In the summer of 1957, the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, made plans to desegregate its public schools.  When the school year was set to begin, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, formerly an all-white school, became a battle ground in the nation’s ongoing civil rights struggle.

Here, a timeline of those events in 1957:

September 2: Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus orders the state’s National Guard to surround the school and prevent the entry of the African-American students.

September 4: National Guardsmen bar the entry of the nine African-American students to Central High School.

September 20: Federal Judge Davies orders Governor Faubus to cease barring integration.

September 23: A crowd of about 1,000 people gather in front of the school. The nine students go inside through a side door. When the crowd learns the students are inside, mob riots break out and the students are taken out of the school through a side door.

September 24:  Mob violence continues.  President Eisenhower announces he is sending 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to uphold the law. He also federalized the 10,000-man Arkansas National Guard.

September 25: The students, who become known as The Little Rock Nine, are escorted by Army troops and admitted back into Central High.

June 3, 1958: Ernest Greene becomes the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock’s Central High School.

-more at the Presidential Timeline

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