Little Rock Crisis 33Pattillo, Melba(1941– ):
One of the Little Rock
Nine who desegregated
Central High School, Little
Rock, Arkansas.reassurances that there would not be ‘love scenes in class plays featuring stu-
dents of different races.’ Such reassurances did not mollify white parents,
who pressured the board to retreat. With the board dragging its feet, NAACP
attorneys Wiley Branton and Thurgood Marshall sued to force immediate
school desegregation. But the Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that
the Little Rock plan complied with Brown’s nebulous directive of ‘all deliber-
ate speed.’
The Blossom Plan delayed desegregation until September 1957 and
sharply limited the number of black students. Seventy-five of the 517 black
students who lived in the district sought admission to Central High. The
selection process for ‘good Negroes’ winnowed the list to twenty-five, based
on the intelligence, character, and health of the applicants. As the desegrega-
tion date loomed, the school board telephoned parents to pare the list still
further: ‘Your daughter has a magnificent voice... but if she goes over to the
white school, and being new, she could get lost in the shuffle and won’t
get a chance to sing.’ Several students took the hint and remained at the
black high school. Those who pressed ahead – Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth
Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray,
Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls – became known as
the Little Rock Nine. Coming from middle-class families, they wanted to go
to the best high school available – the all-white Central High.
This modest plan was undone by governor Orval Faubus. Raised in
poverty by a father who condemned prejudice, Faubus appointed more blacks
to state positions than any predecessor, integrated the state’s colleges, and
opposed lynching and the poll tax. After the Browndecision, however, Faubus
faced the same problem that other bottom-feeding southern politicians faced
- how to win reelection when white public opinion ran overwhelmingly
against desegregation. He had seen the entire Arkansas congressional delega-
tion run for cover by signing the Southern Manifesto, which lambasted the
Browndecision. Faubus’s task was made more difficult when several small
Arkansas public schools admitted blacks. Compounding his troubles,
Faubus had increased taxes and utility rates and was violating tradition in
seeking a third term.
In the fall campaign of 1956, Jim Johnson, a fire-eating segregationist who
was state director of the Citizens’ Council, tarred Faubus as a communist
traitor who let the ‘ignorant nigger’ demand ‘integration in the white bed-
room.’ Fearing he would be destroyed politically, as well as financially,
Faubus saw political gold in racial epithets. He vowed never ‘to mix the races’
while he was governor. He won reelection convincingly with racist support
and signed several bills in early 1957 to preserve school segregation. The
new legislation permitted parents to withdraw their children from integrated
schools, authorized school districts to contest lawsuits for integration, required
Faubus, Orval (1910–
94): Arkansas governor
who blocked the Little
Rock Nine from Central
High School.