Perhaps no place represents the history and struggle for Civil Rights and social justice more than Little Rock, Arkansas. On this weekend of remembrance for Martin Luther King, Jr. and his battle for Civil Rights, we are thinking of the audacity and the bravery of youth. MLK, Jr. was so young when he was thrust into the leadership of a mass movement and so were many of the teenagers that fought for change with him throughout our country in the 1950s and 1960s. Our youth often represent the best of us and endure the worst of us. As one student at Little Rock’s Central High said…”I got up every morning, polished my saddle shoes, and went off to war.” We hope you enjoy this week’s essay.
An eerie quiet hovered over the streets of Little Rock as we pulled into the Central High School National Historic Site Visitor Center back in the summer of 2015. Central High School was the focus of the Civil Rights world in 1957 as the clash concerning the desegregation of public schools heated up after the Brown decision. We immediately began to picture the brave African-American students going to school each day guarded by federal troops. Visiting this National Park site is truly like traveling back in time. The fact that the school is still operating today makes it even more special, particularly to two public school teachers.
Any school in the summer months looks forlorn and abandoned. Without the youthful masses in all their rowdy, boisterous glory parading up sidewalks and bounding off buses, the school is just a quiet, deserted hive. But Central High seemed more than just a school in hibernation for the summer months. Even the streets around the school seemed empty; there were no kids playing in the yards, squealing with summer break joy and ease, no packs of teenagers roaming with nothing but time until September. It seemed that everyone was gone.
We walked onto the campus envious of a time when school buildings looked as beautiful as old world churches and castles and museums. The architecture of any time period reflects in some ways what was valued and in the case of education, the design of the school house is surely alive with educational philosophy. The Little Rock community of 1927 must have believed that the school was the seat of all power in a community and that teachers were worthy of a mansion. Central High School is magnificent. It’s height and strength is reflected in its bold bricks and stone.
Conversely, many public schools constructed over the last 40 years look more like prisons. Buildings completely devoid of inspiration. Structures built to reflect standardization, uniformity, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, completely lacking of any type of inspiration or ornamentation.
I expected to see Central High as it is in the history textbooks, a gray toned photo peppered with girls in dresses and saddle shoes and boys in slacks and button down shirts. Instead, I found Central High in full color, a bright green lawn, shining sun illuminating the brick, unpeopled and in calm repose. I thought this historic site would be like the ones I grew up with in Virginia. Shrines like Williamsburg and Jamestown, places famous for reenactments where time has stopped and life has not moved on.
But Central High has moved on and is a working school like the one I go to everyday and clearly it wants to be left alone in the summer months like all schools. So, we walked back over to the Visitor Center looking for more information, looking for the history, for the story, for the people.
Through photographs, news footage, quotes and archived objects, Central High finally came alive for us. The street that we just walked on in front of the school is suddenly crowded with skirts and guns. The photographers capture white faces filled with rage and hate and in these still shots, they contort into crazed, ugly people. The Black teenagers walk regally and calmly and coolly through the verbal wreckage. