Clinton welcomes back blacks

"What happened here changed the course of our country forever," Clinton said, recalling a racial drama that wrenched America and was seared in history on television screens around the world.

"Forty years ago today, they climbed these steps, passed through this door and moved our nation. And for that we must all thank them," said Clinton. The audience - blacks and white together - roared approval.

AP PHOTO President Clinton greets Thelma Mothershed Wair along with other members of "The Little Rock Nine" during ceremonies celebrating the 40th anniversary of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. yesterday.

But even as he commemorated an important, early victory of the civil rights movement, Clinton warned that American schools are resegregating, opportunities for jobs and education remain unequal and affirmative action programs are being rolled back, "slamming shut the doors of higher education on a new generation."

"Segregation is no longer the law," Clinton said, "but too often separation is still the rule. And we cannot forget one stubborn fact that has not yet been said as clearly as it should: There is still discrimination in America.

"We have to keep working on it - not just with our voices but with our laws," the president said. "And we have to engage each other in it."

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, also stirred the crowd, saying, "What happened here 40 years ago was simply wrong. It was evil. And we renounce it."

Huckabee, a Baptist minister, said that in many parts of the South, "It was the white churches that helped not only ignore the problems of racism but in many cases actually fostered those feelings and those sentiments." He called on all religious leaders "to say never, never, never, never again will we be silent."

Clinton was 11 years old during the Little Rock crisis, attending segregated schools 50 miles away in Hot Springs. "It was Little Rock that made racial equality a driving obsession in my life," he said.

After a morning drizzle, skies turned blue and a warm sun beat down on Central students and hundreds of guests, including the family of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights pioneer.

Now middle-aged, the so-called Little Rock Nine - six women and three men - basked in cheers and applause, a sharp contrast to the taunts and jeers they braved as teen-agers. The president led them up Central's steps and he held open the school's heavy glass-paneled doors, greeting each of the nine with a handshake or a pat. Clinton was assisted by Huckabee and Little Rock Mayor Jim Daley.

The dramatic gesture had been suggested by students and by the nine who had been turned back, presidential spokesperson Mike McCurry said.

One of the nine, Minnijean Brown Trickey, a social worker in Ontario, became overwhelmed and reached out emotionally to Clinton and Huckabee for comfort.

Forty years ago, President Eisenhower ordered the Army's 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to escort blacks into classes after then-Gov. Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to block integration. It was the first real test of the government's willingness to use force to implement the 1954 Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision outlawing school segregation.

Nightly newscasts showed scenes of whites cursing blacks and spitting on them. Eisenhower said the specter of "mob rule" in Little Rock menaced America's safety and allowed "gloating" Communists abroad to undermine U.S. prestige and influence.

The story of the Little Rock Nine has been told in films, books and documentaries. Their names appear in history books, noted Ernie Green, Central's first black graduate and now an investment executive.

If one young person is inspired by their story, "then the Little Rock Nine become the Little Rock 10, the 10 a hundred, the 10,000, the 10 million," Green said.

"Today, it's 40 years later. I wouldn't take anything for our journey," Green said.

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton recalled she had received an early lesson in courage as she watched the crisis on television "from my suburb outside of Chicago where I went to schools that were all white, where I lived with only white people."

And the president lamented: "Too many Americans of all races have actually begun to give up on the idea of integration and the search for common ground."

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