I had paid little attention to recent news coverage and was unaware that Faubus had spent much of the summer cavorting with groups of well-known segregationists. In late August, when the Mothers League filed a temporary injunction in Pulaski County Chancery Court to halt the integration of Central indefinitely, Faubus even testified as a surprise witness. He upheld the group’s claims that parents were afraid to send their children to school for fear of widespread violence. He said guns and knives had been confiscated from Little Rock students. The injunction was granted, but just days later, a federal district court judge nullified it when the NAACP sent two of its best attorneys—Wiley Branton, a homegrown lawyer who had been involved with the successful integration of the University of Arkansas’s law school in 1948, and Thurgood Marshall, the rising star who had argued the Brown case before the U.S. Supreme Court. As my family gathered at ten p.m. in front of the television in the den to watch Faubus, none of us expected any earth-shattering news. This was my bedtime, and quite frankly, I was just eager to get to sleep so that I could be well rested for the big day ahead.
About fifteen minutes after the hour, Faubus appeared onscreen. Like Blossom, he was a big man. He wore a dark suit and tie and spoke with a southern drawl typical of white politicians of his ilk. I listened as he droned on the first few minutes about the history of race relations in Arkansas. But at age fourteen, I was a busybody who found it hard to sit still for long periods, especially during rambling speeches. I was about to start daydreaming when the governor said something that caught my attention:
Now that a federal court has ruled that no further litigation is possible before the forcible integration of Negroes and whites in Central High School tomorrow, the evidence of discord, anger, and resentment has come to me from so many sources as to become a deluge. There is evidence of disorder and threats of disorder which could have but one inevitable result—that is, violence which can lead to injury and the doing of harm to persons and property.
I could hardly believe my ears. Were white men and women in Little Rock really so angry about black students attending Central that they were willing to harm us? I just wanted to go to school and get the best possible education. What was so wrong with that? The thought that people were threatening violence at first made me more angry than afraid. But I found an odd sense of comfort in what Faubus said next:
Units of the National Guard have been or are now being mobilized with the mission to maintain or restore the peace and good order of this community. Advance units are already on duty on the grounds of Central High School. I have informed Chief Lindsey, director of the Arkansas State Police, of the developments and he is now mobilizing a force to act as an arm of the state militia in maintaining or restoring the peace and order of the community and to act in every way possible to protect the lives and property of the citizens of Pulaski County.
I knew I was a citizen of Pulaski County. My parents paid taxes; they were citizens, too. I honestly believed that I was included in those whom our governor had deployed the Arkansas National Guard to protect. It was shocking to think that a military unit might be necessary to keep the peace on my first day at Central, but I still wanted to go. Somehow, I had gotten it into my head that Central was crucial to my future. I knew that if I could make it there—a school ranked among the top forty in the nation—I could make it anywhere. Things would settle down eventually, once the rabble-rousers realized theirs was a lost cause, I figured. In the meantime, the National Guard would keep me safe—or so I thought. I must have been too caught up in my own thoughts to pay much attention to the last part of the Faubus speech, the part calling for a delay in integrating Central. When I closed my eyes that night, I was confident that I would be at Central the next day and that I would be safe.
It would be my last night of innocence.
The next morning, I woke up to news that the opening of school was delayed. Mrs. Bates had called my parents while I was sleeping with word that the school board was asking the black students to stay at home until further notice. With the disruptive presence of the National Guard and Faubus’s call for a delay, the board wanted to seek further legal resolution. My new dress would have to wait. I’d pinned so much of my hope and excitement on this day. Now, all I could do was wait and wonder. It was beyond frustrating. The day seemed to drag with little information from the adults involved. Daddy went to work, as usual, and Mother spent much of the time on the telephone, answering questions from concerned relatives and friends. She also checked in with Mrs. Bates for updates. The neighborhood was dead still. Most of my friends returned to Mann that day, so I couldn’t even talk to them on the telephone.
The legal matter was resolved by early afternoon. U.S. District Court judge Ronald Davies, the magistrate who had nullified the initial injunction, ordered the school system to proceed the next day with integration at Central. He said he was not swayed by the sentiments of the segregationists.
“I have a constitutional duty and obligation from which I shall not shrink,” he said.
Later that afternoon, Superintendent Blossom called a last-minute meeting with as many parents as could attend and instructed them to send their children to Central the next day alone. The presence of the parents might incite even more trouble at the school, he told them. My parents could have decided right then that the risks were too high and withdrawn me from Central. I’m grateful that they did not. Instead, they remained calm and resolute. In a rare newspaper interview, Daddy later explained to a Gazette reporter why he didn’t back down:
“Only one thought ever crossed my mind about the whole thing. She had a right to go there. My tax money is not separated from the rest of the tax money. There was no reason for her to pass one high school to go to another.”
Daddy believed we were doing the right thing. He and Mother were among the youngest of the black parents sending their children to Central, and they deeply respected the leadership of Mrs. Bates and the other parents involved, particularly Mrs. Green, Ernie’s mother, my first-grade teacher. If Central was safe enough for Mrs. Green’s son, they figured, then surely it was safe enough for me.
