Stephen Tillotson is an undeclared sophomore. He can be contacted at [email protected].Fifty years ago in Little Rock, Ark., nine black students were integrated into an all-white high school. President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to safely escort the students into the school.
While the landmark Brown v. Board of Education had ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in 1954, it took three years for Little Rock to integrate its schools.
Sept. 25 marks the 50th anniversary of the integration, and a ceremony will be held to honor the nine students that bravely entered Central High School amid a violent crowd.
The ceremony may be celebratory in nature, but it doesn’t mean racial problems in schools have disappeared completely.
The recent “Jena 6” drama tends to overshadow any progress made in overcoming the racial tensions in America’s schools.
Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the nine black students who entered Central High School, was recently quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “We’re still living segregated lives based on culture and language. Here we are in 2007 and we’re still playing the same game.”
Her words could not be truer, even though many people might like to deny them.
It seems impossible that black and white students could display such contempt and violence toward one another as they did in Jena, La., last year. Such despicable acts as hanging a noose in a tree and beating a fellow student are not supposed to happen anymore. But they do.
Living under the impression that all of our racial problems were solved during the Civil Rights Movement is ignorant and gets us nowhere as a country. The “Jena 6” controversy and its aftermath have proven that we still don’t know how to deal with the racial imbalances that are left over from a bygone era of turbulence.
Carlotta Walls Lanier, another of the nine Arkansas students was quoted as saying, “I really didn’t understand at 14 we were helping change the educational landscape in America. All we wanted to do is go to school.”
If incidents like the one in Jena keep popping up every so often, the change that she helped bring about will go unnoticed by the younger generations. It would be tragic for the efforts of those nine students to be forgotten. Without them, our schools would be worse off than they are today.
The right to a free education is something all Americans can enjoy, regardless of color or creed. This right is only enjoyed because people like Carlotta Walls Lanier and Minnijean Brown Trickey were determined enough to make it a reality.
School should be a place of learning that is free of indifferences, where black or white no longer matters. Just try telling that to the “Jena 6” or the student who was beaten after hanging a noose in front of the Jena High School. The last thing they want to hear is that school is free of indifferences.
At this point, I find myself feeling most sorry for the rest of the high school students in Jena who had nothing to do with the year-old incident. They have to endure seemingly constant media attention and live in a community that many feel is racially charged. The entire Jena student body has been cast in a racist light and there is nothing they can do about it.
It seems strange, but 50 years after the Little Rock integration, we still just want to “go to school.