Arkansas State University in Jonesboro will officially kick off African American History Month at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 1, in the Rotunda of the Dean B. Ellis Library on campus. On Monday, Feb. 2, Ernest G. Green will speak at 6 p.m. in the Fowler Center. 

One of the “Little Rock Nine,” Green and his eight classmates risked their lives to become the first black students to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. the Board of Education that declared segregation illegal.

The integration of Central High School became one of the crowning victories of the Civil Rights Movement and a triumph over legal segregation. The first African-American to graduate from Central High, Green was the subject of a movie, “The Ernie Green Story,” produced and distributed by the Walt Disney Corporation.

Now an investment banker and managing director of Lehman Brothers in Washington, D.C., Green served as Assistant Secretary of Labor under former President Jimmy Carter and was appointed by former President Bill Clinton as Chairman of the African Development Foundation.

Numerous other activities are slated during the entire month of February.

For more information, please call Jerrod O. Lockhart, assistant dean of students in the Tribal Student Leadership Center, at 870-972-2034.

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