Preloading

One Man's Remorse for Ridiculing the Little Rock Nine

Aired on 01/15/1996 | CC tv-pg
In a landmark step in the desegregation of southern schools, The Little Rock Nine were the first African-American students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School. It was 1957 and racial tension in the U.S. was at a fever pitch, so the group endured a great amount of physical and psychological torture.

David Sontag was one of the teenagers who participated in the humiliation of the Little Rock Nine, and he says he has come to feel sorry for the negative things he did to them.

"It was not done out of hate," David says. "It was done out of ignorance of not understanding her plight and her—the plight of all of them. We didn't really know. We weren't walking in their shoes. We didn't put ourselves in their shoes. And I know that I didn't treat them the way I would have wanted to be treated."

Watch as David apologizes for the abuse he inflicted so many years ago.

Original airdate: January 15, 1996

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