Elizabeth Eckford

Elizabeth Eckford (born October 4, 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is one of the African American students known as the Little Rock Nine. On September 4, 1957, she and eight other African American students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School, which had previously only accepted white students. They were stopped at the door by Arkansas National Guard troops called up by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. They tried again without success to attend Central High on September 23, 1957. The next day, September 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to accompany the Little Rock Nine to school for protection.

Early years

She was born on October 4, 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas as one of six children in the family of Birdie and Oscar Eckford. Her father worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad as a nighttime dining car maintenance man, and her mother taught African-American students at the segregated school for the blind and deaf how to do their own laundry.

Little Rock and desegregation

Elizabeth received her elementary education in Little Rock and graduated from Dunbar Junior High School before starting high school at Horace Mann. Near the end of her 10th grade year, Elizabeth became interested in attending, and helping desegregate, Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957. On the morning of September 4, 1957, 15-year-old Eckford, wearing a new dress, walked down Little Rock’s Park Street through a jeering crowd to attend Little Rock Central High School. When the image was taken she had been turned away by Arkansas National Guardsmen after she tried to enroll at the all white high school. Hazel Bryan Massery stands behind her in the photos, jeering. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=The Integration of Little Rock Central |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/09/littlerock_slideshow200709?slide=2 |quote=September 4, 1957: Elizabeth Eckford is followed and taunted by an angry crowd after being denied entrance to Little Rock Central. The girl in the light dress behind her is Hazel Bryan. Eckford was one of the nine black students whose integration into the high school was ordered by a federal court following legal action by the N.A.A.C.P. |work=Vanity Fair |date=September 24, 2007 |accessdate=2008-07-18 ] [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Life is more than a moment |url=http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/HomePages/102299/text/counts.htm |quote=On Labor Day 1957, photojournalist Will Counts was on the scene when a young black woman named Elizabeth Eckford, textbooks in arms, made her way through a hostile crowd at Little Rock, Ark., Central High School. Behind her, a young white woman named Hazel Bryan shrieked with disdain. The 15-year-old Eckford had just been turned away by Arkansas National Guardsmen after she attempted to enroll at the all white high school. Counts snapped the photograph |publisher=Indiana University |date= |accessdate=2008-07-18 ] [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Through a Lens, Darkly |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/09/littlerock200709 |quote=Other black schoolchildren were due at Central that historic day, but Elizabeth would be the first to arrive. The world would soon know all about the Little Rock Nine. But when Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Central, and thereby become the first black student to integrate a major southern high school, she was really the Little Rock One. The painfully shy 15-year-old daughter of a hyper-protective mother reluctant to challenge age-old racial mores, she was the unlikeliest trailblazer of all. But as dramatic as the moment was, it really mattered only because Elizabeth wandered into the path of Will Counts's camera. |work=Vanity Fair |date=September 24, 2007 |accessdate=2008-07-18 ]

After trying for eighteen days to persuade Orval Faubus to obey the ruling of the Supreme Court, Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to Arkansas to ensure that African American children could go to Little Rock Central High School. The white population of Little Rock were furious that they were being forced to integrate their school and Faubus described the federal troops as an army of occupation. Elizabeth Eckford and the eight other African American children at the school suffered physical violence and constant racial abuse. Parents of four of the children lost their jobs because they had insisted in sending them to a white school. Eventually Orvel Faubus decided to close down all the schools in Little Rock.

College

During the 1958-1959 year Governor Orval Faubus closed the public high schools in Little Rock rather than continue with court-ordered desegregation, Elizabeth moved to St. Louis, took correspondence courses, summer school and received tutoring from the NAACP which allowed her to gather enough academic credit to begin work on her bachelor’s degree at Knox College in 1960. After graduating she became the first African American in St. Louis to work in a bank in a non-janitorial position. Eckford returned to Little Rock in the 1960s and was employed by the First Division, Pulaski County Circuit Court in Little Rock.

Father Joseph Blitz Award

In 1997, Elizabeth shared the Father Joseph Blitz Award (presented by the Arkansas Chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice) with Hazel Bryan Massery. Elizabeth lives in Little Rock and has two sons.

Oprah

In 1996, seven of the Little Rock Nine, including Elizabeth Eckford, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. They came face to face with a few of the white students who tormented them as well as one student who befriended them. A reunion in Little Rock in 1997 provided an opportunity for acts of reconciliation, as noted in this editorial from the "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette" on the first day of 1998:

One of the fascinating stories to come out of the reunion was the apology that Hazel Bryan Massery made to Elizabeth Eckford for a terrible moment caught forever by the camera. That 40-year-old picture of hate assailing grace — which had gnawed at Ms. Hazel Massery for decades — can now be wiped clean, and replaced by a snapshot of two friends. The apology came from the real Hazel Bryan Massery, the decent woman who had been hidden all those years by a fleeting image. And the graceful acceptance of that apology was but another act of dignity in the life of Elizabeth Eckford. [http://www.jenningsosbornefamily.com/news/itn0198.html Happy old year — Thank you for 1997] , editorial, "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette", January 1 1998]

ee also

*Brown vs. Board of Education
*Little Rock Nine

Further reading

* [http://www.facinghistory.org/ Facing History and Ourselves]
*"Civil Rights", "Kids Discover", Volume 16, Issue 1, ISSN 1054-2868, January 2006.
* [http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=August&x=20070822172142berehellek0.267265 US Information Agency article on Eckford]

References

External links

* [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/09/littlerock_slideshow200709?slide=2 Alternate photograph] from a different angle by Will Counts.