 Well, good evening. I'm Rodney Ellis and I want to thank you all for being here on a rather chilly night in Austin, Texas. Not long ago, within my lifetime, African American children needed armed soldiers to escort them to school. That might seem strange to some of the students sitting in this audience tonight, but it was a reality for some remarkable folks that you're going to hear from tonight. I want to set the stage for this evening's program with a brief video produced by Marquette University. What about you, sir? Do you think the college students will show up? If I got anything to do with it, they won't show up. Well, I think it's a breaking point of the school integration. I just don't feel that they have a right to go to school. It's easy to believe today that we are an enlightened society free from problems of race, gender, or economic separation. But some of the most difficult lessons we learn are a result of individuals who push us through these divisive barriers. In September of 1957, nine black school children, the eldest only 17, forced us through such a blockade. They sought a better education for themselves and the opportunity to pursue the American dream. That's the Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas troops which for nearly three weeks lined the sidewalk here in front of the high school under orders to keep the colored students out have been replaced now from their orders to comply with the law which means let the Negro students in if they come in. We were Terrence Roberts and Jefferson Thomas, Thelma Mothershed, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Carlotta Walls, Melba Petillo, Minnejean Brown, and Gloria Ray. They became known as the Little Rock Nine. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown versus the Board of Education found segregation of schools unconstitutional. But as the Little Rock Nine approached the high school, segregationists swarmed the campus. As the violence escalated, one schoolgirl, Elizabeth Eckford, was threatened by an angry mob chanting, Lynch her, Lynch her. President Dwight Eisenhower intervened in Little Rock and set a precedent for our nation as a whole. Such an extreme situation has been created in Little Rock. This challenge must be met and with such measures as will preserve to the people as a whole, their lawfully protected rights in a climate permitting their free and fair exercise. In the present case, the troops are there, pursuant to law solely for the purpose of preventing interference with the orders of the court. On September 25, 1957, the 101st Airborne Division and 10,000 National Guard troops escorted the Little Rock Nine as they walked bravely past screaming miles and made their way to the classrooms of Little Rock Central High School. Just got a report here on this end that the students are in. Do you feel it's worth it going through this? Yes, I do. These nine heroes were willing to step forward and in doing so altered the course of history. Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from the Central High School. He is now a leading public finance banker having served as Assistant Secretary of Labor and Employment and Training during the Card Administration. His story was captured in the Disney documentary The Ernest Green Story. It was produced in 1993 and won a Peabody Award later that year. He also gave my wife her first job, at least first paying job in public service. Dr. Terrence Roberts started at Central High as a 15-year-old junior. He completed his senior year in Los Angeles due to school closings in Little Rock and later earned a PhD in psychology from Southern Illinois University. He's devoted his career to mental health and social welfare and he's now CEO of Management Consulting, a firm that he owns, the Terrence Roberts Consulting Group. He's documented his story in Lessons from Little Rock, a memoir published in 2009. Carlotta Wallace Lanier was the youngest Little Rock Nine member at age 14. Graduating from Central High School in 1960, she spent her career as a real estate broker and now owns her own brokerage firm in Inglewood, Colorado. Carlotta shared her story in a mighty long way. My journey to justice at Little Rock Central High. She curtly serves as president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation, created to promote equality of opportunity for all, particularly in the field of education. Before we welcome these American heroes, I want to introduce you to another one. Amarie Austin. Amarie is a third generation of women in her family to attend Little Rock Central High. Her great aunt is Thelma Mothershade, one of Little Rock Nine. Her mother, Michelle Motherhead, is joining her tonight in the audience, is also a graduate. And now Amarie Austin is a junior at Little Rock Central High. She participated in High School's Memory Project. It's a program in which students interview older people and get stories about their personal experiences involving discrimination and their right essays about it. Amarie interviewed, of course, her great aunt. The Memory Project's goal is that by sharing stories about all types of prejudice, it will foster change and acceptance. Would you please help me welcome Amarie Austin. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Amarie Austin, and as previously mentioned, I am the great niece of Thelma Ware Mothershade Ware. My journey of understanding my history began when I was a freshman at Little Rock Central High. As previously also mentioned, I was given the assignment to interview someone who had something to do with civil rights that was an elder. Of course, I had no option but to interview my aunt. But this was a life-changing experience for me. Not because I just had to understand where someone who was older came from, but she was a relative, someone I knew, someone I grew up with. And I think that's what made it more special, because before, she was just my con-hearted aunt that gave me candy all the time and sometimes forgot my name. But that day, she became a courageous, brave knight. All of them are. And I am so empowered by my legacy, my history, and it only pushes me more to want to understand where I came from, because let's be honest, you can't move forward unless you know where you've been. I like to hold myself in highest esteem because of my legacy. I don't want to use her as a crutch. I want to further understand race relations. And I feel like my generation is the generation to do that, because I feel as though the youth is where race relations and true integration can come into play. Now, like I said, I attend Central High, and you can just walk down the halls and see all of the diversity that has come with all the cultures, all the ethnicities, all the races. But in the lunchroom, that's a different story. The white kids sit outside and the black kids sit on the inside. And that is a problem for me, because the nine kids spent their hard time. I mean, let's be honest, if you're a teenager, you have so much to go through. Your family, you know, your education, figuring out what you're going to do with the rest of your life and not only did they want to have a better education, they had to fight for it. So when I see my fellow students acting as if it's not that serious, it bothers me. Not just because someone in my family is a part of the Little Rock Nine, but because I feel as though our education is being taken for granted. I feel so empowered at the fact that I don't have to fight for my education. I can simply walk in the classroom and sit down and get it. I don't have to have guards walk me