1st black to graduate Central sees some bad, some good since crisis

— Ernest Green remembers that as a child he looked up at Little Rock Central High School and thought that wonderful learning must happen there.

He wanted to go to school there, he said Monday, because it would be good for him later in life.

"Most people didn't want us to get hurt but they wanted us to fail," Green said Monday. "They wanted to say, 'Ernest Green didn't understand physics.'"

More Central High Coverage
Visitor Center Dedication Ceremony

Visitor Center

Video available Watch Video

Green became the first black graduate of Central. He spoke to a Political Animals Club breakfast meeting Monday at the Governor's Mansion.

Later, during a lunch at the mansion, Sander Vanocur shared his experiences as a tele-vision reporter for NBC covering the news surrounding the desegregation of Central.

Vanocur said he still hasn't figured out how to view the crisis.

"Do we celebrate ... or do we offer instead a sense of lamentation?" Vanocur said. "I will go to my grave without knowing an answer."

Green, 66, now a banker in Washington, D.C., said the Central High School crisis helped bring about other civil-rights improvements for blacks. He said the black middle class has increased since then.

But he lamented that many black and white children continue to attend schools with few students of the other race and that black children continue to score much lower on tests than do whites.

He also said he disagreed with recent U.S. Supreme Court action that rejected race-based school assignment plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle. He said the court stated that the law must be "colorblind," which he said is wrong.

"Is there no constitutional way to level the playing field to those hurt because of color? Of course there is," Green said. "To be colorblind is to be blind to what happened to people of color."

Green said he turned 16 years old days before President Eisenhower sent troops to help him and other blacks attend the school safely.

"I appreciate the birthday present your grandpa sent me," Green told Susan Eisenhower of Washington, D.C., who wasattending the breakfast.

Virgil Miller, co-chairman of the Central High Integration 50th Anniversary Commission, noted in his introduction how Green has always been politically active, having developed political skills from dealing with adversity at Central High.

In April 2002, Green was fined $10,000 and was sentenced to 90 days of home detention and two years of probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor tax evasion charge.

The charge was related to a sweeping congressional campaign-finance investigation. Green failed to declare and pay taxes on money that he received from Little Rock restaurateur Charlie Trie in 1995.

When he pleaded guilty in 2001, Green confirmed that he had lied to both houses of Congress.

In June 1997, he told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that he had never received money from Trie or Trie's associates. Green later repeated those denials to the House Government Reform Committee.

According to Justice Department filings, Green received $30,000 in 1995 but failed to list it on his tax return in April 1996. Had he done so, the governmentestimated, Green would have owed $8,000 to $13,000 more in taxes. In 1996, the government said, Trie wired Green another $9,500.

As part of his plea agreement, Green agreed to refile his 1995 and 1996 taxes and pay more tax, penalty and interest.

Green has said little publicly about the guilty plea, and after his speech Monday, Green said in an interview that he didn't want to talk about it.

"It's behind me," he said.

During the lunch honoring contributions of journalists, former Arkansas Gazette reporter Roy Reed, who later wrote a biography of Gov. Orval Faubus, noted that Faubus during a special session of the Legislature in 1958 helped enact laws allowing the governor to close schools and to allow public money to be transferred to private schools.

"You'd like to forget some of these things, but they did happen," Reed said.

Vanocur credited Gene Smith, who was the Little Rock police chief at the time of the Central High crisis, for taking a lawand-order stance that may have saved lives.

"Arkansas deserved better than what they got at the hands of Orval Faubus," Vanocur said.

Faubus was known as a moderate on race until the Central High crisis. Earlier Green said that his mother had supported Faubus.

Vanocur noted that Harry Ashmore, then editor of the Arkansas Gazette, helped Faubus write a campaign speech in 1954 when Faubus unseated Gov. Francis Cherry. Ashmore later wrote editorials critical of Faubus related to the Central High situation.

Arkansas, Pages 9, 16 on 09/25/2007

Upcoming Events