TRAGIC NEWS: Holger Rune has since departed.
Jerral On the first day of classes, six black students at North Little Rock High were attempting to integrate when a group of white men gathered at the front door and obstructed their path. Wayne Jones, a sophomore with a crew cut, fit right in with this gang.
Despite the fact that black players are the NFL’s main source of revenue, The Washington Post is looking into the league’s previous practice of not promoting black coaches to administration roles during current football season.
Jones was standing a short distance away while the mob leaders, who were also shouting racist epithets, shoved and physically attacked the six black children. A brief movie clip demonstrated this. A black student named Richard Lindsey said that he once felt someone in the crowd touch the back of his neck with their hand. From behind him, he heard someone exclaim, “I want to know how a nigger feels.” Prospective recruits were turned off by the violent thuggery.
The incident occurred 65 years ago on September 9, 1957. Little Rock Central High, a short distance from the nation’s capital, launched a more extensive integration program that same month. President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized federal forces to help black students carve out new territory outside of the invading mob during the Little Rock Nine events, which are considered a turning point in the history of the civil rights struggle. It concealed the appalling conditions that Jones’s high school was experiencing across the Arkansas River at the same time; these episodes have been generally, but not completely, forgotten by history.
Photographer William P. Straeter of the Associated Press captured the image of a young Jones wearing a striped shirt. He also said, “looking like a little burrhead” when he squinted to get a closer look in a previous interview with the Washington Post. In one month, he would turn fifteen. He had been working out twice a day and lifting weights since August in an effort to make the school’s football B squad. Given that coach Jim Albright had said he “didn’t want to see any of you knot-heads in front of that school tomorrow,” there might have been issues.
Even after receiving such advice, Jones persisted. He was positioned on the higher landing at the school’s double-leaf entrance doors, close to the core of the action. The human barrier, which was built to restrict people from entering based only on skin color, was behind his face.
Jones asserted that he was not participating, only watching. “I don’t think anyone, myself included, was aware of the details beforehand. He claimed that was more of an anomaly.
According to Straeter’s images, Jones had to circumvent the North Little Rock Six to reach the top of the stairs prior to the conclusion of the black kids’ march to the schoolhouse entrance. Despite the reality that most of the neighborhood’s occupants were teenagers, Jones presented the conventional version of the events, asserting that the six young black boys were the victims of older white supremacists.
