[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 148 (Tuesday, October 2, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2048-E2050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        WHY INTEGRATION MATTERS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, October 2, 2007

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce two stories 
written in the Washington Post on September 25, 2007 entitled, ``A 
Little Rock Reminder'' and ``The Legacy of Little Rock'', in 
recognition of the 50th anniversary of the integration of the school 
system of Little Rock, AR, by a brave group of Black children who came 
to be known as ``The Little Rock Nine''.
  Integration has been a long and difficult process here in the United 
States. Only 50 years have passed since President Dwight Eisenhower 
decided to send soldiers to protect and defend the newly acquired 
rights of nine Black students to go to a previously all White school. 
Those brave Black students who endured the difficulties of starting the 
process of desegregation in schools in 1957 should be remembered and 
appreciated today, on the anniversary, and everyday.
  It has been proven that integration is a key factor in the success of 
our society. A school where all races and nationalities work together 
is giving their students more than classes; they are teaching them the 
correct way to live, in harmony with the world. In addition it has been 
proven that an integrated learning environment leads to greater 
academic success.
  Our society today still has a long way to go but it is a much 
healthier one than 50 years ago. These children were brave enough to 
understand what their parents and other leaders of their community 
knew--that they deserve the same rights as the next one; they too are 
citizens of the United States and all it represents. Their efforts need 
to be commended.

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2007]

  A Little Rock Reminder: Nine Pioneers Showed Why School Integration 
                                Matters

                           (By Juan Williams)

       Fifty years ago this week, President Dwight Eisenhower 
     risked igniting the second U.S. civil war by sending 1,000 
     American soldiers into a Southern city. The troops, with 
     bayonets at the end of their rifles, provided protection for 
     nine black students trying to get into Little Rock's Central 
     High School. Until the soldiers arrived, the black teenagers 
     had been kept out by mobs and the Arkansas National Guard, in 
     defiance of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling ending school 
     segregation.
       The black children involved became the leading edge of a 
     social experiment. Their lives offer answers to the question 
     of what happens to black children who attend integrated 
     schools, a question underscored by the recent Supreme Court 
     ruling that voluntary school integration plans in Louisville 
     and Seattle are unconstitutional.
       The June decision said a focus on mixing students based on 
     their skin color violates every student's right to be judged 
     as an individual without regard to race. The ruling

[[Page E2049]]

     confirmed a political reality: America long ago lost its 
     appetite for doing whatever it takes--busing, magnet schools, 
     court orders--to integrate schools. The level of segregation 
     in U.S. public schools has been growing since 1988, reversing 
     the trend toward integration triggered by Brown v. Board of 
     Education.
       The movement away from school integration is glaring. The 
     Civil Rights Project found in 2003 that the nation's 27 
     biggest school districts were ``overwhelmingly'' segregated 
     with black and Latino students. Nationwide today, almost half 
     of black and Latino children are in schools where less than 
     10 percent of the students are white. Those essentially 
     segregated schools have a large percentage of low-income 
     families and, according to researchers, ``difficulty 
     retaining highly qualified teachers.'' Meanwhile, the average 
     white student attends a school that is 80 percent white and 
     far more affluent than the schools for minority students.
       This trend toward isolation of poor and minority students 
     has consequences--half of black and Latino students now drop 
     out of high school.
       Integrated schools benefit students, especially minorities. 
     Research on the long-term outcomes of black and Latino 
     students attending integrated schools indicates that those 
     students ``complete more years of education, earn higher 
     degrees and major in more varied occupations than graduates 
     of all-black schools.''
       That conclusion is reflected in the lives of the Little 
     Rock Nine, who represent the black middle class that grew 
     rapidly as better schools became open to black people during 
     the 1960s and '70s.
       Ernest Green, 65, who became the first black student to 
     graduate from Central High, is the most prominent of the 
     nine. He earned a master's degree in sociology and worked in 
     the Carter and Clinton administrations. He is director of 
     public finance in Washington for Lehman Brothers.
       Melba Pattillo Beals, 65, chairs the African American 
     history department at Dominican University in River Forest, 
     IL, and wrote an award-winning book about her experiences at 
     Central High; Elizabeth Eckford, 65, is a probation officer 
     in Arkansas; Gloria Ray Karlmark, 64, moved to Sweden to work 
     for IBM and later founded and edited the magazine Computers 
     in Industry; Carlotta Walls LaNier, 64, started a real estate 
     company in Colorado; Terrence Roberts, 65, is a psychologist 
     in California; Jefferson Thomas, 64, fought in Vietnam and 
     worked in government in Ohio for nearly 30 years; Minniejean 
     Brown Trickey, 66, worked in the Clinton administration and 
     is a visiting writer at Arkansas State University; and Thelma 
     Mothershed Wair, 66, became a teacher.
       Part of their success comes from their ability to mix 
     easily with black and white people and to comfortably join 
     the social and professional networks that segregation kept 
     from black people. In fact, most of the nine worked in mostly 
     white organizations. And four of the nine married white 
     people (three black women married white men, and one black 
     man married a white woman).
       In her book ``Turn Away Thy Son,'' Arkansas native 
     Elizabeth Jacoway notes that the nine never take a group 
     picture with white spouses or mixed-race children. Jacoway 
     believes they don't want to take away from black pride in 
     their achievement or reignite segregationist fears about 
     interracial sex.
       Terrence Roberts, who went on to become a psychology 
     professor, thinks ``fear of black people in the family'' is 
     still a driving force pulling Americans away from integrated 
     schools. Ernest Green, whose first wife was white, calls it 
     the ``zipper issue. . . sex and race are highly 
     combustible.''
       The interracial daughter of Minniejean Brown Trickey, 
     Spirit Trickey, works as a Park Service tour guide at a 
     memorial to the events at Central High. She says visitors 
     regularly ask why so many of the nine broke the taboo against 
     interracial marriage.
       ``My answer is that the Little Rock Nine followed the 
     principles of nonviolence,'' she said. ``They married who 
     they fell in love with. But it is telling that so many people 
     ask about it. It tells me where we are today.''