in. I don't have to worry about an angry mob when I wake up in the morning. I don't have to worry about death threats. All I have to do is do the work. As far as integration within my school goes, I feel like it's not done. I feel like integration within the world is not done. Race relation has so much more to do. And like I said before, I feel like my generation is the one to strengthen it, to empower it, to make it go further. But we must start with communication because communication to me is key. We can't stop, we can't not have the conversations because they're uncomfortable, because they're awkward, because we don't want to step on anyone's toes. If that's the case, we'll never get anywhere. And we'll be able to stand still for many more years to come. And I would hate for all the hard work that any civil rights leader did fade away. Now me personally, I started to become interested in my history. I started to become interested in furthering along race relations. Like it was said, I am in Memory Project. And Memory Project, we don't only publish books about conversations that kids have with their elders or people that they know that had to do with civil rights. We also have these discussions that I'm having with you all today, daily. We talk about how we can encourage others to come together at our school. It's a shame that we go to a school that bled off of diversity, fought for it, and we can't have it within our own classrooms. It shames me that when I walk into an AP class, all I see are white faces. Now that's not the problem. The problem is education is not fought for anymore. They're afraid that they won't be with their friends anymore. They're afraid that they won't understand that they'll be left alone. And that shouldn't be the case. You have many people to converse with. They're just not the same skin color as you. As well as being in the Memory Project, I've also come up with a few ideas of my own. Currently, I'm working on having a Mix It Up Day. Now, I know you're probably all wondering, what is that? Where did that come from? Well, Mix It Up Day is a day once a week where all the students are not forced but urged to speak with somebody that they've never met before. Not of the same skin color, of course, but of different cultures, of different races. Expand your horizons, get to know new people. Because let's be honest. I mean, you can't move forward if you don't know anything. You can't move forward if you don't know where you come from. So please help me welcome to this stage Mr. Ernest Green, Dr. Terrence Roberts, Ms. Carlotta Walls-Lanier, and Mr. Mark Upti Grove. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Thank you very much. It is my great honor to welcome you three heroes to this stage. Senator Ellis very elegantly prefaced this session by telling your stories and giving a brief biographical profile of each of you. But I wonder if you could talk each of you about what led you to become enrolled in Little Rock High School in 1957. Ernie, we'll start with you as the oldest member of this group, the most senior member. Well, I saw it as an opportunity to get the best public education that they had to offer in Little Rock. I lived near Central, passed it practically every day. Those of us who, those of you who grew up in small southern towns, Little Rock was a place that had only one football stadium. Black school played one night, white school played the other night. I played in the band and I used to march up and down that field and look up and see the buildings which looked to be gigantic. Four or five times the size of the school that I was attending and I always wondered what could be going on inside something that large. The science courses, we got the hand-me-down books. That there were some courses they didn't offer physics at Horace Mann did at Central and it was that limited knowledge of what was going on and as well as I felt my energy level was stoked by the Montgomery bus boycott. I was aware of the till murder and paid a little attention to the 54 decisions. So it was a bit of ferment and also just a simple interest in trying to get what I thought was the best ticket for my education in Little Rock. Carlotta, what about you? Similar. I was really one who remembered Brown versus Board of Education even at 11 and 12. For some of you in the audience, you might remember a newspaper that was printed and published for kids and I think they are missing that today. It was called The Weekly Reader. And with that, it told you what was going on in the world, in our country and in the world. And I'll never forget a week after that decision. We discussed it not only in my home but it was discussed in my black school. It was discussed at the YWCA in my church in the community. So it was somewhat of a no-brainer. I really did expect integration to take place that next fall. And I was disappointed because, you see, I played softball living on the street of all African-Americans. Another street over was all white. There was this open field. And when school was out during the summertime, we played softball together. As Ernie mentioned, see, I never had a book, a new book, where I could put my name in it first. So when I would hear that they were getting new books in the fall, I was happy for them because that meant that their books were moving over to my school. So it was that hand-me-down of that separate so-called equal educational system that I grew up in. With that, I passed the school every day walking to the Black Junior Senior High School and at that time I wanted to be a doctor. And I knew in that biology lab that two kids were dissecting a frog where over at my school, it was 10 or 12 of us standing around the poor little frog trying to dissect it. So it was really about an access to an opportunity when I signed a sheet of paper that came around in April of 1957 asking or stating, really, it was not a recruitment in my homeroom class. It was a statement any of you who lived and gave street boundaries and have any intentions of attending Central to please sign the sheet of paper. I signed it, gave it to the guy behind me, didn't think another thing of it. Finally, I will be able to go to one of the top schools in the nation. I come from a family of contractors and my great-uncle helped build that school. And I knew that it was also one of the top 40 high schools in the country. On its letterhead, it said, you know, American Architects Institute stated it was the most beautiful high school in America. Now, I did not know at that time that it cost $1.5 million in 1927, but that was what it was, and it was imposing, and it had everything there. And I wanted a piece of that American dream, and that is why I did what I did. I was able to recall you didn't tell your parents. I did not. But they found out. Yes. Were they supportive? And they were very supportive, but you know what? It was not necessary. I didn't think to tell them. It was just the next step because from cradle on, all I ever heard was to, you know, no one can take knowledge away from you, that the road to success was through education. So when you're hearing that for your first 12, 14 years of your life, you do what you're supposed to do. And so I did just as I had been taught because the door was opening, and Brown v. Board gave me that opening. Right. And as I stated before, I knew what that meant. So with that, they didn't know until the registration card came in July. And they were very pleased. So that is really how it happened for me. I happened to run into Ernie at a concert and he asked me, are you going? And