Lessons from the Little Rock 9 Highlight MLK Commemoration

It was 1957, three years after the Supreme Court had struck down school segregation in 布朗和. 教育委员会, when about four hundred students at a black high school in Little Rock, 阿肯色州, volunteered to be among the first to integrate all-white Central High.

只有9人入选. One of them, Carlotta Walls 拉尼尔, was simply after the best education possible. The fourteen-year-old didn’t realize she would be making history.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Groton hosted 拉尼尔 for an all-school lecture. She took the community back to the taunts, 威胁, and violence that traveled alongside her as she attempted to walk through the doors of Central High, landing in the center of an important chapter of the civil rights movement.

九个黑人孩子, 谁 became known as the Little Rock 9, had been chosen after careful scrutiny of the students 谁 had volunteered. Central High officials looked at grades, 家庭背景, behavior—anything that might help predict 谁 could handle the chaos that would ensue.

The determinedly obstructionist governor, 奥瓦尔。福伯斯, announced that he was sending the 阿肯色州 National Guard to Central High—ostensibly to “protect” the citizens of Little Rock. “我知道我是一个公民,拉尼尔说。, 谁, 她天真烂漫, did not realize that the National Guard would prevent her from entering. “I slept the last night of innocence of my life,” she added.

第二天早上, wearing a dress her uncle had bought (her mother sewed most of her clothes), 她上的是中央高中, where the nine students were told that “no Negroes were permitted.”

拉尼尔 described that as a “moment of disbelief.” She loved school and was stunned by the hatred. 最终, 9月25日, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent in federal troops to uphold the law, and the students were able to enter.

But the battle wasn’t over. When the first of the Little Rock 9 graduated from Central High, Dr. King attended the ceremony. The governor then took extreme action: he closed all four of the high schools in Little Rock—affecting more than 3,600名学生, 黑白电影. 拉尼尔 continued her education with a correspondence course through the University of 阿肯色州, returning to Central High the following year, after a federal court ruling forced the schools to open.

“The harder the segregationists fought to keep me out and make my life miserable, the more determined I became to get that diploma from Central,”她说。.

拉尼尔 did graduate, but the road to that diploma was not smooth. While the Little Rock 9 regularly endured hitting, 推, 脱扣, 骂人, 和排斥, the abuse sometimes was even more serious. In May 1960, shortly before 拉尼尔’s graduation, her house was bombed. No one was hurt and the damage was minimal, but the message was clear. Police charged a man she is certain was innocent; nevertheless, he served eighteen months of a five-year sentence.

Because of her bravery as a teenager, 拉尼尔 has received numerous awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal. The dress her uncle had bought for her first day at Central High is on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American 历史 and Culture.

Before sharing her reminiscences of Central High, 拉尼尔 described meeting Dr. King, 谁 was staying with a friend of her family’s. 年轻的青少年, she was told to be on her best behavior and went, 尽职尽责地, not realizing the emerging civil rights leader eventually would become an icon. “He was a young man on a mission,她回忆道。, but had not yet written his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” or given the rousing speeches for which he became known. Dr. King was not superhuman, she said, but he “put his gifts to the service of all of mankind.”

Lanier concluded her MLK speech with advice for Groton students. Speak up if you hear a racial joke or see someone treated unfairly, she told them. When meeting someone different than yourself, consider it an opportunity to expand your world. Turn a dream into a plan and work on that plan.

拉尼尔, 亲切亲切, met with students and faculty over lunch and patiently spent forty-five minutes signing copies of her autobiography, 漫漫长路.

Groton’s two-day MLK celebration also included performances of 开放招生 雪莉·劳罗, a powerful two-person play about educational inequities; a screening of the documentary 13th, about the over-incarceration of black males in America; and a TED talk by social justice activist Bryan Stevenson, which was followed by small-group discussions.

As Lanier pointed out, there is much work remaining. While race relations have “come a mighty long way,”她说。, “you don’t have to look too far to see that we’re still a nation divided by race, class, 和文化.”

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