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- 'They Didn't Want Me There': Remembering The Terror Of School Integration (38 min)
NPR WHYY Fresh Air, January 15, 2018. Host Dave Davies interviews Melba Pattillo Beals, who was one of nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
- Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony for the Little Rock Nine (75 min)
November 9, 1999, President Clinton and members of Congress honored nine former Little Rock, Arkansas high school students with Congressional Gold Medals. Known as the "Little Rock Nine," they were the first African American students bussed to white public schools under new desegregation legislation in 1957. These former students were honored for their courage and determination in helping end segregation in Southern schools. The “Little Rock Nine” were Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Echford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo Beals, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls.
- Melba Pattillo Beals author website
In 1957, Melba Beals was one of the nine African American students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. While her white schoolmates were planning their senior prom, Melba was facing the business end of a double-barreled shotgun, being threatened with lynching by rope-carrying tormentors, and learning how to outrun white supremacists who were ready to kill her rather than sit beside her in a classroom