By Antonio Harvey
The efforts of the Little Rock 9 (LR9), the first Black students to integrated Central High School in the early part of the civil rights movement, is well-documented in African American history. The students obtained that notoriety because of the usage of television in the 1950s.
About four years after the LR9 went through its turbulent period integrating Central High, the civil rights youth movement moved up to the college level where nine Black students from a small educational institution in Central Mississippi also made a stand against racism.
Geraldine Edwards, who now lives in Stockton, Calif., and goes by the last name of Hollis, was attending Tougaloo College in 1961 when she and eight other Black pupils made a courageous stand to exact equality.
The “Tougaloo Nine,” as they were later called, began a “sit-in” in the main “White Only” library of Jackson, Miss.
“The ‘Tougaloo Nine’ was successful but not well known,” Ms. Edwards-Hollis said at her book signing and discussion at the Underground Books Store last month. “This is why I’ve been trying to tell my story that we made a difference,” she said.
Ms. Edwards-Hollis, a native of Natchez, Mississippi, talked about her position as a member of the “Tougaloo Nine,” her time spent at the Historically Black Christian College 17 miles north of downtown Jackson, and her book, “Back To Mississippi.”