May 27 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 27.

Ernest Green Graduates from Little Rock.

He was the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1958.

As a child, Green participated in church activities and was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, eventually earning the rank of Eagle Scout.

He attended segregated Dunbar Junior High School and graduated after ninth grade, at which time he was assigned to Horace Mann High School, a new high school for African-Americans.

At the end of his junior year at Horace Mann, Green volunteered to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957 and help desegregate one of the nation's largest schools.

Green became the only senior among the nine African Americans who decided to integrate Central High that fall.

In 1999, he and the other members of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bill Clinton.

Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com