1950s SPECIAL REPORT: "CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS SPEAK OUT ON NEGRO STUDENTS"

girls why didn't you walk out of the school this morning well i didn't believe that there was enough to people to walk out to really do any good i mean if there was enough people to walk out and show that the kids at central are all not for this that it might have done some good but only just a few did besides i didn't think it would really do the purpose i mean you could be suspended or something like that that's the same as i feel and i didn't want to mess up on my studies like it's all cause i've been out already a week and i don't want to be out anymore and miss anything that i have to be in well that's why i didn't walk out because i really didn't think there were enough kids that we're going to walk out and i believe that if they hadn't found out we were going to do it more people would have walked out but after they found out kids more got scared than they would have otherwise how do you feel about having the nine negroes there well they really haven't done any harm to me especially but i'd rather have it not going to school with them but it doesn't seem like this much that we can do right now if any of you talk with these negroes oh and jim uh they've been very friendly to me but we haven't talked discuss this problem they just talk about their uh activities or something like that you mean some of the white children do talk to them yes and jim there are two girls uh two newer girls in my class and we talked to them but not about the problems of school do you think this will go on indefinitely can it go on indefinitely well what do you mean just by that well can you continue your studies and get your homework done and pass your tests with troops and incidents and well lately with the guard staying outside the door and continually looking in the room to see if the negro students are all right well it certainly upsets me because i hear the footsteps and see someone peeping around and i'll look up and get my mind off the work and i just you may completely work you may have heard that some of the boys who walked out this morning came across the street and hung up a effigy of a negro on a tree and set fire to it yeah right over here now how do you feel about that i think that's all uncalled for it certainly is i mean you can you can bring about things without showing disorder like that that shows that you're very immature if you can't discuss and do about problems without things like that well i hadn't even heard anything about it so you mentioned it then but i don't believe it was necessary either there was should have been some other way that they could have shown that they didn't want them there well do you feel that the nine igures are going to stay under the court order or do you think they'll eventually be driven out uh the students are the negro students are going to stay for the reason that uh the central students can't do anything about it every week there's a different plan like this plan for walking out and it didn't go over so i just think that sooner or later they're going to stay because no plan has worked over yet do you think if they do stay and the troops are taken away that things will settle back to normal eventually well i don't know i think it's just fighting and as you might say it would keep up more or less because there's so many kids that don't want them there that's something that's going to keep on happening i believe now we can't even sit out in front of the school all the steps in the morning we have to stay inside the building like um i mean every place you walk there somebody telling you to go on or don't stand there or something like that not like that's right because you there's no certain place that you can go without someone pushing you on or saying you can't stand here or you can't do this or you can't do that the soldiers give these orders to the students well um they have passed bulletin around today that uh that they do not want you to stand in front of the school of the morning and usually that has been done by all the students just congregating around talking we just walk around and talk and everything but since they had that little incident up there the other morning they won't let you stand up there mr presumably you say if the soldiers are taken away there'll be more trouble and the soldiers will come back and go away and it'll be more trouble eventually maybe the white students are going to have to choose between having the negroes there and having the soldiers there forever i think the students would prefer to have law and order in the negroes i have no law and order and not have the negroes oh certainly everyone's order because fights and everything like that is all uncalled for but i don't know how they're going to sell it with out things i mean it's certainly not called for but i don't know how they're going to settle it also i think that the there's usually just a one-sided opinion like i said to you a few minutes ago that they just show the side that the negroes have to face and not what we have to and usually that is the case because they never show what they call when the color people start a fight or something like that or they have it written down to paper on the last page and very little print tell us what it is that you feel that the white students have to face is difficult for them well i think it is it's just difficult to go to school like that when you've been used to going to school which is all white and i don't know exactly but um you're used to the collard rice having their own school and they do have as good of schools as we do and central being as crowded as it is and we just got rid of uh some white students that transferred over to the new school and then these nine come over to central when they have a school that's not even filled to capacity yet uh i just wanted to say that one reason that the kids don't want them going there it's not because we don't really dislike the neighbors themselves it's just that they don't have to go there but they're just doing it a lot of people think it's more or less just for the publicity or just to have something different going on because they don't really have to go there at all and they have their new uh colored high school and it's pretty good and it's good for them if they go there but they just don't their answer is well the supreme court said separate facilities are not the same as equal and that they demand equality i think their school is about as equal as ours so well i think in a place like little rock where they have just as good as places as we have and and they go to school and i think they learned just as much as we learned here and i don't think the cover students that are here are really concentrating on their work right now they might be but this is my own personal opinion because having all the the children yell at them and everything but that's to be expected really because you girls have never mixed with negroes on any kind of an equal basis in your lives before have you [Music] it makes it never had anything to do with any until they came here i mean we just never lived well what you'd say close enough to us or we're just never around them really isn't that part of what makes it difficult when you live 15 to 17 years of your life and then start doing something different all of a sudden well i think like if a spanish or a chinese person came here it wouldn't be hard to get along with them it's just that the negroes are what you might say more different to us than a spanish christian might be but now you talk with some of these negroes uh uh yourself do you think they are very different from you well i believe they have all had the same ideas as as all the white students do but on this program i saw of interviewing a negro girl she said that she thought that she would make better friends with central and i think a friend is someone that you can work with and depend on and discuss problems and get together and often girls i have party skills and things like that and i think as far as going to school with them that's you can be nice to them but friends i mean friends is much closer you sometimes stay all night with each other at bunking parties social parties and everything and you can't ever imagine you're being on on that no i can't talk to them i i had the impression that most of them would have nothing to do with it that's right but the ones that they do talk to they're really sort of making fun of them as they talk to them and i really i don't think it's right for them to be going to school with us because it's mentioned in the bible i can't say where it is but i could find it for you that the races weren't supposed to mix like that and i think if it was god's will to have us mix it we would be mixed i mean we'd just be mixed right now does any white student who does talk to them is he immediately accused of being an ego lover they um maybe don't exactly like them talking to them but they don't exactly throw a foot about it you might say because the people that talk to usually aren't maybe just helping them out and where some certain room is or something like that if they don't really talk as a friend anyways do you feel the situation is any calmer now than it was a week ago when the coops first came are you settling down to normal emotionally at all well if you might say all over it's calmed down but it's still a lot going on i mean we feel about it now as we did then our opinions haven't changed much i don't believe thanks very much uh this is mike mckelvey a uh sophomore here at central high school which is the building just behind us and these are two of his friends dinah and sheila now mike i'd like to start off by asking you you were in there today when some of the students walked out and i believe they burned a negro in effigy and caused some disturbance how do you feel about it i think that was ridiculous there's no sense to it it's not going to help any matters any stupid well now tell me mike uh the whole problem here at central high how has it affected your study and affected me one way or another i don't care about i'm up there to learn not try to solve racial problems how do you feel about sitting in the same classrooms with the colored children no i don't mind that there's some i have a colored kid in my gym class and he's a pretty good old guy what do you think the the basic problem here is is it the students or is it uh the parents around the community parents it's the parents that's what it is because most of the students over there accepting it and they're only a few of these hoodlums you know that i just want to start trouble in other words most of the students you think feel like you do that you're just there to study morally [Music] would you say that uh the situation as it is seems to interrupt classes and causes you to have trouble studying oh i don't know it it doesn't interrupt any of my classes i it hadn't interrupted any money except the first day you know when all this commotion was out here when the crowd was out here uh bad some of the people had started walking out of the school and uh crowded start clapping and every time that happened everybody run over the windows that hasn't happened since the first day oh it hadn't happened well now how has studying been going today after these kids walked out i didn't even notice it it's just about the same in all my classes and you have one colored boy in one of your classes in gym class he's a pretty good old guy and he seems to get along with everyone yeah he's trying to make friends but some of them you know just won't make friends and since i'm will yeah maybe me for instance where do you think we can go from here now do you think that uh sending nine negro students into the school this year was too much no i i think that wasn't enough i think they should have seen more in there how do you feel