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2007]

The Legacy of Little Rock: Fifty Years Ago, He and 8 Others Became the 
         Faces of Integration. Now He Is a Sign of Its Success.

                        (By Avis Thomas-Lester)

       Ernest G. Green Jr. sees much of the world now from a top 
     floor comer office on K Street, just blocks from the White 
     House and a very long way from where he started.
       His BlackBerry holds the phone numbers of powerful men: 
     former president Bill Clinton; Robert L. Johnson, founder of 
     Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the Charlotte 
     Bobcats; former ambassador Andrew Young; and three candidates 
     for president of the United States.
       He spends his days negotiating multimillion-dollar deals as 
     managing director of public finance for Wall Street stalwart 
     Lehman Brothers with clients including the City of New York 
     and the State of Connecticut. He has a big house in Northwest 
     Washington, ``a beautiful wife, three wonderful kids'' and a 
     lot of gratitude for the circumstances that catapulted him 
     from segregated Little Rock into U.S. history as one of nine 
     students to integrate Central High School 50 years ago today.
       ``It has been a tremendous boost for me,'' said Green, who 
     turned 66 on Saturday. ``It provided me with opportunities I 
     never would have otherwise had. I had a tremendous window 
     into the last half of 20th century.''
       Green returned to his home town this weekend for events 
     commemorating the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of 
     Central High. Five decades ago, Green and eight other 
     students were escorted into the school by the U.S. Army's 
     101st Airborne Division under orders from President Dwight 
     Eisenhower after Gov. Orval Faubus used the state's National 
     Guard to block the integration effort.
       In the year that followed, Green and the others, who came 
     to be known as the Little Rock Nine, were tripped on the 
     stairs, attacked in the halls and pushed out of lunchroom 
     lines. Teachers and administrators largely ignored them. The 
     few white students who befriended them were subjected to ill 
     treatment as well.
       ``Clearly, none of us anticipated that it would be as 
     difficult as it was,'' said Green, the first of the nine to 
     graduate. ``But once we got there, all nine of us knew how 
     important it was to stay. Backing down was not an option.''
       His story is a testament to the potential of forced 
     integration, a remedy widely debated now as many urban school 
     districts become resegregated. Green said people miss out 
     when they don't mingle with those who are different from 
     themselves. ``We need to make sure children understand that 
     they are more similar than different.''
       Green never set out to become an icon of the civil rights 
     movement, with a movie made of his life and a congressional 
     medal to his name. What he did, he said, was simply step out 
     of his comfort zone.
       ``Too many blacks today,'' he said, ``opt for comfort over 
     taking a chance that might change their lives. We have to 
     work hard to break through our comforts.''
       Many wouldn't consider a childhood in the segregated South 
     a comfortable place, but Green has fond memories of growing 
     up at the comer of 21st and Pulaski. His father, Ernest Sr., 
     who died when Green was 13, was a janitor at the post office; 
     his mother, Lothaire, taught in Little Rock schools for 43 
     years.
       He, his sister, Treopia, and his brother, Scott, learned 
     about taking a stand from their mother. In the 1940s, she 
     supported the efforts of black teacher Susie Morris, who, 
     with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Thurgood Marshall, 
     sued the Little Rock schools, demanding equal pay. His mother 
     opened their home to Marshall when he was in town working on 
     the case.
       Green grew up riding past the impressive edifice of Central 
     High School, considered the best school in town. The name was 
     stamped into the secondhand books that taught him U.S. 
     history, algebra and chemistry. As a member of the marching 
     band--he played tenor saxophone--at segregated Horace Mann 
     High School, he had marched on Central's field.
       ``We didn't have a stadium, so the black schools played on 
     the field one night and the white schools another,'' he 
     recalled.
       Green was 13 when the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on 
     arguments by Marshall, outlawed school segregation in the 
     Brown v. Board of Education case. Even so, many officials in 
     Southern states vehemently refused to carry out the order.
       No such sentiment was evident in Little Rock in 1957, which 
     had a progressive reputation, Green said. Blacks owned 
     businesses. There was a thriving black middle class. The 
     public libraries and city buses were integrated, as was the 
     University of Arkansas campus. Several Arkansas school 
     districts had voluntarily integrated.
       It was against this backdrop that the Little Rock school 
     board decided to integrate.
       ``I heard about it on the radio that they were looking for 
     students interested in going to Central,'' said Minnijean 
     Brown Trickey, another of the Little Rock Nine. ``It started 
     off that there were 23 of us, but by the time we got to 
     school that first day, there were only nine.''
       It was Green's idea to attend Central High, and his mother, 
     like the other parents, supported the decision. ``They had 
     some idea of what it would do to change the opportunities for 
     all the black folks in Little Rock if we were able to 
     integrate the school,'' he said.
       Green said they were all thunderstruck by the level of 
     resistance.
       ``We didn't think there would be a confrontation,'' he 
     said. ``Orval Faubus was regarded as a progressive white 
     Southerner. My mother had voted for him as governor. He 
     didn't have an image of being a firebrand segregationist or 
     racist.''
       On Sept. 4, the students were denied entry by guardsmen and 
     racists yelling epithets. After the NAACP took the case to 
     court, they were allowed in on Sept. 23 but had to leave 
     early because of fears of violence. Two days later, with an 
     escort from the 101st Airborne, they were admitted.
       For four weeks, things were relatively quiet. Soldiers 
     escorted the nine black students to class. Many avid 
     segregationists kept their children at home.
       ``Once they saw we weren't leaving, they started to trickle 
     back in,'' Green said. Soon, the harassment started.
       As the only senior, Green was a prominent target.
       ``It seemed to me that one of the things that would drive 
     them crazy was if I were to be successful,'' he recalled. 
     ``So I was determined to stick it out that whole year.''
       Each morning, the black students would gather at one of 
     their homes or at the home

