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Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie Arlington Street Church 4 November, 2007

Little Rock Nine

On May 17th, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, declaring all segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and calling for desegregation nationwide. Many of us remember that date because, 50 years to the day later, the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s historic Goodrich decision,1 ending the ban on same-sex marriage, went into effect. For the first time in a church in this country, a marriage license was signed at the close of a same-sex wedding ceremony, joining our own Dave Wilson and Rob Compton. With a fist raised for the Brown victory, the spectacularly joyous occasion dealt another deadly blow to segregation and racism, as a Black man was wed to a White man.2

In addition, same-sex marriage apparently reversed the curse of the Bambino,3 and the Red Sox went on to win the World Series for the first time since 1918 … which has now become a habit.

This year marks another fifty-year anniversary: that of what historian Tyler Branch has called “the most severe test of the Constitution since the Civil War.” I want to tell some of the story of the this morning, and to reflect together on what it means to us, fifty years later.

Following the successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, sparked by , the Little Rock, city buses and some libraries and parks were successfully integrated. It took three years for a federal court to order Little Rock to comply with public school desegregation, although, as the state capitol, Little Rock “was seen as one of the relatively progressive cities in the South,” and the Little Rock School Board was the first in the South to attempt to comply with the Brown … decision.”4 “Virgil

1 Goodrich et al vs. Dept. of Public Health 2 The capitalization of Black and White, in reference to race, follows the style guide of the NAACP. 3 caused by the trade of Babe Ruth to the NY Yankees in 1920 4 Lottie L. Joiner, “Nine Lives,” The Crisis, September-October 2007, p. 31 2

Blossom, the superintendent of schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration, … which the board unanimously approved.” The NAACP hand- picked nine students with excellent grades and good attendance records.5 The superintendent met with the students and gave them a list of don’ts: the students would not be allowed to run for an office on student council; attend activities such as football games; or participate in any extracurricular activity, such as being on a team, in the band, or in the choir.6

On the morning of September 4th, 1957, they attempted to enter Central High. They were stopped by the Arkansas National Guard, called out by Governor Orval Faubus to “protect the citizens of Little Rock.”7

In response, “the Council of Church Women issued a statement condemning the governor’s [action] … and [calling] for a citywide prayer service.” President Eisenhower met with Governor Faubus and warned him not to interfere with the Supreme Court Ruling. , president of the Little Rock NAACP, enlisted then lead-attorney to help move the cause forward.8

Nearly three weeks later, the National Guard was withdrawn, and the Little Rock Police Department took their place. While hundreds of White parents protested out front, the police quietly slipped the nine Black students through a side door and into the school. The students stayed for only half a day; the protestors became a vicious mob, and the protest became a riot. The police were overthrown, and the mob threw bricks, smashed windows, broke doors, and beat reporters.

Let’s hold that image for a moment while we hear from a few of the Little Rock Nine, thanks to journalist Lottie L. Joiner, in her article for “The Crisis” entitled, Nine Lives.

Carlotta LaNier remembers being in geometry that day. Asked why she agreed to go to Central, she says, “I did that …because it was a normal progression from what I knew about Black history, what I knew about the changes taking place in the country, what I knew about Brown v. Board of Education. What you have to understand is that I was taught certain things

5 Wikipedia, “Little Rock Nine” 6 The Crisis, p. 32 7 The Crisis, p. 31 8 ibid 3 from early on, and one particular thing was to get the best education available to you. I was also taught that even though I’m an African American – ‘Negro’ and ‘colored’ was used when I came along – the color of my skin … did not mean that I was a lesser person.”9 Carlotta LaNier was fourteen years old.

Ernest Green said, “I lived in Little Rock all my life…. I knew [Central High was] ... offering … a greater range of courses than we were getting…. I saw it as an opportunity to improve my educational opportunities.” Ernest Green was sixteen years old.

“Terrence Roberts didn’t feel he had a choice. ‘Choosing not to go would have been missing an opportunity to make a statement, and there was no way I was willing to continue living under those very adverse circumstances.’” Terrence Roberts was fifteen years old.

The names and ages of the other six students are Thelma Mothershed, seventeen; Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, and Melba Pattillo, all sixteen; and Gloria Ray and Jefferson Thomas, both fifteen.

The day after the riot, President Eisenhower ordered a thousand members of the Tenth Airborne Division of the United States Army to protect the Little Rock Nine. He also federalized the ten thousand member Arkansas National Guard, taking it out of the hands of Governor Faubus.10 President Eisenhower isn’t remembered for being particularly committed to equal rights, but he did step up to enforce the court order. His deployment of federal troops was characterized by some White southerners as a “second invasion,” in reference to the Civil War and Reconstruction.11 Taylor Branch notes that the government had been looking the other way for a long time.

On September 25th, each Black student was escorted to class by a national guardsman for their first full day of school. For two or three weeks, the most avid segregationists boycotted classes, and Central High was fairly peaceful. But when they returned, despite the presence of the guards, they began to threaten and harass. Sharp objects were thrown. Books were stolen and destroyed. The Black students were tripped in classroom aisles, and spit at and taunted in hallways.

9 ibid 10 ibid and Wikipedia, “Little Rock Nine” 11 Wikipedia, “Little Rock Nine” 4

Terrence Roberts says he endured this hell because “he knew he was contributing to a cause greater than his individual comfort. [He says,] ‘The way that the system was structured – the laws of segregation, for instance – I felt were totally unjust, insane even, so it made sense to make a different kind of statement. In the face of that…. the nine of us being there was a statement to the world, basically saying this is unjust, this needs to be changed.’” “I knew I had the right to be there,” adds Carlotta LaNier. “That’s what it all boiled down to for me.”12

By February of 1958, Minnijean Brown had had enough. Verbally assaulted by a group of white male students in the cafeteria, she dumped a bowl of chili on one boy’s head, and was suspended. As a whole, though, the Little Rock Nine “remained steadfast,” displaying extraordinary self-restraint and moral courage. Ernest Green calls success their best revenge. “For me,” he says, “the longer … I stayed there, I knew that that would harass my enemies, and that if I really wanted to drive them crazy, I could try to graduate that year, and that would really send them up the wall. I was dedicated to that. That was one of my missions in life, to drive the segregationists as mad as I could make them.”13

That May, Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Central High.

