This post will take a while to get to the point. Lots of legal stuff. Bear with me.
At the end of the American Civil War, the Congress of the United States passed three amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, except for those convicted of criminal offenses; the Fourteenth Amendment redefined citizenship for former slaves and addressed equal protections under the law; and the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination in voting on the basis of race or previous conditions of servitude. If it seemed like these sorts of amendments might have been opposed by those states which joined the Confederacy...well, they lost the War so...
Despite these Amendments (which were fully ratified by 1870), the Louisiana State Legislature in 1890 passed the Separate Car Act, which required "equal, but separate" train cars for white and black people. Some folks thought this law might violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Enter Homer Plessy, a New Orleans resident whose ancestry was 1/8 African, who bought a first class train ticket in June of 1892, took a seat in the whites only car and then deliberately revealed his 1/8 African ancestry to the conductor. The resulting series of lawsuits from Plessy's arrest ended up in the United States Supreme Court as Plessy v. Ferguson. Homer lost his case and the resulting verdict, that states had the right to require separate but equal accommodations for whites and blacks, set the Civil Rights Movement back decades. Sanctioned segregation would become the law of the land in the South.
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| Exhibit at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. |
But things weren't equal. Separate, yes. Equal, no way. And starting in the 1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) started to challenge segregation in public education. Their efforts ended up in 1954 in front of the United States Supreme Court as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. That case was actually a collection of five similar cases filed in various locations, including one in Virginia related to the student walkout at Moton High School in Farmville, VA which we visited back in February of this year (love it when different trips interrelate!).
The Brown verdict was a landslide. A 9-0 ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, with a finding that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. However, in their ruling, the Court didn't spell out how to end the current segregation in place. I guess maybe they assumed all segregated schools would just integrate the next day?
So a follow up case was brought before the Court the very next year to address the timeline for desegregation. Their ruling this time? That integration should happen "with all deliberate speed". Gee, that helps a lot. Thanks for clarifying that. Effectively, the Court's ruling created the means for those so motivated to challenge racial segregation in their schools, but unless a town or city saw fit to desegregate on their own (and some did), then desegregation might take a while. Or forever even.
Which brings us to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Which also brought us to Little Rock in 2021. For a visit to the Little Rock Central High School.
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| Little Rock Central High School. |
Under normal circumstances (meaning non-global pandemic circumstances), the NPS tours include a visit inside the school. Considering we are in a public health emergency, their tours are strictly exterior right now, although we did have about an hour of classroom learning with audience participation to reconstruct the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement from the arrival of the first slave ship in the New World up to 1957 before setting out on our tour. Not kidding. We seriously were in a classroom with markerboard with Ranger Rebecca in the teacher's spot. It was actually really fun and informative. Thank God we had been to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis the very day before so we knew some of the answers.
We knew we wouldn't be able to get inside before we went to Little Rock. Despite the fact we were limited to strictly exterior access, we still found it way worth the trip. There is most often great value in being there, wherever "there" happens to be. We found this rule applied even when we only walked about one city block on the outside of a building.
The desegregation of Little Rock Central High School was ugly. Maybe it was destined to be that way but it certainly seems to me that the actions of adults in responsible charge made it way worse than it had to be.
In the March of 1955, the Superintendent of Schools, Virgil Blossom, submitted a plan for the integration of schools in Little Rock. After some loopholes were added, and maybe a little school district gerrymandering, the city was ready to proceed with a plan for integration in 1957. 200 black students applied for enrollment, which shocked the school board. The board claimed there was not enough capacity for that many additional students in a school built for 3,000 students that in 1956 held just 1,500 (math not a strong suit of the Little Rock school board in the mid-50s, apparently).
So they changed the rules. Perfect grades and perfect attendance were added as requirements. That got 200 or so down to 17. Then extracurricular activities were banned. So was retaliation if the students choosing to integrate were attacked in any way. 17 was reduced to 10. Then the list of the 10 was leaked to the press and then to the general public. Threats of violence and threats against employment for parents were made. 10 was reduced to nine. That number stuck: the Little Rock Nine.
