Little Rock Central High School still functions as part of the Little Rock School District and is now a National Historic Site that houses a
Civil Rights Museum, administered in partnership with the
National Park Service, to commemorate the events of 1957. The
Daisy Bates House, home to
Daisy Bates, then the president of the Arkansas NAACP and a focal point for the students, was designated a
National Historic Landmark in 2001 for its role in the episode. In 1958, Cuban poet
Nicolás Guillén published "
Little Rock", a bilingual composition in English and Spanish denouncing the
racial segregation in the United States. Melba Pattillo Beals wrote a memoir titled ''Warriors Don't Cry'', published in 1994. Two
made-for-television movies have depicted the events of the crisis: the 1981
CBS movie
Crisis at Central High, and the 1993
Disney Channel movie
The Ernest Green Story. In 1996, seven of the Little Rock Nine appeared on
The Oprah Winfrey Show. They came face to face with a few of the white students who had tormented them as well as one student who had befriended them. In 1997, Central High Museum, Inc. held a dedication ceremony in observation of the 40th anniversary of the desegregation. With restoration help from the Mobil Foundation, they opened the first visitor center near the High School that September, in a former
Mobil gas station. African-American artist
George Hunt was hired to produce a painting of the Little Rock Nine for the event. In November 1998, legislation passed designating Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site as a unit of the National Park Service, and Central High Museum, Inc., donated their property to the park service. While the NPS visitor center was under construction, Hunt's painting, titled "America Cares", hung in the White House. In February 1999, members created the Little Rock Nine Foundation which established a scholarship program which had funded, by 2013, 60 university students. In 2013, the foundation decided to exclusively fund students attending the
Clinton School of Public Service at the
University of Arkansas. It is given to those who have provided outstanding service to the country. To receive the Congressional Gold Medal, recipients must be co-sponsored by two-thirds of both the
House and
Senate. In 2004, art director Ethel Kessler selected George Hunt's Little Rock Nine/America Cares painting for a 37-cent U.S.
Postage Stamp. It was one of 10 stamps depicting milestones of the
Civil Rights Movement in a February 2005 Black History Month commemorative stamp panel, "To Form a More Perfect Union". Printed on top of the artwork on the stamp were the words, "1957 The Little Rock Nine". On February 9, 2010,
Marquette University honored the group by presenting them with the Père Marquette Discovery Award, the university's highest honor, one that had previously been given to
Mother Teresa,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Karl Rahner, and the
Apollo 11 astronauts. On November 19, 2022, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier and Thelma Mothershed-Wair etched their initials onto metal plates that were then welded onto the keel of the
attack submarine USS Arkansas (SSN-800) in a ceremony at
Newport News Shipbuilding in
Newport News, Virginia. The plates will remain affixed to the submarine throughout its life. Melba Pattillo Beals and Minnijean Brown-Trickey were also named sponsors of the ship, and all members of the Little Rock Nine were honored. Elizabeth Eckford said "(Former Navy) Secretary
Ray Mabus asked us to be supporters of the ship and its crew. I signed on to be a foster grandmother...President Eisenhower sent 1,000 paratroopers to Little Rock to disperse a mob, bring order, and they made it possible for us to enter Central High School. From that point, I've had very high regard for specially trained forces."
Foreign affairs The crisis at Little Rock took place amid the
Cold War. Civil rights historian
Mary L. Dudziak argues that
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the U.S. federal government's primary concern in their response was the world's perception of the U.S.; Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles was particularly aware of the global impact, telling Attorney General
Herbert Brownell over a phone call that "this situation was ruining our foreign policy". Brownell asked Dulles to look over a draft of the President's speech in Arkansas following the crisis, where he suggested that Eisenhower "put in a few more sentences...emphasizing the harm done abroad". Dudziak highlights other evidence such as
U.S. Department of Justice briefs and
propaganda to show the global implications of Little Rock. The crisis came partly as a result of the
Brown vs Board of Education case. U.S. Department of Justice briefs gave only one reason for involvement in cases like this; that segregation harmed U.S. foreign relations. The briefs argued that the existence of discrimination had an adverse effect on relations with other countries, especially countries in the
third world who had been targeted by the
Truman Doctrine. Evidence of U.S. propaganda can be seen in the booklet
The Negro in American Life, which was translated into fifteen languages and distributed to many countries. It aimed to reverse the global shame surrounding discrimination in America, accentuated by Soviet propaganda, and instead boasted of the progress that they believed could be achieved in an American democracy. The impact of foreign relations, foreign policy and America's global reputation played an important role in Eisenhower's response to the crisis at Little Rock. This eventually culminated in his decisions to order the intervention of the 101st Airborne Division and to federalize the National Guard. ==See also==