Pilgrimage I, Day 2 – Crucible in Little Rock

I have just completed a six day pilgrimage to the civil rights sites in the Mississippi Delta and environs. These are my reflections.

There’s a reason it was so beautiful…

In 1927 the city of Little Rock gave the local school board $1.5 million to build two high schools, one for white students, the other to build a school for “Negroes.” The school board chose to build an elaborate high school for white students, steadily adding ornamental features whose expenditures would insure there would be no remaining funds to build the Black school. A much smaller, instantly over crowded Dunbar High School would eventually be built only because of assistance from the philanthropist Rosenwald schools project with the majority of funding coming from local residents.

When it opened in 1927, Central High was the most expensive school building in the country and was named "America's Most Beautiful High School" by the National Association of Architects. It also provided a wide range of educational programs which would never be unavailable at Dunbar across town where the 7-9 grades attended in three hour shifts in the morning followed by the 10-12 grades for three hours in the afternoon and ultimately the junior college classes which met at night. Imagine how exhausted their teachers were by the end of a day.

This offers insight into the issues that came to a head in 1957 when nine incredibly courageous high school students insisted on claiming their rightful share of the educational opportunities available only at Central High. If they were going to have a chance to become fully educated, it would have to be at Central. It wasn’t that their dedicated teachers at Dunbar were unwilling to provide it. They simply did not have the personnel, resources or the  time.

Everything worth knowing occurs in a context. The context in which the Little Rock Nine arose is particularly troubling. And it has implications for what is happening in the dismantling of public education today.

  

Hard Choices, Morally Right Decisions

The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock is a museum whose mission is to preserve, interpret and celebrate African American history and culture in Arkansas. One of the displays spoke of the “morally right decision” that lay at the heart of the Little Rock Nine story. Recognizing that there were hard decisions for whites and Black alike and that some made morally right decisions in the face of that difficulty is essential to understanding what happened not only in Little Rock but all over the Jim Crow South.

It could not have been easy for those nine young students or their families. And it could not have been easy for the white administrators who made their passage possible or the few teachers and classmates who offered them desperately desired support. There was enormous pressure from every side to preserve the status quo, as virulently racist as it was. Fear inevitably prevents thoughtful decision making, whether it be for loss of  dominance or a fear that a bad situation could get worse.

But along the line, a few brave souls stepped up and made “morally right decisions.” And the arc of the universe bent just a little closer to Justice at that moment.

Nancy Rooseau is the current principal at Little Rock Central. It’s near 3000 students today include classmates from 41 different countries and its graduates attend the top universities around the world. Rooseau speaks glowingly of her students and warmly relates her ongoing relationship with the surviving Nine members, their children and grandchildren. It was a joy to hear.

These morally right decisions were difficult. But they changed the world. And they offer hope to those of us faced with difficult decisions today. And on days like today, I still believe in redemption.

[Image: left, Mosaics Cultural Center display]

 

Troubling Familiar Patterns

The governor of Arkansas had lost the first round. The Little Rock Nine had completed their first year of high school. Ernest Green had actually graduated, insisting upon attending his commencement exercises, a service which Martin Luther King, Jr. himself would attend.

But Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas who had branded himself as a race moderate, had to run for re-election. Assessing the base he would need to win that race, he chose to appeal to the segregationists, ordering the public schools in Little Rock to be closed the next year. He would make the funding for those schools available to the white flight academies organized to avoid desegregation. This would come to be called “the Lost Year.”

In the museum run by the National Park Service at Central, an image an ad from The Mother’s League during an election to recall segregationist school board members began with a headline reading “DO YOU WANT NEGROES IN OUR SCHOOLS?” Note the presumption that the schools belong to them. Note also the presumption that these women have the privilege of deciding who can attend those schools, Constitution be damned.

Now consider the patterns we see today. Public school funding stripped and given to private schools which are free to reject anyone they don’t wish to serve. Discriminatory patterns regarding the operation of schools and libraries pushed by moral entrepreneurs under the cynical rubric of Mothers protecting children.

We must learn from our history. That is why the *entire* history must be taught, not just the whitewashed version of it.

And if you have ever wondered about the damages that cuts to the National Park Service could cause, consider that much of the information that this author relied upon for these reflections came from a very capable NPS tour guide. And many of the images posted here came from the NPS museum at Central High.

These are our truth tellers in a time when power is being used to bury the truth. We must protect them.  

[Images: Display at National Park Service Museum, Central High]

 

She Got On the Bus with a Damp Dress

One of the most famous images from the desegregation of Little Rick Central High School depicts a 15 year old Elizabeth Eckford surrounded by white classmates sneering and threatening her with bodily harm. It’s a powerful image that offers a snapshot of evil incarnate.

But look closer. Notice that she is alone as she walks through that gauntlet of jeering white faces. The eight other students had been organized by Daisy Baits to come as a group. Eckford’s family had not gotten the phone call from that middle of the night planning session. She would endure the taunts alone.

Eckford would later say that all she could think of that day was the recent lynching of 14 year old Emmett Till in neighboring Mississippi. That fear would be heightened when she heard one of the crowd say, "Drag her over to this tree! Let's take care of that nigger!"

Turned away by the Arkansas National Guard and knowing that she would not be attending school that day, Eckford made her way to a nearby park bench to wait for a city bus. She was wearing the beautiful dress she had made for herself for that first day of school. As she sat on the bench awaiting for a bus that no doubt seemed forever in arriving, her assailants continued to scream at her mixing their racist epithets with their spitting on her.

The only reason she was not pulled apart by that maniacal mob was the representatives of the press present there to record such savagery deterred them. When Elizabeth finally got on the bus, her dress was damp with spittle.

This is one of the stories on this pilgrimage that has tormented my soul.

[Top Images from National Park Service Museum, Central High]

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

  frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

       © Harry Coverston, 2025

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