History-Makers Years After Little Rock Crisis, Two Men Meet

They met for the first time at a performance of the musical “Little Rock.” But both men played key roles in the 1957 desegregation of Central High School, the subject of the play.

Ernest Green, now with the Lehman Brothers brokers in Washington, D.C., was one of the “Little Rock Nine” black students who broke the racial barrier at allwhite Central nearly 40 years ago.

Dwaine Hatch, now a coach and gym teacher at suburban Bellevue High School, was among the federal troops called in by President Eisenhower to protect them from angry white mobs.

They didn’t meet then, and only connected at the Children’s Theater production by chance. Green, a historical consultant for the play, learned of Hatch through the daughter of a colleague in Lehman’s Seattle office. They met Saturday for dinner and the play.

After the retro rock musical by Kermit Frazier, which is having its world premiere run here, they were identified to the audience and young people swarmed for autographs.

“This is a great musical,” Green said between signings. “The messages are about tolerance in a pluralistic society, about achieving. It’s a story worth repeating.”

Historians say the events at Little Rock were a watershed for the civil rights movement. The integration of Central High marked the first time the U.S. government backed civil rights after the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hatch, now 61, was a 23-year-old enlisted man at Fort Chaffee when he was ordered to drive a truckload of paratroopers to secure the school.

“I didn’t realize how important all of this was at the time, that it was a really big step those kids were taking,” he said after the play. “I would have paid closer attention to what was happening had I known.”

Green, now 53, said he also had no idea he and the other black students were making history.

He had been attending the allblack Horace Mann high school when he decided to transfer to Central, which offered more math and science classes. He said he had the support of his mother, a quiet rebel who worked at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. And he was inspired by the Brown decision and Rosa Parks’ famous bus standoff.