I said, yes. Who else is going? I said, I don't know. And I didn't. It was not a recruitment thing for me. It was just a decision that I made that this was the right step to take. Right. And Emmett Till really was that piece was something. And Rosa Parks was a person that I just looked up to as, I mean, for what she had done. So those are the sort of things that just kind of mess with this 14-year-old mind. Right. One of those other students who matriculated was Terrence Roberts. Ter, you were a 15-year-old junior. What led you to Little Rock Central High School? You know, for a long time during my childhood in Little Rock, I questioned what was going on because from what I could see, none of it really made any sense. The law said that we as black people were not to be full participants in anything, really. The separate but equal sort of oppressive law was enforced with vigor in Little Rock. There were unwritten rules about what black people could do and couldn't do. And I learned all of those. But it always left me wondering why. One of my initial thoughts was that I had probably been born in the wrong place. Maybe outside Little Rock there were maybe sane, reasonable people. But after a time, and I was able to move around a bit and find out that, you know, Little Rock was simply symptomatic of every place else. So that intensified my desire to do something. And when Brown v. Board was passing 54, I was 13 years old. I'll never forget. I had a feeling of hope that this will be a radical change. Unfortunately, that proved to be fairly naive. But when the opportunity came, I was already participant for this group of nine. No question about it. I didn't think there was another option for me. It made so much sense that we would have this opportunity because as Ernie and Carlotta said, this was our neighborhood school. This was a school we should have been in in the first place. My pupil assignment, you know, if you talk about neighborhood schools, why else would they put that in my neighborhood, right? So as I thought about it, I said, okay, this is probably not going to be done with ease because people will be opposed, but my naivete was exposed once again because I didn't think the opposition would be as fierce as it was, honestly. I thought people would come out and give voice to their opposition, go home, go to work, whatever people would do. But these folks were intent upon being there. The very presence was to be intimidating too. I'm so intimidating that we might voluntarily remove ourselves. But I figured, well, we'll see. Because I thought if the law has changed, that should carry some weight. It should possibly carry some weight. Even though members of the U.S. Congress had decided it didn't because over 100 of them signed their names to something we know as a Southern manifesto. And in that document, they said we will do whatever we can do, whatever is within our power to prevent implementation of this Brown decision. I thought that was pretty hard too. Turns out stuff like that is not so odd in this country after all. Carlotta and Ernie, I would ask you, did you expect the hostility that you saw on day one as you... Did you expect it? No, did you expect it? Oh, expected. Did you... I mean, you had clearly enrolled into the school to seize opportunity. Right. But did you expect the hostility that you faced? I'm with Terrence. I really expected that, yes, that there would be a group of people that didn't want us there. And that was okay. Okay? But I didn't expect the intensity and the length of time that it happened. Okay? I really did think that eventually once they got to know us that everything would just dissipate. But what I didn't count on was the attitudes and the way the adults acted. Okay? It was more about them supporting and encouraging their children or other kids, okay? To do certain things and to be that way. Very quickly, I just decided that this is a bunch of ignorant people. Okay? So... And this is their problem because we grew up understanding that you lived within the law. And as Terri mentioned, this was the law of the land. And I just felt that as long as I was within the law, I had a right to go there because Brown v. Board gave me that right. And the school board put their plan in place. I have a right to go there. And my father paid taxes just like everyone else. So, yes. I... So... I think the... None of us expected it to have the intensity that it did. But as Terrence and Colada have said, we watched the unfolding of the Supreme Court decision. We saw... We knew the quality, generally, the reputation that the school had. And that we felt, you know, after some period of time, I mean, you had to be, you know, oblivious to everything, not to expect that there would be some uproar. We... Clinton, Tennessee, the year before, Hoxie, Arkansas. You knew all of these places that resistance showed its... its head. But the first day we went there, none of us, including the city phobos, expected Orville Phobos to call out the National Guard to bar our entrance. And I'm standing there, you know, we are all standing there looking at these guardsmen who are about not much older than we are, with bannets drawn. And so something went on in my head to say, well, if they're working this hard to keep me out, it's got to be something going on inside there that I want to see. So it intensified my interest. Yeah, because all of the... Carlotta mentioned we signed this sheet of paper in the spring. And for most of us, we didn't pay any attention beyond that. All of my friends said that they were going to go. I said the first object lesson of life I learned was that, you know, your friends, when the moment of truth comes, many of them back away. And so of the nine, I was the only one in the 12th grade. All my other colleagues had backed away. But when they put up the resistance to try to keep us out, I think we all came to the same conclusion. Look, I'm going to this place. It's got to be something that's behind that curtain that I want to see. And if you're working that hard to keep me out, I know that this confirms that this is the place for me to be. When we see that footage, we see what's going on around Little Rock High School. What happened when you entered those doors? What was the experience like then? When we finally got in, we discovered that the opposition was so well organized that we really had to recalibrate our daily activity to maintain existence. Because I think without the presence of the army there, we may well have all been killed. There's no question. These folk were so angry. I think a lot of the kids in that school were angry because they had been told lies. They had been baptized in this notion of white superiority and this racist ideology. They were expecting that we would not be able to compete with them for one thing. So I think the fact that we showed up and showed them that we were not only able to compete with them, but they had to work hard to keep up with us. That was a problem. But it was problematic for us in that we had to suffer the consequences of their anger. Well, I always said part of the problem was this crowd was setting the curve. I mean, we were students and some of us were a lot smarter than others. My colleagues over here so that when we went into the classes, we were setting the curve in the class. And that really destroyed all these old views and visions that the segregationists had about what we could do. So we were competitive. We had the support of family, the nine of us. We had friends and relatives that were supportive. And I think we were committed