Reflections on the Little Rock Nine

On September 23, 1957, nine young African American students walked into a school in Little Rock, AR and made history. Central High School in Little Rock became synonymous with white racism and virulent hate that day. Each time I see pictures of the snarling, hateful faces of the whites surrounding those nine children, I get sick inside. How sad for those people, how sad for my country, but most of all, how terribly, terribly sad for those nine black children.

When I was younger, I wondered how their parents could have allowed their children to endure what they did that awful period in our history. Adults taking that kind of abuse was one thing, but children? Surely there was a better way to achieve integration than sending those kids into a hellhole like that! I'd seen pictures of civil rights marchers being beaten into bloody pulps by red-faced, fat bellied white cops in the south. I'd seen marchers having fire hoses turned on them, thrown in jail, spat on, kicked, punched, you name it. But, children? What parent, I kept asking, would subject their child to that? Furthermore, what parent would abuse another child like the white mobs did that day?

It is totally incomprehensible to me what those kids went through as they tried to get an education. I have read "Warriors Don't Cry" by Melba Pattilo Beals, one of the nine. In the book, that year she wrote her New Year's resolutions. The very first thing she wrote, number one on her list was: "To do my best to stay alive until May 29." This was a child. I cried for her, for all of them.

I still don't understand that sort of hate. I'm glad I don't because if I did, I'd be worried. This was not the first time the white south had declared war on black children. I will never forget the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 where four little black girls attending Sunday School lost their lives.

I see those nine children as heroes. True heroes. HOW did they do it? How did they not lash back, curse, scream? How did they sleep at night? What did their parents tell them to encourage them to continue going back? Why were they chosen to "break the barrier"? I couldn't have done it, I know I couldn't. How is they didn't have heart failure, not knowing if any of those wild beasts would attack and kill them at any moment? It is truly amazing.

I still don't know how I feel about a parent who would put their child through that. I realize that somebody had to do it but it sure as hell wouldn't have been my daughter! We owe them a great debt. Our society is still sick with racism and hate but never so much as at the time when nine children, children, just wanted to go to school. This, from a society who is always screaming about how much we value children. What a crock.