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| Testament: The Little Rock Nine Monument. Outside the Arkansas State Capitol. |
What could possibly have delayed the entrance into High School of nine kids looking to do nothing more than get an education? How about Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, interrupting the Labor Day broadcast of I Love Lucy to claim that "caravans" of white supremacists were on their way to Little Rock to demonstrate outside the school? How about the Arkansas National Guard being called out to deal with threats of violence but then being ordered to keep anyone not white (including kitchen and maintenance staff as it turned out) out of the building? How about lawsuits? How about the President of the United States getting involved? All this because nine kids from the absolute bottom of the social structure in our country wanted to go to a better school.
Those "caravans" by the way? Didn't exist. But white supremacists DID show up after the Governor claimed they were already there. And threats of violence? The Governor claimed he had evidence but just declined to produce it. Sound familiar? Hmmm...I wonder.
That was the first three weeks of the school year. It would be October 24 before an armed escort would NOT be necessary for the Little Rock Nine to enter school. One month later!!!
I can't imagine what that first year was like for those nine kids. All they were trying to do was get an education and learn. The "no retaliation" condition of admittance must have been equivalent to state sanctioned bullying. Over their first year there would be student strikes; bomb threats; bullying; beatings and tauntings by both white students and parents; boycotts of local newspapers supporting integration; kids jumping out of windows; suspensions. All because nine kids wanted an education.
All of the Nine did not make it through year one but none of them dropped out. Minniejean Brown was suspended in December of 1957 for spilling chili on two boys blocking her way. She was then expelled in February of 1958 for calling some girls "white trash" who threw a purse filled with locks at her. After she was expelled some students distributed cards with the slogan "One Down..Eight To Go". I can't imagine the pain.
As if all that weren't bad enough, the next year they didn't have school at all. It was cancelled. The whole year. The idea of more than 1,500 white kids sharing a school with fewer than ten black kids scared people so damned badly that they just cancelled the whole school year. Think about that: people were so upset about nine black children getting a good education that they denied everyone the opportunity to learn. How messed up is that?
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| Little Rock Central High School exhibits at the National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis. |
I got all that out of our visit to Little Rock Central. But that's not really what I got out of being there. There's always a "being there" part and the story from being there that will stick with me forever is the story of Elizabeth Eckford.
When the Little Rock Nine were advised to stay home for their own safety on September 3, Daisy Bates, the co-owner of the local Arkansas State Press newspaper and advocate for the desegregation, coordinated a plan whereby all of the Nine would meet at her house and then walk, escorted, together to the school on the morning of September 4. She managed to coordinate this plan the night before with the exception of looping in Elizabeth, whose family did not have a telephone. She figured she'd get a hold of Elizabeth the next morning somehow.
She forgot. So Elizabeth Eckford got on the school bus near her home and got off to find the school surrounded by the Arkansas National Guard, all of whom were under orders to not let her into the school.
Elizabeth, all of 15 years old on September 4, 1957, described her attempts to enter the school being met with refusal by armed Guardsmen with rifles and bayonets while being surrounded by white children and adults chanting anti-integration rhymes and threatening lynching (there are estimates that there were 400 protestors outside the school that day). She's a 15 year old girl who looks utterly unlike the crowd around her and she's carrying books to try to get an education and she's met with every sort of scaring and hatred you can imagine. At one point, she sees a woman who looks like she has a sympathetic face so she heads towards her only to be spat on by this woman. Which causes other members of the crowd to spit on her and the dress she made specially for this first day of school as well.
I know we are almost 64 years removed from that September day but I shudder to think that nobody in that crowd wondered what exactly it was about a high school girl that caused them to threaten, bully, intimidate and just generally behave this way towards another person. If they did, they certainly didn't do anything to stop it.
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| Display from the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Visitor Center. Original photograph by Will Counts. |
Not knowing quite what else to do after being turned away from a day of high school by soldiers because of the color of her skin (just writing that sounds crazy), Elizabeth decided to walk right past the School to the corner of South Park Street and West 16th Street where she knew she could catch a bus at some point and go right back home. She first tried to enter the drug store across the street but the owner of the store locked the door when he saw her approaching. So she sat on a bench on that corner and waited. With a mob of white people all around her yelling at her.
That walk from the time Elizabeth got off the bus until she sat down on that bench must have seemed interminable. It's one block but it is a long, long block. Almost a quarter of a mile. We walked it one day last month in our guided visit to the High School site while not having our path blocked or having our lives threatened or being spit at. We didn't get to do too much else but that walk was enough to understand just how long and painful that walk must have been for Elizabeth Eckford. It feels a little strange writing a whole blog post based on a one block walk but ultimately that act made some of the events of that September day sink in.
