THELMA MOTHER’S BAR: 1940 – 2024

Thelma Mothershed-Wair, who has died at age 83, was one of nine black students who had to be escorted by the 101st Airborne Division through jeering crowds at Little Rock Central High School during school desegregation in Arkansas in 1957. civil rights struggle.

If Thelma Mothershed was less abused than the others, this was perhaps because she was visibly thin, weighing six and a half stone and the shortest of the nine, standing barely five feet tall. He was prone to mild heart attacks and was exempt from physical education classes, where the worst beatings occurred.

Despite this, his face hit the metal stairs. The phone threats were so constant that his parents had to pick up the receiver. One of the black students was burned in effigy on campus.

Thelma Mothershed was valedictorian of her black middle school, and her worried parents tried to dissuade her from enrolling at Central High School, fearing that the anxiety and stairs might kill her, but she was determined to get that education. The best training to become a teacher.

Following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate schools, some districts in Arkansas secretly admitted black students as a token. But white resistance was growing, and Orval Faubus, the populist governor of Arkansas, risked losing the 1958 election unless he bowed to his segregationist base.

On September 4, 1957, Thelma Mothershed and her friends were removed from Central High School by Arkansas National Guard sent by Faubus. They successfully entered the school on Monday, September 23, but a mob outside beat the black reporters and the children were sent home for their safety. Two days later, President Eisenhower assigned 1,200 men from the 101st Airborne Division to force the issue.

The scenes outside Little Rock became symbolic of the South’s resistance to civil rights. Some girls chanted: “Two, four, six, eight!” We don’t want to integrate!” A famous photo was taken of a white girl screaming at honorable, subdued black students; he later apologized publicly.