[[Page E2050]]

     of Daisy Bates, the legendary Arkansas NAACP president, and 
     her husband, L.C. Bates, founder of the Arkansas State Press, 
     the state's leading black newspaper.
       The hostility didn't subside until the day before Green's 
     graduation.
       ``There were a number of white kids who got up the nerve to 
     come over and congratulate me for getting through the year,'' 
     he said.
       The principal urged Green to take his diploma and go home 
     without attending the commencement ceremony.
       ``Local authorities were afraid there would be some attempt 
     to do physical harm to me, but I was convinced that I had 
     angels looking over me,'' Green said. ``I figured I had gone 
     through [too much] not to enjoy the benefits of the 
     service.''
       As it turned out, Martin Luther King Jr., who had gained 
     prominence with the Montgomery bus boycott 2 years earlier, 
     was in Arkansas.
       ``He came up the evening of the ceremony to sit with my 
     mother, aunt and family,'' Green said. ``I didn't know he was 
     in the audience until after the ceremony was over.''
       The next five decades of Green's life have, in many ways, 
     been defined by that year at Central High.
       He devoted himself to civil rights causes. At Michigan 
     State University, which he attended on a full scholarship, he 
     became president of the school's NAACP chapter and often 
     protested the policies of the university's president, John 
     Hannah. Thirty years later, he learned that Hannah had 
     personally arranged for his scholarship.
       After earning bachelor's and master's degrees, Green moved 
     to New York and worked with civil rights leaders A. Philip 
     Randolph and Bayard Rustin to recruit minorities into the 
     building trades. In 1977, he was tapped by President Jimmy 
     Carter as assistant secretary of labor for employment and 
     training. He later formed a minority consulting company with 
     Alexis Herman, who would be named Clinton's labor secretary.
       In 1987, capitalizing on the relationships he made in 
     public service, he took a position with Lehman Brothers as an 
     investment banker; his projects included underwriting 
     municipal debt with governmental agencies and nonprofit 
     organizations. Again, he drew on his experience at Central 
     High.
       ``It made me a tougher negotiator, able to control my 
     emotions and able to handle the ups and down of business and 
     life,'' he said.
       The years have brought proud moments: In 1999, Clinton 
     awarded Green and the rest of the Little Rock Nine the 
     Congressional Gold Medal. There have also been humbling 
     times: In 2002, Green was sentenced to 90 days of home 
     detention and given a $10,000 fine for failing to declare and 
     pay taxes on income he received as part of a planned business 
     venture.
       Today, he works passionately to help young people. He noted 
     that last week, 50 years after he entered Central High, black 
     activists were gathered in Jena, La., to protest the 
     treatment of six black youths arrested after a racially 
     tinged brawl.
       ``A lot of people don't realize,'' he said, ``that there is 
     still racial injustice in this country.''

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