BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
From The Little Rock 9 to The Jena 6
September 25th, 2007
From The Little Rock 9 Fondation’s Page:
September 25, 1957, became a historic day in the Nation when nine courageous children risked their lives to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Confronted by a hostile crowd and escorted by the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airbourne, they shouldered the burden of integrating a then segregated public school system. Although the Supreme Court’s Landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education struck down racial segregation in public schools, it was the courageous actions of these nine young champions of school integration that tested the strength of that decision. Their actions not only mobilized a Nation to insure that access to a quality education was granted to all Americans, but they helped to define the civil rights movement. They became known as the Little Rock Nine.
A community unwillingly to except Blacks and people of other races into their school sparked this historic event, that today we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of. I applaud the 9’s bravery, as they were juveniles taking a stand for all of our opportunities in a trying situation.
Fifty years later, another community not too far away, in the bordering state of Louisiana had still not decided that Blacks were worthy of going to school with white children. They maintained a white’s only tree at the school, and defacto segregation in the school.
As much as our society likes to pretend things are different, beneath the surface layer, things have scarcely changed, and much is still the same. One thing that has changed from the day of the Little Rock 9; there’s no federal intervention from for the Jena 6. The foot shuffl’in, head scratch’in, Black U.S. Attorny in Shreveport Louisiana isn’t gong to do anything as he’s justifying what Reed Walters is doing and won’t even move on the hanging of the nooses as a hate crime (though the FBI recommended just that) because he says the kids who did the noose hanging didn’t have a bad history. Do you think he’s then going to actually move on Reed Walters or Judge Mauffray for civil and constitutional rights abuses?
As equal justice, treatment and protection under the law are being rolled back, as I will make evident in coming post, people of color had better learn to take a stand and fight, like our forebears did. They better learn to follow the lead of the children in Little Rock and Birmingham.
As the movement song lyrics go, “the one thing we did right, was the day we started to fight”.
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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