The Little Rock 9 Return To Central High

The Little Rock Nine, once barred from Central High School because they are black, arrived on its soggy campus Tuesday in three white limousines as the community marked 50 years since President Dwight Eisenhower directed soldiers to escort the students into the majestic building.

"You can overcome adversity if you know you are doing the right thing," said Carlotta Walls Lanier, one of the nine students who integrated Central High School on Sept. 25, 1957.

Seating was set out for 5,000 people on the front lawn of the inner-city campus, dampened by sprinkles of rain. The high school is 52 percent black now, and classes were canceled Monday and Tuesday to accommodate ceremonies commemorating one of the early key moments in the civil rights movement.

Gov. Mike Beebe said Arkansas has made progress in the 50 years since the Central crisis but said economic and educational inequalities still exist.

"There will always be a necessity to show that we are inclusive as a society," Beebe said. "The lesson is that we need to make sure that people learn from this event and be as inclusive as possible."

The head of the state NAACP chapter said a weeks-long celebration throughout the city overstates the progress in race relations. Broad swaths of the city are predominantly black or predominantly white.

"After today, the lights will go out and people will look at something else. Today is a commercial piece," Dale Charles said in an interview.

Mayor Mark Stodola, in his address to the crowd, decried the divisions that remain here despite community development projects that have boosted the local economy.

"We have the largest black middle-class in our history, but 35 percent of black children in the city live below the poverty line," said Stodola, who is white. "We have transformed the River Market, replacing blight, but too many neighborhoods south of Interstate 630 are decaying.

"There is a pervasive feeling that we are two cities," Stodola said. "We may be desegregated, but we have a way to go to be integrated."

In September 1957, then-Gov. Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to keep nine black children out of Central High, telling a statewide TV audience that court-ordered integration would spark mob violence. He didn't acknowledge that he helped manufacture the crisis to boost his segregationist credentials.

Outside the school Tuesday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the civil rights struggle continues 50 years later in a social system that has "first-class jails and second-class schools."

"We were winning against all odds. Now we're begging youth to attend school," Jackson said.

From the porch of her parents' home across the street, Patricia Washington McGraw watched the preparations for the anniversary celebration with mixed feelings. McGraw, a retired English professor at the University of Central Arkansas, told CBS News affiliate KTHV-TV that she was proud of the efforts of the Little Rock Nine, but noted that when her daughter and her grandson attended Advanced Placement classes at Central, they were among the very few black faces in those classes.

Gary Orfield studies the phenomenon of re-segregation at UCLA and told CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasan that American schools are back-sliding at a distubing pace, increasingly segregated by class, language and race.

"We show every state in the south is going backwards, and every part of the country going backwards since the early 90s," Orfield said, saying this trend hurts the students who are most at risk. "Children tend to learn more in integrated schools. Children tend to be more likely to graduate from high school and graduate from college."

Gene Prescott, who photographed the school's integration for the Arkansas Gazette newspaper in 1957, noted the difference in the crowd over 50 years. The all-white mob 50 years ago jeered the nine while Tuesday's crowd of blacks and whites welcomed them.

"They are mingling and they are shaking hands. That certainly is a change," he said.

Former President Clinton was scheduled to speak at a morning ceremony. Ten years ago, Clinton and then-Gov. Mike Huckabee walked to the front of the school and held the doors open for the Little Rock Nine: Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Lanier, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey and Thelma Mothershed Wair.

Huckabee, now a Republican presidential candidate, said President Bush likely would have attended Tuesday's ceremonies if not for his visit to the United Nations.

"Like all of us, he can only be in one place at one time," Huckabee said. "I'm sure if he hadn't have shown up at the United Nations, there would have been people critical of him." The White House issued a statement commemorating the anniversary.

"As an Arkansas high school turned into a battleground for equality, the bravery of the Little Rock Nine inspired a generation of Americans," Bush said. "We honor their courage, and we resolve to continue their work to make America a more perfect Union."

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional, ruling that many districts were operating education systems that were separate but not equal. By the fall of 1957, the Charleston, Fayetteville and Hoxie school districts had integrated peacefully but agitators targeted Little Rock for trouble.

For three weeks, Little Rock became the focus of a showdown between Faubus and Eisenhower. Faubus pulled the Guard away but a crowd gathered outside the school Sept. 23 to prevent it from complying with U.S. District Judge Ronald Davies' desegregation order. An Associated Press account called the chaos a "human explosion."

Eisenhower that night authorized the use of federal troops to enforce Davies' order and - for the first time since Reconstruction - federal troops were deployed to a former Confederate state. Members of the 101st Airborne Division escorted the Little Rock Nine to classes on Sept. 25, 1957.

Eight students completed the school year - Minnijean Brown Trickey was expelled after a run-in with white students - but Faubus closed schools for the 1958-59 school year. This year, the Little Rock School District, with 27,000 students, is 70 percent black.