Seventy years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ended racial segregation in public schools, members of the “Little Rock Nine” — the first group of African American students to attend Little Rock Central High School — sat down with ABC News to discuss the challenges they faced in education then and the challenges that remain today.
Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls LaNier, known as the Little Rock Nine, began attending Little Rock Central High School in 1957, three years after the historic decision, making them the first students to desegregate the school.
The Nine were all volunteers recruited by the NAACP, under the leadership of Daisy Bates , the president of the Arkansas chapter, to be part of the first official enactment of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the “separate but equal” doctrine. Their journey to the classroom was not simple.