Monday, March 2, 2015

Ernest Green, Member of Little Rock 9 to Speak at Southark


Perhaps the best-known member of the Little Rock Nine, Ernest Green was among the first black students to integrate Central High following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that declared segregation in public schools illegal.

Now he will tell his story to audiences at South Arkansas Community College at 7 p.m. on March 12 at the El Dorado Conference Center, part of the annual Lecture Series. The event is free and open to the public.

After graduating from Central, Green went on to graduate from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in social science and a master’s degree in sociology. He also has honorary doctorates from three colleges.

He is a partner at Matrix Advisory, an institutional asset management firm with offices in New York and Washington, and has held several presidential appointments. He was the chairman of both the African Development Foundation and the Historically-Black Colleges and Universities Capital Financing Advisory Board under former President Bill Clinton. He was the assistant secretary of labor for employment and training under former President Jimmy Carter.


He is on the boards of Fisk University, Quality Education for Minorities Network and Clark Atlanta University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Executive Leadership Council and the National Association of Securities Professionals, of which he was chairman for two consecutive years.
Green’s lengthy list of awards includes the Urban League’s Frederick Douglass Freedom Medal, the John D. Rockefeller Public Service Award, the National Association for the Advancement of Color People’s Spingard Medal and the Boy Scouts of America’s Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. He and the other eight members of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1999, and six years later a commemorative U.S. postage stamp was issued in their honor. In 2007, the U.S. Mint issued a $1 coin commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine.
Black Enterprise Magazine noted Green as one of the Top 25 African Americans on Wall Street in 1996, one of the Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street in 2002 and one of the 75 Most Powerful Blacks on Wall Street in 2006.
A number of books, movies and TV documentaries have been produced chronicling the lives of Green and the rest of the Little Rock Nine, including “The Ernest Green Story” for the Disney Channel.

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