Cooper v.

Aaron and the Little Rock Nine

Jaylon Sargent, Jenny Cheng Junior Division Group Website

Following Brown v. Board of Education in of 1954, the school board of Little Rock, Arkansas, assembled the Blossom Plan to integrate Central High School (1957). Governor Orval Faubus instructed the Arkansas National Guard to stop the access of nine African American students the day before desegregation. The NAACP then presented the Cooper v. Aaron case to the Supreme Court; they held that postponing the plan to preserve public peace would go against black students rights under the Equal Protection Clause and pushed the plan forward and stated that governors and state legislatures were under the oath of the Constitution and the Supremacy Clause. This case is not just a landmark decision, but also a turning point in the civil rights struggle, first desegregating public schools, and eventually resulting in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As soon as the theme this year was introduced, we asked our siblings and parents for suggestions. They both leaned toward black history in local places; so naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is the Little Rock Nine. We talked to our teacher about the topic but were told that maybe we should consider Cooper v. Aaron instead since it is lesser done. Since it still had a relation to our original thought, we agreed. We researched separately to ensure diverged sources. One of us started from our local college libraries where we found periodical magazine articles from the 1950s and different books on our topic, and the other searched online for recorded media and scholarly articles. It was clear how one action of the public influenced an argument in the case and how the events connect and follow each other. The idea of starting a website felt like a lot of stress to us. We knew little about designing and creating websites but the program provided made the job very entertaining, surprisingly.

With each media and paragraph added a new sense of accomplishment rushes over us. Available quality pictures from the 1950s were usually black and white and dont involve poster advertisement, resulting in our simple black design for the site. We began putting information from the start with the Brown v. Board of Education to the beginning of Little Rock school integration all the way to the actual case itself. We studied the components of last years winner and tried to get ideas from there without completely copying the site. The Cooper v. Aaron case helped opened peoples eyes nationwide. The treatment of African American people was publically reported through news and print. Even after racist attempts like Governor Orval Faubuss to close Little Rocks schools rather than to desegregate, this Blossom Plan of years still managed to finally come through. Schools were integrated, leading to a new step in African American Civil Rights Movement by gathering more attention on black suffrage, protecting students learning rights, directly stating government and officials under the Constitution and Supremacy Clause, and eventually adding to the reasons for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.