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[Participants, some carrying American flags, marching in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965]

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Selma to Montgomery Beginning of the March clip from Selma movie

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Selma to Montgomery Beginning of the March clip from Selma movie

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Selma (2014) - The March Begins Scene (4/10) | Movieclips

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The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. In March of that year, in an effort to register Black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. As the world watched, the protesters-under the protection of federalized National Guard troops-finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery, Alabama. The historic march, and Martin Luther King Jr. 's participation in it, raised awareness of the difficulties faced by Black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.

Voter Registration Efforts in Alabama

Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination in voting on the basis of race, efforts by civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) to register Black voters met with fierce resistance in southern states such as Alabama.

But the civil rights movement was not easily deterred. In early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC decided to make Selma, located in Dallas County, Alabama, the focus of a Black voter registration campaign. King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and his profile would help draw international attention to the events that followed.

Alabama Governor George Wallace was a notorious opponent of desegregation, and the local county sheriff in Dallas County had led a steadfast opposition to Black voter registration drives.

As a result, only 2 percent of Selma's eligible Black voters (about 300 out of 15,000) had managed to register to vote.

Did you know? Ralph Bunche, who participated in the Selma to Montgomery March with Martin Luther King Jr., won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine a year earlier.

Bloody Sunday

On February 18, white segregationists attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators in the town of Marion, Alabama. In the ensuing chaos, an Alabama state trooper fatally shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American demonstrator.

In response to Jackson's death, King and the SCLC planned a massive protest march from Selma to the state capitol of Montgomery, 54 miles away. A group of 600 people, including activists John Lewis and Hosea Williams, set out from Selma on Sunday, March 7, 1965 a day that would come to be known as " Bloody Sunday,"

The marchers didn't get far before Alabama state troopers wielding whips, nightsticks and tear gas rushed the group at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and beat them back to Selma. The brutal scene was captured on television, enraging many Americans and drawing civil rights and religious leaders of all faiths to Selma in protest.

Hundreds of ministers, priests, rabbis and social activists soon headed to Selma to join the voting rights march.

Edmund Pettus Bridge

On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, Black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. King paused the marchers and led them in prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside.

King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal injunction prohibiting the march. This decision led to criticism from some marchers, who called King cowardly.

That night, a group of segregationists attacked another protester; the young white minister James Reeb, beating him to death. Alabama state officials (led by Wallace) tried to prevent the march from going forward, but a U.S. district court judge ordered them to permit it.

LBJ Addresses Nation

Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson went on national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters and to call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was introducing in Congress.

"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem," Johnson said, "Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."

Some 2,000 people set out from Selma on March 21, protected by U.S. Army troops and Alabama National Guard forces that Johnson had ordered under federal control. After walking some 12 hours a day and sleeping in fields along the way, they reached Montgomery on March 25.

Nearly 50,000 supporters-Black and white-met the marchers in Montgomery, where they gathered in front of the state capitol to hear King and other speakers including Ralph Bunche (winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize) address the crowd.

"No tide of racism can stop us," King proclaimed from the building's steps, as viewers from around the world watched the historic moment on television.

Lasting Impact of the March

On March 17, 1965, even as the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the right to vote (first awarded by the 15th Amendment) to all African Americans. Specifically, the act banned literacy tests as a requirement for voting, mandated federal oversight of voter registration in areas where tests had previously been used and gave the U.S. attorney general the duty of challenging the use of poll taxes for state and local elections.

Along with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act was one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. It greatly reduced the disparity between Black and white voters in the U.S. and allowed greater numbers of African Americans to participate in politics and government at the local, state and national level.

HISTORY Vault: Voices of Civil Rights

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Selma to Montgomery March - MLK, Purpose & Distance | HISTORY

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The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil-rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. The historic 54-mile march, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s participation in it, raised awareness of the difficulties faced by black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.

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Little Rock, 1959. Rally at state capitol

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1 negative : film. | Photograph showing a group of people, several holding signs and American flags, protesting the admission of the "Little Rock Nine" to Central High School.

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America's reading comprehension crisis.

