Ernest Green Honored at 2017 Absalom Jones Benefit

On Friday, March 3, members of the Cathedral School community gathered at 583 Park Avenue for the school’s annual Absalom Jones Benefit for financial aid. This year’s the school honored Ernest Green, a member of the Little Rock Nine. Three years after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, nine courageous students risked their lives in order to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. They shouldered the burden of making the Supreme Court’s ruling a reality. Their actions not only mobilized their fellow Americans to fight for access to quality education for all, but they helped to galvanize the civil rights movement. They became known as the Little Rock Nine.

 

That Friday afternoon, Mr. Green graciously met with the 4^th and 8^th grade classes at Cathedral to speak about his experiences as a senior at Central High School in 1957. In his remarks to the community later that night, he joked that “he never thought that 60 years later, he’d still be talking about his graduation from high school.” Mr. Green told the audience that he “went to Central because I believed that we could make the future better than the present, and that the only way we were going to breathe life into that Supreme Court decision, was to have people who were willing to stand up.” In his closing thoughts, Mr. Green said of the Little Rock Nine, “We made the future a little better, and it’s up to Cathedral students to take it the rest of the way.” It was a privilege to have Ernest Green as our 2017 Absalom Jones Benefit nominee.