The Beatles' song "Blackbird" (White Album, 1968) was inspired by the Little Rock Nine and other civil rights champions. Just when you thought you couldn't love the Beatles more, arewerite? (Source)

Carlotta Walls' family got her a store-bought dress for her first day at Central High School. She recently donated it to the Smithsonian Institution. You wanna look good when you're making history. (Source)

Why did Chief Justice Warren use the term "all deliberate speed" to describe how desegregation was to happen? The NAACP lawyers had recommended he use the term "forthwith" to get things rolling quickly. After Warren retired he admitted that he chose Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous phrase because "there were so many blocks preventing an immediate solution of the thing in reality that the best we could look for would be a progression of action." (Source)

World-famous jazz musician Louis Armstrong usually didn't talk about politics. But before a concert in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on September 17th, 1957, Armstrong couldn't hold back his frustration over Little Rock. "It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country," he told a reporter. "The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell." After President Eisenhower dispatched federal troops, however, Armstrong was quick to send his support. "If you decide to walk into the schools with the little colored kids, take me along, Daddy," said Armstrong in a telegram. Now that would have been one cool assembly. (Source)

Jackie Robinson, who'd broken Major League Baseball's color line in 1947, wrote to the president on May 13, 1958: "You said we must have patience. […] I respectfully remind you sir, that we have been the most patient of all people. […] 17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change. We want to enjoy now the rights that we feel we are entitled to as Americans. […] An unequivocal statement backed up by action such as you demonstrated you could take last fall in dealing with Governor Faubus […] would let it be known that America is determined to provide—in the near future—for Negroes—the freedoms we are entitled to under the Constitution."

Mr. Robinson was right: A hundred years after the Civil War was a long time to wait. (Source)