Little Rock Nine

This past Friday night, I accompanied five white students, three black students, two exchange students, and a Mississippi Teacher Corps almuni and fellow teacher to Lenoir. We were going to hear Elizabeth Eckford speak. Ms. Eckford was one of the nine students that desegregated Little Rock, Arkansas, and it's her picture that's probably most famous from the historical event (above).

I knew the basics about the Little Rock Nine: that local police and whites resisted, that Eisenhower deployed about a thousand soldiers to make sure it happened, that this was the first major Southern city. But in my mind, I thought of it as an event, a one-time showdown. What I learned listening to Ms. Eckford was that getting in was easy compared to the following year of torment. The torment was not only taunts, but assault from her fellow high-schoolers... while grown-ups let it happen. Inside school, there was noone to protect them. How do you get up every morning and go back to school? And as one persistent audience member kept asking, How do you not hate whites?

Ms. Eckford seemed like a gruff woman who didn't particularly like to speak about all this, and I thought about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. I'll paraphrase her: Each of us is responsible for the community we create. Sometimes when another person is outspoken, but we are silent, it might be misconstrued that they are speaking for us.

One of our parent chaperones was telling me afterwards that she was not only glad she came, but that this should have been mandatory for every student. Her comment reminded me that earlier in the day one of our brightest, most driven, and sweet tenth-graders groaned when she realized she was put in Civil Rights club "yet again" and made a big deal about it her friends. I hadn't said anything, but I was a little disappointed. I guess I look for the hero in every person.