Despite the disappointing limitations of the Blossom Plan, the local NAACP wanted to push forward and send nine black students to all white Little Rock Central High in 1957, the first year they would be eligible to attend. These students were later called the Little Rock Nine.

Soldiers escort the nine students into the all white high school.

Even though the Blossom Plan said that desegregation was the plan for the future, many people in Little Rock and the rest of the state were upset about it. All of Arkansas' congressmen had signed the Southern Manifesto, a document declaring the South's intention to defy the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. And the state's governor, Orval Faubus, was fully committed to resisting the Blossom Plan.

Faubus knew that the majority of voters in Arkansas were opposed to desegregation, so he committed himself to their cause. On September 4, 1957, the Little Rock Nine made their way to Little Rock Central High for their first day of school, but an angry mob of white protesters was waiting for them. Faubus had also sent troops from the Arkansas National Guard to ensure that the students wouldn't be able to enter.

In the end, the Little Rock Nine were turned away by the troops and the pro-segregation mob. Members of the local school board condemned Faubus' use of soldiers to enforce segregation; however, Faubus himself claimed that they had been deployed for the safety of the entire community. Even President Dwight Eisenhower condemned the governor's actions and chastised him for defying the Supreme Court.

Review the Blossom Plan and how pro-segregation groups responded to it by answering the questions below: