After the President forced Little Rock Central High to desegregate, the Little Rock Nine faced a difficult year. Some white students accepted them, but others subjected them to daily insults and physical abuse. One had acid thrown into her face, and another was expelled for calling one of her daily tormentors "white trash."

This protest against desegregation took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1959--two years after the Little Rock Nine desegregated local high schools.

The following year, Orval Faubus succeeded in shutting down all public schools in Little Rock, hoping to create an alternate, private school system that would be racially segregated. He was thwarted after a lost year of no schooling for any children in Little Rock. In 1959, the schools opened again, and the remaining Little Rock Nine returned to their classes.

Meanwhile, other school districts in Arkansas and the South continued to resist desegregation. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that all states are bound by the Court's decisions, even if they find them objectionable--the case was Aaron v. Cooper, and it was specifically related to desegregation.

After the Aaron v. Cooper decision, it was clear that the Southern states had to desegregate their schools eventually. Segregationists believed that the federal government was infringing on their rights.

Today, the Little Rock Nine are remembered as brave students willing to endure daily persecution and abuse in the name of expanded civil rights and freedom for black Americans.