Elizabeth And Hazel

Elizabeth And Hazel

Adult nonfiction
"Two girls, one black, one white, born less than four months
apart, each about to start eleventh grade. Within a few minutes of
each other, they set out for the same destination: Little Rock Central
High School. They did not know, nor--in the world of the South in the
1950's--would they have encountered each other before, except when
they rode the same buses or passed on a downtown street or sat--on
different levels--in a local movie theater. But within an hour or so
they would, and from that moment on, their lives would be
intertwined..."
The year was 1957. The Little Rock School Board had decided to
desegregate. Then the superintendent had stalled three years and
decided to only admit a small number of black students to one school--
Central.
"...In May 1957 school administrators set out to find the black
trailblazers: children who were simultaneously old enough to attend
Central, close enough to get there easily, smart enough to cut it
academically, strong enough to survive the ordeal, mild enough to make
no waves, and stoic enough not to fight back. And, collectively
scarce enough to minimize white objections."
A lot of people weren't happy with this decision. During the
summer of '57 segregationists preyed on many white parents' fears.
Their children might end up kissing, dancing with, or getting venereal
diseases from black peers. Not surprisingly, crowds of livid white
adults showed up the first day of school ready to do whatever it took
to keep the Central student body lily white.
Elizabeth Eckford, alluded to in the lead paragraph of this
review, was one of the nine black students. She was the only one who
did not learn of the plan for all of them to go to the school
together. As she approached the building, the Guardsmen who were
admitting white peers did not let her in. Whites gathered behind her
yelling hateful things. Hazel Bryan, the other girl referred to, fell
in with a couple of her friends. The camera caught her screaming,
face contorted in hate...
...for one of the most famous photographs in this nation's
history.
Did you ever wonder what happened to those two girls, trapped by
the photograph in one moment in their lives in the public's mind? I
surely did. So I was delighted when I discovered David Margolick's
Elizabeth And Hazel: Two Women Of Little Rock, the source of the
quote I started the review with. Margolick gives readers a fifty year
narrative of the turns their lives singly and collectively (yes,
collectively--truth can be stranger than fiction) took.
Elizabeth And Hazel is a must read for anyone who believes that
black lives matter. A lot of whites like to think, yeah, things got
pretty ugly back then. But we're beyond that mess now...
...except that we aren't. We're just more subtle. Thanks to
factors like white flight and economic segregation, our nation's
schools are segregated to a degree that would warm Bull Connor's
heart. And we're moving in the wrong direction. I was recently
reading about how wealthy 72 white communities are working on
secession from larger school districts that would leave their
districts as segregated as if Brown as if Brown v Board of Education
had ever happened...
...now, nearly two decades into the twenty-first century. Will
America ever do right by our darker children? On a personal note, it
looks like the cold snap will finally break. By the end of the week
it may get into the 40s. Heat wave! And, no, record breaking cold
does not disprove global climate change. Warming poles will make for
more unstable air flow.
A great big shout out goes out to the valient scientists who are
striving, in the face of a science denying gubmint, to prove that
climate change is very real and very traceable to human activities
and, if we don't do something to halt or at least slow it, very
devastating to this beautiful planet that, as far as we know, is the
only one capable of supporting human life.
jules hathaway


Sent from my iPod