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Grandmother always said that time brings about change, and as time moves forward, our significant life events become a series of snapshots in our minds.
But when I first heard Grandmother’s wisdom, I was fifteen years old, frightened, and caught up in the middle of a political firestorm over racial segregation. Eight other teenagers and I stood at the center of the tug-of-war between the U.S. government, Arkansas’s governor, and the angry white mobs intent on halting integration in Little Rock’s Central High School. At the time, I had no idea of the impact or importance of our successful entry and very difficult year as students inside Central High. It would turn out that our determination to remain in school, despite having to tread through a
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On August 20, 2005, hundreds of people, many of them white Arkansans, gathered on the grounds of the Arkansas state capitol for the unveiling of statues of the nine of us. On this day, many of the people who once scorned us have come to congratulate us for standing our ground, for claiming our equality, for completing that year at Central High School against all odds.
“Pull the cord—now,” one of the program coordinators whispered. Suddenly my hand reached out, and I pulled. The audience applauded wildly—then fell into a weird, whispering silence. I stood frozen, my eyes and my person riveted on the statue. I thought, My God—it’s me—me, with a ponytail, a young face, a tall, thin body clutching my books to my chest. It is me, poised, ready to attend a day at Central High. I felt as though I must hug this innocent, wide-eyed young girl; I must shelter her wounded spirit.
Suddenly the throng of reporters was pushing forward, moving closer, only a few feet away, determined to get pictures of me and the eight others as we stared at our young images. We nine were oblivious as we examined our younger selves. We were overwhelmed with tears, immersed in the moment, emotionally weeping at the sight of the nine statues, so real, so commanding. When we nine are together, we become one, falling into lockstep, anxious, happy to be together once more. Now we were crying together, grateful we had made it to this moment, alive and celebrating on a spot where we might have
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This year, 2007, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the integration of Central High. To celebrate that occasion, a coin will be available from the U.S. Mint, a Little Rock Museum will be opened, and former President Clinton will host a celebration. It will be a week of galas and joyous cavorting. Huge committees of Little Rock’s finest have convened over the past two years with the sole purpose of creating the right events at the right times to attract people and publicity from around the world.
If one person is denied equality, we are all denied equality. —Melba Pattillo Beals
Some people call me a heroine because I was one of nine black teenagers who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. At the age of fifteen I faced angry mobs, violent enough to compel President Eisenhower to send combat-ready 101st Airborne soldiers to quell the violence. I endured a year of school days filled with events unlike any others in the history of this country.
In some instances I have changed people’s names to protect their identities. But all the incidents recounted here are based on the diary I kept, on news clippings, and on the recollections of my family and myself. While some of the conversations have been re-created, the story is accurate and conveys my truth of what it was like to live in the midst of a civil rights firestorm.
And yet all this pomp and circumstance and the presence of my eight colleagues does not numb the pain I feel at entering Central High School, a building I remember only as a hellish torture chamber. I pause to look up at this massive school—two blocks square and seven stories high, a place that was meant to nourish us and prepare us for adulthood. But, because we dared to challenge the Southern tradition of segregation, this school became, instead, a furnace that consumed our youth and forged us into reluctant warriors.
In 1957, while most teenage girls were listening to Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue,” watching Elvis gyrate, and collecting crinoline slips, I was escaping the hanging rope of a lynch mob, dodging lighted sticks of dynamite, and washing away burning acid sprayed into my eyes.
During my junior year in high school, I lived at the center of a violent civil rights conflict. In 1954, the Supreme Court had decreed an end to segregated schools. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and states’ rights segregationists defied that ruling. President Eisenhower was compelled to confront Faubus—to use U.S. soldiers to force him to obey the law of the land. It was a historic confrontation that generated worldwide attention. At the center of the controversy were nine black children who wanted only to have the opportunity for a better education.
On our first day at Central High, Governor Faubus dispatched gun-toting Arkansas National Guard soldiers to prevent us from entering. Mother and I got separated from the others. The two of us narrowly escaped a rope-carrying lynch mob of men and women shouting th...
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Three weeks later, having won a federal court order, we black children maneuvered our way past an angry mob to enter the side door of Central High. But by eleven that morning, hundreds of people outside were running wild...
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Some of the police sent to control the mob threw down their badges and joined the rampage. But a few other brave members of the Little Rock police force saved our ...
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On my third trip to Central High, I rode with the 101st in an army station wagon guarded by jeeps with turret guns mounted on their hoods and helicopters roaring overhead. With the protection of our 101st bodyguards, we black students walked through the front door of the school and completed a full day of classes.
The physical and psychological punishment we endured profoundly affected all our lives. It transformed us into warriors who dared not cry even when we suffered intolerable pain.
I am proud to report that the Little Rock experience also gave us courage, strength, and hope. We nine grew up to become productive citizens, with special insights about how important it is to respect the value of every human life. I am often asked, in view of the state of race relations today, if our effort was in vain. Would I integrate Central if I had it to do over again? My answer is yes, unequivocally yes. I take pride in the fact that, although the fight for equality must continue, our 1957 effort catapulted the civil rights movement forward a giant step and shifted the fight to a more
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First off, I was born on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. Mother says while she was giving birth to me, there was a big uproar, with the announcement that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
At five I learned that there was to be no space for me on that merry-go-round no matter how many saddles stood empty.
You don’t want to be white, what you really want is to be free, and freedom is a state of mind.”
She would tell us the story of the lone black man who was trying to integrate the law school. In the classroom, he was forced to sit confined by a white picket fence erected around his desk and chair. When he needed to come or go, he sometimes stumbled over that fence. White people around him sometimes stumbled over that fence, too. And still each day when he arrived, there it was, encircling him, keeping him separate but equal.
