This month, Little Rock will commemorate the date, 50 years ago, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to escort black children to Central High. In that moment, Little Rock became a synonym for hate. After claiming that desegregation would lead to violence, Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to keep black children from attending the school. Meanwhile, the black students designated to integrate Central High made plans to enter as a group. Eckford's family had no phone, so she never got the message. She came alone, only to be sent away by Faubus's soldiers and left to the angry mob.
No black child got in on the appointed day. Three weeks later, armed with a judge's order prohibiting Faubus from interfering, the students were spirited in through a side door (the mob was so unruly, however, police decided the Nine could not stay). In the weeks that followed, they endured unrelenting abuse. They never believed the task would be easy, but they had no idea how hellish it would become. Minnijean Brown Trickey was expelled for a fight she didn't start. "If we knew what it was going to be, we would have been too scared to go," says Trickey, who returned to Little Rock after many years away to care for an aged parent. Decades later, Eckford realized she suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. For years, she could not work. In her current job since 1999, she has found a measure of peace: it has taken "a long time getting there, a long time to talk about the past without crying."
Charles Ommanney / Getty Images for Newsweek
Now and Then: Eckford today, at her former high school
Mostly, the Nine have flourished. Many got advanced degrees. All moved away—for a while, at least—and Little Rock tried to move on. Mayor Mark Stodola says it's time to put the past aside. He says Little Rock never deserved its racist reputation and that "the people who want to continue to look to the past are an impediment to where we want to go for the future." Ralph Brodie, a Central High football player and student-body president at the time of the crisis, says the reputations of many were unfairly tarnished by the actions of a few. Most people at Central were receptive to the black enrollees, he says, yet the world focused on "problem students—25 maybe, a minuscule percentage." The rest "did everything they could to make that schoolyear work," says Brodie, a lawyer and member of Central's 50th Anniversary Commission.
No black child got in on the appointed day. Three weeks later, armed with a judge's order prohibiting Faubus from interfering, the students were spirited in through a side door (the mob was so unruly, however, police decided the Nine could not stay). In the weeks that followed, they endured unrelenting abuse. They never believed the task would be easy, but they had no idea how hellish it would become. Minnijean Brown Trickey was expelled for a fight she didn't start. "If we knew what it was going to be, we would have been too scared to go," says Trickey, who returned to Little Rock after many years away to care for an aged parent. Decades later, Eckford realized she suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. For years, she could not work. In her current job since 1999, she has found a measure of peace: it has taken "a long time getting there, a long time to talk about the past without crying."
Charles Ommanney / Getty Images for Newsweek
Now and Then: Eckford today, at her former high school
Mostly, the Nine have flourished. Many got advanced degrees. All moved away—for a while, at least—and Little Rock tried to move on. Mayor Mark Stodola says it's time to put the past aside. He says Little Rock never deserved its racist reputation and that "the people who want to continue to look to the past are an impediment to where we want to go for the future." Ralph Brodie, a Central High football player and student-body president at the time of the crisis, says the reputations of many were unfairly tarnished by the actions of a few. Most people at Central were receptive to the black enrollees, he says, yet the world focused on "problem students—25 maybe, a minuscule percentage." The rest "did everything they could to make that schoolyear work," says Brodie, a lawyer and member of Central's 50th Anniversary Commission.
Photo ;Will Counts / Arkansas Democrat Gazette-AP
1 comment:
I remembered this story and always wondered if the 9 students had PTSD. Sometimes, US citizens forget about those who were little trail-blazers and we forget that they had so much to deal with internally. Good Post.
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