Elizabeth Eckford
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
See update in article.
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.
In 1958 Elizabeth Eckford moved to St. Louis where she achieved the necessary qualifications to study for a B.A. in history. 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. 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.[1]
Sadly, the reconciliation of Eckford and Massery did not last.[1]
Excerpt from 50 year anniversary program;
On the morning of September 4, 1957 and wearing a new dress, Elizabeth Eckford walked down Little Rock’s Park Street and into history as the lone teenage girl in the sunglasses who braved the screaming, segregationist mob and inquisitive press corps in her quest to attend Little Rock Central High School. Her life would never be the same.
Born in late 1941, Little Rock native Elizabeth is one of six children in the family of Oscar and Birdie 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.
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, Central High in the fall of 1957.
That September, Elizabeth and Hazel Bryan Massery, a white Central High student, were captured in the now-iconic Arkansas Democrat photo that became the single most recognizable image of the 1957 crisis. Photographer Will Counts snapped the picture of Hazel at the head of an angry white mob screaming at Elizabeth as she walked to school.
The two did not actually meet until 1997 when they reunited for a second, very different, picture taken by the same photographer who captured the black-and-white image 40 years earlier.
During the 1958-59 year when Governor Orval Faubus closed the public high schools in Little Rock rather than continue with court-ordered desegregation, Elizabeth 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.
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.
Elizabeth Eckford was born in Little Rock in 1942. Like most children in the Deep South, Eckford went to a segregated school. The states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky all prohibited black and white children from attending the same school.
In 1952 the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People appealed to the Supreme Court that school segregation was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that separate schools were acceptable as long as they were "separate and equal". It was not too difficult for the NAACP to provide information to show that black and white schools in the South were not equal.
After looking at information provided by the NAACP, the Supreme Court announced in 1954 that separate schools were not equal and ruled that they were therefore unconstitutional. Some states accepted the ruling and began to desegregate. However, several states in the Deep South, including Arkansas, refused to accept the judgment of the Supreme Court.
On 4th September, 1957, Elizabeth Eckford and eight other African American students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School, a school that previously had only accepted white children. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, was determined to ensure that segregation did not take place and sent the National Guard to stop the children from entering the school.
On 24th September, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower, went on television and told the American people: "At a time when we face grave situations abroad because of the hatred that communism bears towards a system of government based on human rights, it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence and indeed to the safety of our nation and the world. Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations."
After trying for eighteen days to persuade Orval Faubus to obey the ruling of the Supreme Court, Eisenhower decided to send federal troops to Arkansas to ensure that black 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.
In 1958 Elizabeth Eckford moved to St. Louis, Missouri where she achieved the necessary qualifications to study for a B.A. in history. After university she became the first African American in St. Louis to work in a bank in a non-janitorial position.
Elizabeth Eckford eventually moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas, and is now the mother of two sons
[edit] Sources
- "Through a Lens, Darkly," by David Margolick. Vanity Fair, Sept. 24, 2007.
- Facing History and Ourselves
- "Civil Rights", Kids Discover, Volume 16, Issue 1, ISSN 1054-2868, January 2006.
- US Information Agency article on Eckford
[edit] References
- ^ Happy old year — Thank you for 1997, editorial, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 1, 1998
- Alternate photograph from a different angle by Will Counts.
