Central High School and the Little Rock Nine

It thundered and lightninged and rained hard all night, but we are grateful that there was no wind. Our LP gas detector went off a couple of times startling us awake, but there was nothing running on gas so we are thinking it must just be because we have been all closed up with the nasty weather. It stopped after the second time. We sure felt tired when we woke up. On my way over to the public restrooms, our neighbors passed in their truck and the lady rolled down the window and asked us where we'd gone for shelter last night. I laughed and told her that we'd not been too sure where to go. She said they and a couple others were in the bathroom for a couple of hours. Turns out the bathrooms really are built to be tornado shelters. They are completely concrete that is stamped to look like wood siding and cedar shakes. Inside has these chintzy fiberglass walls that look like a mobile lab or something since there is a shower in there, but evidently those are just for looks too. Oh well, now we know.

We worked on school and work in the morning so that we could take a field trip this afternoon to the Central High School Museum. Little Rock is the first city and Central High School the first high school to integrate their students. The Little Rock Nine were the 9 black students, ages 14-16, who chose to make the switch from their all black high school to make a difference and to receive an education that would better prepare them for college.

The museum was free to attend and was really well done. The most impactful thing for me was listening to the personal stories from several of the students via recorded testimonies at several kiosks with telephone handsets. Spencer and I sat together and listened to all the available audio recordings and it probably took 30-40 minutes. There were present day interviews interspersed with the students narrating while showing video footage from 1957. It is definitely different to see and hear the actual people and real video versus just reading about the events in a textbook. I'm not sure how much of it really sunk in with the kids, but I think we all seemed to get a sense of those students courage and tenacity and commitment. It is hard to grasp how difficult it was for those students and their families (and anyone who tried to support them) and it is challenging to imagine the perspective of the anti-integration people. It was very sobering.

The gas station where a mob gathered across the street from the high school.

 The school is actually a very beautiful, huge building and it is still an operational high school. When we got to the area, current students had just gotten out of school and were milling around. It was pretty neat to learn about the events and then walk over and see the front of the school where the nine students, on the third attempt, were able to attend classes. We got to see in the videos how the 101st Airborne came in to escort them in. In the interviews, one of the girls mentioned how one of the soldiers opened the door for her and called her ma'am and it really meant something to her to be treated with such respect by anyone let alone a white person. That really hit me...how important that we treat everyone with that kind of respect which should be considered "common courtesy". Then one of the guys talked about how this third attempt to enter the school, they didn't try to sneak in a side door as they had the other times, the soldiers marched them right up the front steps. When we went over to the front steps it was easy to imagine that you were there. Gave me goosebumps...even though it was 89 degrees outside and extremely humid.

We came back to the trailer right between 5 and 6 pm. We had some school work to finish up and Brock worked most of the evening, but we kept an eye on weather forecasts and tried to decided what to do tomorrow...stay or go, as originally planned. We learned that Oklahoma had been hit today with more tornadoes.

We started to have some pretty big thunderstorms in the evening. We've been under a flash flood warning pretty much the whole time we've been here, but the "creek" (shallow drainage ditch) behind our trailer had mostly dried up again. We decided to just see what tomorrow looks like.