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Tuesday, December 5th, 2017

The Resegregation of America

Author:     Christopher Petrella
Source:     NBC News
Publication Date:     Dec.03.2017 / 1:25 AM ET
 Link: The Resegregation of America
Stephan:   One of the reasons I became involved in the civil rights movement as a teenager, was my experience with a Black boy, who was the son of a man who worked for my father. Henry and I became friends because we both liked hiking. He would come over with his dad, and while our fathers worked we would go hiking. He was very smart and wanted to go to the local high school, but could not because of segregation. It seemed then, and seems still, grossly unfair to me, and it was one of the reasons I became an activist. Up until the last year or two I thought we were finally getting past segregation, but no. Virulent racism is alive and well in America, and we are the worse for its re-emergence.

Students shout insults at Elizabeth Eckford, 16, as she calmly marches down to a line of National Guardsmen who blocked her from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. on Sept. 4, 1957.
Credit: Will Counts / Arkansas Democrat Gazette /AP

On Sept. 23, 1957, thousands of segregationists blocked nine young black students from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School, an all-white institution in the Arkansas capital. Gov. Orval Faubus ignited a nationwide crisis when he defied the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision on desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education, and deployed the Arkansas National Guard to bar the students. Two days later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered U.S. Army units to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school.

This fall marked the 60th anniversary of this pivotal moment in the history of America’s racial struggle. With the political landscape seemingly as divided as it has ever been, this moment provides an opportunity to examine the depth and contours of segregation in the nation today. Though clear advances have been […]

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