[Dramatic music ...]
[Narrator: Jefferson Thomas]
Where do you begin? Where do you look?
Like an ancient battlefield, the ground is silent,
Though people still move in familiar places.
Now on this field, Negro and White run together,
remembering not how it was in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.
Perhaps it is best for those today to look where they are going and
not where they have been.
But when you're a dark man in a country where
the Negro is demanding more and more and equal chance,
you have the right to look back, to discover if you are really
moving forward, or if the world is just moving beneath your feet.
I have a special reason for looking back.
My name is Jefferson Thomas, and I'm one of the Nine from Little Rock.
[Music]
There is nothing strange in seeing nine American children walking to school
on a September morning.
But this was a special morning in a special part of America.
A place where Negro children had never gone to school with Whites before.
[Music]
Hatred is easier to organize than understanding.
And there was a minority in our state who found it to their advantage
to bring hate to Little Rock in 1957.
While we watched, the White children went to school.
And we stood outside.
[Music]
[United States and Arkansas Flags raised]
We had been taught in school that we were a nation under law, and
the law said segregation was wrong.
Now, we waited to see if our laws had meaning,
Or were just words in a book or idle talk in a classroom.
[Soldiers marching to commands]
On September 27, 1957, President Eisenhower sent one thousand men of the
United States Army to carry out the law.
[Music]
The Supreme Court of the United States had said,
"The entire strength of the nation may be used to enforce, in any part of the land,
"the security of all rights entrusted by the Constitution."
And, that included my rights, and the rights of eight other Negro Americans
who wanted to go to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
We were: Terrence Roberts, Thelma Mothershed,
Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Carlotta Walls, Melba Pattillo,
Minnijean Brown, and Gloria Ray.
And we were going to school again.
Obviously, in this town of a hundred thousand,
there were many who didn't like what was happening.
But as we looked at the soldiers, we knew there must be millions of others
who thought we represented something important.
[Drum cadence]
When the doors closed behind us that day, it was both an end and a beginning.
From that moment on, we would be watched, not only by those who looked at us
as strangers, but by those who wondered if we would live up to our new opportunity.
I remember standing there, wondering how history would judge us.
[Bells tolling]
It's been seven years since that first day.
What has happened? Where have we gone?
What have we done?
[Minnijean Brown]
I was the oldest of the nine, and perhaps the least serious.
I came here to Southern Illinois University after graduation.
At first, I thought I wanted to be a nurse but I was too outgoing for that.
Now I know I want to work on a newspaper, to be a journalist, and to write.
More than anything else in the world, I want to write.
This year, I took a job with the University Newspaper.
I work as a reporter, 20 hours a week after classes.
There's no substitute for writing under pressure.
You have to get the story out, and to make it good.
I remember the reporters who came from all over the world
to cover the story of Little Rock.
To be able to take a story like that and to put it into words
is something I have always wanted to be able to do.
Someday, I'm going to write a book about what happened in Little Rock.
But first, I've got to learn more about writing and about the world.
And you can do that best in school.
Teachers like Professor Simon have helped me to grow up.
He's a man who makes you want to go to school forever.
But I'm going to work after I graduate.
I've applied to two newspapers, and one has already offered me a job.
[Cheerful music]
I'm going to miss this university.
The friendships I have made here are long and deep.
The things I have learned here have helped me come to terms with myself.
For the first time in my life, I have begun to understand
WHY some Americans act the way they do.
I know now some Americans have a fear of the Negro.
A fear of growing a way of life that has been dead in this country
since the end of slavery.
That's what the mob in Little Rock was afraid of: that the Negro --
who had done so much with no chance --
might do so much more with an equal one.
[School bell rings]
[Jefferson Thomas]
It's been four years since I stood in this hallway and watched
the faces moving from class to class.
None of this would seem strange to us now, for we all went on to colleges where
there were more Whites than Negros.
Except Elizabeth: she went to Central State College in Ohio.
[Elizabeth Eckford]
Central State was founded as an all-Negro college about 100 years ago.
Today, like most American schools, it is a mixture of Negro and White.
When I entered high school, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, then a teacher,
and now like most students, I haven't quite decided what I want to be.
The world is a big place, and when I go out into it,
I want to be sure I go in the right direction.
[Group singing]
If it hadn't been for that morning in September 1957,
I could have gone into law or education
and not thought much about it.
