Using eyewitness accounts from a variety of key participants, including the nine black students who integrated Central High School, white students, black students, teachers, parents, military, police, and government officials, the author explores what happened, what's changed, what hasn't, and why.

Using eyewitness accounts from a variety of key participants, including the nine black students who integrated Central High School, white students, black students, teachers, parents on both sides, military, police, government officials, including his own personal interviews with many of these people at the 50th anniversary celebration in September 2007, Paul Walker explores what happened, what's changed, what hasn't, and why. A history of school desegregation will be an integral part of the overall civil rights time line in the back of this book, along with selected postscripts. The foreword will be by Terrence J. Roberts, Ph.D., one of the Little Rock Nine.

Paul Robert Walker has written twenty books on subjects ranging from the Italian Renaissance and the American West to folklore, baseball, and miracles. A former teacher and journalist, he lives in Escondido, California, with his wife and two children.