Thanks to Atlanta Board of Education member Matt Westmoreland for reminding us what happened 55 years ago today: Nine black students --- Thomas Welch, Madelyn Nix, Willie Jean Black, Donita Gaines, Arthur Simmons, Lawrence Jefferson, Mary James McMullen, Martha Ann Holmes and Rosalyn Walton --- integrated four all-white Atlanta public high schools.
Atlanta didn't integrate its schools until seven years after the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. Segregationists in the state called for closing the schools rather than allow black and white children to learn together. But a judge finally stepped in and integration began.
The country watched to see if there would be a replay of Little Rock, Ark., where federal troops enforced integration in the face of violent and racist protests. Atlanta appeared to rise to the occasion. At the time, Time magazine cheerfully reported:
Last week the moral siege of Atlanta (pop. 487,455) ended in spectacular fashion with the smoothest token school integration ever seen in the Deep South. Into four high schools marched nine Negro students without so much as a white catcall. Teachers were soon reporting "no hostility, no demonstrations, the most normal day we've ever had." In the lunchrooms, white children began introducing themselves to Negro children. At Northside High, a biology class was duly impressed when Donita Gaines, a Negro, was the only student able to define the difference between anatomy and physiology. Said she crisply: "Physiology has to do with functions."
But that sunny account minimized what students endured. In 1991, the AJC wrote about the 30th anniversary and spoke to some of the nine students.
(See the history of Atlanta school integration in photos. )
The AJC reported:
I hope these nine students knew they were heroes. We sent children to tear down barriers adults could not themselves lift. And they did. But not without a personal cost.
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