By CHASITY WEBB
Staff Writer

On Thursday, Feb. 25, at 6 p.m., Terrence Roberts, a member of The Little Rock Nine, spoke in the Music/Mass Communication building in honor of Black History Month. An hour and a half before he was to speak, I sat down to interview him.

The moment I stepped into the room, Roberts’ humbleness and friendly smile calmed my week-long anxiety. Although I was now calm, I still kept in mind the impact this man had made on thousands of lives and will continue to make for years to come.

All his life Roberts understood that the world wasn’t fair and that was just something he would have to live with daily. When I asked him about his opinion of segregation before that infamous day when he was 15 and traveled to the Krystal’s restaurant to get a to-go order Roberts said, “Well I understood it. I knew about it. I didn’t like it, pretty much. But I had decided prior to going into that Krystal Burger … I knew all those rules and I didn’t like them.”

When he went into the white-established Krystal’s that allowed blacks to get to-go orders, he did the worst thing possible during that time period. He sat down, an experience that changed his view on the world forever. His mind set about segregation changed. “I couldn’t obey the rules anymore. I had gone through that charade for too long. I was a very rational human being and any rational human being looking at that system would question it. My decision was not to do anything spectacular but to simply refuse to obey the rules,” Roberts said.

A couple of years later, in 1957, Roberts was recruited as one of the nine students who would be the first to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. The Gov., Orval Faubus, as well as most of the white citizens, was opposed to this and he decided to use the Arkansas State National Guard to keep the black students out of the school.

Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton, then the current lawyers of the NAACP, fought Faubus’ decision in court and had the Guard removed. President Eisenhower then sent the 101st Airborne to protect the students. The students knew they were going to have a rough time beforehand, even speaking to Martin Luther King Jr. and taking an oath of non-violence.

I couldn’t imagine what would have been going through the nine teenagers minds at that point so I asked Roberts. “There are so many things, not the least of which was, am I going to survive this ordeal; will I be killed in the next minute or so? Also, what was going to happen the next day and the day after that? If today is this bad, will it get worse?”

Constantly being beaten by the white students in the school was met with the black students’ non-violent behavior. This made me wonder if there were any white students who were accepting of the new students’ attendance. “There were white students initially who accepted us, not eventually but initially. But they were warned off with social sanctions and that word was, ‘If you fraternize with those niggers we will kill you.’ So that was basically the end of any friendship from that quarter,” Roberts said.

This experience never got easier for the students. The school was even closed the following year to keep black students from attending. Roberts said, “The governor and those who supported him decided they weren’t going to support this notion of desegregation and like I said even today we’re still working on it.”

I then began to question Roberts about his opinions and the personal influence the experience had on him.

I thought it was amazing that such remarkable men were involved with the Little Rock Nine. Roberts, however, proving how truly he sees everyone equally had a different opinion. “I think it was OK. I tend not to see folk as powerful or non-powerful. They are human beings who are participating fully in this drama of life or their not. Those two were pretty well engaged in the drama and it was fine,” he said.

Roberts was very fearful during that year of his life, although he didn’t express that fear often. “Not very widely [did I express my fears]. Not even to myself all the time. You know fear has that impact on you. You feel the fear but for whatever reason I was reluctant to give voice to it.”

Roberts said he is not very impressed with the progress America has made in the area of racism. In fact he doesn’t believe there has been really any. ‘Have we made any progress?’ The answer to that would be a grudging yes, but with qualifications.”

“I think before we talk in terms of progress we have to talk in terms of the task at hand and that is I don’t think in this country we’ve ever really confronted the heart of the problem which is this ideology of racism and white supremacy that sort of lurks underneath what I call a thin veneer of civility. That’s problematic and so I don’t even like to think about progress until we have tackled that and we have been low to do it in this country,” he said.

I decided to ask Roberts about something that had been, and continues to be on my mind. Natural segregation on campus boggles my mind. I always wonder why everyone makes it a habit to sit with people of their own color all the time. I asked Roberts if he felt it was hindering our progress as a nation. “I don’t think it hinders progress because we are not making any progress. I think what that reflects is just who we are as a people. The majority of us, the overwhelming majority of Americans, live mono-racial, mono-cultural lives. So this phenomenon you see on campus is nothing new. That’s just who we are. That’s a reflection of who we are. It would be quite shocking if the situation were reversed.”

How do we fix it? Is there a way that we can bring the people of our campus, and ultimately our country, together? “I’m not sure if mixing the students is going to solve any problem. But I think if we teach students how to exist as peers to each other in the universe then it wouldn’t be a question of whether they’re mixed or not because they would be treating others as peers whether they chose to be separate or apart. It would be a different aura, a different atmosphere on campus.”

“I have not been on this campus very much but I bet you if I walked around I could sense the tenor and tone of Austin Peay in terms of its race relations. If it’s like most campuses I would not be shocked or surprised to find that there are enclaves of students and who tend to treat each other as enclaves of students as opposed to treating each other as peers in a learning environment. It’s always sort of strange to me that even in a learning environment people cling to these notions of separateness,” Roberts said.

A few other questions were asked and then I left Roberts to get ready for the event.

Attending the event were an estimated 200 students, faculty, staff and people of the community, and people from out of town. Roberts spent about an hour telling his story and then devoted half an hour to discussion time.

Here people could ask him questions, tell him their opinions and just get to know him for who he was.

After the event, Roberts had a book signing in which he spent time as he signed each book talking to and encouraging each and every individual who came by his table.

Roberts is the only human I have ever met that can honestly say he does not discriminate. He looks up to no one and looks down to no one. Everyone is his peer.

His most inspiring piece of advice during his speech was about helping everyone in America. I quote this loosely.

“Those of you that are already ahead, keep moving forward but don’t forget to reach back and help pull forward the ones who are not as fortunate as you.”