By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Two ceremonies 28 years apart honored the nine Black students who broke the color barrier at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Both featured speeches by one of the nine, and both featured a Huckabee speaking as governor.
We’ll start with the second ceremony, which occurred Aug. 29 at the Capitol. It marked the 20th anniversary of the unveiling of Testament, the monument honoring the Little Rock Nine.
The ceremony started after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders arrived with Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Nine, who walked slowly with a cane and spoke strongly from the lectern.
Eckford and her fellow students made history by being the first to attend the previously all-white school. The other eight were Minnijean Brown Trickey, Ernest Green, Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Dr. Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, the late Jefferson Thomas, and the late Thelma Mothershed Wair.
Eckford arrived alone the first day of school in 1957 and was met by a mob. Photos of the abuse she endured remain among the most iconic of the civil rights movement. Gov. Orval Faubus had called out the National Guard to block her and her fellow Black students from attending. President Dwight Eisenhower then federalized the Guard and dispatched U.S. Army troops to restore order and protect the students.
Desegregating Central High amidst so much animosity was a “tumultuous” experience, she said.
“When I talk to students, I tell them about the history, but I also tell them that there’s no such thing as not being involved,” she said. “When you decide that you’re not involved, you’re giving permission to other people to act.
Sanders said when she was a student at Central High four decades later, it was one of the state’s best and most diverse high schools.
That takes us to the first event at Central High, when Sanders was a sophomore. The 40th anniversary of the Nine’s bravery was commemorated at the school on Sept. 25, 1997. That event concluded with then-President Bill Clinton, then-Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey, and Sanders’ dad, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, opening the school’s doors and welcoming the Little Rock Nine as they walked inside together.
A former Southern Baptist preacher, Huckabee earlier in the event had said that, like the Israelites in the book of Exodus, Arkansas had spent 40 years struggling to find its way.
“Essentially, it’s not just a skin problem,” he said. “It’s a sin problem. Because we in Arkansas have wandered around in ambiguity, all kinds of explanations and justification. And I think today we come to say once and for all that what happened here 40 years ago was simply wrong. It was evil, and we renounce it.”
Huckabee said the unwelcoming white Central High teenagers in 1957 were reflecting the values they had learned at home. Furthermore, he said white churches in much of the South had not only ignored the problem but often had fostered it. He called upon houses of worship of all kinds to never again be silent when people’s rights were at stake.
He said American society had come far in 40 years, but “we’re not home yet.” Government can require classrooms and other places to desegregate, but only God can change people’s hearts. He believed society would continue to deal with racial issues “until the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King lives in all of our hearts, and that is that we will judge people by the character of their hearts and not by the color of their skin.”
Green, the first of the Nine to graduate Central High, recalled that he and the others knew they were entering the eye of the storm. They had hoped they would be welcomed at the door, but they were not.
Those that blocked them did not know them, he said. If they had, they would have known that their parents were honest, hardworking people whose children listened to them.
Even within the African-American community, there were some who had opposed what the students were doing, he said. They thought it was too dangerous to confront the system, and the answer instead was to study and work harder.
Green and the other eight felt differently.
“If we were going to determine our own destiny, this was the time and the front on which we needed to make a stand because regardless of the inequities, this was our home, and at home we are obliged to adhere to one absolute responsibility: Be of service,” he said.
That was worth commemorating in 1997, and commemorating again.