*Includes pictures
*Includes a bibliography for further reading
Though Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence wrote that the United States would be founded on the principles that all men were created equal, nearly 200 years would pass before the principle was put into any real practice. While the end of the Civil War opened the door for the passage of the Civil War Amendments, which abolished slavery, and, in theory, granted the descendants of both free and enslaved blacks the same rights as those enjoyed by whites, those rights were not respected or practiced during the century following the war. Most aspects of life, including schooling, remained segregated on every level, especially throughout the Jim Crow South, and the years following the desegregation triumph of Brown v. Board of the Education in 1954 saw little done to accomplish the instructions given by the Supreme Court. Put simply, even as Americans are instantly familiar with important events such as the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's also common knowledge that the efforts to integrate society faced stiff resistance, often violently. James Meredith's struggle to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 is still remembered vividly, but the Little Rock Nine are frequently overlooked when it comes to discussing the Civil Rights Movement, despite attempting to integrate Little Rock Central High School five years earlier. 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.
The physical and psychological torture they endured profoundly affected them for the rest of their lives, but their experiences irrevocably changed the country. Integration at Central High School was symbolic of the struggle for racial equality throughout the United States, according to Time magazine's Lina Mai. It was the first public test case of whether school integration would work in the South. Just as Rosa Parks became a symbol for the fight for equality in the public arena, the Little Rock Nine became a collective symbol for the fight for equality in public schools.
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. An avowed segregationist, Barnett asserted, "The Good Lord was the original segregationist. He put the black man in Africa. ...He made us white because he wanted us white, and He intended that we should stay that way." And according to Barnett, the reason so many blacks lived in Mississippi at the time was because "they love our way of life here, and that way is segregation." Barnett would later be fined $10,000 and sentenced to jail for contempt (though he never ended up going to jail or paying the fine).
On September 30, Meredith was escorted by U.S. Marshals sent in by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. A white mob attacked the Marshals, and nearly 200 people were injured. President John F. Kennedy finally had to send in the Army to allow Meredith to stay at school, and Meredith would receive a bachelor's degree in political science in August 1963.