After the meeting with Blossom, Mrs. Bates gave us the good news: School was back on for the next day. Besides Ernie and Gloria, I still wasn’t sure who would join me at Central. Several students had changed their minds when they first heard from Blossom that they would have to give up all of their extracurricular activities. I’d just have to wait and see. Sometime after midnight, Mrs. Bates called again to tell my parents to drop me off at eight-thirty a.m. at 13th and Park streets, about a block from the school. An interracial group of ministers would meet us there to escort us to school, she said. We wouldn’t have to walk alone.
The next morning, September 4, I popped out of bed without hesitation. It was really going to happen, I thought. The anticipation of walking up those regal steps into Central made each moment seem to tick by slowly. Questions filled my head: Who else would be there from Dunbar and Mann? What would the teachers be like? What about the students? Would I make new friends? Was I ready to compete with them academically? How long would it take me to learn my way around that huge campus?
Finally, it was time to go. Mother and I climbed into the car shortly after eight a.m. and headed down 14th Street to Valmer to 13th and cruised toward Park. We noticed a small group of students and two black ministers whom Mother recognized gathering near the intersection. This was the meeting spot, and Mother pulled to a stop. She looked relieved when she saw Reverend Harry Bass, who had been my pastor at White Memorial. He now served as pastor of Wesley Chapel Methodist Church on the campus of Philander Smith. It was one of Little Rock’s largest black Methodist churches and where the Cullins side of my family attended. Mother also knew the other black minister who was there, Reverend Z. Z. Dryver, the father of one of my friends at Dunbar. She trusted these men, and I’m sure it comforted her to leave me in such good hands. Three older white ministers and a young white man, none of whom I knew,
were there, too. I said good-bye to Mother, hopped out of the car, and made my way over to the group. As I walked toward them, I saw Ernie, Gloria, and another student I recognized, Jefferson Thomas, a fellow sophomore who had been president of the student council at Dunbar the previous year. I had worked closely with him as vice president, so I knew him pretty well. There were three other students I didn’t know, but I learned their names pretty quickly: Thelma Mothershed, Minnijean Brown, and Jane Hill, a tall, quiet girl who seemed a bit more uncomfortable than the rest. We chatted anxiously until one of the ministers approached and said it was time to get moving. But first, he said, we needed to pray. We formed a tight circle and bowed our heads as the reverend asked God to walk with us, strengthen and protect us. Then the adults put us in formation. Out front were the four white men: Reverend Dunbar Ogden, Jr., president of the Greater Little Rock Ministerial Association; his twenty-one-year-old son, David; Reverend Will Campbell of the Nashville-based National Council of Churches; and Reverend George Chauncey of First Presbyterian Church in Monticello, a small town in southern Arkansas. The students lined up by twos in the middle. Reverends Bass and Dryver held up the rear. Now, it was time to go.
Slowly and silently, our group began moving in tandem up Park Street toward the school. I could hear the rumble of a crowd up ahead. It was loud, like a Dunbar football game-size crowd. I clutched my notebook and moved with the group through the sticky September air. With every step, the hooting and hollering grew louder. As we got closer to 14th Street, I glanced toward the Mobil gas station on the other side of the street, and for the first time I saw it—a mob of people that stretched as far as I could see. The sheer size of the crowd was shocking. There must have been hundreds of people—white mothers with faces contorted in anger, white fathers pumping their fists in the air and shouting, white teenagers and children waving Confederate flags and mimicking their parents. Just who were these people? Were they the women who turned up their noses and murmured nasty words at Mother and me on the city bus? Were they the white customers I saw from time to time with Big Daddy at the meatpacking houses downtown? Were they my white neighbors? The scene felt surreal. With everyone screaming and jeering at once, their words sounded muddled, except for one: nigger … nigger … nigger. It shot out of angry mouths like bullets and pierced my ears again and again.
Adrenaline pulsed through my body and quickened the pace of my heart. But I wasn’t afraid. The mob was too far away to stop me from getting inside. The front entrance of the school was now in sight, and the military was just steps ahead. I was more perplexed than anything else. I had never seen such raw anger up close before. And this was directed at me. For what? Because I wanted to go to school? I turned away and remembered Mother’s and Daddy’s words:
They’re just ignorant, low-class people. They’re just trying to scare you. Do not stoop to their level. You are a Walls. Just take the next step, and the next.
Finally, we were staring into the faces of the Arkansas National Guard. The guardsmen had formed a ring around the school. They blocked the entrance, but I was certain that when they saw us, they would just step aside and allow us through. They were, after all, there to protect us and keep out the troublemakers, I thought. But not one of them budged. Instead, the commander, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Johnson, whose name I was to discover later, stepped forward. Commander Johnson assumed Reverend Ogden was our leader and began addressing him. The rest of us gathered closely around. I stood to the side of Johnson, who had both hands clutched unnaturally tight around a billy club. His knuckles looked white. Ernie, pressing his lips together nervously, stood beside me. That put him almost face-to-face with the officer. Gloria stood behind me, and behind her, Jane towered over us all. Johnson told Reverend Ogden that on the orders of Faubus, we would not be permitted to enter the school. The commander’s words stunned me. There was a huge disconnect in my head. The guardsmen weren’t there to protect us; they were there to keep us out. As the message washed over me, I thought:
You’ve got to be kidding.
