DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
30 August 2007
Jefferson Thomas
Fifty years ago, black youngsters’ struggles to attend Little Rock’s Central High School during the 1957-1958 school year propelled the civil rights movement forward in the United States. (See “After Facing Mobs 50 Years Ago, Nine Go Home to Honors.”) The Little Rock Nine’s story is really nine stories.
Like his classmate Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas took correspondence courses (conducted via mail) during the 1958-1959 school year, when Little Rock high schools were closed -- first by the governor and then by popular vote -- to avoid racial integration.
“After the governor closed the schools, I knew I was in the right place. That the governor would say, ‘To stop a few black kids from getting an education, I’m going to deny it to 2,000 whites is amazing.”
He returned his senior year and graduated in 1960, along with LaNier. After earning a college degree, he worked as an accountant until his retirement.
Thomas vividly remembers the first day the Little Rock Nine attempted to attend Central High, down to the plaid shirt he put on that morning. It was in early September 1957. “I felt anticipation on the first day of school -- of meeting new people. I was excited and ready to go. I knew white boys with whom I had played ball were at Central. A couple of them grew up two-and-a-half blocks away. We knew each other. I anticipated the surprise they would have seeing me.”
But Thomas would not find them. He recalls walking with several ministers from different denominations who were there to support the school’s integration: “We walked a block. The National Guard closed ranks each time we stepped up on the curb [at the school]. We made two or three attempts to enter. Each time, we would be blocked. The ministers talked to the guards. The troops said, ‘You can’t enter here.’ They didn’t say, ‘We’re keeping you out.’ Eventually, we turned around and walked home.”
Thomas said he saw reporters surrounding his group and that some jostled him. Only after he came home -- to see his mother, waiting on the porch, crying -- did he learn that he had been surrounded by ugly violence. On the television, he saw the reporters who had been near him taking a beating. He saw one hit by a baseball bat.
Later that month, the Little Rock Nine entered school and attended a few classes before being pulled out and taken to the main office, where the police fretted about keeping the black students safe as the mob outside became restive. Thomas heard a policeman suggest to the chief that he turn over one black student to the mob, saying, “You can get credit for saving eight.” Thomas feared it would be him and began calculating how he might outrun the segregationists. (The chief smuggled all nine out safely.)
The Little Rock Nine agreed to forego extracurricular activities, to ease fears of whites who did not want “race-mixing.” Thomas, an athlete, would have to stop running track.
“The white students kept me in shape,” Thomas laughed. “They kept me running.” He has a sense of humor. He said he had to be careful at times at Central not to show it, but that he secretly enjoyed “body-language jokes.” When a bully would attempt to hit or shove him, Thomas stepped aside quickly. “I enjoyed helping them miss me. They couldn’t keep up.”
When Thomas went to college, he somehow was not assigned a dormitory room. An administrator, after hearing about his high school background, assigned him a room in the foreign-student building and jokingly justified it to Thomas, saying, “Little Rock? That stuff that has been happening there can’t be in America. It’s a foreign country you are from.”
See Black History Month.
Listen to Thomas talk about how he kept his mindset rooted in nonviolence while at Central.
In his own words
Film excerpt of Little Rock Nine in 1957