Variant 1 You could have come first and won the race if you … faster

A long hard trip to school

Elizabeth Eckford will never forget her first day of high school. It was 50 years ago. Kids screamed at her as she tried to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. “They were so angry that I would not dare to try to go to that school.” Eckford told journalists. Why were they angry?

Eckford was in the first group of black students to go Central High. In 1957, many people did not believe that black and white students should go to school together. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that black students could no longer be made to do separate schools. But the governor of Arkansas still refused to let the black students enter Central High. In 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower finally had to send 1,000 armed soldiers. They protected the black students, who entered the school on September 25, 1957.