Ernie, the only senior among us, spoke up: “You’re not going to let us in? Is that what you’re telling us?”
The officer repeated his order for us to leave. His men stood resolutely in formation, still blocking us out, their rifles slung across their chest. Our group stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do. And then the ministers turned and led us silently away. The mob continued yelling in the distance, but this time, I barely heard any of it. I was completely stunned. I’d never missed a day of school in my life. I still could not believe that I was standing just steps from the schoolhouse door, wanting desperately just to go to class, and the powers that be wouldn’t let me in. The highest court in the land had said I had a right to be at that school, to learn, just like the white children. What would it take to open those closed ears and change their hardened hearts?
For the rest of the day, I felt out of sync, isolated. I kept thinking that all of my good friends were in school, where I should have been. But as bad as I felt, nothing could compare with the sorrow that came over me when I clicked on the television news that evening and saw in black-and-white what had happened to Elizabeth Eckford, a junior who was supposed to be with our group that day.
I didn’t know Elizabeth personally. But, as was common in the black community, our families knew each other. She and some of her siblings had attended Stephens Elementary, and her father periodically worked for one of my great-uncles. Her grandfather also owned a neighborhood grocery store just across the street from Big Daddy’s pool hall and café. But the Eckfords didn’t have a telephone, and as Mrs. Bates later described in her memoir, Elizabeth didn’t get the word about our meeting place. Mrs. Bates had intended to try to reach her that morning, and in the hurried pace of the day, she just forgot. Unfortunately, Elizabeth walked right into the mob, which surrounded and terrorized her. There she was on my television screen, walking silently and alone in her crisp black-and-white dress. Her face looked solemn, and she wore dark sunglasses, which I’m sure must have hidden her tears. She was followed by some of the same angry men, women, and children I had seen from a distance earlier that day. But they were right on Elizabeth, shouting at her, spitting at her, clawing at her, not the least bit concerned that television cameras were capturing it all for eternity. That iconic image of Elizabeth surrounded by the mob would circle the globe and outrage the world.
The next day, The New York Times would run this account of the moment when a lone white woman—Grace Lorch, whose husband taught at Philander Smith College—came to Elizabeth’s aid:
The Negro girl … sat on a bench. She seemed in a state of shock. A white woman, Mrs. Grace Lorch, walked over to comfort her.
“What are you doing, you nigger lover?” Mrs. Lorch was asked. “You stay away from that girl.”
“She’s scared,” Mrs. Lorch said. “She’s just a little girl.” She appealed to the men and women around her.
“Why don’t you calm down?” she asked. “I’m not here to fight with you. Six months from now you’ll be ashamed of what you’re doing.”
“Go home, you’re just one of them,” Mrs. Lorch was told.
She escorted the Negro student to the other side of the street, but the crowd followed.
“Won’t somebody please call a taxi?” she pleaded. She was met with hoot calls and jeers.
Finally, after being jostled by the crowd, she worked her way to the street corner, and the two boarded a bus.
Two others who were supposed to be part of our group, Melba Pattillo and Terrence Roberts, both juniors, also walked separately into the mob that morning. But each of them managed to slip away. I didn’t know Melba, but Terrence had been president of the student council at Dunbar while I was vice president in my eighth-grade year. That would have been ten black students who showed up with intentions to enter Central. But after that morning, Jane Hill, the tall, quiet girl who had made that first terrible walk with us, never returned.
&nbs
p; That left nine of us.
None of us had any idea how long it would be before we were allowed to go to school. One day turned into two days, which turned into a week and then another. When I wasn’t at home, the nine of us often could be found at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bates. The couple lived on West 28th Street in a middle-class neighborhood that was a collage of small wood-and-brick houses. The Bates home was a yellowish brick ranch model with a large picture window facing the street. To the national civil rights leaders who came to town to assist in the case and the reporters who covered it, the house on West 28th Street became the unofficial headquarters for the nine of us trying to enter Central. We were interviewed there, we met politicians there, and we heard words of encouragement and lectures about the importance of our mission there. It became our home away from home, and Mr. and Mrs. Bates were our trusted guardians. Mr. Bates was tall and lean, with a narrow face, deep brown skin, and short gray hair. He was much older than his wife, grandfatherly to me, very low-key, gentle, and reassuring. While he was a longtime activist who used his newspaper to advocate for civil rights, it was Mrs. Bates who rose to the limelight. She wouldn’t be caught anywhere without being perfectly made up, head to toe, but pity the man who mistook her ladylike ways as a sign of weakness. She was tough to the core, with razor-sharp edges. And she demanded respect. Her objection to the treatment she received from an attorney for the Little Rock School Board during a court hearing in a separate case a year earlier had made front-page news. The NAACP was in court in 1956, attempting to force the school board to speed up its plans to desegregate. But during questioning, Mrs. Bates stopped the attorney in his tracks:
A Mighty Long Way Page 8
