Photo copyright Will Counts, Used with permission of Vivian Counts.On Sept. 6, 1957, in Little Rock, Arkansas, Elizabeth Eckford ignores the hostile screams and stares of fellow students on her first day of school. She was one of the nine negro students whose integration into Little Rock's Central High School was ordered by a federal court following legal action by the NAACP.
Photo copyright Will Counts, Used with permission of Vivian Counts.On Sept. 6, 1957, in Little Rock, Arkansas, Elizabeth Eckford ignores the hostile screams and stares of fellow students on her first day of school. She was one of the nine negro students whose integration into Little Rock's Central High School was ordered by a federal court following legal action by the NAACP.

“Fighting Back 1957–1962” will screen at the Peterborough Community Theatre on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m.

The second film in the “Eyes on the Prize” series focuses on the struggle to enforce federal civil rights legislation across the South. During the first half of the century, the American social system was sharply segregated along color lines. Enacted into law with such Supreme Court rulings as the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, which sanctioned segregated seating in railroad cars, this system provided “separate but equal” facilities and services for blacks and whites. In the 1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed a legal team to systematically challenge segregation in the nation’s courts.

By the early 1950s, the NAACP focused on segregation in U.S. public schools. In a series of rulings known as Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” unconstitutional. The rulings had widespread implications — activists saw it as the first step toward desegregation, but many white Southerners interpreted it as an infringement on their states’ rights. The ruling’s implications for the particularly sensitive issue of children and education ignited segregationists’ rage and fed their sense of imminent threat.

The episode begins in 1956 when Autherine Lucy, a black woman, enrolled in the all-white University of Alabama. In response to wide-spread hostility and mob violence, the university board suspended Lucy, ostensibly for her safety, and then later expelled her for challenging the decision in court. The struggle for school desegregation continued in Arkansas. In 1957, the Little Rock Board of Education decided to comply with the Supreme Court decision and admitted nine black students to the prestigious Little Rock Central High School.

The episode ends with the story of James Meredith, who successfully used the courts to fight for the right to enroll in the University of Mississippi. Despite on-campus riots, Meredith persevered and became the first black student to attend “Ole Miss” as the university is known.

The films in this series are free to the public and are co-sponsored by Peterborough Community Theatre, Mariposa Museum, and New Hampshire Public Television, in partnership with public television’s WORLD Channel.