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Introduction
The mass movement for racial equality in the United States known as the civil rights movement started in the late 1950s. Through nonviolent protest actions, it broke through the pattern of racial segregation. Segregation was the practice in the South through which Black Americans were not allowed to use the same schools, churches, restaurants, buses, and other facilities as white Americans. The movement also achieved the passage of landmark equal-rights laws in the mid-1960s. These laws were intended to end discrimination against people because of their race ( see racism). This article provides an overview of some of the main events of the civil rights movement. To read about the movement in greater depth in its historical context, see Black Americans.

Background
When the United States first became a country, the majority of the Black people who lived there were enslaved. They were not considered citizens. They were thus not granted the basic rights of citizens in the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1788. This was changed several decades later with three amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) ended slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted citizenship to people who had formerly been enslaved. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) gave Blacks the same voting rights as whites (in other words, the men could vote but the women could not).

In the South, however, new laws were passed to effectively prevent Black people from voting and to reinforce segregation practices ( see Reconstruction Period). White people in the South used poll taxes (charging fees to vote) and other measures to stop Black people from voting. Laws called Black codes kept Black people from owning property or having certain kinds of jobs.

In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court approved racial segregation by allowing "separate but equal" facilities for Blacks and whites. The Court decided this in the case of (1896). In reality, however, the separate institutions and services provided were not equal. Those provided for Black people were not as good as those for white people.

1940s and '50s
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argued a series of desegregation cases before the Supreme Court. They led to the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas). In that case, the Court ruled on May 17, 1954, that having separate schools for Black students made the schools fundamentally unequal and was thus unconstitutional. This historic decision inspired a mass movement by Blacks and sympathetic whites to end racial segregation and inequality. Many whites, especially in the South, however, strongly resisted this movement. ( See also Little Rock Nine.)

On December 1, 1955, a Black woman named Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. This sparked a major protest, the Montgomery bus boycott. It helped ignite the civil rights movement. Two local Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy, led a long, nonviolent boycott of the bus system. To participate in this protest, Black people and others stopped using the buses. Without their bus fares, the bus system received less money than usual. In this way, the boycott eventually forced the bus company to desegregate its buses.

Similar protest actions soon spread to other communities in the South. King became the leading voice of the civil rights movement. In 1957 he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate and lead this massive resistance movement.

In 1960 a group of Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, insisted on being served a meal at a "whites only" lunch counter ( see Greensboro sit-in). This was one of the first of the movement's many prominent civil rights sit-ins, a form of nonviolent protest. In a sit-in, participants enter a business or public place and remain seated until they are forcibly removed or their grievances are addressed. The sit-in movement was largely led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Its techniques were patterned on the nonviolent civil disobedience methods of the Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. As the movement spread across the United States, it forced the desegregation of department stores, supermarkets, libraries, and movie theaters.

In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), under the leadership of James Farmer, began a new program of nonviolent protests. It started sending participants on Freedom Rides on buses and trains throughout the South and elsewhere. The purpose of the rides was to test and break down segregation practices on interstate transportation. By September of that year, some 70,000 students, both Black and white, were thought to have participated in the movement. Roughly 3,600 of the participants were arrested for their participation. All together, they traveled to more than 20 states.

The civil rights movement reached its climax on August 28, 1963, in the March on Washington. This was a massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., to protest racial discrimination and to demonstrate support for civil rights laws then being considered in Congress. It attracted more than 200,000 participants, including both Blacks and whites. The highlight of the march was King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech. It rallied civil rights advocates throughout the country.

In the years that followed, the civil rights movement won several important legal victories. On July 2, 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It was one of the most comprehensive civil rights laws to be enacted by Congress. The act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in public accommodations, employment, and federal programs. It also regulated literacy tests and other registration requirements for voting to ensure they were not biased against Blacks. A year later, Johnson enacted the Voting Rights Act. The enforcement of this act ended the tactics that had been used in the South to prevent Blacks from voting. This led to great increases in the numbers of Blacks who registered to vote.

