The Legacies of the Little Rock Nine: A Facing History and Ourselves Podcast

In this Facing History and Ourselves podcast, we explore the legacies of public school integration in the United States as seen through the eyes of Jessica Green, daughter of Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine.

The actions of upstanders like Ernest Green and the Little Rock Nine create important legacies, which ripple through the years.  These legacies affect not only the individuals in a particular community—they reach an entire nation. We asked Jessica Green to tell us a little bit about the impact her father’s story has had on her life.

Click on the audio controls at the bottom of this page to hear the 7-minute podcast.

Related Facing History and Ourselves Resources:

• Choices in Little Rock is a teaching unit that focuses on efforts to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. The unit explores civic choices - the decisions people make as citizens in a democracy. Those decisions, both then and now, reveal that democracy is not a product but a work in progress, a work that is shaped in every generation by the choices that we make about ourselves and others. 

• Crisis in Little Rock is one of four featured stories from Choosing to Participate, an exhibit on civic engagement that challenges us to think deeply about what democracy means and what it asks of each of us. The story describes the way people in the community responded to the integration of Central High School in 1957. 
  

• Eyes on the Prize Study Guide. Eyes on the Prize is a landmark television documentary that offers important lessons about the power of ordinary citizens to shape democracy. The study guide created by Facing History and Ourselves provides teachers with an invaluable resource that brings this documentary into the classroom and insures its legacy in the education of our students. (See readings related to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, pp. 26-30, the integration of Central High in Little Rock , pp. 30-39 and desegregation of Boston Public Schools, pp. 192-198.) The study guide is available for free download.

• Warriors Don't Cry Study Guide.  Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, Melba Pattillo became a warrior on the front lines of a civil rights firestorm. Warriors Don’t Cry is her autobiographical account of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Facing History and Ourselves created the study guide that accompanies the book. The study guide is available for free download.

• Terrence Roberts 2007 New England Benefit Dinner Speech. Dr. Terrence Roberts spoke at the Facing History 2007 New England Benefit Dinner. He was a 15-year-old eleventh grader when he and eight other students became the first black students to go to a formerly segregated public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Other Related Videos Available for Facing History and Ourselves Educators from our Lending Library:

• Mendez v. Westminster
• The Road to Brown
• I Sit Where I Want
• Hoxie: The First Stand
• Building Bridges

Additional Resources of Interest:

• In this video from the Clinton School Speaker Series, Jessica Green is one of three children of Little Rock Nine upstanders included in a panel discussion.

• Jessica Green is the co-director of the Maysles Cinema, the only movie theater in northern Manhattan dedicated to documentary film. The cinema serves as a site of community-based, low-cost popular education and entertainment. 

This podcast was produced by Stacy Abramson and narrated by KC Kourtz. Facing History and Ourselves Podcast theme music by John Englander. Background music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0."