to staying there that year to finish it out. And even though the school board told us that we couldn't participate in any extracurricular activities, I mean, we were all active in many things of the school we left. But, you know, like Brear Rabbit and the Browpats, they did us a favor because that year, we needed to concentrate all of our attention to finishing out that school year. So thanks to the school board, as they tried to limit us, they helped us giving us time to concentrate on our studies and not have to do band or choir or whatever else you do during your high school years. It was also a, I think not enough credit is given to the parents and you know the story of Daisy Bates and the Arkansas NAACP, but clearly parents at each of us had a sense that they believed in what we were doing. They had a vision about the future. They were willing to put at risk a lot of creature comforts, mortgages, car notes, all of that they did because they could see further down the road that this was going to be helpful to their kids. And at the end of the day, it would be helpful for Little Rock. Now, you told me 50 years later I'd still be talking about high school in 1957. I say you're absolutely crazy, but it succeeded at least I think all of our views of its importance. And, you know, I'm proud to be a part of the group. I'd like to reinforce that piece regarding the parents that I had the distinct opportunity to meet another Arkansas by the name of Maya Angelou 40 some odd years ago. And I'll never forget her using the terms heroes and she rose then. And I really did think about our parents being the true heroes and she rose because you don't understand that until you become a parent. And you think about all the things that they sacrificed for us to do as we did. But it was all of the things that they had learned from their parents as well. They recognize taking another step forward and they recognize that we were taking another step forward. I spoke to someone this afternoon and I was explaining to them about poll taxes. People didn't, you know, for my mother's soul poll taxes so that we had the right to vote. These are things that have been going on for years. And then we now have this reversal of trying to take those sorts of rights away from us. So it's just been building on a strong foundation that our forefathers had. I have just recently, when I was in Little Rock this past week, discovered that my father was in World War I. And he was involved in his battalion in a battle of argon forest in France and found all this out and 500 troops went in, only a couple of hundred were survivors. And I thought, you know, with all of that, when my dad came back to Little Rock in the 20s, he couldn't vote. He couldn't go to all the restaurants and movies. And yet he was in Europe fighting to defeat the Germans. So it is all of that that, you know, our families have experienced that I think conditioned and helped us believe that there was the right thing to do. There was the right place to be there and that we could compete and move forward. As you settled into that first year, 1957, 1958, what were the daily realities that you would face as a consequence of being a part of Little Rock High School as African-Americans? You know, the spittle, the name calling, the pushing down the steps, breaking into the lockers and destroying your homework to the point that it didn't take me very long to recognize I needed to carry my books with me all day. The fact that, you know, even carrying the books, walking down the hallway with a guard, they would get knocked out. You learn how to keep your rear to the wall because otherwise you get kicked in the rear. Your clothes being destroyed in gym classes, those sorts of things went on in the classroom, moving the chair away from you, you know. You know, one thing after another, I had this one nemesis that walked on the back of my heels and to that point that they bled, really. And the one thing that I had decided to do, we knew we couldn't retaliate and I was not that tight to do that sort of thing anyway. But I said, now, if she's going to walk on the back of my heels, she's going to work for it. So I became a very fast walker. And with that, I didn't recognize, I recognized, it was told to me later, everyone else seemed to have a military guard. I've always been asked the question, did you get to know your guard? No, I never did. I always had a different one Monday morning. And I found out later, it's because I walked into death. So anyway, they would have signed another guard. Terrence, what were the realities for you every day? I was afraid every day. I had never experienced that kind of fear in my life. You know, I wanted to quit every second. I thought, this is insane. You know, I'm putting myself in this position, potentially to be killed. It didn't feel good, didn't make me want to go running there every morning early to get in. But somehow it occurred to me that I had been brought to that place by those who had preceded me in life, people who saw the situation and understood the need to confront it and had actually given their lives. Thousands of people before me had died in this cause of liberty and freedom and justice. And so in spite of the fear, I would conclude, I cannot leave. That's how the day went for me. Trying to deal with that fear, trying to master it, trying to gain control over it so I could stand upright. Because the kind of fear I felt, I thought, before I had actually experienced it, that if any human being were ever that afraid, he or she just might fall over and die because it was overwhelming. Absolutely. Ernie? Well, I was, I think my major motivation was that being in the 12th grade, I had a laser vision about graduating. So I was directed and I figured that I had nine months, ten months, whatever that we had. And at the end of that, that I'd go on to other things. But that the more you got into it, I also found, figured much like Kalata, that the activity that I could bring to my nemesis was to remain there. What they wanted more than anything was to see us quit. And I wasn't going to give them that satisfaction. The day was one, I said it was like a bad job, you know? You knew you had to do it, but you thought many times this isn't what I signed up for. But the more that people pushed and resisted, the more it indicated, at least to me, that this was really something that was worth going through. And it obviously was more than just our going to classes. And the reinforcement we got over the course of the year, mail and fan mail, this is all before the internet. We'd probably really been inundated with the messages. But we got a fair amount of mail and cards from all across the world. And what really kept us grounded, though, is that we weren't allowed to bask in this many celebrity status, is that our family said, you got to go to school. You got to do the work. You got to study every night. You got to do the term papers. You got to do the lab reports. And this is what we're going to keep you committed to. And they did. And when you look around, it's a Little Rock Nine. We all finished college. We got a couple of PhDs out of the crowd. We're now second, third generation. Some have grandchildren. And education for each of the kids that we've raised has been center point. I don't know, we got professors and politicians. But that idea that our parents put into us that education was a passport to something else was what we bought. And, you know, when you turn, when you look at it, it makes a lot of sense. It was the right way to go. So many soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement were schooled in passive resistance. Jackie Robinson, when he integrated the Major League Baseball ten years before you went to Little Rock High School, was told to give a period of years of not fighting back. Were you encouraged or asked when you enrolled in Little Rock not to fight back to just hold back and not fight the resistance? Well, it was a litany of things that we could and could not do when we sat before the superintendent of schools. And that was number one, no retaliation. So, you know, as Ernie also mentioned, all of it was more of a litany of things that we could not do, which was not participating in the extracurricular activities. So, but the retaliation part was a known fact that you weren't supposed to retaliate. And, you know, when I think about 114 of us signing up, okay, electing to go, and 39 of us being selected by the superintendent of schools or whatever board that might be. I'm sure they looked at our grades, our character, our churchgoing and community involvement and stuff. To me, it goes back to that Jackie Robinson test. So, that's how I view that whole thing years later, not then. But I do look back on it and say that we just happened to be that group of 39 that they felt comfortable with allowing us to go to Central. Now, what happened to the other 30? You have to ask them. But you fit a certain psychological profile that they were comfortable with. I feel that, okay, I have no documentation to give you, but it's pretty obvious. The great mystery of Little Rock Central is what was the process that went in to select the students to transfer. And I always said that, you know, one was it was partially self-selection because the number went from the 30s down to nine of us. And to me, the common thread was, one, wanting to be there to pursue the education, and two, having strong family, guardians, somebody that didn't think you were off the edge wanting to go there. And that was a certain practical factor. There were nine of us and there were 2,000 other students there. So it didn't take you long to figure out, you weren't going to fight your way every day through every problem. So out thinking, you know, the resistors was a game that we were able to engage in and win. And, you know, they've heard me say this, I went back for my 50th high school reunion. I couldn't find anybody who was opposed to my being at Central High School. They are all my closest friends now. That's what you call historical revisionism. We've seen a lot of that. Terrence, what is your most enduring memory of your year at Little Rock Central? Wow, that's a good question. I guess a few competing memories, but one that truly stands out. I had this personal attacker, I guess you'd call him my personal, I don't know, secret agent, who followed me around, wanted to beat me up. He was in PE with me. And one day he was involved in doing all these things, and the coach saw him going about his business. And there were others who joined in from time to time, but the coach said, look, I'm sick and tired of all you kids sneaking up behind Roberts and picking on him. If you were men and not cowards, you wouldn't do that. He called him out. He said, if you were men, you would challenge him to the mat. And he points to the wrestling mat. Now, this is something that the coach and I hadn't worked out. I'm a little concerned. But these guys, they took him up on it, and this kid who had been my personal assailant took the first spot. And I literally concluded that I was going to die that day because when I looked at their faces, and I looked at the coach too, and he was one of these mono-i-mono guys who felt everything could be settled by personal confrontations. I couldn't expect too much help from him. So I decided, OK, I'm going to die. But if I am going to die, then this kid is going to die first. And my reasoning was that since he wanted to be wherever I was, I was just about to leave the universe. So he would have to leave too. Right. So I would have to become the instrument of his demise since I was the only one who understood this entire dynamic. We get on a mat, and he comes at me, and he unfortunately had warned the school that day a set of military dog tags with a chain around his neck. Well, I quickly seized that chain as an instrument to restrict his air supply. So the coach actually saw what was going on because I was totally committed to this enterprise. And he said, OK, that's enough. That's enough. You shoot us outside. But that stands out today because I put myself at great risk because I knew that by doing that the opposition was going to increase, and it did. So I had to deal with that. But I learned a lesson from that, and that is not to give in to those impulses so readily. Play it cool. Maybe there was another way out. I don't know what it would have been at that point, but there usually is some other way out without having to put yourself in that kind of circumstance. Right. Carlotta, do you have a memory that burns brighter than the rest? Well, I can't say brighter than the rest. I have really a couple of stories. But as a senior, going back to Central, because schools were closed, the 11th grade year, and litigation took place, and then I went back. The lost year. The lost year. So it was Jefferson, Thomas, and I were the only two left of the Little Rock Nine that did return. And we did not have the guards at that time. And the leadership was trying to not be the same as it was in 1957, 58, but still, again, there was that element that you had to deal with. And I dealt with it the best that I could. And I was looking forward to graduation, just as Ernie talked about his senior year. And my home was bombed in February 9th of 1960. And that changed the whole feeling because it was a job for me to go to school every day. It just became a job from 57 on. But I needed that diploma. See, that was to validate everything I had gone through in 57, 58. And I needed that diploma to say Little Rock Central High School because I needed that for my applications to colleges other than where I knew I could go. So this is that thinking that was going on. So to go back to school, I was determined after the night of the bombing of my home with my mother and my sisters there, I was determined to go to school that next day, that they had not gotten to me yet. So I'll never forget being interviewed by Amsterdam News and wanting to know whether, you know, how did you feel about it and will you continue to go to Central? And I did tell them yes or die trying. So that was something that I'll never forget. But to finish that, I also attended my 50th anniversary in 2010. And I had this encounter with one of my fellow students and he came up to me and just was constantly talking. I had just met his wife and he said, Carlotta, you might not remember me, but we were in geometry class together. And I recognized the last name when he said that. And he said we only exchanged four words during that time. And he said, do you know what they were? And I said, no. He said, you came in with all your books in your arms and your purse and you were putting it down and your purse fell on the floor. I picked it up and handed it to you. You said, thank you. And I said, you're welcome. Now in 50 years, that has stayed on his mind. And in my view, it was a lost opportunity for two people who were in geometry class who didn't, who could have learned more about each other if things had been somewhat different. Because really, just think about that for 50 years, this is what you remember. And I just, it