The Little Rock Nine

Introduction

Cooper v. Aaron (1958) began with a lawsuit in the federal district court in 1955 brought by a group of Black plaintiffs asking the court to order the full desegregation of the Little Rock, Arkansas, schools based on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. While this case began as a simple question of how to fashion a remedy based on a decision already handed down by the high Court, it was soon transformed into the profound legal question of who had the final authority to interpret the U.S. Constitution (Brown, 294).

Cooper ...