Led by Arkansas NAACP president Daisy Gaston Bates, nine Black students took on the task of testing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which declared that segregation was unconstitutional in American public schools.
Under the glare of an angry mob of white students, 1,200 armed soldiers, media cameras and pro-segregationist governor Orval Faubus, the Little Rock Nine made their way to Central High. The students were: Minnijean Brown, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Gloria Ray, Melba Pattillo, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Carlotta Walls and Elizabeth Eckford.
The Little Rock Nine went on to accomplish great things in their professional careers, some of them serving in the areas of higher education, mental health, and the criminal justice system. Green served under President Jimmy Carter as his assistant secretary in the Department of Labor. Pattillo became a reporter for NBC. Brown worked under President Bill Clinton in the Department of the Interior as the deputy assistant secretary for workforce diversity.
In 1999, President Clinton awarded the Little Rock Nine with the Congressional Gold Medal for their important role in the civil rights movement. Ten years later, President Barack Obama invited them to his inauguration.
Of the Nine, Thomas was the first to pass away. He died in 2010 from pancreatic cancer.