I was frightened that morning.
But I learned a great deal about people.
Not only about the people who were there, but about the people who were not there.
Like the politician who encouraged the mob.
Like the thousands who suffered with me and wrote to me to tell me so.
While I waited, I heard grave voices speak out against intolerance,
and I saw grown men turn their heads in shame from the canon.
[Students singing Alma Mater]
[Cheering, chanting]
[Elizabeth Eckford]
Central State is a Negro College that opened its doors to Whites only 17 years ago.
Today, 20 percent of the student body and faculty are White, and
There are still Negroes who are against integration.
The Negro is like most Americans, possessing no monopoly on tolerance.
And hoping that the few, the uninformed, will not be confused with the rest of us.
[Jefferson Thomas]
Four years ago, a Negro walked this hall in fear.
Some of the hate outside had come inside.
And there were a few who tried to impose their will on the many.
When we went up a stairway, we hung on to the railing.
[White student] "Can I help you?"
"Ah, I'm looking for Miss Poindexter's room"
"She's in room 214."
"Thank you very much."
"Any time."
Thelma used to say the problems we had getting into this school were worth it.
Just to be able to take courses from some of the teachers.
It's not surprising so many students like Thelma, wanted to go into teaching.
[Thelma Mothershed]
I graduate this year from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Going to college is a tradition in my family.
That's why I applied for Central, I wanted a good high school education.
I wanted the best training I could get before I entered college.
Aspirations are very personal things, but I think I can state mine simply:
I love to teach and I love children.
Children are happy, moody, difficult, and wonderful.
They accept me for what I am.
After I finish college, I want to apply for a job teaching in Little Rock.
Maybe someday at Central High.
I wonder what it'll be like.
[Jefferson Thomas]
Thelma, Carlotta and I had Miss Dunn.
None of us had seen a school with so much equipment before.
I think it was the equipment that first gave Ernie the impression
he wanted to be an engineer -- but I'm glad he changed his mind.
[Singing ...]
[Ernest Green]
After I leave Michigan State University, I'm going to work
in the field of civil rights as a leader and an organizer.
Even in the Northern States, you'll find pockets of discrimination
like you do all over the world.
But there's a tide rising against it, and I want to be part of it.
I came to Michigan State to study engineering.
Three years ago, I changed my mind.
I decided I would rather work with people than with machines.
Under Professor David Gotlieb, I received my Bachelor's Degree in Sociology.
Next week, I will receive my Master's.
I'm convinced that a White American can never fully understand
what motivates the Negro's desire for equality.
But the White American is becoming more concerned, especially my generation,
And that makes tomorrow worth dreaming about.
[Bells toll]
The American Negro must protest, and he must also build understanding
by searching for the truth.
The tools for truth in science are now becoming
tools for truth in human relations.
For the past two years, I have been compiling data on the aspirations
of Negro and White children in a segregated community.
[Computers beeping, spooling]
Today we are capable of getting answers that have real meaning,
that carry the power of fact against those who would exploit rumor and prejudice.
My research is just one part in a quiet revolution that's taking place in America.
It's not alone a revolution in technology, but a revolution in thinking.
A revolution that says man -- no matter how humble his birth,
what color his skin -- must be permitted to go
as far as his mind and his aspirations will take him.
[Music]
[Jefferson Thomas]
Ernie was the first of us to graduate from Central.
Carlotta and I were the last.
We were the class of 1960.
Carlotta [Walls] goes to Denver University in Colorado.
She's a good student and she likes the high mountains out there.
Gloria Ray is a senior at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
This year, she receives her Degree in Chemistry.
Terrence Roberts is studying for his Degree in Business Administration
at the City College of Los Angeles.
Melba Pattillo -- as we guessed -- married early.
She wasn't in college over a year before she became a housewife.
And me? This Spring I take an exam to become a Certified Public Accountant.
That means I'm supposed to be qualified to keep track of profits and losses.
I'm not sure I know enough yet to say what all this adds up to --
I haven't counted all the victories since that first day we went to school here.
But I know there's been at least -- nine.
[Music]
In Little Rock, there's a slow bridge taking shape over
that chasm of intolerance and ignorance.
It's a bridge that is going to be built by us and by our children.
Before it's finished, we're going to have our problems,
But if Little Rock taught nothing more, it taught all Americans that
Problems can make us better -- much better.
[Music]