Crisis in Little Rock: Connections Questions

The following are some questions for classroom discussion to help students connect the history presented in this website to their own lives and the choices they make everyday.

• The nine African American students all lived in the Central High school district. As a result, they knew a number of white students in the school. Yet Elizabeth Eckford recalls, “Some of the students I’d known since I was 10 years old, who were white, were afraid to speak to me in school. It’s true there were only about 50 students who were actively harassing us. But some of those other students, it was my feeling, were cooperating in that violence through their silence.” How does one cooperate through silence? What is she suggesting about the role of the bystander?
  
  
• What message were Hollingsworth’s white neighbors sending when they closed their doors? To what extent were they cooperating in the violence?

• There is an old saying that “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.” Is it true? What is the hurt that comes from words? from silence? from “just being ignored”? How might the situation at Central High School have been different if Webb and other white students had regarded black students as “kids” much like them?
  
  
• As the mob harassed Elizabeth Eckford, Grace Lorch decided that she could not remain a bystander. She braved the crowd to help Eckford reach safety. The white ministers who accompanied the African American students to school that day also took a stand. How important were the choices they made to the black students? to the community as a whole? to themselves? What if others had supported the Little Rock Nine? For example, what if the principal or a group of teachers had opened the doors of the school and escorted the students into the building? How might that decision have altered the outcome of that day?

• In 1957, Jesús Colón (Reading 3) wrote an article about the Little Rock Nine. In it, he describes what a friend did a few days after Faubus called out the National Guard.    

Joe took a rough piece of paper from the factory and wrote a request to the President of the united States to use his federal and military powers to keep open the doors of the high school to the Negro children. Joe then asked the 60 workers in his shop to sign their names to the request. About 40 of them signed. Then Joe put the whole thing in an envelope and sent it to President Eisenhower. Joe is a white worker. Can you imagine the effect in the White House if other Joes in thousands of other factories and offices all over the nation would have done the same? Enough said. ¹²  

• How would you answer Colón’s question? How do you define the word bystander? Research suggests that the responses of bystanders give an event meaning. Television dramatically increased the number of people who were bystanders to the riots in Little Rock. What is Colón suggesting about the ways they could give meaning to the event?

• What do Doris Kearns Goodwin’s remarks suggest about the way TV expanded her “universe of obligation”–the circle of individuals and groups “toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for [amends]”?  To what extent does TV expand your “universe of obligation”?  The video Eyes on the Prize, available from the Facing History Resource Center, shows some of the images she saw on TV in 1957. How do those images help you understand why Goodwin views the crisis in Little Rock as a turning point in her political consciousness?¹³

• As governor of Arkansas, how did Orval Faubus define his “universe of obligation”? How did Eisenhower define his? Why did the editors of the New York Amsterdam News view Eisenhower’s decision as “his finest hour”? What were they suggesting about the way a leader in a democracy defines his “universe of obligation”?

• Harry Ashmore, the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, said of the crisis in Little Rock, “Orval Faubus was the hero to the mob; the nine courageous black children he failed to keep out of Central High were heroes to the world.” To whom was Eisenhower a hero? How does Ashmore seem to define the word hero? How do you define it? Who do you think the heroes were in this story?

• In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to move to the back of the bus as required by law. Her arrest prompted other African Americans to boycott the city buses. For twelve and a half months, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they walked, carpooled, and rode in taxis rather than sit at the back of the bus. Their commitment inspired the Little Rock Nine. Melba Pattillo later wrote that she experienced a “surge of pride when I thought about how my people had banded together to force a change. It gave me hope that maybe things in Little Rock could change.” What connected African Americans in the two cities? How do you think the Little Rock Nine may be connected to students like Marian Wright Edelman, who registered black voters in the South or sat in at lunch counters in the 1960s? to those who took to the streets to demand laws that guaranteed equal rights for all Americans?¹⁴

• The Rev. Colbert Cartwright was one of the few white ministers to speak out against the mob. He and other religious leaders organized a day of prayer for peace in the city on October 12, 1957. Although more than 6,000 people participated, the next day the mob gathered once again outside Central High. And once again, other white citizens chose to look the other way. In reflecting on the crisis, Cartwright observed:       

In the end, the law could not [integrate the schools]. A group of very dedicated people, women. . . marshaled. . . grassroots support to take back the schools and work on the desegregation problem. The lesson is that people themselves had to take responsibility for what they wanted their community to be. . . . They had to rally the good forces in the community to take back the schools, do more than a lackluster desegregation effort by some edict. This was work that should have been done prior to desegregation.¹⁵

• What is integration? What does he suggest is needed to integrate the schools?