Little Rock Nine: An Interactive Middle School Course
(continued)

The night before the first day of school, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, amidst a political popularity lull, made a sales pitch of his own. Threatened by his segregationist opponent, Faubus was up for reelection and wanted more than anything to keep his job. What better way to reach your opponents constituents than to scare them and save them all in the same day. Operation FEAR is what I call it. Tactics not too different from those used by our current administration to justify war.

Governor Faubus announces on the radio that there will be no integration at Central High the following day or ever. To ensure this, he called in the National Guard to keep the black kids out.

Barlev stresses the absurdity of all this fuss. Unlike many other southern states at the time, Arkansas had already desegregated its public transportation and granted Blacks the right to vote. But apparently, a NINE Black high school students with exceptional grades and matching test scores attending Central High was just too much for the people to handle.

Daisy Bates, in response to the radio address, contacted the now infamous Little Rock Nine, telling them to meet at her house the morning of the first day of school. All except Elizabeth Eckford received the message. That morning, Eckford walked to school alone. Huge mobs of people awaited her at Central High in protest. Swarms of people armed with picketing signs and racial slurs circled the wall of armed militia surrounding the school. Shouting, spitting, snarling at this silent girl in a freshly pressed white dress. “GO BACK TO AFRICA!” Barlev shouts in reenactment.

Barlev’s students fill-in their study guides’ sequence of events section as the story unfolds, the bold words indicate those filled in. Nine outstanding black students are selected by the NAACP, on the basis of their academic and moral strengths, to integrate Little Rock Central High School. Many of the parents of the “Little Rock 9” are threatened and intimidated with the loss of their jobs if their children try to integrate Central High.

This 4-page study guide also includes Names to Know and Key Quotes and Phrases sections. These active citizens or change agents in training as I like to call them, are confidently immersed in information. They’ve already drawn the National Guard and the mob around Central High on their Xeroxed handout picture of the school. Every handout was matched by an identical overhead, every story with an image. Barlev even shows sections of Eyes on the Prize to stress the severity of this mob and the repercussions of this protest.

Barlev has been teaching this course for seven years and due to the overwhelming response of former students, she will be teaching multiple sections of the seminar next year. “Traditionally there have only been 2 sections, but this year, thanks to the "sales pitch" of the guidance counselor, over 100 students registered for the course. I thought that would be a one-time-only phenomenon, but a group of my "alumni" recently visited 7th grade classrooms and delivered their own sales pitch for the course, resulting in record numbers of students signing up for next year. I am very gratified that what started out as just another elective class in the "arts rotation" is turning into a popular experience.”