Well the symbolism of Central, when you see it, it’s an imposive, an impressive structure. Very imposing. It takes up two city blocks. It was, in 1957, the top high school in that area; not just in Little Rock, but in that whole mid-South area. And to have successfully gone through there meant that you had cracked one more barrier that had been barred to black people in the city of Little Rock. And what I saw, and I think, speaking for the other eight students, that it was always important for our own education. We thought we were getting the very best that public funds had available in Little Rock, but halfway through the school year, we knew we were doing something for everybody in the town, everybody black in the town. And that the longer we stayed there and if we successfully completed there, it would be difficult, impossible, for anybody to say that black people couldn’t compete in that environment and two, that one more all white institution broken down.

Description + Context: ​Excerpt from a 1985 video interview (for a documentary on the Civil Rights Movement) with Ernest Green, who was one of nine African American students who enrolled in Little Rock Central High School as the first African American students to do so in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.