Heroic Act for Equality in Schools Still Inspires
(Article 9)

By Monte Williams (New York Times - March 5, 2001)

Her voice still trembles. Her eyes still dampen. Elizabeth Eckford still looks away when asked to recall the details. Nearly 44 years later, the memories still sting.

Ms. Eckford was one of the "Little Rock Nine," the valiant black teenagers who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., despite vehement resistance from the state's governor, Orville Faubus, a vitriolic white mob and sometimes-violent classmates.

About 100 students from Manhattan International High School, a public school on the Upper West Side, listened as Ms. Eckford spoke with passion, wit and a pressing urgency at a multimedia exhibition, "Choosing to Participate," at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition features the stories of ordinary Americans who accepted a challenge and changed the course of history. It includes the installment "Crisis in Little Rock," which looks back at a memorable moment Ms. Eckford would rather forget.

On Sept. 4, 1957, at the age of 15, she was barred from entering Central High by the Arkansas National Guard, whose members, she had assumed, were there to protect her. Instead, she was confronted by a crowd of whites bellowing racial slurs.  Among those in the mob was a petite white woman whose hate-filled grimace was embossed on her face. A famous photograph by Will Counts vividly captured the woman's animus and Ms. Eckford's hushed dignity.

The Manhattan International students, a racial and ethnic amalgam, stood still and silent as a tape of Ms. Eckford's velvety Southern-tinged voice washed over a model of the bedroom she had as a teenager.

"Someone directed me into the crowd," she says on the tape. "They were surging forward behind me." As she talks, voices from the segregationist mob can be heard. "Go back to your own kind!" they thunder, followed by the familiar chant "Two, four, six, eight -- we don't want to integrate."

Their fury contrasts sharply with the bedroom's simple details: an old dresser, atop which sits a bracelet, a pale pink perfume bottle and a maroon hair bow. There is also a replica of the white dress Ms. Eckford wore that day.

In her appearance on Friday, Ms. Eckford recalled how she and the eight other pioneering students were locked out of the school for three weeks. When they were finally allowed to enter, they were "knocked about and slammed around" by some of Central High's roughly 2,000 white students for the rest of the year.

"Why did you stay?" a Manhattan International student asked Ms. Eckford, now 59 and a probation officer in Little Rock.

"Part of it was pure stubbornness," she answered, adding that she thought the goal, desegregation, was a community good worth the sacrifice.

After viewing the exhibition and speaking with Ms. Eckford, Monica Balaguer, a 17-year-old Hispanic senior, said she was touched. "I was about to cry," she said. "She went through so much pain and she had the courage to make a change."

Carolina Aristizabal, a 17-year-old senior originally from Bogota, Colombia, was similarly moved. "She was so brave to come and talk to people," she said.

Another of the exhibition's installments, "Little Things Are Big," explores how race, and more specifically perceptions about race, determine the actions of people in quotidian encounters. It portrays a writer of African-American and Puerto Rican parentage reflecting on a late-night subway meeting with a white woman trying to gather several children and a large suitcase.  He grapples with his desire to help her and his fear that his actions might be misinterpreted.

Another installment, "Not in Our Town," illustrates how the citizens of Billings, Mont., united in response to a series of violent acts and intimidation by local hate groups against local Jews and American Indians in 1993.

In answer to a student’s question regarding why Ms. Eckford stayed at Central High School under such difficult and frightening circumstances, Ms. Eckford said, “Part of it was pure stubbornness.” What do you think she means by this? She added  that “the goal, desegregation, was a community good worth the sacrifice.” Using the article, your own experience, the experience of others and/or your reading, discuss whether you think staying in a difficult situation is worth the sacrifice.

Ms. Eckford believed that “the goal of desegregation was a community good worth the sacrifice.” Using the article, your own experience, the experience of others and/or your reading, discuss whether you think desegregation has been achieved since Ms. Eckford attended Central High School, and whether it has resulted in a fully integrated society.