In implementing the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision outlawing school segregation by race, the Memphis Board of Education ultimately agreed in 1961 to a plan to integrate the schools. The Memphis Branch of the NAACP recruited 200 applicants, and 13 African-American first graders were selected to integrate four elementary schools. This phased-in approach, adding a grade per year, was regarded as the safest way to desegregate the schools. Without violence on October 3, 1961, the students enrolled in Bruce, Gordon, Rozelle, and Springdale Elementary schools. The first African-American students to enroll in Gordon Elementary School were Sharon Malone, Sheila Malone, Pamela Mayes, and Alvin Freeman, chosen in part because they lived closer to traditionally white schools than to African-American schools where they otherwise would have been assigned. After opening day they were on their own, and during the course of the year and those that followed, their social isolation and educational progress were left unmonitored. Sharon Malone recalled that Gordon was two blocks from her house and Klondike was 13 blocks away, while Sheila Malone Conway remembered how quickly the ending of segregation in the city schools was forgotten and recalled only a Christmas party as follow-up from those who had selected them. Also remembered are the dedicated parents Mary Elizabeth Malone, Henryene Mayes, and Ozell Freeman. Despite their difficulties, these 13 "pint-sized pioneers" struck a fatal blow to school segregation and claimed their place in Memphis history.
