Hazel Massery

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Hazel Bryan (center, in front of man with hat) shouts at Elizabeth Eckford as she walks to school in 1957. This photograph, taken by Will Counts, is one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th century, according to the Associated Press.^[1]

Hazel Massery (born Hazel Bryan) was a student at Little Rock Central High School during the 1950s. She was depicted in an iconic photograph that showed her shouting at Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, during the integration crisis. In her later life, she would work with Eckford to further the goals of racial harmony.

In 1998, Massery told The Guardian, "I am not sure at that age what I thought, but probably I overheard that my father was opposed to integration.... But I don't think I was old enough to have any convictions of my own yet." Later in life she changed her mind; she had thought of Martin Luther King as a "trouble-maker", but realized "deep down in your soul, he was right". She took the initiative of contacting Eckford, leading to an "awkward" first meeting, but then a real friendship. Both women faced angry feelings from friends and relatives in Little Rock, which remains largely physically segregated.^[2]

She appeared with Eckford and the rest of the Little Rock Nine on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of integration at Central High. The reunion 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. 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."^[3]

Here is a link to the Vanity Fair story: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/09/littlerock200709