Little Rock Shero

Before attending Central High, Walls went to Little Rock’s all-Black school, Dunbar Junior High School. “I remember the teacher reading the day’s bulletin to our class.About half way down he asked if anybody living within the boundaries where I lived had any intention of going to Central, and if so, to sign this sheet of paper. It came around to me, and I signed. I didn’t think anything about

it. It was the right thing to do,” said Walls who has since married and changed her name to Walls LaNier.

“I wanted to be a doctor, and if you looked at the comparison between Central and Horace Mann High, it was obvious. It wasn’t separate but equal. It was separate, but very unequal,” she said, noting she had a long list of reasons to venture into the all-white school. “Ten percent of Central’s graduating class were National Merit scholars. Now why wouldn’t I want to go there?”

Out of 117 students who expressed interest in attending Central, 39 registered for the school’s first year of integration. But on September 4, 1957, only nine braved the first desegregated school year at Central High, to become known as the Little Rock Nine.

“I wasn’t nervous, I was excited about my first day at school,” she said. “I’d had enough of the summer, had

played all the softball I could play, had been to camp. It was time to go back to school,” she said, explaining

how she never imagined the storm that would surround her tenure at Central, nor the stress that it would put on her family.

On the first day of school, however, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, a known segregationist, defied a federal district court decision halting proposed injunctions against school integration, when he called on the National Guard to prevent the nine Black students from entering the school. The issue had grown beyond civil rights into the realm of state versus federal rights.

“It was this governor who had never done a dad-gum thing in his life,” Walls LaNier said. “He had pressure from a white

citizen’s council that had helped to put him into office. I don’t know if he believed in segregation. I don’t want to debate it, but I didn’t like him.”

To gain control and enforce the federal ruling, Little Rock’s mayor called on the police department to take over. Amidst a crowd of more than 1,000 angry whites, the students finally gained entrance on Sept. 23, but their success was short lived. The mob became unruly after learning the students had entered the school through a side entrance. Worried for their safety, the police escorted the Little Rock Nine out of the school.

On Sept. 24, President Dwight Eisenhower sent 1,000 troops from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne to quell the disorder. On Sept. 25, escorted by the Army, the students entered Central High School for their first full day of school.

Facing Taunts, Threats And Violence

Throughout the year, each student had their own Army escort to, from and in school. Despite the military presence, the nine Black students endured insults, threats, taunts, and even physical harm. The students were also told they could not participate in any of the school’s extracurricular activities.

Walls LaNier was kicked by two white boys, but no action was taken against them. Another mean-spirited girl harassed young Walls LaNier by walking so close behind her that the girl stepped on the back of her heels. Fed up with the taunts, Little Rock Nine student Minnijean Brown dumped a bowl of chili on one of her antagonists, only to be expelled from school.

“The integration didn’t come fast enough for Minnie. She always had a problem because she was so outgoing,”

Walls LaNier said.

The students also had to deal with the media frenzy.

“We were only kids, and most of the reporters sensationalized our story. I didn’t appreciate it at all because it was tough on us,” she said. “We caught hell the next day at school, depending on what was printed in the paper, and so did our families.”

Although the media caused problems, Walls LaNier conceded they also played a beneficial role.

“I don’t believe the 101st would have been called out had Eisenhower not been called a fool in the paper by the governor,” she said. “Some reporters were good. We needed John Chancellor and Dan Rather. Those guys had just started out. Television was just starting, and the Little Rock Nine made their careers.”

To escape the early morning harassment, the nine students would go to the school’s chapel service before their first class.

“It was our safe haven,” Walls LaNier said “We had to get there so early because of our convoy. We would meet at a certain place, get into the jeep and go to school. We were usually 15 minutes early, which made us targets. So, we would go to this chapel service thinking if folks believed in the Bible and God, that maybe they wouldn’t bother us, and they didn’t.”

Despite her house being bombed and the continual persecution, Walls LaNier became one of the first Black students to graduate from Central High in 1960. She was awarded a full scholarship to Michigan State University, where she pursued her dream of going into medicine. But, racism and sexism reared their ugly heads even in Michigan, and Walls, already emotionally spent from her

experiences in Little Rock, decided to forgo her scholarship and leave school after just two years.

Ensuring Her Mission’s Complete

Walls LaNier said the Little Rock experience was particularly hard on her family. Not only did they worry about her, but her father had difficulty finding work after she began attending Central.

“I knew my parents suffered because of me,” she said. “My father would hold two or three jobs. But after I went to Central, he couldn’t find work. When people found out he was the father of one of the Nine, they would let him go because of what he represented.”

Her parents moved to Kansas City, Missouri after she graduated from Central and followed her to Denver in

1963.

“I remember visiting Colorado, and it was just so clean,” Walls LaNier said of her decision to move to Denver in 1962, almost a year before her parents. “After being in Detroit, I couldn’t believe such blue skies. And I could walk up to a policeman and ask a question without that fear.”

In Denver, she worked two jobs and saved enough money to finish college. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Colorado State College (now the University of Northern Colorado) in 1968.

In the eighties, Walls LaNier served on the board of the Colorado AIDS Project and remembers seeing the same sort of discrimination against gays, lesbians, and those suffering from HIV.

“That was back when everyone was quiet about it,” she said. “But when I left, I felt like the awareness was out there.”

These days, Walls LaNier owns and operates her own real estate agency in Denver, LaNier & Co. She also speaks locally and nationally about her place in the history of civil rights, and is currently putting the finishing touches on a book about her life called Or Die Trying.

“I speak about my experience and allow people to ask questions,” she said. “I might not have all the answers – I’m a real estate broker, not a social worker. We’ve come a long way, but we still have more work to do,” she said.

Walls Lanier received the prestigious Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1958, and the Congressional Gold Medal from President Bill Clinton in 1999. She was named a “Woman of Distinction” by the Girl Scouts in 2000, and was inducted into the Colorado Women’s

Hall of Fame in 2004. She also received the National Shining Star Award from the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women and was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in October. She has served on the board of trustees for Denver’s Iliff School of Theology and currently serves on the board of trustees for the University of Colorado. She is the president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation, a scholarship organization dedicated to ensuring equal access to education for African Americans.

In September, Iliff opened an exhibit in honor of the Little Rock Nine’s 50th anniversary at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library. The Little Rock Nine exhibit moved to Iliff in November, where it will be on display through the month of January before moving to the Wells Fargo Building downtown in February. Iliff will also host a celebration to honor the Little Rock Nine and the part they played in the advancement of civil rights, at the Adams Mark Hotel in February.

Editor’s note: For information about the Little Rock Nine celebration in February 2008, call Mary Underwood at 303-765-3113 or E-mail her at munderwood@iliff.edu.