2.07.2008

The Little Rock Nine

My comforting thought for the day is this: so many adults are parents.

Parents have children, and children go to school. Those children come home needing help with their homework assignments. This is one explanation for why so many people remember/know things that I have not heard of before, or don't remember hearing about. Their kids had to learn about it in school, and thus, the parents had to learn about it. And, I get to hear about it when they come to the library for help with their homework too, which is cool. Embarrassing when I don't know who they're talking about, but I can usually cover up my lack on knowledge in the moment.

I was helping a woman find information about the Little Rock Nine today to help her daughter with a history project. (One of my colleagues knew who the Little Rock Nine were because she helped her son with the same assignment last year, giving a little bit more support for my theory). I had never heard of them before, but now know that they were the first nine black students to go to a previously all-white school in Arkansas after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. And it was a long, difficult bring-in-the-armed-forces process.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High by Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine, has survived bookshelf purges in my house for more than ten years. That's one specific title on this subject I can recommend.