In case anyone is taking notice, 2007 is a pretty important year for 50^th anniversaries. I don’t know that any of the events will be celebrated since they are, for the most part, merely blips on the overall radar of the history of civil rights. While the 1960s are rightly celebrated as the penultimate decade of black achievement, let us not forget that the seedlings of the orchard that was bear fruit in the 60s were planted in fertile soil ten years earlier. Three of these saplings were:

May 17, 1957 - The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom

September 9, 1957 - The Civil Right Act of 1957

September 23, 1957 - The "Little Rock Nine" are escorted into Central High

Why are these mostly-forgotten events important to recall on their 50^th Anniversary? A glimpse at each one will show how they set the stage for the seismic changes to come years later.

1. Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom - Three years after the Supreme Court rendered its opinion in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, little had changed. Southern state legislatures were dragging their feet. Cloaked in the unfortunate wording of the majority opinion which included the phrase (actually from the 1955 court session in response to school districts seeking relief from the 1954 decision) desegregation should take place "with all deliberate speed," Senator Harry Byrd and others formulated a massive resistance in the form of school closings rather than desegregation. Hoping to prod the government to finally act on desegregation, Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins and A. Philip Randolph organized a rally to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for May 17, 1957. The rally drew around 20,000 protestors - less than the hope for 50,000 - but included Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson, Adam Clayton Powell, and Fred Shuttlesworth.

Speaking last, a young preacher from Atlanta named Martin Luther King, just 2 years from receiving a doctorate in Systematic Theology from Boston University and named Chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in January, delivered one of the seminal addresses of his life. The speech, which became known as the "Give Us the Ballot" speech, propelled Dr. King into the national spotlight. The next month, he was invited to meet with Vice-President Richard Nixon. One year later, he met with President Eisenhower. He became the voice of the nascent "Civil Right Movement" and went on to become the celebrated leader we recall from the ensuing decade.

2. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 - While relatively toothless as civil right legislation goes (it was limited only to reaffirming the 15^th Amendment voting rights and establishing an Assistant Attorney General slot to oversee civil rights violations, a Civil Rights Commission) it did accomplish several things. It clearly showed that with will and direction, the "Dixiecrats" voting block could be neutralized. South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond filibustered for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes but still the bill passed. Pork-barrel politics - Senators from northwestern states agreed to vote with the Dixiecrats is they would vote for the Snake River Dam project - could not stand up against unity of purpose. Most importantly, it opened the door to bigger and better things - the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) - in the future. The national movement toward equal rights had begun.

3. The Little Rock Nine - After the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, the NAACP began pressuring southern school boards to implement integration as federally mandated. One of the first was the school board of Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. Virgil Blossom, the Board’s superintendent, submitted a plan for gradual desegregation which was unanimously approved on May 24, 1955. The NAACP registered nine black students to attend Little Rock Central High. The nine were selected for their excellent grades and attendance. The nine students were Earnest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Lanier, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, Gloria Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed-Wair and Melba Beals.

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus bowed, as all politicians do, to public outrage and the segregationist "citizens councils" and called out the Arkansas National Guard to block the entry of the nine black students. The eyes of the nation were fixed on the unfolding drama. President Eisenhower summoned Governor Faubus to Washington and beseeched Faubus to back down. The U.S. Justice Department sought and obtained an injunction U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Davies on September 20, 1957. Faubus withdrew the National Guard troops. Finally, on Monday, September 23, Little Rock police escorted the nine students into the school. When the protesters escalated their threats, the police removed the students from Central High.

Despite the eventual deployment of the 101^st Airborne to protect the students, the elected Arkansas officials blinked. In August, 1958, the Little Rock School Board (with the support of Governor Faubus and the State Legislature) cancelled the entire 1958-1959 school year. And not just for Central Hish but for all 3 Little Rock high schools rather than desegregate. White students went outside the Little Rock district or to segregated private schools. By the fall of 1959, however, the Little Rock school were reopened and integrated. Today, the Little Rock Nine are depicted in a sculpture titled "Testament" that stands at the Arkansas State Capital. Little Rock Central High School is still an active school and has a museum depicting the events of 1957.

The tragicomedy that was Little Rock would be enacted over and over in the South as integration was inexorably completed. James Meredith required an escort by U.S. Marshals as he integrated the University of Mississippi in 1960. In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace (he of the "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" statement) would repeat the futile gesture at the University of Alabama.

But, 1957 was a year we should all remember. Not for the gentle waves almost imperceptively lapping against the levees standing for 200 years, constructed of the hypocritical, now-rotting timbers of "all men are created equal" but for the tsunami that was to follow and render them archeological splinters. Far out in the sea, the tectonic plates had shifted. The waters had been hurled at supersonic speed toward the once-proclaimed "Land of the Free." The massive wave could barely be seen from the American shoreline in the later 1950s, far off in the distance, but it was relentlessly and irresistibly in motion. Within the next decade, it would wash over the country and change the way we live and, prayerfully, the way we think about our nation and our citizenry.

It never a bad time to check out what came before.