Elizabeth Eckford, a shy fifteen year old, was the first black woman through the doors of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, one of nine students who represented an early victory in the civil rights movement. Until that day, all of the students in the most prestigious high school in the city were white. Her story is breathtaking and sobering. Read it all.
How sad that the school has reverted today to segregation in the name of progress:
Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It’s all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations.
And it echoes all the way into Toronto of 2007.
It’s amazing what you read when you follow unrelated links over at Kathy’s blog.
Kathy Shaidle wrote:
Those two women are reconciled today. A humbling fact.
Posted on 08-Apr-08 at 2:23 pm | Permalink
Shane Edwards wrote:
Actually I read the whole Vanity Fair article you linked to. They did reconcile, for a number of years, but they have fallen out in the last couple of years, and are currently not speaking.
It would have been a great happy ending, but reading the whole thing gave me a view into just how traumatic, troubling, and damaging living through such tumultuous times can be. I don’t fault them for falling out again, but the fact that they reconciled for any length of time lent a beauty to the story that was deeply moving. Race need not divide us, and I don’t think, at the end, that is the reason they do not speak today, but simply the realities that people deal with things differently and sometimes what one person expects is not something that another is prepared or capable of doing.
Posted on 08-Apr-08 at 2:45 pm | Permalink
ThePolitic.com » Soft Racism wrote:
[…] for its fellow citizens by simply making mental, emotional and psychological problems, a “culture” or a “lifestyle […]
Posted on 26-Apr-08 at 12:54 pm | Permalink