BALTIMORE — If you scour the annals of Little Rock’s racial history, the name Lothaire Scott Green isn’t likely to be listed among the better-known Black icons and power brokers of Arkansas’ capital city. Yet this genteel Southern lady, stalwart public school teacher and intrepid mother of three, including Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine and the first Black graduate of Central High School, came to symbolize for her family and community what it meant to take a stand.
In the 1940s, Scott Green rallied with her fellow Black teacher Suzie Morris, who, with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Thurgood Marshall, sued the Little Rock schools, demanding equal pay. It was Scott Green who risked family and her job when she ushered attorney Marshall into their home — a pristine Craftsman bungalow on West 21st Street — when he came to Little Rock to work on the lawsuit.
Thanks to her daughter, one of Scott Green’s greatest academic accomplishments will be publicly celebrated during the commencement at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville this Saturday. Sixty years ago, Scott Green was one of a handful of Black graduate students who managed to earn degrees in 1951 from the state’s White flagship institution. They were made to take classes off campus in trailers and were ultimately barred from participating in graduation ceremonies.
The short e-mail Treopia Washington sent to University of Arkansas Chancellor G. David Gearhart this past January 4 has sparked an outpouring of regret, a pledge to “make things right” and what Scott Green’s family wanted — the opportunity to receive their mother’s master’s degree in education during a public graduation ceremony.
“… As the years passed, particularly after her death in 1976, we have wished that one of us could accomplish what she was denied — to receive that degree, in person, on campus,” Washington wrote Gearhart.
Still etched in her mind, Washington, who was about 14 then, recalls the day her mother received the box containing her graduation hood, diploma and a letter from the university that basically said, you have satisfied your degree requirements, but don’t bother showing up for commencement. You won’t be welcome.
“This honor represents a great moment for the family,” says Ernest Green. “I’m very proud of my sister for pursuing this and I applaud the University of Arkansas for stepping up and giving my mother this opportunity.”
