In September 1957, Terrence Roberts, now 71, helped change the course of history just by walking to school. It was the 1950s, a time marred by the racial injustices of Jim Crow and segregated schools. Roberts experienced this firsthand as a boy in Little Rock, Ark.
But on May 17, 1954, things began to change for the better. The U.S. Supreme Court passed its landmark decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, forcing public schools to desegregate.
“I was grateful that it had finally been decided,” Roberts said, feeling the decision was long overdue.
In the wake of the ruling, Roberts carved out a place in history as a member of the Little Rock Nine, nine black students who integrated all-white Central High School. It was a major early moment in the Civil Rights Movement, and the students’ actions drew headlines spanning the globe.
The group’s first attempt to enter the school in early September was turned back by a white mob and the Arkansas National Guard, who had been ordered by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to bar Roberts and his colleagues from the school.
Weeks later, after Faubus removed the guard, local police snuck him and the eight other students in the school on Sept. 23 to avoid confrontation with another mob railing against integration. They got the students inside, but they were spotted through the windows. The mob revolted, and the police were forced to lead the students back outside for their own safety.
On Sept. 25, President Eisenhower ordered the U.S. military into Little Rock, and the soldiers escorted the nine students into the school. Chaos raged on as Roberts and his peers faced intense racial slurs.
“We were there to try and survive,” he said.
Eventually, the students entered Central High for good, and went down in history.
The next year, Faubus closed down all of Little Rock’s public schools. Roberts moved to Los Angeles to finish high school. He stayed in the Southland, earning a B.A. in sociology from California State University, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Southern Illinois University. Thursday, at Pepperdine University, he led a talk on what fuels race-related issues, and how to combat them.
More than a half-century after he helped break the custom of segregated education, Roberts lamented the slow pace of progress.
“I don’t think schools have stopped being segregated,” he said, noting that many African- Americans still lack access to quality education.
An insatiable learner, Roberts originally jumped at the chance to attend Central High primarily because it offered a better education, as much as for the historical significance.
When attempting to grapple with racism, Roberts argued that America has enacted policies that prove counterproductive. The practice of employers and colleges requesting that applicants identify their race was “irrelevant,” he said.
“It makes no sense. The truth is, there is no such thing as race. There never has been,” he said.
The idea of race is spawned from pseudoscientists creating a white-black hierarchy, Roberts argued, and deceiving the public into thinking it was real.
“The truth is, at some point, we’re [going to] rise above that.”
During the question-and-answer session, Roberts advised attendees to genuinely accept others. He sparked some laughs from the audience by recalling how he randomly hugs bigots, and when he was in Little Rock, critiqued racial slurs lodged at him.
“In fact, I had a rating scale for the quality of the insults,” he said.
That breadth of spirit, Roberts suggested, starts at home. Recalling an experience from his days as a college professor when a student, after taking one of his classes related to the subject, asked him how she should approach the antiquated beliefs of her racist grandfather, Roberts’ reply was, “Love him!”
While embracing each other’s differences is a needed first step in fighting racism, Roberts argued that racism is a deep-seated practice that has permeated American culture for hundreds of years and is difficult to overcome. He explained that America has lifted “whiteness” to such an exalted setting that it has almost become a standard. He urged listeners to resolve this issue by simply getting to know one another.
“That’s why we have to have a dialogue. We have to talk a lot,” he said.