During the 1957 school year, many of the players were just young people—teenagers caught in a crisis they didn't create, and in some cases didn't understand.  Some of the students went along with the crowds, while others took a stand on principle.

(David Sontag, Former Central High Student) "One thing I can say for sure, it was better than being black. It was a whole different ball game back then, and people were not prepared at the time for integration."

David Sontag recalls the racial tension and resulting violence of 1957, the year Little Rock chose to integrate public schools. He says he wasn't taught racism at home--the ugly lessons would come from his neighborhood.

(Sontag) “I was only 14-years-old. See, I lived across the street from the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan, and I was easily swayed. I was involved in that incident--I poured soup on Minnijean's head--and he instilled that in me, and told me exactly how to do it.  And I didn't think anything about it at the time. But when I look back, I never told anyone in my family he told me to do it."

Minnijean Brown, one of the nine black students chosen to pioneer desegregation efforts, eventually retaliated by dumping chili on another student--and was subsequently expelled from Central High. Sontag recalled being suspended, but allowed to return. 

He says he became enlightened after serving side-by-side with other races, including black soldiers, in the army.

(Sontag) “I went on Oprah in 1996 and apologized to Minnijean and to the others that were on the show, too. It was a nice feeling when you get to make something right that was wrong."

In sharp contrast to those who tormented the students was a petite 16-year-old, who challenged the status-quo with a simple act of kindness: Sharing an algebra book with Terrence Roberts. 

Robin Woods-Loucks was also reunited with the students she had befriended years earlier on that same Oprah show. She recently told us what prompted her to take such a bold stand. 

(Robin Woods-Loucks, Former Central High Student) "We were standing in front of Central, and the day Elizabeth Eckford was turned away and walked down these two blocks.  I was walking from home, coming from the opposite direction way down there. I could peer over the crowd to see what was going on and I was horrified. My first instinct was to get through the crowd to walk with her and I couldn't, there was huge mob between us. I went home that night and could not get over what I was seeing because what I was seeing was a total disruption of everything we had been taught. Number one, you do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Loucks says her parents--and her upbringing as a child living in Peru--taught her lessons of tolerance.  For that, in Little Rock in 1957, there would be a price to pay.

(Loucks) “I had rocks thrown at me. I was spat on and I feel I was very blessed to not have been beaten up. And it was a terrifying experience."

Still, Loucks says if she had to do it again, she would without hesitation. What she has changed her mind on, however, was the role she felt Governor Orval Faubus played when he defied federal law and called out the National Guard to bar the black students.

She hated him for years, until she met him in person.

(Loucks) “He was one of the most charming--he had a charisma you had to see to believe.  It was the equivalent, but not quite as charismatic as Bill Clinton. But he could walk into a room and everybody loved him--which is why I believe he used Central as a political tool to get himself re-elected. Had he had the courage to stand up and obey the law, I think the civil rights movement would have gone a lot more smoothly across the south."

Loucks says she almost got kicked out of school that fateful year for giving a reporter an account of what was going on inside. She left Little Rock for awhile after 1958 because she says it was too painful.

Ironically, when she returned, she was denied a job on the basis of her race.

And though during the crisis there were many who were told by their parents to mind their own business, Loucks says there were those who did reach out.

(Loucks) "Basically outside Terrence, I've fallen through the cracks. There were some white students. I was noticing in the visitor's center, several of the classes, students would come and do some small kindness. But they don't remember their names. I'm one of the few, they remember, and I'm grateful."