Jefferson Thomas, Who Helped Integrate Little Rock School, Dies at 67
Jefferson Thomas, one of the nine black students who integrated an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 in a landmark confrontation of the civil rights movement, died Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. He was 67.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, another of the students — known as the Little Rock Nine — who desegregated Central High School and the current president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.
The Little Rock Nine presented the first major test of the federal government’s ability to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
After Gov. Orval Faubus refused to integrate the school, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort the students. Central High’s desegregation began the agonizing, decade-long process of integrating schools across the country....
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The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, another of the students — known as the Little Rock Nine — who desegregated Central High School and the current president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.
The Little Rock Nine presented the first major test of the federal government’s ability to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
After Gov. Orval Faubus refused to integrate the school, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort the students. Central High’s desegregation began the agonizing, decade-long process of integrating schools across the country....