Paul McCartney meets Little Rock Nine members who inspired Beatles' song

Paul McCartney met two members of the Little Rock Nine after his performance Friday at Verizon Arena. During the show, McCartney revealed that civil rights events in Little Rock inspired The Beatles song "Blackbird."
Paul McCartney met two members of the Little Rock Nine after his performance Friday at Verizon Arena. During the show, McCartney revealed that civil rights events in Little Rock inspired The Beatles song "Blackbird."

Two members of the Little Rock Nine met Paul McCartney on Friday after his performance at Verizon Arena, where he revealed that civil-rights events in Little Rock inspired The Beatles' song "Blackbird."

The women, Thelma Mothershed Wair and Elizabeth Eckford, were part of a group of black students who enrolled at all-white Central High School after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus tried to prevent the school's desegregation until President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to escort the students to school.

"Incredible to meet two of the Little Rock Nine — pioneers of the civil rights movement and inspiration for 'Blackbird,'" McCartney said on Twitter after the show.

During the three-hour performance, McCartney told the sold-out crowd that the Little Rock Nine introduced The Beatles to the civil-rights movement after they read about the city's struggles in British newspapers during the early 1960s.

"It's a really important place for us because this is, to me, where civil rights started," McCartney said in a video from the concert posted on Youtube. "We would see what was going on and sympathize with the people going through those struggles, and it made me want to write a song that if it ever got back to the people going through those struggles, it might just help them a little."

Efforts to reach Wair and Eckford were not successful.

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