"Atlanta Nine" Members Honored

Fifty years ago, nine African-American students enrolled at four all-white high schools in Atlanta, marking the end to segregation in what has become the largest city in the South.

Dwanda Farmer, candidate for the Atlanta Public Schools District 2 Seat vacated by Khaatim Sherrer El, spearheaded an effort to celebrate this milestone Tuesday at the Hickman Student Center and Cunningham Auditorium on Morris Brown College's campus.  

While researching archives for her Ph.D. dissertation, Farmer discovered information about the Atlanta Nine at the Atlanta History Center. Impressed with the students' audacity and surprised that she had never heard their stories, Farmer brought the information to the public's attention.  

The Fulton County Board of Commissioners issued a proclamation recognizing the Aug. 30, 1961, racial integration of in Atlanta Public Schools. 

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court had already declared segregation unconstitutional in the landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education. 

But many Georgia leaders and citizens refused to recognize the decision. In fact, the Georgia legislature passed a series of laws to terminate state and local funding and to allow the governor to close schools that integrated.

By 1958, some of the fiercest animosity had dissipated. Concerned Atlanta citizens, both black and white, were determined to keep public schools open and many formed community groups to ensure that integration did not lead to the collapse of public education.

After months of planning and preparation, 133 African-American students applied for transfers to all-white schools in the spring of 1961. Only ten applications were accepted.

Eventually, on August 30, 1961, nine students integrated four public high schools in Atlanta. The Atlanta Nine are:

• Thomas Franklin Welch and Madelyn Patricia Nix, who integrated Brown High School;

• Willie Jean Black, Donita Gaines and Arthur Simmons, who integrated Northside High School;

• Lawrence Jefferson and Mary James McMullen-Francis, who integrated Grady High School;

• Martha Ann Holmes-Jackson and Rosalyn Walton-Lees, who integrated Murphy High School (now Crim High School).

“My first day, I was picked up by a detective in a police car,” Rosalyn Walker-Lees said, remembering her first day at Murphy High School, which is now Crim High School.  “They took us to school and stayed there all day with us.”

Other than the police escorts and a few spit balls thrown, Walker-Lees described the day as “uneventful.”

Lawrence Jefferson, who integrated Grady High School, was not very concerned on his first day at the all-white school in Midtown Atlanta.  “I had lived in an area near Grady High School and actually played with some of the white students who attended Grady before the school was integrated,” he said in a prepared statement sent from his current home in Springfield, Ill.

Ralph David Abernathy, III and former President of the NAACP Lonnie King participated in the program honoring the Atlanta Nine. Both reminded the audience that the Atlanta Nine demonstrate that working class people and young people can spur change. 

Current public school students, Abernathy said, need to know “it was children who [secured] the freedom they enjoy today.”