With the passage of time, I became increasingly aware of how all of the adults around me behaved the same. They were living with constant fear and apprehension. It felt as though we always had a white foot pressed against the back of our necks.
“Someday things will be different, someday our men will be respected and not be called ‘boy’ and treated like children.”
But he warned if we were ever again caught being curious about what belonged to white folks, we’d be behind bars wearing stripes, or even worse, wearing ropes around our necks.
“Be patient, and one day, God willing, you’ll see inside that school, I promise.”
Now as we left school I heard my teacher’s quivering voice: “Pay attention to where you’re walking. Walk in groups, don’t walk alone.” She stood at the top of the steps, telling us to hurry.
I didn’t agree with the radio announcers who described Little Rock as a nice, clean Southern town, a place where my people and whites got along peacefully. City officials boasted there hadn’t been a Klan hanging of one of our people in at least ten years. They called our citizens forward-thinking because they were completing construction of the Strategic Air Command military base nearby that brought in lots of different races of people. But I didn’t think we were so progressive because I still couldn’t eat at the lunch counter at the five-and-dime, go to a movie unless I sat in the balcony,
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But on Sunday evening, September 1, two days before school was to start, word came from the NAACP not to register at our regular high school. NAACP lawyers had already gone to federal court to get us into Central High. They expected a favorable ruling.
That night in my diary I wrote to God: Maybe going to Central High isn’t such a good idea after all. It is costing my family a lot of agony and energy, and I haven’t even attended one day yet. Will Grandma always have to sit up guarding us. She can’t go on sitting there forever. What will become of us. Maybe I should start my plan for moving to Cincinnati. Please give me some sign of what I am to do.
But Grandma is right, if I don’t go back, they will think they have won. They will think they can use soldiers to frighten us, and we’ll always have to obey them. They’ll always be in charge if I don’t go back to Central and make the integration happen.
her hair before he arrived. All of sudden, I heard loud talking in the front hall. Grandma
I would face my first day inside Central High without this protective veil.
I felt proud and sad at the same time. Proud that I lived in a country that would go this far to bring justice to a Little Rock girl like me, but sad that they had to go to such great lengths.
“Patience,” Danny said. “In order to get through this year you will have to become a soldier. Never let your enemy know what you are feeling. You can’t afford to become bored.”
A girl smiled at me today, another gave me directions, still another boy whispered the page I should turn to in our textbook. This is going to work. It will take a lot more patience and more strength from me, but it’s going to work. It takes more time than I thought. But we’re going to have integration in Little Rock.
I wanted to turn and run away, but I thought about what Danny had said: “Warriors survive.”
Minnijean, Ernie, and I decided to retreat, but just then, vice-principal Huckaby made her presence known at the bottom of the stairs. Tiny, erect, and determined, she stood there all alone between us and our attackers, demanding they leave us alone. One by one she challenged the leaders, calling them by name, telling them to get to class or there would be hell to pay. I had to respect her for what she did. Whether or not she favored integration, she had a heck of a lot of guts.
During one late October after-school meeting, we discussed the fact that President Eisenhower would not stop withdrawing 101st troops even though our parents and Mrs. Bates had sent a telegram informing him that opposition against us was more violent with each passing day. We discussed trying yet another approach to change the attitudes of school officials so they would take control of the hooligans.
9 NEGROES BEGIN 12TH WEEK AT CHS WITH NO INCIDENTS —Arkansas Gazette, Tuesday, December 3, 1957
So on New Year’s Eve, I sat home completing my list of New Year’s resolutions: To do my best to stay alive until May 29. To pray daily for the strength not to fight back. To keep faith and understand more of how Gandhi behaved when his life was really hard. To behave in a way that pleases Mother and Grandma. To maintain the best attitude I can at school. To help Grandma India with her work. To help Minnijean remain in school—to be a better friend to her.
The rumor was that the White Citizens Council would pay reward money to the person who could incite us to misbehave and get ourselves expelled. It was apparent that many students were going for that reward.
MRS. BATES SAYS 9 NEGROES WON’T QUIT DESPITE TROUBLE —Arkansas Gazette, Wednesday, January 29, 1958
“THEY BOTHER YOU ALL THE TIME,” OUSTED NEGRO STUDENT CONTENDS —Arkansas Democrat, Thursday, February 13, 1958
THREE CHS PUPILS SUSPENDED; MINNIJEAN BROWN EXPELLED —Arkansas Gazette, Tuesday, February 18, 1958
My dearest friend, Minnijean, left today. I couldn’t stop crying. People at the airport said we all looked very old and tired, for the battle must be getting harder. I pray Minnijean will be happy. She deserves it . . . don’t we all?
CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL NEGROES PASS: ONE ON HONOR ROLL. PRINCIPAL MATTHEWS SAYS HE WILL NOT REVEAL GRADES
Today, when I see how far we have progressed in terms of school integration, in some instances I am pleased. In other areas I am very angry. Why have we not devised a workable plan for solving a problem that has so long plagued this nation? We put a man on the moon because we committed the resources to do so. Today, thirty-six years after the Central High crisis, school integration is still not a reality, and we use children as tender warriors on the battlefield to achieve racial equality.
Until my marriage, I had been hearing from my old friend Link, living in faraway places as he piled up awards and degrees from this country’s most prestigious educational institutions. He was livid about my marriage, saying I’d all along told him we couldn’t date because he was white, and now look what I’d gone and done. I never heard from him again. Still, I think of him as a hero, yet another one of those special gifts from God sent to ferry me over a rough spot in my life’s path.
Indeed, I followed my dream, inspired by those journalists I met during the integration. I attended Columbia University’s School of Journalism and became a news reporter.
