Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later (2007 TV Movie) User Reviews

Riveting

[MikeyB1793 · 9/10 · 28 February 2010]

A riveting documentary on Central Rock High fifty years after it was forcibly integrated by the federal government under President Eisenhower. I was disappointed that this documentary did not focus more on the experience of the African American students who were escorted to Central Rock by the 101st U.S. Airborne division. There is some presentation of this, but the main emphasis is on Central Rock today.

This documentary follows students (black and white) into their high school and their communities. It does not flinch on racial issues and on the racial divide that exists in America. Like all good documentaries it presents several points of view and allows the viewer to absorb and make up his own mind. I could not help but notice how clean the high school looked.

It is true that America has come a long way since the Little Rock of 1957, but after viewing this documentary we must acknowledge that much needs to be done. For more on what happened in Little Rock in 1957 I strongly recommend 'A Mighty Long Way' by Carlotta Walls Lanier. Carlotta Walls was one of the original nine students who integrated into Central High. The pain that she and her family experienced from this gives a good historical back-drop to this documentary.

Just the way it is

[pbczf · 8/10 · 13 July 2023]

This 2007 documentary tells the story of Little Rock and its Central High School fifty years after US Army paratroopers escorted nine black students to class there in 1957. This was one of the early enforcements of the US Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision, which ruled that separate White and Black school systems were inherently unequal. After setting up the historical context, the film first focuses on the school's academic success, following a well-off White family and its world of AP classes and Ivy League admissions. Then a Black teacher, teaching mostly Black kids, tells us 'If you are living in an AP world...you are out of reality.' Then we're off to what does seem like a different world where most kids don't engage with school and their parents are taking care of their high-school daughters' children rather than going to PTSA meetings. The school's principal ties together both worlds, touting the academic successes of some students and bemoaning the fact that others are reading at a third- or fourth-grade level.

The film ends with a powerful scene. Minnijean Brown-Trickey, one of the nine students escorted to class in 1957, visits the school to talk to a class about her experiences. While addressing the class Brown-Trickey stops suddenly and says, 'This room disturbs the hell out of me.' She invites the students to take her place at the front of the class and tell her what's so disturbing. A Black student volunteers and comes to the front and the camera pans so that we can see the back. Are there Confederate symbols? We can't see anything. Then the student says, 'I see it. Caucasians on this side Blacks on this side?' In one of the few classes we've seen with fairly even numbers of Black and White students, segregation continues. As a Black student says, 'It's just the way that it is.'