History of IDEA
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Sister: 'Little Rock Nine' member's mission was education for all
- 09-07-2010
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By Jason Hanna, CNN
Jefferson Thomas was risking his well-being by leaving an African-American school for Little Rock's all-white Central High School with eight other students in 1957. But a simple comparison of the schools' biology classes helped compel the then-15-year-old to go through with it, his sister Alma Hildreth recalled Monday, a day after Thomas died of cancer at age 67. Thomas was one of the "Little Rock Nine" -- the nine African-American students who integrated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. "In his old school, they would go to biology class and dissect a frog, but they had only one frog that all the students would dissect with the teacher," Hildreth said. "But he heard at Central, all the students had their own frog to dissect, and he wanted to go to Central High because he would be in a class where each student had their own frog." (more…)
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