We’re
in Little Rock Arkansas now. As soon as we got to the campground, I was
hurrying John to get in the car to go on a tour of a brewery I found online. It
said the tour today (Sunday) was the last for a week. We rushed into town to
find that the brewery closed and the building now has a bakery! Ah, traveling life means
changes. Since we were already downtown we visited the capital and Little Rock
Central High School.
Good
thing we visited on Sunday. We couldn’t find any public parking around the
capital. We ended up parking in reserved spots for the media (like NPR, etc.).
The capital was basically empty except for a few of us tourists wandering
around. That made it easier to see.
Little
Rock Central High School is both a national park and a working high school.
Again, it was nice to be at the high school on a Sunday so no students were
there. The national park visitor center gave us a good history of the times and
events at the school. The basics…in 1954 the Supreme Court overturned “separate
but equal” laws with Brown v. Board of Education. That meant desegregation for
schools. In 1957, Little Rock’s school board decided to gradually integrate the
schools. The students known now as the “Little Rock Nine” were the first black
students to enter the formerly all-white high school. The governor disagreed
and called out both the Arkansas National Guard to keep the black students out
(pretending this was for their safety) and also asked white citizens to protest
the integration plan. There were crowds every day with the national media
including the fairly new TV news filming everything. It took President
Eisenhower bringing in federal troops to force the desegregation required by
law.
What
gets me was the bravery required by those nine. They had to handle a year of
abuse (the students were verbally and physically abused by white students even after
they finally got in the school door). They had to take the abuse but not answer
it. One black student got upset and responded in a very limited way and she
ended up being expelled. Their parents had to fully support the students. They
had to be presentable at all times to represent their race. And, they had to be
good students to pass the courses under such an environment. All this and they were just young high school
students. Wow!
John
liked the education center for the national park. The gas station was an
unofficial media center for the press who called in their stories from their
public phone.
This
is from my morning walk.
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