Desegregation in 1957: 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, denied entrance to Little Rock Central High

Amerigo Vespucci

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Mon Sep-24-07 09:29 PM
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Desegregation in 1957: 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, denied entrance to Little Rock Central High

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/09/littlerock200709

Elizabeth Eckford, followed and taunted by an angry crowd after she was denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. The girl in the light dress behind her is Hazel Bryan. Will Counts/Arkansas History Commission.

Through a Lens, Darkly

During the historic 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, 26-year-old journalist Will Counts took a photograph that gave an iconic face to the passions at the center of the civil-rights movement�two faces, actually: those of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford on her first day of school, and her most recognizable tormentor, Hazel Bryan. The story of how these two women struggled to reconcile and move on from the event is a remarkable journey through the last half-century of race relations in America.

by David Margolick

WEB EXCLUSIVE September 24, 2007

It was a school night, and Elizabeth Eckford was too excited to sleep. The next morning, September 4, 1957, was her first day of classes, and one last time she ironed the pleated white skirt she'd made for the occasion. It was made of piqu� cotton; when she'd run out of material, she'd trimmed it with navy-blue-and-white gingham. Then she put aside her new bobby socks and white buck loafers. Around 7:30 a.m. the following day, she boarded a bus bound for Little Rock Central High School.

Other black schoolchildren were due at Central that historic day, but Elizabeth would be the first to arrive. The world would soon know all about the Little Rock Nine. But when Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Central, and thereby become the first black student to integrate a major southern high school, she was really the Little Rock One. The painfully shy 15-year-old daughter of a hyper-protective mother reluctant to challenge age-old racial mores, she was the unlikeliest trailblazer of all. But as dramatic as the moment was, it really mattered only because Elizabeth wandered into the path of Will Counts's camera.

Few pictures capture an epoch. But in the contorted, hate-filled face of a young white girl named Hazel Bryan standing behind Elizabeth, screaming epithets at her, Counts encapsulated the rage of the Jim Crow South. And even behind her large sunglasses�her eyes were as sensitive as the rest of her�Elizabeth embodied something else: the dignity, and determination, and wisdom, and stoicism, with which black Americans tried to change their lot. It's all there in one picture, in a way white America could readily understand when it landed on its front stoops. It has reverberated ever since, and resonates still as the 50th anniversary of the events in Little Rock is marked this month.