Elizabeth Eckford felt the first wet splotch of spit hit her skin. She held her head high. She heard the angry, cruel words of the other students who were her age but a different color. She held her head high. But her dignity only made those around her angrier. So later, they pushed her down the stairs. She got up. It was getting hard to hold her head high.
Forty years have passed since Eckford, then 15, became one of the first black students to enroll in Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Last Thursday, September 25, Eckford and Central High's eight other original black students returned to the same steps they once walked under the protection of 1,000 soldiers. This time, instead of armed guards, someone else held open the school's door for them: the President.
"Forty years ago today, they climbed these steps, passed through this door and moved our nation," President Clinton said. "And for that, we must all thank them."
Nine Students, One Famous Day
President Clinton was an 11-year-old boy in 1957, when Little Rock's first black students bravely made their way into Central High. Back then, the President was Dwight Eisenhower, and the
Governor of Arkansas was a man named Orval Faubus. Faubus believed in a system called segregation, which kept black and white people separate--separate bathrooms, separate drinking fountains.
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was illegal. The famous decision, called Brown versus the Board of Education, meant that Governor Faubus had to allow black students into all of Arkansas' public schools. When he refused, President Eisenhower sent 1,000 armed soldiers to protect the "Little Rock Nine" from angry white mobs as they entered Central High on that September day.
One of those nine students, Melba Patillo Beals, recalled that day in her book, Warriors Don't Cry: "All I could hear was my own heartbeat and the sound of boots clicking on stone."
Today 60% of the students at Central High School are black. But many who attended last week's anniversary ceremony pointed out that racism hasn't completely disappeared in all these years.
Elizabeth Eckford is the only one of the Little Rock Nine who still lives in Little Rock. She was surprised to find herself greeted as a hero last week. "I'm usually nobody here," she told USA Today. "People don't attach any significance to me."
Generations of Americans, thankful for her historic, proud walk into Central High, would disagree.