just burned in my soul really when we had that discussion at the 50th anniversary of all the 50th class reunion. So did you see, let me just, for the audience, Carlotta was a freshman, 14-year-old freshman in 1957, 1958, when Terrence and Ernie were there. The following year, Carlotta sophomore year, a little rock central, junior year, I'm sorry, the school was closed and then Carlotta returned for her senior year and you graduated in 1960. All the high schools were closed. All the high schools in Little Rock were closed as a consequence of the integration crisis. But it seems like the hostility did not abate which I find remarkable. Though you had integrated Little Rock several years before when you graduated, the very year you graduated, your house was bombed. Was there any change when you went back to Little Rock? Was there any acceptance, any greater acceptance of your being there? When I went back in 1959, 1960, that's what I was saying that the leadership, meaning the student council, the president, so forth of the school really did try in their way to change a few things that had taken place in 57, 58. They did not want to go through what we had all gone through in our sophomore year. But at the same time, you have that group of people, group of young people whose vision is to make sure that you don't complete what you plan to do, which is to go to school, learn as much as you possibly can and move on, okay? So, unfortunately, you're going to have that all the time. Within your schools, you're going to have a percentage of kids who really don't want to go to school. They want to make things difficult for someone else. So that was going on. And yes, the community, too, that there was, the White Citizens Council was very unhappy with the fact that the litigation that had taken place that past year had ruled against them. Now, what group of people is okay with 3,800 kids not having a high school to go to? What group of people want to keep ignorance among their children so that they won't have to sit next to a black kid to go to school? And that was the thinking that was going on. And it was, you know, you look back on that and it just saddens me to think that, you know, we still have that element in our country. And I feel we have that element in our country today in some places. I think it plays more than an element, actually. And your point, Mark, about where the things had changed. In 1998, the Little Rock School Board hired me as a desegregation consultant. I worked for them for four years. And the dynamics of that are quite interesting because I knew they were not hiring me in good faith. They wanted to dangle me out as PR, public relations, to let the world know that they were really trying hard to achieve these goals of desegregation. They weren't. But I agreed to take the job anyway with the full intent of engaging in guerrilla warfare once I got there because that made the most sense. Well, I'm being paid, right? But I knew that the school board would eventually find out that I wasn't doing what they thought I might be doing which was going along with their program. And after four years, they fired me. But I had anticipated that. In fact, I told the superintendent, you're going to discover what's really going on here and you're going to fire me. But he protested, oh, no, no, we're genuine. We're interested. No. And so when questions like that come up, I have to point out that it's not a matter of surprise that things haven't changed at all because of who we have been as a country. The surprise would be that there'd be any change at all, honestly. Because prior to the Brown decision in 1954, it was legal and constitutional to discriminate in this country. And that had gone on for over 300 years. You don't do something for 300 years without it having a tremendous lasting impact on the psyche, on the institutions, on the philosophy, on the programs. These things are woven into the fabric of our lives. Well, you folk are in Texas. You know what I'm talking about. I think each of us has a series of stories. I, with this interest in science and this course in physics, the instructor when I came into the course said, well, you missed three weeks. I've given three tests and you've flunked all three of them. So at that point I knew I was starting behind the eight ball. But as intervenors and resources that people that were willing to help when Daisy Bates and my family knew I was having trouble with this course, Mrs. Bates and the NAACP went out and got me a tutor. The tutor turned out to be a biophysicist from the University of Arkansas Medical School that tutored me every week throughout that year to complete that course. Now, without his help, I wouldn't have gotten through physics. And I think that there were while we had these resistors and I always said they were on somebody's payroll because they had a nine to five job just trying to agonize us. But at the end of the day, they probably could either warm out Gloria Ray came to school with a science project that today would dazzle any number of scientists I remember carrying. We'd go to school in this Army station wagon. And in fact, another little piece of history, the general in charge of the military unit was General Walker, who turned out to be a real right wing zealot. But when he was commanding the soldiers overseeing us, he was on the ball. But we adapted. We knew how to survive. We became the first group of students to carry books from class to class. We were the early backpackers. We didn't put anything in a locker because we knew that as soon as they assigned lockers, I'm sure the Little Rock School Board must have paid for more lockers than any place else in the world because every time they give us a new locker, our antagonists would figure a way to break it in and steal our notes. So we never carried notes. But all of this, while we couldn't see 50 years down the road, we knew enough that we were trying to change something for the future in Little Rock. And to see this country at this point now, you know, here we are competing with China, with India. I mean, we are a multi-ethnic world even if you don't want to admit it. And that the Little Rocks hopefully become standard barriers that you won't repeat that again, won't let that happen. Figure a new way to do it, to include people and not exclude them. You became the first African American graduate of Little Rock Central in 1958 and your parents attended your graduation with a guest. Can you talk a little bit about who that guest was and why he was there? Well, you know, graduation I was, I had an image of that I couldn't, ceremonies and ceremonies for our graduation were big and extravagant and opulent and you had thousands of people in this football stadium. And actually, the principal told me that he would send me my diploma in the mail. I said, hey, buddy, after all this, you got to send this diploma in the mail. I'm going to appear at this ceremony. But there were threats that, you know, we were going to be assassinated and the violence was going to occur at the ceremony. It turned out, and unbeknownst to me only at the end of it, that that guest was Dr. Martin Luther King and that he was speaking at a college 45 miles from Little Rock, he knew the baits well and wanted to come up and witness my graduation. I like to say that I'm probably in a small category of people that Martin Luther King came to the high school graduation. Quite remarkable. There's an old saying that harboring anger and resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Actually, I looked this up on Google