Integration of Little Rock Central High School (1957)

CTL-E-5418 · Event · other · 1957

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

In September 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education, nine Black teenagers — the Little Rock Nine — attempted to enroll at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, under a federal desegregation plan. Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround the school and turn them away; on September 4 the Guard blocked Elizabeth Eckford, who had not received word of the group's changed plans and faced the mob alone. After a federal court ordered the Guard withdrawn and a riot answered the students' first entry on September 23, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. On September 25, 1957, soldiers escorted the Nine into Central High, where they endured a school year of harassment under military protection. Faubus closed Little Rock's high schools entirely the following year rather than integrate them. The crisis was the first great test of whether Brown would be enforced, and its answer — federal troops, or nothing — instructed both sides of the decade to come.

The record

• Also known as: Little Rock Nine, Central High School Integrated, Little Rock Crisis

Notes

Statistics: Key dates: September 4, 1957 (Eckford turned away); September 25, 1957 (escorted entry) (NPS). The intake paste's stop #19 (September 1957) is VERIFIED. Nine students held as a group in this record; individual Person records for the Nine are future candidates. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review: Nine teenagers needed a division of paratroopers to attend algebra. The record keeps the ratio in view — it is the single clearest measurement of what Brown asked and what Arkansas answered — and it keeps Eckford's September 4 walk, alone in front of the mob, where it belongs: at the front of the story. · Photo slot: CLEARED CANDIDATE — Wikimedia Commons File:Operation Arkansas, Little Rock Nine.jpg (101st Airborne escort, 1957), Public domain, license verified from Commons API metadata on 2026-10-15; not downloaded — visual pass follows merge per standing pattern.

Sources

• National Park Service, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site — supports: the September 1957 sequence, Governor Faubus's use of the National Guard, Eisenhower's federalization order and the 101st Airborne deployment, and the September 25 escorted entry (primary source)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Little Rock Nine' — supports: the nine students' enrollment attempt, the September 4 mob scene, and the school closures of 1958–59

Record CTL-E-5418 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 2 sources (1 primary) · CTL research: BCI-001, RELP-001.
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