The progress of the period was accompanied by violence against Blacks and civil rights workers, however. On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, the field secretary of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, was killed near his home in Jackson. During the summer of 1964, members of the SNCC and other civil rights workers who were attempting to register voters in Mississippi were routinely beaten and jailed. In mid-June three of the workers were arrested and killed by local law officials in Philadelphia, Mississippi. On April 4, 1968, the civil rights movement suffered a devastating blow when King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Even before the death of King, some Black people, particularly residents of poor urban areas, had begun to look for new leadership. Many urban residents had grown increasingly impatient with the slow progress of the nonviolence movement. They noted the failure of recently enacted civil rights legislation to make significant changes in their lives. In 1965 nearly one half of Black Americans lived below the poverty level. The majority still experienced discrimination or violence daily. In the mid-1960s this frustration erupted into race riots, including a major disturbance in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California, in 1965.

In this period the civil rights movement as a unified effort disintegrated. Civil rights leaders advocated different approaches and varying degrees of militancy. The growing militancy of Black activists was inspired in part by Black nationalist Malcolm X, who had been assassinated in 1965. Increasingly, Black Americans sought to achieve political power and cultural autonomy by building Black-controlled institutions. The more militant Black power movement split off from the civil rights movement. Black nationalist organizations such as the Black Panthers were established, and the SNCC adopted a more radical stance.

In the decades that followed, many civil rights leaders sought to achieve greater direct political power by being elected to political office. They also sought to improve employment and educational opportunities for Black people through affirmative-action programs, which give preference to minorities in job hiring and college admissions decisions.

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The mass movement for racial equality in the United States known as the civil rights movement started in the late 1950s. Through nonviolent protest actions, it broke through...

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Desegregation of Schools

In its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, issued May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of America's public schools was unconstitutional.

Until the court's decision, many states across the nation had mandatory segregation laws, or Jim Crow laws, requiring African American and white children to attend separate schools. Resistance to the ruling was so widespread that the court issued a second decision in 1955, known as Brown II, ordering school districts to integrate "with all deliberate speed."

Little Rock Central High School

In response to the Brown decisions and pressure from the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board adopted a plan for gradual integration of its schools.

The first institutions to integrate would be the high schools, beginning in September 1957. Among these was Little Rock Central High School, which opened in 1927 and was originally called Little Rock Senior High School.

Two pro-segregation groups formed to oppose the plan: The Capital Citizens Council and the Mother's League of Central High School.

Who Were the Little Rock Nine?

Despite the virulent opposition, nine students registered to be the first African Americans to attend Central High School. Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls had been recruited by Daisy Gaston Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP and co-publisher of the Arkansas State Press, an influential African American newspaper.

Daisy Bates and others from the Arkansas NAACP carefully vetted the group of students and determined they all possessed the strength and determination to face the resistance they would encounter. In the weeks prior to the start of the new school year, the students participated in intensive counseling sessions guiding them on what to expect once classes began and how to respond to anticipated hostile situations.

The group soon became famous as the Little Rock Nine.

Orval Faubus

On September 2, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced that he would call in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the African American students' entry to Central High, claiming this action was for the students' own protection. In a televised address, Faubus insisted that violence and bloodshed might break out if Black students were allowed to enter the school.

The Mother's League held a sunrise service at the school on September 3 as a protest against integration. But that afternoon, federal judge Ronald Davies issued a ruling that desegregation would continue as planned the next day.

Elizabeth Eckford

The Little Rock Nine arrived for the first day of school at Central High on September 4, 1957. Eight arrived together, driven by Bates.

Elizabeth Eckford's family, however, did not have a telephone, and Bates could not reach her to let her know of the carpool plans. Therefore, Eckford arrived alone.

The Arkansas National Guard, under orders of Governor Faubus, prevented any of the Little Rock Nine from entering the doors of Central High. One of the most enduring images from this day is a photograph of Eckford, alone with a notebook in her hand, stoically approaching the school as a crowd of hostile and screaming white students and adults surround her.

Eckford later recalled that one of the women spat on her. The image was printed and broadcast widely in the United States and abroad, bringing the Little Rock controversy to national and international attention.

