50th anniversary of Little Rock: "Backing down was not an option"

WASHINGTON — Ernest Green Jr. sees much of the world from a top-floor corner office on K Street, just blocks from the White House and a long way from where he started.

His BlackBerry holds the phone numbers of powerful men: former President Clinton; Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the Charlotte Bobcats; former Ambassador Andrew Young; and three presidential candidates.

He spends his days negotiating multimillion-dollar deals as managing director of public finance for Wall Street stalwart Lehman Brothers. He has a big house, a wife, three children and a lot of gratitude for the circumstances that catapulted him from segregated Little Rock, Ark., into U.S. history as one of nine students to integrate Central High School 50 years ago this week.

"It has been a tremendous boost for me," said Green, 66. "It provided me with opportunities I never would have otherwise had."

Green returned to his hometown last weekend for a week of events commemorating the anniversary of the desegregation of Central High. Five decades ago, Green and eight other students were escorted into the school by the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division under orders from President Eisenhower after Gov. Orval Faubus used the state's National Guard to block the integration effort.

In the year that followed, Green and the others, who came to be known as the Little Rock Nine, were tripped on the stairs, attacked in the halls and pushed out of lunchroom lines. Teachers and administrators largely ignored them. The few white students who befriended them were subjected to ill treatment.

"Clearly, none of us anticipated that it would be as difficult as it was," said Green, the first of the nine to graduate. "But once we got there, all nine of us knew how important it was to stay. Backing down was not an option."

His story could be seen as one testament to the potential of forced integration, a remedy widely debated now as many urban school districts become resegregated. Green said people miss out when they don't mingle with those who are different from themselves: "We need to make sure children understand that they are more similar than different."

Green never set out to become an icon of the civil-rights movement, with a movie made of his life and a congressional medal to his name. What he did, he said, was step out of his comfort zone.

"Too many blacks today opt for comfort over taking a chance that might change their lives. We have to work hard to break through our comforts," he said.

Many wouldn't consider a childhood in the segregated South a comfortable place, but Green has fond memories of growing up there. His father, Ernest Sr., who died when Green was 13, was a janitor; his mother, Lothaire, taught for 43 years.

He, his sister, Treopia, and his brother, Scott, learned about taking a stand from their mother. In the 1940s, she supported the efforts of black teacher Suzie Morris, who, with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Thurgood Marshall, sued the Little Rock schools, demanding equal pay. His mother opened their home to Marshall when he was in town working on the case.

The name of Central High School, considered the best school in town, was stamped into the secondhand books that taught him history, algebra and chemistry at segregated Horace Mann High School.

Green was 13 when the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on arguments by Marshall, outlawed school segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education case. Many officials in Southern states defied the order.

No such sentiment was evident in Little Rock in 1957, which had a progressive reputation, Green said. Blacks owned businesses. There was a thriving black middle class. Libraries and buses were integrated, as was the University of Arkansas campus. Against this backdrop, the school board decided to integrate.

It was Green's idea to attend Central High, and his mother, like the parents of the other eight, supported the decision. "They had some idea of what it would do to change the opportunities for all the black folks in Little Rock if we were able to integrate the school," he said.

He said they were all thunderstruck by the resistance.

"We didn't think there would be a confrontation," he said. "Orval Faubus was regarded as a progressive white Southerner. ... He didn't have an image of being a firebrand segregationist or racist."

On Sept. 4, the students were denied entry by Guardsmen and racists yelling epithets. After the NAACP took the case to court, the students were allowed in the school Sept. 23 but left early because of fears of violence. Two days later, with an escort from the 101st Airborne, they were admitted.

For four weeks, things were relatively quiet. Soldiers escorted the nine black students to class. Many segregationists kept their children at home.

"Once they saw we weren't leaving, they started to trickle back in," Green said.

Soon, the harassment started. Green, the only senior, was a prominent target. "It seemed to me that one of the things that would drive them crazy was if I were to be successful," he recalled. "So I was determined to stick it out that whole year."

The hostility didn't subside until the day before Green's graduation. "There were a number of white kids who got up the nerve to come over and congratulate me for getting through the year," he said.

The next five decades of Green's life have been informed by that year. He devoted himself to civil rights. At Michigan State University, he became president of the school's NAACP chapter and often protested the university's policies.

After earning bachelor's and master's degrees, Green moved to New York and worked with civil-rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin to recruit minorities into the building trades. In 1977, President Carter appointed him as assistant secretary of labor for employment and training.

In 1987, he took a position with Lehman Brothers as an investment banker; his projects included underwriting municipal debt with governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations.

His experience at Central High "made me a tougher negotiator, able to control my emotions and able to handle the ups and downs of business and life," he said.

The years have brought proud moments: In 1999, Clinton awarded all the Little Rock Nine the Congressional Gold Medal. There also have been humbling moments: In 2002, Green was sentenced to 90 days of home detention and fined $10,000 for failing to declare and pay taxes on income he received as part of a planned business venture.

Today, he works to help young people. He noted that last week, black activists were gathered in Jena, La., to protest the treatment of six black teens arrested after a racially tinged beating.

"A lot of people don't realize," he said, "that there is still racial injustice in this country."