today and it's either Buddha who said this or a fisher, Princess Leia, not sure which. You choose. But it's a great expression and it makes a lot of sense. How do you get over the resentment that you certainly would bear an inexperience like this? How do you shed that? You know, that's a very good question. In some ways, you have to fight to make it happen, but I think for us, as I've interacted with this group of nine, include Jeff and this, but yes, yes, we've had a legacy of how to deal with this stuff. So when you have that in your background, we were raised in the church for one thing. You know, they don't call the south the Bible belt for nothing. You spend a lot of time in church. I often say, you know, if you spend as much time in church as I did, some of that stuff will rub off on you. I can remember the first time I ever heard the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It resonated. It made sense. And my mom helped me understand. She said, Terry Roberts, you cannot afford to hate others because they don't contribute. In order for your hatred to work, you have to pay for you and them. You have to buy two tickets and that's a drain on your reserve. I gave it up early on in life. I chose not to hate. And when you do that consciously make that decision, you are not vulnerable to the whims of others. She also said what other people think about you is none of your business, which also helps very much so because it's easier to forgive when you're not all caught up in their strange thinking about who you might be or not be. So in some ways it's difficult or it could be hard. I mean it could be easy but I think you have to really spend time asking yourself if that's what you really want. If you really want to be a forgiving person, you have to work hard to achieve that. I think for us as a country of people, we have a history of violence, honestly. That's more our legacy. Peace and forgiveness is not our strong point. We like to use force and so I think we have to fight against that. My wife and I were at a house party not too long ago recently and we noted at one point that we were alone in one part of the house and everybody else was crammed into one room and we could hear a television blaring and we went and looked over the heads of the people and they were watching something that I later learned was UFC. You heard of this? It's I think the ultimate fighting championship. These are gladiators who try and kill each other for entertainment and I thought, wow, that is such a good illustration of our commitment to violence. The football, well, what more can I say? I know. Especially in Texas, right? Carlotta, how did you overcome that? Something similar to Terrence, where I came from, I was never taught to hate. The forgiveness part, I just never got to that part. I just ignored it because it was ignorance to me. I just didn't hate people. To this day, I don't like to use the word hate because even if it means I hate a particular food or I hate a particular class or what have you because I think that that drains on you. I think it's a negative word there that can really just eat at you. That group of people who didn't want us going to school with their kids talked about classes sitting next to each other, being in plays together and all that sort of thing. I like white people, but I really don't get a buzz sitting next to you. That's why I'm sitting here, by the way. We had a really sick between us. You're just another human being. Fortunately, that is how I grew up in my family. It was just not one of those things that because they were white and because they were doing what they were doing to me that I hated them or used those terms. I stayed above it. I decided it was their problem, not mine. Because I had this right and I was going to exercise that right. As I said before, and I'm sure that they did too, they played with white kids in the summertime, too. Or had exchanges or engagements with other kids. You just didn't go to school together. That's how I looked at it. To me, it was their problem. It was their part that Carlotta left out. Because I had that same question you remember. We were in LA having breakfast some years ago. It occurred to me that I didn't know how you had handled all that stuff. You know what she said to me. She said, Terri, I knew better than to behave like they were behaving. But I felt pity for them and I didn't want them to know that I pity them. She actually cared about them. Concerned about their feelings. I think one of the other things that we all knew that we had a life in front of us. And for me, as I was receiving that diploma, I'm thinking what else is out in the future. So that we were all future-oriented and that spending a lot of capital and energy for these guys, it wasn't worth it. We weren't going to invest in it. And that at 16, 17, 15, I think all realized that there was more to life. In fact, I'm going to write a book and I'm going to say something other than high school. That there was a future out there. I mean, there was additional education. There was careers. There was family. All of that was for me and I think for my colleagues forward-thinking and that to spend personal capital and energy worrying about some guy who now comes up to me and says, you don't remember me. But I was the one that, you know, through the wet towels and the visit course or something like that. And now they all want us to give them our papal excuse so that when they get to heaven, they'll be able to say that Ernie Green said I was okay. But it's the whole question about non-violence. Non-violence was a practical issue for us as well. I mean, one is you weren't going to fight every day and that there was some practical reason for adapting it and that I think one of the beauties of the modern civil rights movement was that Dr. King taught most people to use your brain to outthink your enemy rather than to try and do it with weapons or your fists. Terrence was talking a moment ago about how we progressed since 1957. Have we gone as far as you had expected as a country on the issue of race? I mean, I think we all realize that there's distance yet to accomplish. You know, you look around at the issues of places like Ferguson, Missouri, and others that spring up. But this country, it seems to me at some point, has to wake up to the fact that its strength is its diversity. That you're coming into a world in which lots of people, different colors, are important. I mean, our president is just coming back from China. That you've seen what the health pandemic, you may not know where Guinea is. You didn't know three months ago. Today you know Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, where they are located. We're in this interconnected world. And soon as I think the average person realizes that America's strength is in its race relations, not its deficit. And that we have to spend time seeing that as positive capital, not a negative capital. I mean, this library is a testament to getting part of the way, the Poting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and that whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent socialist, that you need the other person on the other side of the street, the other side of the communities. And the sooner we figure out that that's an asset for us, the better off we'll be as a nation. I'm going to ask, before we take audience questions, for Amari to come back to the stage. I'll go to the podium and then we'll take your questions. Amari, would you come back, please? If you can line up your questions. But Amari, I'm going to