Tuesday, January 23, 2018

On The 60th Anniversary -Memories Of Central High School, Little Rock, 1957-A Personal Set Of Memoirs From One Of The Little Rock Nine

On The 60th Anniversary -Memories Of Central High School, Little Rock, 1957-A Personal Set Of Memoirs From One Of The Little Rock Nine


By William Bradley


NPR Terry Gross- Fresh Air 

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/15/577371750/they-didn-t-want-me-there-remembering-the-terror-of-school-integration

In setting up this short introduction to the NPR’s Terry Gross’ show Fresh Air I had to look up some information on Wikipedia to get a feel for an event that I had only read about briefly in my high school History class about a decade ago. One picture of the crowd full of hate-flecked white students and their white supremacist supporters threatening, menacing nine black high school students whose only “crime” was wanting to go to an integrated school for a quality education as per Brown v. Topeka made the hairs on the back of my head stand up. Made me want to scream stop some sixty years later. But that part was nothing, that first day part for as this personal memoir of one of the Little Rock Nine makes clear the whole experience was from hell. We may have come a long way from then-make that “maybe” very provisional but this hatred-filled photograph is very deeply etched in my brain and I won’t soon forget it. Listen up.   

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