On 50th anniversary, integration problems linger

Jena update

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, right, on Sunday called on the federal government to intervene in the racially charged Jena 6 case, accusing authorities in Louisiana of treating six black teenagers more harshly than a white classmate they were accused of beating. Thousands of marchers demonstrated in the small Louisiana town last week, where tensions led up to a series of racially charged incidents.

Little Rock ? Fifty years after federal troops escorted Terrence Roberts and eight fellow black students into an all-white high school, he says the struggles over race and segregation still are unresolved.

“This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society,” said Roberts, who is a faculty member at Antioch University’s psychology program.

He and the other students known as the Little Rock Nine will help the city observe Central High School’s 50th anniversary this week with a series of events culminating with a ceremony featuring former President Bill Clinton.

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black students from enrolling at a high school with about 2,000 white students. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 – and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate – Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds. It was the first time in 80 years that federal troops had been sent to a former state of the Confederacy.

Yet, half a century later, there are signs of progress and strife in Arkansas’ largest school district, which is now 70 percent black.

A federal judge ruled this year that the 27,000-student district was unitary, or substantially integrated, and ordered the end of federal desegregation monitoring. The school now has a nearby museum for the Little Rock crisis, and statues of the nine brave students stand on the grounds of the state Capitol.

But race still divides the school board, which has a black majority.

Minnijean Brown Trickey and others in the Little Rock Nine said they’re frustrated with the school system nationally, not just in Arkansas, which they see as still widely segregated.

“We’re still living segregated lives based on culture and language,” said Trickey, who now works as a gender and social justice advocate. “Here we are in 2007 and we’re still playing the same game.”