Black History Month – Little Rock Central High School September 1957

By Guest Blogger, Yahtzeebutterfly

Elizabeth Eckford being verbally attacked by the monstrous mob

The desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in September 1957 brought to the surface the vile racism of whites, both within the community and outside it.  A huge, nasty mob formed around the high school on September 4, the day that nine black students were to integrate the school.  The nine black students were, Minnijean Brown, Terrance Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls.  Horrible acts of hate and violence were directed at them.

Just 12 years after the U.S. had liberated Hitler’s concentration camps where 6 million Jews were murdered, a New York Times reporter, Dr. Benjamin Fine, was spat upon and called a “dirty Jew” as he and a white woman, Grace Lorch, rescued Elizabeth Eckford from the mob.  Dr. Fine told Daisy Bates what he had witnessed: