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Still battling over school segregation


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On September 25, 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower was president, federal troops forced a path through a heated mob into Little Rock's Central High School, and nine black teens won the first battle for school desegregation. Fifty years later, blacks and whites are still battling over segregation in Louisiana's Jena High School. Blacks accuse whites of hanging nooses in a tree unofficially designated whites only, and whites accuse blacks of beating a white teen.

Terrence Roberts, one of the "Little Rock Nine," said, "In spite of the progress that's been talked about today, it is not nearly enough for me. ... This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society." Minnijean Brown Trickey, another of the nine, said, "We're still living segregated lives based on culture and language. ... Here we are in 2007 and we're still playing the same game."

Kasey S. Pipes, an Eisenhower biographer and author of Ike's Final Battle, agrees that "we're not there yet." Although Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce desegregation, he believed that troops weren't enough.

According to Pipes, Eisenhower knew that segregation was "criminally stupid," but he also knew changing a law "didn't immediately mean that everybody started treating everybody better." He advocated change from the bottom up and knew that religion was key: "Churches preaching to their members was a good way to get people to treat their fellow man as a brother." Meanwhile Eisehhower urged people to be patient -- and he lobbied businesses to be more fair in their hiring.

Eisenhower worked to give blacks an equal start in the race for the American dream, Pipes said, and he did make progress: "I don't think that you have the malicious, intentional effort to hold people back that you had fifty years ago."


Alisa Harris Alisa is a WORLD Journalism Institute graduate and former WORLD reporter.

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