Little Rock integration figure dies

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Jefferson Thomas, one of the nine who integrated all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957, has died, a fellow Little Rock Nine member said.

Minnijean Brown Trickey said Thomas was 67 when he died Sunday of pancreatic cancer in Columbus, Ohio, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Monday.

Thomas was 15 when he volunteered to release the stranglehold of Central High's segregation policy by helping push 1954's Brown vs. Board of Education's insistence of desegregation against Gov. Orval Faubus's shove of mob defiance.

It took a highly reluctant President Eisenhower to nationalize the Arkansas National Guard and send in the Army's 101st Airborne Division to escort the teens past the governor, spitting, rock-throwing mobs calling for lynching.

The experience taught him to take a stand and persevere, he said in a 2007 interview.

"You can't control what other people do and how they treat you, but you do have control in how you react and respond to them," Thomas said in that article. "I still do that every day."

After graduating from Central High School, Thomas served in Vietnam, earned a bachelor's degree in business administration, helped run a family-owned business and later became an accounting clerk with the Defense Department, the newspaper said.

Thomas is survived by his wife Mary, a son and two stepchildren. Memorial services are planned in Columbus and Los Angeles.