Sixty-six years ago today, on August 12, 1959 (July 9, 1959), Little Rock stopped a mob. Nine black students walked into the school with textbooks under tight protection, and white students glared. On August 12, 1959, a group of 250 rival protesters gathered outside Central School in Little Rock, Arkansas, to protest that blacks were allowed to study at the school. Two blacks walked through the front door of the school amid mocking white demonstrators. Police officers and squads used clubs and water hoses to stop white demonstrators from approaching blacks. Twenty-one protesters were arrested for using violence and refusing to follow police orders. But this riot was much milder than the riot at Central School two years earlier. Gov. Oval-Forbes, an unabashed segregationist who encouraged segregationists to "continue the struggle" despite the court's explicit rule that blacks should be allowed to attend school, said that "the sun is hot outside, and the police are still on duty, and the imposition of unreasonable regulations must place a great burden on them."