A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir

by Jason Timbuktu Diakité

Then there were nine black students left, and they came to be called the Little Rock Nine. “The day after the angry mob forced us to flee from school, my dad sent a telegram to President Eisenhower, and that same evening, a soldier came knocking and delivered the president’s answer: he promised to send soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, the ‘Screaming Eagles.’ The day after that, we were picked up by a military convoy, and when we arrived at the school, the soldiers formed a corridor through the mob. The soldiers had bayonets on their rifles. I had never seen a bayonet before. Each of us then got a soldier as a personal escort who followed us throughout the school day, throughout the lessons and on the break periods. That’s how it was for the entire year. The Screaming Eagles stayed until December and were then replaced by regular army troops.” Gloria tells me how, during that year, things were thrown at her in the corridor, and how she was called ugly names. Urine was poured in her locker so often that they couldn’t get the smell out. One of the Little Rock Nine boys once had a brick thrown at his head and was knocked unconscious. The soldier escorts weren’t allowed to enter the locker rooms, where the white boys could scare the shit out of the black students. The terror was constant. “One day in the cafeteria, a white boy spit in my friend Minnie Jean’s bowl of chili. It was the final straw for her. She threw the dish at the boy. She was suspended but still remai...