Three months is all it took for me to flee from the South. I never had any intention to go back. However, I do want to see the Legacy Museum of Bryan Stephenson in Montgomery, AL and the SPLC Civil Rights Museum is also in Montgomery. So I decided I would do a summer trip through the south visiting Civil Rights History destinations.
July 16 I arrived at my first – Little Rock Central High School which is now a national historic site. I took Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive passing Martin Luther King Avenue and Little Rock Nine Avenue. I read the website ahead of time and it said the visitor center was closed in June 2024. This is July. It was closed. It allegedly opens Tuesday to Saturday, 10-4. It was Tuesday at 2 p.m. – it should have been open. So blazing hot as it was, all I could do was stroll around the school grounds, visit the Elizabeth Eckford bus bench, the Commemorative Garden, and the Magnolia Mobil Gas Station (visitor center) that was the media headquarters in 1957 during the standoff. The pay phone from which the reporters called in their stories was one of the few in the area. The gas pumps are the old kind I recall from my own youth. Elizabeth had not gotten the message where to meet the others before going to the school because their home did not have a phone. She went alone and is the girl in the iconic photo walking to school with crowds of white men and women shouting at her.
The gardens are exquisite, the famous façade of the school is much more than the photos show. It could be the setting for some Roman conqueror film or maybe the next Rocky. I can’t imagine going to a high school like that. But when I peeked in the windows of the locked doors, I could see the same heavily varnished wood floors and metal student lockers just like we had in our high school.
I was astonished at how fancy the school was but what amazed me more was the neighborhood. Leafy, green, lush, two-and three story well-kept old houses with large porches and columns and fancy windows – clearly an upscale neighborhood. These were not poor whites who were scared that Blacks would take the crumbs the rich had tossed to the poor whites. These were rich whites who feared losing the false narrative of their superiority. They did.
I wonder if any of the students or organizers or parents realized at the time that they would become American heroes with streets named after them as well as books, documentaries, statues, and memorials. I doubt they realized they were making history and changing the this nation. They were just doing the right thing, seeking justice and freedom, and being brave and courageous.
We have a duty to those brave children and the future. We are making history now in the upcoming election. We can keep marching forward to make a more inclusive union – one that includes “we the people” – or we can send the country down a very dark path. For the world and the future, I hope we can be as brave and courageous as the Little Rock Nine and stand up for a positive future.