Excerpt from TURN AWAY THY SON

INTRODUCTION:   Elizabeth Eckford

Elizabeth had paid attention throughout the summer as an increasingly vocal group of white people, the Capital Citizens' Council, had mounted a propaganda campaign against the planned desegregation of Central High School.   She had been confident, however, that school authorities and the local police would maintain order at the high school, and she felt nervously excited rather than fearful as the opening of the fall term approached.   In preparation for that day, in her small, crowded household, she laid out on the living room floor the fabric and pattern for a new dress, a beautiful white shirtwaist with a deep gingham hem, to wear on the first day of school.   Her sewing occupied her thoughts in the last few days.   Even as Governor Faubus surrounded her new high school with armed National Guardsmen on the night of September 2 nd , Elizabeth fretted over her new white buck loafers and bobby socks, making sure that everything was ready for this exciting new chapter in her life.

Birdie Eckford was terrified by the Arkansas governor's actions.   She thought she heard him say on television that if the black children insisted on pressing their right to attend Central High School at that time, "blood will run in the streets" of Little Rock.   Governor Faubus actually did not say those words, but the fact Mrs. Eckford thought she heard them indicated the level of her anxiety.   The next day, September 3 rd , the black children stayed home while the Little Rock School Board went into federal court to ask for a temporary delay of its integration plan.   Federal Judge Ronald Davies, visiting from North Dakota to clear up a backlog of cases, noted the governor had said his Guardsmen would function neither as integrationists nor segregationists but only to preserve the peace.   He ordered the School Board to proceed immediately with its federally-mandated plan. 1 

The children and their parents had met that same afternoon with Superintendent Blossom, and even though the school official had told the parents to send their children to school unaccompanied, Elizabeth believed that if trouble did develop the next day, she would be protected.   When they got home from their meeting with the superintendent, Birdie Eckford insisted the family pray together, and after dinner she instructed Elizabeth to read Psalms 27 and 4.   Psalm 27 read "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?   The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" 2 

Filled with excitement and a growing apprehension, Elizabeth tossed and turned all night, finally rising early on the morning of September 4 th to iron her new dress one last time.   When her little brother turned on the television and the announcer blared that a crowd was already forming in front of Central High School, Birdie shouted from the kitchen:   "Turn that TV off!"   Oscar Eckford paced back and forth through the house chewing on his pipe and carrying a cigar, both unlit, and Elizabeth would have laughed if she had not been so nervous.   After reading Psalm 27 one last time, the plucky teen told her parents not to worry and boarded the city bus alone for the short ride to Central High School. 3

Elizabeth did not know that late the night before, Daisy Bates had arranged for the black children to assemble at her home in order to drive them as a group to meet with city policemen two blocks from the school.   From that point, a group of black and white ministers planned to escort the children to the school grounds and to offer themselves as a moral shield of protection in the event a hostile crowd assembled outside the school.   Working into the early morning hours to call all of the parents, an exhausted Bates realized at length the Eckfords did not have a telephone.   She fell into bed making a mental note to find Elizabeth, whom she had never met, in the morning.   The next morning, however, she forgot about Elizabeth.   Neither Daisy Bates nor the black children nor any other Little Rock civilians knew that about the same time Mrs. Bates was making frantic telephone calls to the parents, Governor Orval Faubus was changing his orders to the National Guard, instructing them not simply to "keep the peace" as he had the day before, but to bar the black children from the campus of Central High School. 4

When the bus deposited her at the corner of Twelfth and Park Streets Elizabeth could see the large crowd that had formed in front of the massive buff brick school.   As she approached the corner of Fourteenth and Park, she felt comforted by the presence of the National Guardsmen ringing the school, and she headed for the sidewalk behind the line of soldiers in order to position herself between them and the noisy protesters.   Elizabeth neared the soldiers and was relieved to see a white girl pass between them.   One of the Guardsmen, however, motioned for her to cross to the other side of the street, suggesting she should approach the decidedly unfriendly throng of about two hundred whites.   Obedient as always, Elizabeth did as she was told, and the whites initially drew back to let her pass.   When, however, she heard one man say "Here she comes, now get ready!," she felt the first real fear surge through her.   She moved to the middle of the street, walking with the soldiers on her right and the large band of increasingly hostile whites on her left. 5

Elizabeth saw some white students pass through the line of soldiers about halfway down the two-block campus, and she headed for that spot.   Whites were crowding closely behind her saying such things as "Go back where you came from!   Go home before you get hurt, nigger.   Why don't you go back to the goddam jungle!"   Incredulous that this was happening to her, the fifteen-year-old girl from a religious and moral household set her sights on the center point of the soldiers' line, confident that the armed men would protect her and that they would let her through.   As she told a local white minister several days later, she began to grow fearful, but the proud and dignified young girl also worried she would "bust out crying and I didn't want to in front of all that crowd."   When the frightened child finally arrived at the mid-point of the campus and tried to pass between two soldiers, they raised their guns and barred her entry.   Her knees shaking, Elizabeth turned to face the mob, hoping to find a friendly or compassionate soul.   One grey-haired woman seemed to have a kindly manner, but when the black girl looked at her beseechingly, the woman spat in her face. 6

With dignity and composure, Elizabeth turned and walked briskly toward the Sixteenth Street bus stop, believing for some reason she would be safe there.   As she walked that nightmarishly long block, an aroused mob trailed closely behind her hurling threats and epithets.   "Lynch her!" was the one she remembered.   At some point during the seemingly endless journey, a young photographer for the Arkansas Democrat snapped a haunting picture that soon traveled around the globe, becoming in time an icon of the Civil Rights Movement. 7 

1Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (New York:   David McKay and Company, 1962), p. 61. For the full text of the Faubus speech see "First Speech," September 2, 1957, Box 496, Folder 1, Orval E. Faubus Papers, Special Collections, David Mullins Library, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.   For the full text of Judge Davies' order see Race Relations Law Reporter , October, 1957, pp. 937-939.

2 Lister, "Barred Negro Pupils Tell of Courage and Confidence"; Daisy Bates did not feel reassured by the meeting with Blossom, and she claims in her memoir that her sense of unease inspired her to recruit a group of ministers to accompany the children to school the next day; Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock , pp. 64-65.   Other members of the black community suggest that the black ministers originated this idea; Minnijean Brown interview with Elizabeth Jacoway, September 15, 2003, p. 21, in the possession of the author.   Cartwright, "A Portrait In Ebony."

3 Elizabeth Eckford, "Little Rock, 1957:   The First Day," Southern Exposure (Summer, 1979), p. 38.

4 The whites were Dr. Dunbar Ogden, pastor of Central Presbyterian Church and his son David, Will Campbell of the National Council of Churches; the blacks were Rev. Harry Bass and Rev. Z. Z. Dryver; white minister Rev. Colbert Cartwright covered the incident as a free-lance journalist.   Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock , p. 66.

5 A photograph on the front page of the New York Times showed Guardsmen telling Elizabeth to cross the street while a white girl passed through their lines; New York Times , September 5, 1957, p. 1.Eckford, "Little Rock, 1957:   The First Day."

6 Cartwright, "A Portrait In   Ebony."   Eckford, "Little Rock, 1957:   The First Day."

7 Eckford, "Little Rock, 1957:   The First Day."   Wilmer Counts, A Life Is More Than A Moment:   The Desegregation of Little Rock's Central High (Bloomington:   Indiana University Press, 1999 ).