Last month VSP Vision Care sponsored the 2011 Martin Luther King Celebration Dinner in Sacramento, CA. The keynote speaker of the event was Carlotta Walls LaNier. Her name may not sound familar to many, but she belongs to a very special group of African Americans in history – the Little Rock Nine.
On September 25, 1957, nine black students (Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray and Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Patillo Beals) risked their lives to integrate into the segregated school system in Little Rock, Arkansas. More than three years had passed since the landmark 1954 passing of Brown vs. the Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court declared state laws which mandated separate schools for black students and white students were unconstitutional.
Ms. LaNier gave a moving account of the days leading up to that first day of school at Central High. She detailed the reaction of encountering angry white students, the tense atmosphere caused by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus when he called out the state National Guard to block the entrance of the Little Rock Nine; and the action of President Dwight Eisenhower, deploying 1,200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students inside.
Ms. LaNier is president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation, a Congressional Gold Medal Receipient an author of A Mightly Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.
Watch this award winning video done by 9th grader Shea Higgins as a history project for school, detailing the events leading up to integreation of Central High School.
