Editorial: Still a long way to go

Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

It is a measure of how far we have come that the scene 50 years ago today in Little Rock, Ark., is now unimaginable.

Nine black teenagers walking into Central High School were reasonably safe only because they were being escorted by troops from the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

The drama began in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. The Little Rock School Board approved an integration plan in 1955 and declared it would go into effect on Sept. 4, 1957.

Nine black students registered at Central High and arrived that day, only to find the Arkansas National Guard and a white mob blocking their way.

The U.S. Justice Department ordered the Guard withdrawn. The mob, however, remained, in numbers that overwhelmed local police. Only after President Dwight Eisenhower ordered out the federal troops were the students able to start school at Central High, on Sept. 25.

"I really didn't understand at age 14 we were helping change the educational landscape here in America," one of the "Little Rock Nine," Carlotta Walls LaNier, told the Associated Press this month. "All we wanted to do is go to school."

The showdown at Central High was a turning point in the civil rights movement, which often is erroneously said to have ended in the late 1960s.

Despite great progress toward equality, for which we as Americans can all take pride, the lack of daily public examples of racism doesn't mean it is no longer at work.

Although the fight against obvious racism when it does occur - the recent display of nooses in Jena, La., for example - must remain aggressive, our main challenge today is to take the civil rights movement to its next level.

By that we mean fighting against the subtle racism that still abounds, which cumulatively results in minorities being inordinately affected by society's ills, such as poverty. That is a measure of how far we have yet to go.