Little Rock 9 - 1957
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement .
By the end of September 1957, the nine were admitted to Little Rock Central High under the protection of the U.S. Army (and later the Arkansas National Guard), but they were still subjected to a year of physical and verbal abuse (being spat on and called names) by many of the white students.Melba Pattillo had acid thrown into her eyes and also recalled in her book, Warriors Don't Cry, an incident in which a group of white girls trapped her in a stall in the girls' washroom and attempted to burn her alive by dropping pieces of flaming paper on her from above.
The Lost Year
In the summer of 1958, as the school year was drawing to a close, Faubus decided to petition the decision by the Federal District Court in order to postpone the desegregation of public high schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. In order to avoid any further complications, the public high schools were scheduled to open earlier than usual, on August 12, 1959. Although the Lost Year had come to a close, the black students who would be returning to the high schools were not welcomed by the other students. Rather, the black students had a difficult time getting past mobs to enter the school, and, once inside, they were often subject to physical and emotional abuse. The students were back at school and everything would eventually resume normal function, but the Lost Year would be a pretext for new hatred towards the black students in the public high school.
Thesis Statement
Little Rock 9 was a turning point in life because it affected racial profiling in the past and also in the present . It affected life because everybody got touched with the fact that there was so much hate and decided to be that way forever to show how much damage the caucasians did to the african-americans.