rock Nine, the first African-American students to desegregate a public school in Arkansas, three years after the Brown v. Board decision. Although "school officials interviewed approximately eighty black students for Central High School, the largest school in the city, only nine were chosen" (Jacoway, 2007). On the first day of school, Governor Orval M. Faubus of Arkansas ordered the state National Guard to block the student's from entering the school. Two weeks later, President Eisenhower ordered U.S. Marshalls to escort the nine students to school. That same day a mob gathered outside of the school and the students were escorted out of the school.

Minnijean stated:
"we didn't go back until the Army troops arrived and took us to school in an Army station wagon, guarded by a jeep front and back. That was a wonderful feeling, knowing that no mob would have the nerve to come through Army troops" (Look, 1958).

Soon after, each of the students was given a guard to walk them to school and stand outside of their classroom door. Although this didn't stop other students from targeting them. Minnie stated that "gym was the most heartbreaking" because the other girls would stand around and imitate African dances and throw balls at her. Once the guards were pulled out of the schools, the abuse only increased. Kids threw food at her and the other black students so often that Minniejean had to wear special clothes to school to hide the stains. She was also physically abused often by boys that would kick and beat her in outside of school. Eventually, Minniejean was expelled from the school for calling a classmate "white trash."

 

Sources: 

Jacoway, Elizabeth "Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shcoked the Nation," 2007.,  Simon and Schuster

James Leonard Jr. and Lula Peterson Farmer Papers, 1908, 1921-1999, Box 2R646, Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.