"we can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist" —James Baldwin

In 1938, Jack Johnson was speeding when he was stopped by a policeman. He issued him a $50 ticket. Jack handed him a $100 bill, to which the policeman proclaimed "I can't make change for that much!" Jack replied, "keep it, as I will be making the return trip at the same speed."

On September 25, 1957, nine Black teenagers walked into Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas under the protection of soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. Their arrival marked a defining moment in the struggle to desegregate American schools, three years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public education was unconstitutional. The students, later known as the Little Rock Nine, were Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray, Thelma Mothershed and Melba Pattillo. Their enrollment had been met with fierce resistance. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus initially deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering Central High, while angry white crowds gathered outside the school. After weeks of confrontation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. On September 25, the nine students entered Central High under armed military protection. Federal troops could get them through the doors, however, but they could not shield them from everything that happened inside. Throughout the school year, the students endured relentless racial abuse from some of their white classmates. They were insulted, spat on, shoved and threatened. Melba Pattillo later recalled having acid thrown toward her eyes and described being trapped in a bathroom stall while girls dropped burning pieces of paper onto her. She documented much of what she experienced years later in her memoir, Warriors Don't Cry. Minnijean Brown also endured repeated harassment. In December 1957, after white boys taunted her in the cafeteria, she dropped a bowl of chili on them and was suspended. Following another confrontation in February 1958, she was expelled from Central High and eventually continued her education in New York. The treatment of the nine showed that legally opening a school to Black students was very different from making that school safe or welcoming for them. Despite everything, the students helped break a major barrier. Ernest Green became the first Black student to graduate from Central High in May 1958, with Martin Luther King Jr. attending the ceremony. Their courage turned a local school desegregation battle into a national test of whether the federal government would actually enforce the constitutional rights of Black Americans. The Little Rock Nine were teenagers asked to carry a burden that should never have been placed on children. Yet every morning they returned to that school, they challenged a system determined to tell them where they could learn and where they belonged. Their story remains one of the clearest examples of the courage required to turn a Supreme Court ruling into a reality.

A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority. - Booker T. Washinaton