Early Life and Education
Terrence Roberts was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to William L. and Margaret G. Roberts. He first attended segregated schools like Dunbar Junior High School and Horace Mann High School. In 1957, he volunteered to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High School the next fall and help desegregate one of the nation's largest school.
On September 4, 1957, Roberts and eight other African American students (known as the Little Rock Nine) made an unsuccessful attempt to enter Little Rock Central High School. Despite the presence of the National Guard, an angry mob of about 400 surrounded the school.
The National Guard were removed with the protection of the students left to the local police. On September 23, 1957, a mob of about 1000 people surrounded the school as the students attempted to enter. The following day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to accompany the students to school for protection. The troops were stationed at the school for the entirety of the school year, although they were unable to prevent incidents of violence inside.
As a result of the subsequent closing of Little Rock's high schools during the 1958-1959 school year, Roberts completed his senior year at Los Angeles High School in Los Angeles, California.
Read more about this topic: Terrence Roberts
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers’ hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Until we devise means of discovering workers who are temperamentally irked by monotony it will be well to take for granted that the majority of human beings cannot safely be regimented at work without relief in the form of education and recreation and pleasant surroundings.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)