History In Kristin Levine's Lions Of Little Rock

In the book Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Beals was a heroine and a national symbol of hope for change. Beals and eight other students were brave enough to attend Little Rock Central High School, the highly segregated school in Arkansas in 1957. Despite the many objections from the segregationists and the Governor Faubus, the nine students were able to complete the school year. During the school year of 1957 – 1958, Melba and eight other African-American students received tremendous harassments from the Central High students, parents, administrators, and segregationists. Beals’ mother almost lost her, because she supported her daughter’s decision to attend Central High. President Eisenhower had ordered the

Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine is about a 12 year old girl named Marlee. The book takes place in 1958 in Little Rock, Arkansas, which was the time of segregation when the two races were separated from each other. Segregation took a big stand in this time period. Marlee is shy until she meets Liz. Liz is a new girl at school who is brave and is passing for white, meaning that she is one color, but makes it that she is another. The author uses elements of historical fiction related to the time period to express emotional impact of events during the process of integration, or the blending of people of different races into living one life together, that is not separated. The theme in this book is that friendship and courage will always

Did you know that without the Little Rock Nine our schools might still be segregated. The Little Rock Nine were the first black students to attend a white school. Parents and the Governor of Arkansas tried to keep the schools segregated. President Eisenhower found out of this, and sent help to the black students. With the white parents and governor against the; The Little Rock Nine affected the school system with the help of President Eisenhower.

“In 1957 a group of black students, known as the Little Rock Nine tried to enter Central HIgh School. Segregationist threatened to hold protests and physically block students from entering the school”(Source 2). Directly from this passage it states that the segregationist were going to harm the African American students if they entered the school. By acting in such a way the segregationist were being hateful and racist towards the

“Beyond religion, beyond class, beyond politics and ideology, for centuries race has been Americans dialogue.” In 1957 nine African American kids were prevented from entering Little Rock Central High School.

Also like Jackie, Beals had a life-changing experience, she was going to be one of the first African American students to attend an all-white school in Little Rock Arkansas. On her way to becoming one of the first African Americans to attend an all-white school, people did many hateful things to her. She had to be brave and confident to accomplish her goal of becoming the first African American to integrate into an all-white school. In paragraph eighteen, Beals states, ”We stepped up the front door of Central High School and crossed the threshold into that place angry segregationist mobs had forbidden us to go.” The “segregationist mobs” tried to prevent Beals’s entry into the school, which is a challenging event. These events caused Beals to grow and develop into one of the pioneers to integrate into an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. In paragraph eighteen the text states, “Where none of my people had ever walked before as a student.” Beals’s reactions impacted her society by ending segregation in schools across the country. In paragraph sixteen, Beals states, “I felt proud and sad at the same time, Proud that I lived in a country that would go this far to bring justice to a Little Rock girl like me. But sad they had to go to such great lengths.” Her reactions impacted her society because now that the United States

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American high school students who, in September of 1954, enrolled in the all-white high school, Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students enrolled in order to test out the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling to unsegregate public schools. The members of the Little Rock Nine were Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls. They were trained by members of the NAACP on how to deal with the aversion that they would face upon trying to enroll in Central High School. The students upon approaching the school on what was supposed to be their first day of school were met with a group

On September 4th, 1957, Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to Little Rock Central High school, preventing any of the Little Rock Nine from entering Central High. Elizabeth Eckford was the only student that went to school on this day because of a lack of communication with the other students. She arrived at the school alone and was antagonized by the angry mob. “At first she felt reassured when she saw the troops, whom she assumed were there to protect her…When she tried to squeeze past a guard, ‘He raised his bayonet, and then the other guards moved in.’” One can only imagine what Eckford felt like, being completely alone in a mob of people screaming “Lynch her!”, only to realize the people you thought were there to protect you were actually not. The students finally were able to enter the school on September 23rd, 1957. But the fight was not over. The Little Rock Nine continued to face extreme harassment, both physical and verbal. Melba Pattillo recounted many of these incidents in her book, Warriors Don’t Cry. One that stuck out the most was when she recounted going to bathroom, the one place her guard could not join her, and having girls “scratch and giggle” outside the door. She writes, “ I promised myself I would drink less water so I wouldn’t have to take that risk so often.” Her stories of the vulgar language and the harassment when the guard was or wasn’t around, shows the extreme condition she faced trying to make a charge for her generation. She compares her experience in Central High to being soldier, just trying to survive. Another factor that created this environment for the Little Rock Nine was the lack of discipline of students by teachers. Pattillo writes about how her friend Minnijean Brown had faith in school officials, faith that they would step in. “She continued to count on them to respond with compassion to

With the Integration came a very strong up rise segregationists, they tried to stop any movement forward of the integration of schools and the civil rights movement. In the book A Mighty Long Way governor Faubus is shutting down all schools to stop the integration from happening.

When the Supreme Court ruled that nine teenagers would be chosen to integrate LIttle Rock’s Central High School, the citizens of Little Rock responded in many different ways. Most of the students at Central High School were very rude to the nine students and very few were kind to them. In the book there were many instances were the students were rude but one example was on page 72 when the nine students walked in the school most students were yelling very rude things to them.

The book has a lot of information about civil rights while still having a fictional setting, I found the information to be quite historically accurate. When I was reading the book One of the questions I had was, “Did black people have only have certain places they could live?”. According to the book they had certain sections for the whites and blacks even in housing. Research told me that although whites and blacks may have lived next to each other in some cases although they wouldn’t acknowledge the other color. The second question I had was, “Could blacks get arrested for going into a no black zone even if they weren’t being violent or hurting anything?”. In the book when Jo and the boys went into the library the librarian called the cops and had all of them arrested. History tells us that even if the blacks were doing peaceful protests they could still get sent to jail and brutally beaten by whites. My third question was, “Was is against the law to be friends with the opposite

In 1957, as president of NAACP Bates was able to encouraged nine African -American students to desegregate Little Rock Central High school. To begin with, Bates accompanied and supported the students as they confronted a mob of 500 jeering whites who surrounded the building. Consequently, Bates was recognized as the principal spokesperson and leader for the forces behind school desegregation. Daisy was heroic, in view of the fact that as an African- American woman, she dared to challenge those who opposed school desegregation. Additionally, Bates acquired donations and grants for Arkansas educational system. By 1960, she had also proceeded to win further support as she based her book “The long Shadow of Little Rock” on her school integration

The Long Shadow of Little Rock, Reflections on 1957 by Daisy Bates is an example that although it was illegal to segregate schools, this did not mean that integration was a smooth process. The Little Rock Nine were a group of

One student that made up the little rock nine was Elizabeth Eckford, she discussed that there were 2 separate schools that made up of white and one made up of blacks prior to the desegregation. The one for whites was Central High School and the one for blacks was Dunbar High School. However, when Elizabeth moved to Central High School she was expecting that there might be something more available at Central that was not available at Dunbar; such as, more courses that she could pursue. However, she was not prepared for what was about to happen. As Elizabeth states in her article “Black Students Integrate Little Rock’s Central High School”, she was more worried about what she was going to wear and if it was going to look good. Meanwhile, the

The proliferation of private schools in the South “was a gigantic event, and it blew the minds of civil rights folks and took the wind out of their sails,” said Douglas A. Blackmon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, who is working on a documentary about the effects of segregation