Little Rock Nine: from the portfolio, I Am A Man

Image Not Available

Little Rock Nine: from the portfolio, I Am A Man

Artist Ernest C. Withers American, 1922 - 2007

Publisher Panopticon Press, Tony Decaneas, Waltham, MA

Datephotographs: 1956-1968; portfolio: 1994

Dimensionssheet: 15 15/16 x 18 7/8 in. (40.5 x 47.9 cm)
image: 14 15/16 x 18 1/4 in. (37.9 x 46.4 cm)
Sheet, according to WAC form: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

MediumGelatin silver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineMrs. George W. Stevens Fund

Object number

2003.46E

Not on View

Published Referencescf.: Pictures Tell a Story (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2000) cf.: Let Us March On! Selected Civil Rights photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955-1968 (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1992)Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, People Get Ready: 50 Years of Civil Rights, June 27-September 21, 2014.

Label Text(l to r): Carlotta Walls, Melba Pattillo, Elizabeth Eckford, and Minnie Jean Brown “The first day I was able to enter Central High School, what I felt inside was terrible, wrenching, awful fear. On the car radio I could hear that there was a mob…. So we entered the side of the building, very, very fast. Even as we entered there were people running after us, people tripping other people…. There has never been in my life any stark terror or any fear akin to that.” --Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools are “inherently unequal” and ordered the desegregation of public schools. Three years later, nine black children in Little Rock, Arkansas, attempted to enroll in Central High School. They were put off initially by legal maneuvers by the governor and by angry mobs. President Dwight D. Eisenhower eventually sent in 1,000 troops to ensure the safe entry of the Little Rock Nine, and the students bravely returned to integrate the school. Ernest Withers stayed in contact with the Little Rock Nine throughout his life.