Ronald Davies

In the following weeks, federal judge Ronald Davies began legal proceedings against Governor Faubus, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to persuade Faubus to remove the National Guard and let the Little Rock Nine enter the school.

Judge Davies ordered the Guard removed on September 20, and the Little Rock Police Department took over to maintain order. The police escorted the nine African American students into the school on September 23, through an angry mob of some 1,000 white protesters gathered outside. Amidst ensuing rioting, the police removed the nine students.

The following day, President Eisenhower sent in 1,200 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and placed them in charge of the 10,000 National Guardsmen on duty. Escorted by the troops, the Little Rock Nine attended their first full day of classes on September 25.

Numerous legal challenges to integration continued throughout the year, and Faubus repeatedly expressed his wish that the Little Rock Nine be removed from Central High.

Although several of the Black students had positive experiences on their first day of school, according to a September 25, 1957, report in The New York Times, they experienced routine harassment and even violence throughout the rest of the year.

Melba Patillo, for instance, was kicked, beaten and had acid thrown in her face. At one point, white students burned an African American effigy in a vacant lot across from the school. Gloria Ray was pushed down a flight of stairs, and the Little Rock Nine were barred from participating in extracurricular activities.

Minnijean Brown was expelled from Central High School in February 1958 for retaliating against the attacks. Harassment went beyond the students: Gloria Ray's mother was fired from her job with the State of Arkansas when she refused to remove her daughter from the school. The 101st Airborne and the National Guard remained at Central High School for the duration of the year.

Ernest Green

On May 25, 1958, Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, became the first African American graduate of Central High.

In September 1958, one year after Central High was integrated, Governor Faubus closed all of Little Rock's high schools for the entire year, pending a public vote, to prevent African American attendance. Little Rock citizens voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed.

Other than Green, the rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school careers via correspondence or at other high schools across the country. Eckford joined the Army and later earned her General Education Equivalency diploma. Little Rock's high schools reopened in August 1959.

Did you know? Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. attended graduation ceremonies at Central High School in May 1958 to see Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, receive his diploma.

Little Rock Nine Aftermath

Several of the Little Rock Nine went on to distinguished careers.

Green served as assistant secretary of the federal Department of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. Brown worked as deputy assistant secretary for workforce diversity in the Department of the Interior under President Bill Clinton. Patillo worked as a reporter for NBC.

The group has been widely recognized for their significant role in the civil rights movement. In 1999, President Clinton awarded each member of the group the Congressional Gold Medal. The nine also all received personal invitations to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.

Jefferson Thomas became the first of the Little Rock Nine to die when he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 67 on September 5, 2010. After graduating from Central High, Thomas served in the Army in Vietnam, earned a business degree and worked as an accountant for private companies and the Pentagon.

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Little Rock Nine - Definition, Names & Facts | HISTORY

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The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine Black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

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Massive Resistance and the Little Rock Nine

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Massive Resistance and the Little Rock Nine

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Read about resistance to desegregation and the nine African American students who dared to integrate Little Rock's Central High School.

A campaign of " Massive Resistance" by whites emerged in the South to oppose the Supreme Court's ruling that public schools be desegregated in Brown v. Board (1954).

Southern congressmen issued a "Southern Manifesto" denouncing the Court's ruling. Governors and state legislatures employed a variety of tactics to slow or stop school desegregation; white Citizens' Councils emerged to lead local resistance.

In September 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the Court's desegregation order.

Massive Resistance

After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in the 1954 cases, it ordered that schools be desegregated with "all deliberate speed." But many white Americans, especially in the South, responded angrily to the Court's rulings. They did not want public schools to be desegregated. Soon, " Massive Resistance, a campaign to block desegregation at the local, state, and national level, was underway.

To this end, a group of 101 southern congressmen issued a "Southern Manifesto" accusing the Supreme Court of a "clear abuse of judicial power," and vowing to use "all lawful means to bring about a reversal" of the Court's decision in Brown. White Citizens' Councils opposed to desegregation organized in towns across the South. Composed of white businessmen, civic leaders, and ordinary citizens, the Citizens' Councils led local and statewide efforts against public school desegregation.