For Elizabeth, this was day one. There was still an entire school year to go of this sort of stuff, albeit without the adults participating for the most part. One of the most frustrating parts of our Civil Rights trip was the acts of violence or intimidation directed towards those that are the most powerless and certainly children fit first and foremost in that definition. Even if those perpetuating the violence were also children.
The added irony of the hatred and violence these nine kids endured in Little Rock is it likely would not have been as bad if it weren't for the Governor of Arkansas, the highest elected official in the state, getting involved. It might be easy in 2021 to assume integration of schools in the 1950s seems like a concept that was doomed to fail, but it had already taken place without incident in many places of the country, including in the South and in the state of Arkansas. Seriously. In Arkansas, Charleston and Fayetteville had integrated even before the Brown v. Board of Education decision; Bentonville began integration in 1955; and the town of Hoxie had to go to court to get an injunction from a court of law IN FAVOR of desegregation. I'm not saying things in Little Rock in 1957 would have gone smoothly, but the Governor certainly made it worse and likely did it for his own political gain. Again...sounding familiar?
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| Elizabeth Eckford Bus Bench. The Little Rock Central High School is visible behind. |
In 2005, a sculpture featuring all nine members of the Little Rock Nine was unveiled on the grounds of the Arkansas Capitol. I've already named Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Carlotta Walls Nier and Jefferson Thomas. The other four were Melba Patillo Beals, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed and Terrence Roberts. There are quotes from each of the Nine around the perimeter of the sculpture. I couldn't help thinking how ironic it was that we are relying on these (former) kids to teach us about tolerance and acceptance after all they have been through.
The spot where Elizabeth Eckford sat on a bench surrounded by an aggressive mob now holds another bench named in Elizabeth's honor. There's a quote from Elizabeth on a plaque next to the bench about the importance of standing up for others who are being harassed and despised just based on the fact that they look different. Again, we are relying on those who have been harassed and despised to deliver messages to the rest of us.
One of the more frustrating aspects of this trip we took this May was the knowledge that there were people who had to suffer or die to advance society those tiny little steps forward. In cases like those of Emmett Till, the suffering was clear to see; he was straight up tortured and murdered. But make no mistake there was plenty of suffering endured by the Little Rock Nine as well. All nine of these kids had their lives affected by the mental, emotional and physical abuse suffered while attending (in some cases) just one year of school at Little Rock Central. Some still bear actual physical scars and if proof beyond that is necessary, look no further than Elizabeth Eckford's two attempts to take her life.
I think there's a tendency to dismiss the suffering of the Little Rock Nine as "if they didn't do this, someone else would have had to" but I can't stop thinking about Orval Faubus' completely unnecessary and blatantly untruthful press conference. What would have happened if he hadn't done that? And I guess honestly we'll never know.
I believe our time in Little Rock was worthwhile. Sure, access into the school was off limits and that was unfortunate. But just like roaming around rural Mississippi in search of Emmett Till, I think we owed it to these kids and the change they helped bring about to go to Little Rock and learn. I think there is also a lot of value in hitting up multiple Civil Rights sites in one trip. The constant repetition really emphasizes causes and effects within the Movement which I think is super valuable. The concepts discussed in Ranger Rebecca's "class" were echoed in the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum.
How We Did It
The Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site is open daily with guided Streetscape Tours offered twice daily with a 48 hour advance reservation requirement (although honestly, I think we could have done ours without advance reservations, although I'm not 100% sure that would have been allowed). There may be days (like Federal Holidays and school breaks) when tours are discontinued. Best to check the website for the latest information, particularly because if we ever truly come out of this pandemic, all the rules for everything may change. There is a museum exhibit inside the Visitor Center; it took us about 45 minutes to an hour to get through everything there pretty thoroughly.
The National Historic Site website has a list of sites related to the history of the events of September 1957 which you can drive by. We elected not to do this and instead head over to the Testament statue on the grounds of the State Capitol. It's on the south side of the Capitol building and there are free parking spots nearby for Capitol visits. We assumed our visit to Testament counted as a Capitol visit.
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