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. At Rozelle Elementary School, the first African-American students to enroll were E. C. Freeman, Joyce Bell, Clarence Williams, and Leandrew Wiggens. Their parents included Mattie Freeman, Bettie Marie Bell, Edward Williams, and Woodrow Williamson. After opening day the children were on their own, and during that year and those that followed, their social isolation and educational progress were left unmonitored. Mattie Freeman said it would be foolish to send her little 6-year-old three miles away to school when there was one a block away. Leandrew Wiggens remembered the pressure becoming overwhelming and said he begged his mother until his parents took him out because if he was scared, they were scared. Clarence Williams recalled that his father believed he would get a better education at Rozelle and get more out of life. Despite their difficulties, these 13 "pint-sized pioneers" struck a fatal blow to school segregation and claimed their place in Memphis history.