At the close of the school year, though, rather than comply with integration, Governor Faubus supported the school board decision to close all three Little Rock public high schools.

Over the next year, he was outdone; in the fall of 1959, the schools reopened as an integrated system. Carlotta LaNier and Jefferson Thomas returned to Central as seniors. In February of 1960, the LaNier home was bombed as her family slept. Miraculously, no one was physically harmed. Carlotta LaNier became even more committed to graduate from Central. “I was determined to get that sheet of paper,” she says. “I needed that to validate all that I had gone through since the tenth grade, on. I needed that diploma. I was interviewed [after the bombing], and they wanted to know whether I … planned on going back to school the next day…. I said, ‘I do plan

12 The Crisis, p. 32 13 op cit, p. 33 5 on going back, or die trying.” Carlotta LaNier graduated form Central in May of 1960, the first African American woman to do so. All of the Little Rock Nine went on to become successful adults. “Today, Central [High] is Arkansas’ largest school, with an enrollment of twenty-four hundred students, … fifty-three percent of [whom] are African American.” For the past two years, Newsweek has rated it as one of the nation’s top twenty-five public high schools.14

***

As progressive people of faith, how are we to hear this sobering and inspiring story? Fifty years later, how does it speak to our lives?

The first theme I hear is the tremendous courage of those nine young people. Can you imagine yourself at fourteen, or seventeen, or now, summoning the bravery to put your dreams on the line for a future you might die trying to realize? I say, We are called to envision ourselves as that courageous. By their role modeling, the Little Rock Nine have called us to faith in possibility.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”15 None of us knows if we might be asked to step forward as they were, but we don’t have to wait to be asked to support that kind of courage; all around us, all the time, people are taking a stand for justice. Our faith calls us to stand with them.

State Representative Byron Rushing said something really beautiful on October 2nd, at a candlelight vigil in support of democracy in Burma. As peaceful, pro-democracy Buddhist monks and Burmese citizens were being violently crushed by the junta in the streets of Rangoon, Byron Rushing reminded us that there is precious little we can do to further their cause from here; the work for their freedom must largely be done inside their country. But even at this great distance, he said, we can stand with them; photographic images sent to them from vigils and rallies all over the world will remind them that they are not alone. To remember them in this terrible time, to bear witness: that is our work.

14 ibid 15 Back to Methuselah (1921), part 1, act 1 6

The second theme I hear in the story of the Little Rock Nine is the experience of commitment and conviction: sustained commitment to a dream of racial equality, and absolute conviction in its possibility in the face of David and Goliath odds.

Slavery lasted in America from 1619 until the passage of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1865. With two hundred and forty-six years of slavery behind them and ongoing oppression throughout their lifetimes, the Little Rock Nine put their faith in the only model of liberation they knew, the biblical exodus of Moses and the Israelite slaves from Egypt to Israel. They carried on, not necessarily because they believed it would be realized in their lifetimes, but because they held fast to a vision of liberation in the future. Can you imagine that degree of commitment and conviction, that unwavering devotion to the Promised Land of their dreams? Again, I say, we are called to practice that unwavering commitment, that bedrock conviction. By their role modeling, they have called us to faith in our vision of a just world at peace.

The third theme I hear in the story of the Little Rock Nine is the experience of change: envisioning change, seeing themselves as change- agents, and being the change that transformed a nation – and the world.

In 1999, the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. “You were able to feel that you made a change on some issues around you,” says Ernest Green. “[In many ways,] you had helped … be part of this great human rights revolution that’s occurred. I feel very proud about that.”16 Adds Carlotta LaNier, “When I see the freedom to vote … the Housing Act, the Civil Rights act – all of those … came …, in part, from Brown v. Board of Education. We took the baton from Brown … and we ran our relay.”17 Yet again, I say we are called to a vision of change, to make of our lives a channel of change, and, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, to be the change [we] wish to see in the world.18

I wish I could close this sermon on the 50-year high with which it should conclude. While nothing can diminish the victorious heroism of the pioneering Little Rock Nine, according to the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angleles, “the majority of students [today] attend schools in which less than half the students are from other racial

16 The Crisis, p. 33 17 ibid 18 “You Must be the change you wish to see in the world.” -Gandhiji 7 backgrounds. Seventy-three percent of Black students and seventy-seven percent of Latino students attend schools that are predominantly [Black and Latino]. White students are the most isolated; most attend schools where only one [in] five students is of a different race.”19 And this past June, the Supreme Court struck down desegregation plans in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, opening the floodgates for re-segregation.

My spiritual companions, now is the time not to look away, but to gaze unwaveringly at the potential unfolding of the full catastrophe. Now is the time, not to stand by idly, but to stand up and say an uncompromising no to this kind of reactionary regression and erosion of civil rights for which those who came before us paid with their very lives. Now is the time to invoke the spirit of the Little Rock Nine, to walk the “road they trod” with courage, commitment and conviction, and a vision of change … a vision of a just world at peace. In the words of the Black National Anthem, We have come over a way that with tears has been watered … Keep us forever in the path, we pray.20

19 ibid 20James Weldon Johnson, Lift Every Voice and Sing