Elizabeth Eckford ignores the hostile screams and stares of fellow students on her first day of school on Sept. 4, 1957, at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Eckford broke barriers and made history when she was one of the nine African-American students whose integration into the school was ordered by a federal court. She and Minnijean Brown, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls - the students comprising the Little Rock Nine - and Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, were awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1958 The integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957Hundreds of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, sent by an outraged President Eisenhower on Sept. 25, 1957, escorted nine African-American students, dubbed the Little Rock Nine, into Little Rock Central High School to finally begin regular classes of the school year three weeks after initially being prevented by Gov. Orval Faubus who called on the National Guard to stop the school's integration. This marked the beginning of the end of racial segregation at the previously all-white school. Met by hateful taunts and racist heckling from crowds of unruly white people, the nine went down in history for ....
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