about having the troops around i think well it's it's okay to prevent violence but as far as falling around in the halls i've been looking at that and i think that's pretty ridiculous they are inside the school building itself now falling around the halls but what goes on in inside the hole there nothing nothing at all except for that one incident nothing's happening what was that one incident before they kicked them in and cheered at them and that was yesterday as yesterday do you think the students could handle this without the uh soldiers inside the school well there of course there would be some of them that were just show-offs and try to start a lot of trouble but if it wasn't for them we could handle it very well how about the girls i'm gonna move over and talk to them thanks mike uh you girls now as i understand it are junior high school seniors and you'll be going here to central high school starting next year right just a second you'll start to central high next fall about this time is that right yeah well now how do you feel about this whole problem here well i mean i think the troops are okay but the minute they leave there's going to be just as much trouble as there was when they left because they think that they can't well the national guard wasn't severe enough on them and they aren't scared of the national guard and they were the airborne troops are you talking about the students now or the parents in the in the crowd well i don't know which is causing the most trouble from students from other schools have been over here so my sister have told me and they've caused a lot of trouble but before at the first school the student council had already uh appointed some of the uh kids to uh take the negro students around and show them around school and everything was going fine and then father sent the guards up and everything like that and then trouble started and i don't know if it was fabulous or what or the parents or who but it just uh a lot of people just started getting hurt and everything and my sister said that up there in the lunchroom they started putting signs up like get out of here or go back to africa and she just got up and pulled it back down again they called her names and everything but a lot of people have been making friends with the color children i never have put that in the newspaper all i've been putting is the things that have been happening that have been bad like the children going after the colors when and everything would you think that there have been some sides to this that have worked out pretty well yes sir well now how about you uh how would you feel about going to school with the colored kid well i'm not going to mind it i mean if they're going to come they've got to come anyway it might be about 50 years from now but they're going to come you mean integration is going to integration he's going to come ask sheila how about now come over here a little closer you all are running away from me uh how do you feel about it you'll start to school here next year uh would you mind going with colored students no i don't well yes and no i mean i've i've been tasting like that you know being dark and everything i mean it used to bother me i used to come home crying about it but i mean the niggles will get used to them saying something and they won't think anything about it i mean after they get used to it and everything in other words you think you could get used to going to school with colored children yes sir i think so i mean if i'm gonna have to do it i'm not gonna get used to it well now what about this do you think that the trouble is with the students here in the high school and in the schools of little rock or is it with the parents or is it without ciders or where's the trouble i think it's the parents i mean i mean i saw you know all these craps out here man me and kicking that negro and everything then you don't sympathize with that sort of action at all no surrounding what do you well i think it was just down right on america and i think it was the most terrible thing that has ever been seen in america i mean yeah i'm guessing sounding patriotic or something like that but i always thought that uh all men were created equal and that uh god loves all these little children even like negroes and negro children is just my uh boys just much my brothers mike is and all that i know uh religion is supposed to be brought up and didn't firstly brought up politics but i've always sympathized with that but i don't know what's gonna happen i mean i'm sort of scared and i'm sort of not scared because i'm afraid a whole lot of people's gonna be hurt who didn't need to be hurt in the first place [Music] mike what do you say about that about those crowds about the the real basis of the trouble here is it among the students or is it among the parents among the parents those crowds are just stupid i'm glad that i'm glad that eisenhower sent those paratroopers in here because those other guys weren't they you know they lived here and once all this is over they're gonna have to go back and face their people they live with and these people here they're from kentucky you know and they don't have anything to worry about tell me this now you've had these kids shouting at you while you've been talking here uh are some of the kids in the school sort of angry if you talk to newsmen yeah they're they're mad if we express express our views are they uh afraid themselves to talk to us some of them are i've noticed when i've gone up to some they wouldn't even answer in other words there's some pressure on you not to to talk to us and not say how you feel yeah there is and that's because they disagree with you is that right they very much

Channel: Hezakya Newz & Films

Views: 93,477

Keywords: HEZAKYA, HEZAKYA NEWZ, ARKANSAS, LITTLE ROCK NINE, DESEGREGATION, SEGREGATION, CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Id: 4JQSWsOIJA4

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021