James Meredith and the Little Rock Nine: The History of the Civil Rights Icons Who Integrated Schools in the South after Brown v. Board of Education

For millions of kids, high school is a tumultuous time, with social highs and lows, academic pressure, and extracurricular wins and losses, but for the Little Rock Nine, the first African American students to attend a previously segregated high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, those years were nightmarish. 

Getting into Central High School was an obstacle witnessed by the entire nation, but that was only the beginning of their ordeal, because once they were permitted to step through the doors, their true battle began, pitting them against bullies, tormentors, and narrow-minded ignorance. While many teenagers’ main concern is finding a date for prom, theirs was surviving until lunch, and when some students were worrying about making the volleyball team, they were worried about making it home alive each day. The Little Rock Nine and their families and neighbors could not trust the local government to serve them, the school system to treat them fairly, or the police to protect them. As Melba Patillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Times, noted, “All my life I had felt unprotected by city officials…Whites had control of the police, the firemen, and the ambulances. They could decide who got help and who didn’t. Even if the Ku Klux Klan ravaged one of our homes, we wouldn’t call the police for help.”

Meredith is still remembered for the almost surreal scenes that came with his admission to the school, but those historic moments required a prolonged fight. After a drawn out lawsuit that involved the State of Mississippi appealing the lower court’s decision, he was finally set to attend the university in September 1962, only to be repeatedly prevented by a mob, which included Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. Governor Barnett had earlier attempted to stop Meredith’s admission by changing state laws to ban anyone who had been convicted of a state crime; Meredith’s “crime” had been false voter registration.