A Mighty Long Way: Chapters 6–8

Just imagine a constant stream of about two thousand raucous teenagers wending their way to classes in all different directions over five floors several times a day.

Add to the mix nine much-resented black students, and the atmosphere was volatile, even with the presence of our military guards.

But I learned early that while the soldiers were there to make sure the nine of us stayed alive, for anything short of that, I was pretty much on my own. They were in a precarious position, for sure.

I was angry that I had to face this kind of torture in a hallowed place of learning, angry that the threat to my life was so great that I needed to be escorted to class by battle-trained soldiers, yet those same soldiers didn’t even have the authority to stop groups of hateful boys and girls from spitting on me and knocking me on my face.

Class offered little solace, though. A whole new set of defense mechanisms was required there.

He had a calming presence that seemed to add a bit of levity to our days.

The nine of us usually headed down to the basement for a casual debriefing with Mrs. Bates. Each of us found a comfortable spot on the sofa, a chair, or the floor to answer Mrs. Bates’s questions.

For some, those sessions may have been cathartic. For me, it was wasted breath, wasted energy, having to go through the trauma all over again.

At the end of the first grading period in late October, a reporter for a national newspaper called Mrs. Huckaby to ask how the nine of us were faring academically.

But at times, the other part—the fourteen-year-old girl who just wanted to go to school without all the histrionics—felt used.

If some viewers also saw for the first time that on Thanksgiving colored folks ate baked turkey and dressing on fine china with perfectly pressed table linens, spoke articulately, and demonstrated impeccable table manners, then we had well served our dual purpose.

The news about Minnie’s suspension put a damper on the beginning of the two-week break from school, but I looked forward to the time off.

No sooner had Minnijean left Central than hateful cards began appearing all over the school: “One Down...Eight to Go.” Distributing the cards led to the suspension of one perennial troublemaker, Sammy Dean Parker.

School administrators regularly took similar cards away from students or yanked down the brazen signs scrawled on notebook paper and posted throughout the school.

When I thought about Jesus Christ and the profound suffering he endured, that made my own challenges seem small.

Eventually, her grandfather relented.

They were the ones who called us derisive names, spat on us, kicked, hit, pushed, and slammed us into lockers and down the stairs.

Maybe it was their parents who helped to make up the segregationist crowds that clung to the wrongheaded belief that Central somehow belonged to them and that the nine of us were the interlopers causing trouble by having the audacity to keep showing up.

On paper, they were just girls who shared the same interests, but the parameters of their relationship were clear.

A newspaper report estimated that the cost of federal protection for the Little Rock Nine that school year had been a whopping $3.4 million. That was a staggering figure in 1958, more than twice the amount it had cost to build Central thirty years earlier.

At the time, Dr. King was clearly on the rise, having achieved acclaim as leader of the successful Montgomery bus boycott.

But I have to chuckle because to this day, my most vivid personal memory of one of the world’s most revered leaders is not of eloquent words or a suit-and-tie moment.

But I have to chuckle because to this day, my most vivid personal memory of one of the world’s most revered leaders is not of eloquent words or a suit-and-tie moment.

But as awestruck as I was by Mr. Sengstacke’s home, I was equally smitten by his handsome son, who was about my age.

But the more I learned about Lena Horne in the ensuing years, the more I admired her.

Owned by Leo “Lindy” Lindermann and his wife, Clara, the restaurant was a popular hangout for Broadway and vaudeville stars.

I felt embarrassed—embarrassed that we were such spectacles, embarrassed that we had arrived late, embarrassed by the largesse of it all. I wasn’t ungrateful, though. I knew the Elks meant well by honoring us in a big way.

He was even cockier than usual after having just won the Democratic nomination for his third term. In Arkansas, that was tantamount to reelection, and Faubus was about to become the first governor in fifty years to serve more than two terms.

To quell the teachers’ fears, the board agreed to continue paying them.

The most galling development of all, though, occurred just five days after Faubus closed the high schools.

A group calling itself the Save Our Schools Committee also perpetuated the notion that our parents and Mrs. Bates were at fault.

When teachers returned again to empty classrooms the following January, rumors began circulating that the board was planning a “purge” of teachers. Faubus said publicly that he thought Central’s principal, Jess Matthews, and the two vice principals, Mrs. Huckaby and Mr. Powell, should be fired.

My parents and I agreed that I should return to Little Rock to get my high school diploma because I needed to hone the academic skills required for college.

They had come with nothing but their sheer will and ingenuity—a kind of industriousness that, I might add, was not always appreciated by their citified black brethren, who complained behind closed doors about the ruin the country folk were bringing to the neighborhood.

They had come with nothing but their sheer will and ingenuity—a kind of industriousness that, I might add, was not always appreciated by their citified black brethren, who complained behind closed doors about the ruin the country folk were bringing to the neighborhood.

John was from Little Rock but had come to Chicago that summer with his friend Al Bell—the same Al Bell who would go on to become the head honcho at Stax Records.

Al had lived with John’s family in Little Rock throughout high school and college and his tenure as a popular young dee jay at KOKY, the first local station to cater to black listeners.

But even as a teenager, I’d become something of a jazz aficionado.

They traveled with other couples to St. Louis for a spring musical revue, called the Y Circus, which featured a number of jazz artists.

Family members told me how the governor fired up the crowd with his anti-integration rhetoric and how the streets filled afterward with an angry mob headed for Central.