ask the first question to you. You alluded to the fact that there are still issues on race at Little Rock Central High School. What would you change to at Little Rock Central High School so that we could better fulfill our promise as a nation as it relates to race? I think the first thing that needs to take place is for us to be able, like I said, to have those conversations. Just open the floor for us to be able to get to know one another on a personal level so that it's not so much as we don't know about each other. Using that as an excuse not to talk. Because I think I've heard that come up a lot in our memory project meetings. The leader will ask questions like, why do you think that the students don't really communicate? And that's always the first thing to say, oh, it's a comfort thing, they don't really know each other. So I think opening the floor for communication will take a step towards changing things a little bit. Good answer. We take our first question, sir. Mark, first of all, Michael Morton also referred to that quotation you made so you could add to the citations. Carlotta, you said that there were only two of the nine that's second year that you attended Central. Were there additional black students that joined those two? Yes. It was five of us in 59, 60, two seniors, Jefferson and I, and two juniors, and one sophomore. So it was only five that in my senior year. What happened after that, because when I graduated May 30th, 1960, I caught the first thing smoking the next day. So I just, I can't tell you how it evolved to where it is today. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Hi, I have two quick questions. But I first want to say thank you for what you did for all of us. And secondly, and secondly, more parochially, as a professor, I want to thank you. Your story gets told to my students both in law school and undergraduate every semester. And I think if I did one thing right, I did that. They're still riveted by it. Wow. And I usually do it through the eyes on the prize segment. And I have my two quick questions. So I wondered, is there anything about that video or the other famous stories, telling of your story that you think really gets something wrong or miscommunicate something? And my second question is, I've heard a lot about the students, the administration, so forth. I've never heard a lot about the teachers in the high school. And if they were supportive to what you were doing or if it was a mixed story. Well, the reports, the archival footage is perhaps the most consistently correct source because that was filmed on the spot. The interpretations, I would say all of them have something wrong, simply because of human imperfection and allegiance to preferred story or way of telling the story. So I think students are better served with the primary source. And the others can be taken and used, but they have to really be vetted very carefully in order for them to be effective tools of learning. In terms of teachers, I always think of them as being arrayed along a continuum. One end, that group who hated us with vile passion. And the other end, those who supported us. And then everyone else in the middle. For safety's sake, I divided them into two groups that year, the ones who supported us and the rest, just to be sure. Thank you. Ma'am. I'm wondering about your friends, the ones that you left from your other schools. How did they react to what you did and did you have any problems with them? Generally speaking, they were supportive or they would say, no way could I put up with that. So, you know, their attitudes overall, you're here, I'm sorry. I think overall that they were supportive of us doing a going to school there. And, you know, as far as the social activities, we had to go back there anyway for anything that was on the social basis. My experience was that it was a core of friends that were very helpful to me. And while they, I'm sure, had reservations of whether they would have done what we did, they've always been there in our corner and included me in all the activity that they had going on. Last question. Ma'am. Hi. My question is a little bit tied towards kind of the next evolution or the next step. What do you see as the next evolution of race relations and how do we, as young people, start to help make progress to build on, you know, the fights that you and generations before us have fought to get us to where we are today? Because obviously it's not done yet. I kind of like to have you erase that term race relations from your middle map. I find it to be somewhat nonproductive in that it reduces this whole thing to interactions between individuals. It's much more than that. It's not about, quote, race relations. It's about what are we going to do as a people who share a very honorous history? How are we going to extricate ourselves from all of the stuff that has been implanted in our surroundings as a consequence of that? We know how to get along with each other. We just choose not to. So that's all very quickly. But the other stuff will require a bit more work on our part. Thank you. We take one more over here on the other side. Hi. My name is Alexandria Drake. I'm a graduate student here doing research on education of African-American students. And I wanted to know, how did your teachers at, I think you mentioned Horace Mann High School, the school that you attended before going to Central, how did they prepare you for this experience? I come out of a family of teachers. The way they prepared you if you came home with less than a A that you'd have to explain it. I think one of the things that will take some time, but Little Rock was also one of the cases of teacher pay equity that in most southern communities there was a significant differential between white and black teachers and what they got paid. And there was a case in Little Rock before our situation involving a teacher, Sue Cowan Williams, who sued the Little Rock school board for equal pay. And she was supported by a group of teachers, including my mother and aunt, who helped pool together their money for two years to support this teacher. The lawyer that represented this woman was a lawyer by the name of Marshall, Thurgood Marshall. So in most of these communities, there was something going on before we went to school. And that I think it's important for everybody to understand that this was a long-term effort. It involved lots of people and that while there were nine of us at Central, and that's the picture that you see, if you look over our shoulders, the team behind us was enormous and the events were such that it was more than just our going to Central High School. We had a Civil Rights Summit last April where many came to the stage, including four presidents, and they talked about Lyndon Johnson's courage and all that he did for civil rights. And I believe that Lyndon Johnson will be known as the civil rights president. That's what we will think about Lyndon Johnson first and foremost. But he wanted to be known as the education president. He signed many laws to that end. But he believed that if he was the education president, if he gave all Americans equal access to a good education, there would be no need for civil rights in this country because people would have opportunity. It wouldn't matter if you were white or black or yellow or brown or purple with pink polka dots. If you had a good education, you could seize opportunity. And I want to thank all of you for everything you have done to give those in this country opportunity. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you all.