Little Rock 9

• Little Rock 9 - 9 black students who wanted to attend Little Rock Central High School, an all-white school in 1957.

  Arkansas started to integrate high schools first.
• Gov. Orval Faubus - a racist governor in Little Rock, Arkansas who ordered the National Guard to stop the Little Rock 9 from entering the school.

  • He violated the federal law with this action.

  Elizabeth Eckford - the one girl that didn’t receive the phone call from the other Little Rock black students and walked alone to school. She was met by a mob of angry white people on the way to and from school.
• • Eisenhower is still president and calls Faubus about him blocking the Little Rock 9 from going to school.
  • Faubus keeps the national guard at the school despite Eisenhower telling him to remove them and let the black students attend school.
  • FBI gets involved, they find out he is encouraging people to protest in front of the school and not allow black students to integrate.
• Eisenhower goes back to D.C. and gives a televised address to the nation about the situation in Arkansas. He lets people know that he’s handling it and that he’ll make sure black students in Little Rock are free to attend any school in the state.

  • He speaks directly to Gov. Faubus and tells him that he must follow federal law.
• • Eisenhower assigns the U.S. army to walk the Little Rock 9 to their school and they meet the national guard at the steps.
  • National guard leaves and Gov. Faubus is left as a loser. However, these students need to go every day to school and were abused every day that they went to school.
  • Each student had a guard assigned to them, but couldn’t be with them all the time.
  • Ernis Green became the first black student to graduate in Little Rock. Then, white families moved their students to private schools.
• Civil Rights movement is becoming more and more popular on TV and many people are watching it, federal government is worried.
• J. Edgar Hoover - FBI worker worried about the civil rights movement because of the mobilization of black people throughout the country.

  Cointelpro - FBI program formed by J. Edgar Hoover to capture civil rights leaders which he believes to be communists. Used illegal tactics like psychological warfare

  • They sent MLK a suicide packet and told him to kill himself.
• • Cointelpro would put fake quotes from people like Dr. King and Malcom X about each other in hopes that they would start a fight between the leaders.
  • They were responsible for many assassinations of civil rights leaders and there is plenty of evidence that points to them in MLK‘s assassination.
  • After the “I Have A Dream Speech”, J. Edgar Hoover says MLK is dangerous and needs to be stopped, King is assassinated in the 1960s, Hoover created Cointelpro Black Hate.
• • Now we know that civil rights movements and helpers of leaders were undercover FBI agents.
  • CIA had “Operation Chaos” which is like Cointelpro.
  • Files from Cointelpro are found and sold to a press who published them and exposed the crimes being committed by the FBI.
  • J. Edgar Hoover is found out, Cointelpro is dissolved and reopened under a new name. This process continues for years after the first Cointelpro.
• President Eisenhower used military force to enforce court orders requiring the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.