“Fables of Faubus,” “Original Faubus Fables,” and the Little Rock Nine
“Fables of Faubus” is a song composed by African American jazz bassist Charles Mingus (1922-1979). Written to protest and mock the racist temperament of Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus, the song was placed on the 1959 album “Mingus Ah Um.” In 1957, Governor Faubus sent out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the segregation of Little Rock Central High School by nine African American teenagers. Columbia Records would not allow the lyrics of the song to be included so only the instrumental was on the album. Nonetheless, in 1960, the original version of the song was released (with lyrics) as “Original Faubus Fables” under Candid Records, a more independent label.
On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court decided unanimously that state laws allowing separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. This case, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, was a major breakthrough in the Civil Rights movement. Not everybody accepted the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. It took years after for many states to begin desegregating their schools. By 1957, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Arkansas had registered nine black students to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High School. Those nine students were Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Thelma Mothershed, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Melba Pattillo Beals, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Jefferson Thomas and Terrance Roberts and they became known as the “Little Rock Nine.”
The plan was to start with the high school and then gradually go to the lower grades over time. When fall came around, the nine students were ready to enter the school but many people were opposed and ready to do something about it, including the actual governor of Arkansas himself. On September 4, 1957, the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter Central High but were met by National Guard troops, called out by the governor, and turned away. One of the nine, Elizabeth Eckford, arrived separate from the rest. She was met by an angry mob of protesters who followed her to her bus stop when she was turned away from the National Guardsmen. They taunted and harassed her until she left. Eckford later recalls, “I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the mob—someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”
The refusal to let the black students enter the school made national headlines and for more than two weeks, the nine students stayed at home trying to keep up with their school work. On September 23, the students went back to Central High but this time they were escorted by troops of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army (ordered by President Dwight Eisenhower). And the entire National Guard of Arkansas was federalized eliminating any threat from Faubus. Ernest Green recalls, “The first few weeks we had individual soldiers that waited outside the classroom and escorted us from class to class.” The students had to enter through a side door and when the angry crowd found out they had entered, black reporters on the scene were chased and beaten.
Though the students were successful in getting into the school, the battle did not stop there. They often found themselves being harassed (verbally and physically) by students. Boys urinated on Green’s gym locker. Students placed thumbtacks on Melba’s chair. Plenty of hardships were endured by the students that went unheard nor reported. Minnijean Brown on the other hand, was punished for retaliating. She was suspended for six days for pouring a bowl of chili on some white students and then suspended for the remainder of the school year for further confrontation. She then moved to New York City and graduated from New Lincoln High School (Ernest Green was the first Black student to graduate from Central High. Dr. King attended the graduation).
The next year, voters chose to close all four of Little Rock’s high schools so the students had to attend other schools or take classes.
Faubus said in his “Speech on School Integration” in 1958, “…Once integration is effected totally and completely, will the peace and harmony you desire be attained? If we are to judge by the results elsewhere, anywhere, once total, or near total integration is effected, the peace, the quiet, the harmony, the pride in our schools, and even the good relations that existed heretofore between the races here, will be gone forever….”
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