Little Rock Nine: The "Little Rock Nine" first day of school, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957, from the portfolio I am a Man

After the verdict of Brown vs. Board of Education ruled racial segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional, the integration of a group of courageous African American teenagers, known as the Little Rock Nine, into an all-white high school became a national controversy.

In his photo-documentation of the event, Withers captures (from left to right) Carlotta Walls, Melba Patillio, Elizabeth Eckford, and Minnie Jean Brown being escorted by a federally appointed paratrooper on their first day of school. In the background, the blockade of students and the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students’ entry is visible at the school entrance. Withers’s “Little Rock Nine” group stand in the crux of the tensions between state and federal rights and the institutionalized racism pervasive throughout the American educational system at that time.