Nine Black students made up the Little Rock Nine, who integrated Arkansas’s Central High School in 1957.
The students enrolled after the Supreme Court’s Brown decision required public-school desegregation. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus attempted to use the National Guard to prevent them from entering the school, claiming that violence might result.
On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops from the 101st Airborne Division to protect the students. They attended Central High under intense harassment, making the school a nationally visible test of federal authority and school desegregation.
The group included Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Melba Pattillo Beals, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Terrence Roberts, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, and Thelma Mothershed Wair. Ernest Green became the first of the group to graduate from Central High, in May 1958.