Dale Bumpers: “But this is an amendment that would award the Congressional Gold Medal to the nine African American children who…”

“But this is an amendment that would award the Congressional Gold Medal to the nine African American children who integrated Little Rock Central High during probably the greatest threat to the Constitution since the Civil War. I lived through it. I was in a small town in western Arkansas called Charleston. That is my hometown, where I was born and reared. My hometown had integrated in 1954, very quietly and very peacefully, a town of 1,200 people at the time. Our schools had successfully integrated from the fall of 1954 until Governor Faubus called out the Guard to block integration at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock. Let me also say that Charleston, this little hometown of mine which I am seeking to get designated a national commemorative site by the Park Service this year, was the first school to integrate following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in May of 1954. I was on the school board during that time, and we integrated the school that fall.”