Little Rock Nine

===School tensions===
[[File:Little-Rock-TIME-1957.jpg|thumb|190px|Young U.S. Army paratrooper in battle gear outside Central High School, on the cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine (October 7, 1957)]]
By the end of September 1957, the nine were admitted to Little Rock Central High under the protection of the [[101st Airborne Division]] (and later the [[Arkansas National Guard]]), but they were still subjected to a year of [[Physical abuse|physical]] and [[verbal abuse]] by many of the white students. [[Melba Pattillo Beals|Melba Pattillo]] had acid thrown into her eyes<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/iml04/soc/ush/civil/beals/index.html|title=Melba Pattillo Beals|access-date=February 2, 2008|work=Teachers' Domain|publisher=WGBH Educational Foundation|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080421200149/http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/iml04/soc/ush/civil/beals/index.html|archive-date=April 21, 2008|df=mdy-all}}</ref> and also recalled in her book, ''Warriors Don't Cry'', an incident in which a group of white girls trapped her in a stall in the girls' washroom and attempted to burn her by dropping pieces of flaming paper on her from above. Another one of the students, [[Minnijean Brown-Trickey|Minnijean Brown]], was verbally confronted and abused. She said

<blockquote>I was one of the kids 'approved' by the school officials. We were told we would have to take a lot and were warned not to fight back if anything happened. One girl ran up to me and said, 'I'm so glad you're here. Won't you go to lunch with me today?' I never saw her again.<ref>{{Cite news|last1=Brown|first1=Minnijean|author-link=Minnijean Brown-Trickey|last2=Moskin|first2=J. Robert|title=One Girl's Little Rock Story|magazine=[[Look (American magazine)|Look]]|date=June 24, 1958}}</ref></blockquote>

Minnijean Brown was also taunted by members of a group of white male students in December 1957 in the school cafeteria during lunch. She dropped her lunch, a bowl of chili, onto the boys and was suspended for six days. Two months later, after more confrontation, Brown was suspended for the rest of the school year. She transferred to the [[New Lincoln School]] in [[New York City]].<ref name="LittleRockCentralHigh"/> As depicted in the 1981 made-for-TV docudrama ''[[Crisis at Central High]]'', and as mentioned by Melba Pattillo Beals in ''Warriors Don't Cry'', white students were punished only when their offense was "both egregious and witnessed by an adult".<ref name=CaCH>{{cite journal |last1=Collins |first1=Janelle |title=Easing a Country's Conscience: Little Rock's Central High School in Film |journal=Southern Quarterly |publisher=[[University of Southern Mississippi]] |date=2008 |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=78–90 |url=https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1598172951/easing-a-country-s-conscience-little-rock-s-central |id={{ProQuest|222252522}} |access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> The drama was based on a book by [[Elizabeth Huckaby]], a vice-principal during the crisis.