Massive Resistance spread beyond opposition to school desegregation to encompass a broad agenda in defense of the race prejudiced traditions in the South. Some southern states outlawed the NAACP. In 1956, Georgia incorporated the Confederate battle flag into its state flag, and within a few years South Carolina and Alabama began flying the Confederate battle flag over their state capitol buildings. Even President Eisenhower did not personally support the Court's ruling in Brown, saying privately, "I don't believe you can change the hearts of men with laws."

The "Little Rock Nine"

Among the African American students soon to be known as the Little Rock Nine was Elizabeth Eckford. She recounted her efforts that morning: "I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in.... When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards closed in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn't know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me . . . . I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd-someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me."

Television and newspaper reports showing of the event drew national and international attention to the issue of school desegregation.

Eisenhower enforces desegregation

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus removed the National Guard from the school only after a federal district court ordered him to do so on September 20. On September 24, President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered more than a thousand federal troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock. It was the first time that federal troops had been deployed in a southern state since the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Protected by the armed federal troops who accompanied them to school, September 25 was the first full day of school for the African American students at Central High. That day, as the New York Times reported, some classrooms were half-empty, and "from time to time groups of [white] students threw down their books and walked out of school. Some of them chanted . . . 'two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate.'"

What do you think?

How do you think the "Southern Manifesto," and Governor Faubus's deployment of the Arkansas National Guard looked in the eyes of people outside the United States who looked to the country as a land dedicated to freedom?

When the US Supreme Court interprets the US Constitution is it sometimes, in effect, making new laws? Is such "activism" on the part of the Supreme Court part of its job?

Would Central High School have been successfully desegregated if the federal government had not aided local African American citizens?

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"Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group-consisting of Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed-became the centre of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, especially in the South. The events that followed their enrollment in Little Rock Central High School provoked intense national debate about racial segregation and civil rights.

During the summer of 1957, the Little Rock Nine enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which until then had been all white. The students' effort to enroll was supported by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which had declared segregated schooling to be unconstitutional.

Warned by the Little Rock board of education not to attend the first day of school, the nine African American students arrived on the second day accompanied by a small interracial group of ministers. They encountered a large white mob in front of the school, who began shouting, throwing stones, and threatening to kill the students. In addition, about 270 soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard, sent by Arkansas Gov. Orval Eugene Faubus, blocked the school's entrance. Faubus had declared his opposition to integration and his intention to defy a federal court order requiring desegregation.

The confrontation in Little Rock drew international attention to racism and civil rights in the United States as well as to the battle between federal and state power. Television and newspaper reporters devoted substantial coverage to the "Little Rock Nine," as the African American students were called.

Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Governor Faubus, and Little Rock's mayor, Woodrow Mann, discussed the situation over the course of 18 days, during which time the nine students stayed home. The students returned to the high school on September 23, entering through a side door to avoid the protesters' attention and wrath.

They were eventually discovered, however, and white protesters became violent, attacking African American bystanders as well as reporters for northern newspapers. The students were sent home, but they returned on September 25, protected by U.S. soldiers. Despite Eisenhower's publicly stated reluctance to use federal troops to enforce desegregation, he recognized the potential for violence and state insubordination. He thus sent the elite 101st Airborne Division, called the "Screaming Eagles," to Little Rock and placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal command.

The Little Rock Nine continued to face physical and verbal attacks from white students throughout their studies at Central High. One of the students, Minnijean Brown, fought back and was expelled. The remaining eight students, however, attended the school for the rest of the academic year. At the end of the year, in 1958, senior Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School.

Governor Faubus was reelected in 1958, and, rather than permit desegregation, he closed all of Little Rock's schools. Many school districts in the South followed Little Rock's example, closing schools or implementing "school-choice" programs that subsidized white students' attendance at private segregated academies, which were not covered by the Supreme Court's decision. Little Rock Central High School did not reopen with a desegregated student body until 1960, and efforts to integrate schools and other public areas throughout the country continued through the 1960s.

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Little Rock Nine | Names, Significance, Facts, & Segregation

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Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group became the center of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, and their actions provoked intense national debate about civil rights.

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Title: Black Lives Matter Solidarity March