Little Rock celebrates 50 years of desegregation

Annie Bergman

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — National Park Service Ranger Spirit Trickey feels a special connection when directing tourists down the sidewalk to Little Rock Central High School. Her mother made the same journey 50 years ago as one of nine black students integrating the previously all-white school.

“I always want people to realize that this is their history too. It’s not just black history. It’s American history and world history,” said Trickey, the daughter of Minniejean Brown-Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine. The Central High School National Historic Site offers tours related to the 1957 crisis, and visitors to Little Rock will find a variety of things to see and do this summer and early fall to mark the 50th anniversary of the events.

After a showdown between Gov. Orval Fau–bus and President Eisenhower, the Little Rock Nine entered Central High School on Sept. 25, 1957 — escorted by members of the 101st Airborne. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled against “separate but equal” schools in 1954 but Faubus ignored a local federal court order to integrate Central.

“[Central] was the first important test after the Brown vs. Board of Education case to break down segregation and education. So Brown happened on the court level, but this was on the ground level,” Trickey said.

The imposing Central High building still evokes memories of black-and-white newsreel footage of National Guardsmen, bayonets in hand, shielding the school. Angry crowds filled the streets, jeering the Little Rock Nine.

One of the most famous photos of the era shows a white girl yelling at Elizabeth Eckford, one of the original nine, as she walked near the school.
Visitors can walk the same sidewalk today with Central High students, black and white.

“When people actually walk down that street that she walked when the mob was following her … I’ve had visitors tell me that it’s surreal, eerie,” Trickey said. “I mean that they were stopped in their tracks — that kind of thing. It’s very touching to walk those same steps.”

To mark the 50th anniversary, Little Rock has planned a number of events.

At the national historic site, rangers offer tours from the visitor center — a refurbished Mobil gas station across the street from Central. The site is open daily but tours run only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The first tour begins at 9:15 a.m. with the second leaving at 1 p.m. The original Mobil station had the only pay phone around, and was used by reporters covering the integration effort to phone stories in to their news organizations.

“We try to paint a picture of what it looked like on the front lawn of Central and in the streets with the National Guardsmen shoulder-to-shoulder lining the block around the school and in the neighborhood,” Trickey said. “When you tell people there were over 1,000 soldiers there for nine kids,” it’s hard to imagine, she said.

To help crystallize the images, the center displays photographs, including the famous shot of Eckford. Others show the National Guardsmen and signs outside the school that read, “This school is closed by order of the federal government.”

A reflecting pool on campus, once covered over, shows how peaceful the campus is now. Ten marble benches — one for each of the Little Rock Nine and one in honor of the school’s past, present and future students — were unveiled on the 49th anniversary in 2006 and show that the school hasn’t forgotten its past.

Across from the visitor center, a Commemorative Garden has winding stone walkways that lead past a different set of nine benches, along with nine trees, through large arches with photos of Little Rock Central students.

A 10,000-square-foot visitor center that is more than five times the size of the current center is under construction. It will be completed in time for a Sept. 24 dedication, at which point the Mobil station will become an education center.

To see all the sites associated with the desegregation, the Park Service has started a new program for visitors wanting more than a walking tour of the building and grounds.

The Bike with a Ranger program leads groups of up to 30 on an approximately 7 1/2-mile bike tour of various sites related to the 1957 crisis. The tour starts at the visitor center, travels to the L.C. and Daisy Bates Home National Historic Landmark, the Terry Mansion and Dunbar Middle School, then continues to the Governor’s Mansion and the state Capitol.

Daisy Bates was a local civil rights leader and a mentor to the Little Rock Nine. The Terry Mansion was the home of Adolphine Terry, who founded a women’s organization to condemn Faubus for closing the schools in the wake of the integration crisis. Dunbar was originally a segregated school for black students.

The nearby Clinton Presidential Library will exhibit the Emancipation Proclamation — on loan from the National Archives — for four days, Sept. 22-25. The document will be the centerpiece of an exhibit called “The Last Struggle,” showing how presidential decisions influenced the civil rights movement.
Jordan Johnson, spokesman for the library, said the library will begin taking reservations to see the proclamation on Aug. 1.

“It would be a very popular attraction even if it weren’t the [Central] anniversary,” Johnson said. “But it’s going to magnify it and help children and adults see it in a different context and real world application here.”

Additionally, the Arkansas Repertory Theatre will perform an original play called “It Happened in Little Rock,” which grew out of 100 interviews with people closely linked to the desegregation effort.

Theater Director Bob Hupp said the three acts will focus on 1957, 2007 and Central’s legacy during its run Sept. 14-30.

“We felt this was a story that hadn’t been told on the stage and that it would be an important story to tell,” he said.

An art show presented by The Central High School Visual Arts Department Sept. 14-Oct. 27, titled “Looking Back — Looking Ahead: Commemorating 50 Years of Integration,” will be on display at the city’s Cox Creative Center.

Additionally, the annual Worldfest will focus of civil rights and human rights. The two-day event, Sept. 21-22 at MacArthur Park near downtown Little Rock, is a multicultural festival. This year’s theme is “The World is Watching Us! From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Celebrating Our Diversity.”

(Associated Press)