It was doomed from the start

The photo above is of me and Ms. Elizabeth Eckford in 2024.  

Ms. Eckford was once the teen whose photo below is rumored to have made James Baldwin return from France. You likely know the photo, because like the image of the protestors at lunch counters having sugar dumped on their heads in Greensboro, or image the protestors being pelted with water hoses in Birmingham, this photo of a then 15 year old Ms. Eckford attempting to go to school while racists who are clearly activated by rage and murderous intent loom threateningly behind her, is a photo that has become canon.

I first became interested in the details of Ms. Eckford’s story when the band I perform with paid homage to the Little Rock 9 on the occasion of the 66th anniversary of their integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

We were invited to perform for the living members, and then Ms. Eckford agreed to share some of her oral history for part of an upcoming recording we’d be releasing.

When I knew I would be performing in front the surviving members of the (as google AI described) “nine African American students who courageously integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957, facing intense racial opposition and becoming symbols of the Civil Rights Movement,” I did an intense deep dive on the time period and on Ms. Eckford in particular.

I read her book, The Worst First Day, and watched video of her recounting her experience over and over again as she shared it at colleges, conferences, and on television interviews.

My initial offering was a poem called “Hoodoo for 9 Offences: A Little Rock Ritual.” However, what getting in touch with and deeply knowing the history did for me, was solidify my belief that integration should not have been the final aim.

Descendants of Africans in the U.S. needed a more full bodied, robust, and future thinking plan

that didn’t just stop at integrating schools. 

As an English teacher, I often encourage writers to find the “So that” part of their argument in an essay. The “so that” part of the integration strategy was missing. 

Integrate so that . . .?

I’m a dual citizen of East St. Louis, Illinois and Meridian, Mississippi. While researching for my work as an oral historian for The Community Archive, I found out that in 1949, East St. Louis’s black High School  – Lincoln High – had gotten so crowded that they were holding classes in the gym and in the lunchroom. They had also added a Spring graduation. In response, the leaders of the school went to the East St. Louis’s all white school board and said, “Hey, we’ve got the separate part down, but we don’t have the equal part. We would like some financial resources in order to expand the school, build more classrooms and so forth.” 

The white school board came back with a “No,” and that is what made black people attempt to register at East St. Louis Senior High School, which by the way is now the city’s only high school.

I found out that trying to enroll black kids in white schools was often attempted after first trying to equalize the resources. But back to Ms. Eckford. 

Did you know she has attempted to take her own life on at least two occasions? 

There is also video from the day the iconic photo of Ms. Eckford was taken. Some of it features a black journalist being beaten. Other parts show Ms. Eckford sitting on a bench trying to gather herself while this menacing crowd of hundreds of white adults and teens from the school try to arrange her lynching. They had ropes. They were negotiating which tree to use.

The particulars of the school year the Little Rock 9 endured are rarely talked about in the detail they deserve.

Those children were tortured; summarily tortured for a year.

Urine was thrown on them. Scalding hot water was thrown on them. Their lunches were tampered with. Tacs and other sharp objects were put in their desks.

Being taunted, being pushed down stairs were daily occurrences, and all under the watch of adults who were present and refused to protect them.

As a mother of two children, I know it was not worth it.

I can’t think of a situation where having my children physically assaulted every day would be worth it to me.

And for what? 

Now I can’t flatten the issue and say “Nothing has improved.” In the 1940’s, my grandmother attended a one room schoolhouse in rural Mississippi. In the 1960’s, my mother had to use the handed down books from the white school. By the time I matriculated through “integrated” schools in Mississippi, I received a good education that prepared me to enter college.

But notice I put quotes around the word integration. Like so many Black folks in the U.S., I attended a school within a school and the majority of my Black classmates were not prepared for college. I was essentially in a segregated school within an “integrated” school.

Only certain Black kids – the ones who tested well, the ones who were light skinned, or well behaved, or were not poor or had parents who were not too intimidated to advocate for them – were put on the “college track.”

When I think of what Ms. Eckford suffered, I want to go around with a bullhorn and publicly apologize to her and the rest of the Little Rock 9.

I’m so, so sorry that they were sacrificed for a failed project.

I’m also angry that adults thought this was okay, and that with all the brilliance that civil rights strategists exhibited, THEY COULD NOT IMAGINE A WAY TO RESPOND TO SUBPAR BLACK SCHOOLS THAT DID NOT INVOLVE PERMANENTLY DAMAGING THE BODIES AND PSYCHES OF BLACK CHILDREN.

As my own daughter prepares to graduate high school, I am breathing a mighty sigh of relief . . . almost. I won’t really be able to breathe until we are driving away from the campus for the final time. And this is because she attends a predominantly white high school which is where school shooting almost exclusively occur.

So no, I don’t think integration was a good idea. I believe it was doomed before it began,.

I would love to hear from you how other paths could have been forged and what we can do to improve schools in the present day.