Honoring Both the Legacy and the Trauma of Elizabeth Eckford and the Little Rock Nine
Two days ago, some members of our country quietly celebrated the day when Elizabeth Eckford and the other members of the Little Rock Nine…
Honoring Both the Legacy and the Trauma of Elizabeth Eckford and the Little Rock Nine
Two days ago, some members of our country quietly celebrated the day when Elizabeth Eckford and the other members of the Little Rock Nine bravely became the first Black students to integrate Little Rock High School, despite opposition from the Arkansas Governor, the National Guard, and most of the white population.
We like to tell the happy and inspirational sides of this story. We like to keep the story short, this photo plus a blurb in our history books about how their activism helped integrate our public schools. Maybe followed by another story about how the Black woman in the photo, Elizabeth Eckford, and the white woman, Hazel (Bryan) Massery, later became friends — at least for a time.
Photo source: https://allthatsinteresting.com/elizabeth-eckford-hazel-bryan
This story is simple, neat, and has a happy ending. But it is not the complete story of the violence and trauma that Eckford endured on that day.
On September 4, 1957, Fifteen year-old Elizabeth Eckford had been completely unprepared for what she would face when she attempted to enter the school. She wrote that (like many 15 year olds) she’d mostly been thinking about the dress she would wear. She and her mom had made the dress themselves and they had rushed to finish it on time for the first day of school. She’d believed that the Governor had called the National Guard to ensure their protection, and that they would keep her safe. She believed she would enter Little Rock Central High School with the other eight Black students who had been selected to attend with her. But her family didn’t have a phone, so they didn’t get the call from the NAACP and community organizers that the group was going to meet at a different spot,with ministers and other members of their community escorting them, and attempt to enter through the back door.
So Eckford arrived alone and was the only student at the front of the school.
Eckford’s experience was the stuff of our worst nightmares.
She got off the bus two blocks from the school and found herself surrounded by armed guards and a mob that was screaming racist slurs and threatening to lynch her. She looked for the other the Black students she was supposed to meet but didn’t find them. On her own, she made her way to the school, thinking she would be safe once the National Guard kept the peace and let her inside. But when she got there, the Arkansas National Guard blocked her three times in three places and left her to deal with a mob of white people who were spitting on her threatening her life. The mob blocked the route to return to her bus stop, so she tried to walk a different route to another bus stop, with the mob — including Hazel — following her. They continued to threaten and harass her as she sat alone crying and waiting for the bus that seemed to take forever to come. Only two white people sat with her or escorted her onto the bus, and a group of reporters formed a protective ring around her, while the mob became increasingly violent.
In Eckford’s words:
“I stood looking at the school — it looked so big! Just then the guards let some white students through. The crowd was quiet. I guess they were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I was able to steady my knees, I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in. He didn’t move. When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet, and then the other guards moved in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me. They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling, “Drag her over this tree! Let’s take care of that n____!’”
That day, Elizabeth Eckford barely escaped with her life.
Little Rock, Arkansas, and even the U.S. federal government did not offer any immediate support. The city and the Governor became further entrenched in their refusal to keep schools segregated. President Dwight D. Eisenhower then took two weeks to decide whether or not to support her and the other eight students’ attempts to go to that high school, while all of them studied at home.
Even two weeks later, when Eisenhower got the Governor to get the police to escort the members of The Little Rock Nine into the schoolthrough a side door, this is what happened:
“The crowd let out a roar of rage. “They’ve gone in,” a man shouted…Once the Little Rock Nine entered the school, they were separated. The mob infiltrated the school, and under threats of death, the nine were taken to the principal’s office. One of the nine overheard officials saying “We may have to let the mob have one of those kids, so’s we can distract them long enough to get the others out.”
The following year, all of Little Rock’s high schools closed so they wouldn’t have to integrate. Most of the white students went to private “segregation academies” while many of the Black students were left with no schools to attend. Eckford never got to graduate from Little Rock High, and she had to finish her education via correspondence courses and night school.
The events of that day have affected the rest of Eckford’s life.
She has had PTSD, depression, and endured a lifetime of trauma due to that day and the actions of people like Hazel. She attempted suicide two times. She continues to be sensitive to loud noises and light flashes. When she was on Oprah and had to confront a huge blown-up version of photo of her with Hazel yelling at her, she jumped and then froze up so much she could barely answer Oprah’s questions. When Oprah asked her why, she said the photo had taken her back to that moment.
Eckford raised her two sons as a single mother and lived in poverty. The trauma was intergenerational. One of her sons had mental health issues and committed “suicide by police.”
There is also a feel-good story of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel (Bryan) Massery. Although they began a friendship for a time, the trauma from that day made it too difficult for Eckford to maintain that friendship. To Elizabeth Eckford, Hazel (Bryan) Massery seemed more interested in the media attention and a possible book deal than in taking full accountability for her actions. She even claimed that she “had amnesia” about that day, but later Eckford found out she had been part of an organized group of students who met every week to strategize new ways to harass the members of the Little Rock Nine. The two went their separate ways, and the media sought out the next feel-good story instead of following a more complex and nuanced narrative.
How can our country move forward if we can’t face the true legacy of the trauma segregation and discrimination caused, or of how it still affects people to this day?
We like to tell the happy story about how Eckford changed history, and stories of honoring her and the other eight members and of reconciliation. But we don’t usually dig deeper and really deal with the trauma and its legacy. I do not think our country can fully heal until we do that.
Elizabeth Eckford in 2018, sitting on the reconstructed bench that is now a memorial to the events of September 4, 1957. The past is still with us and we are still working through its legacy.
A British poster on James Fell’s feed asked how good Christian U.S. citizens could go so far as to try to lynch a teenage girl. My answer about the historical context of the events in Littlerock and their modern implications is here: https://suzienull-81301.medium.com/phohow-can-good-christians-in-the-u-s-f60b843bcbbf
Sources:
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/elizabeth-eckfords-words
https://allthatsinteresting.com/elizabeth-eckford-hazel-bryan
https://www.npr.org/2011/10/02/140953088/elizabeth-and-hazel-the-legacy-of-little-rock
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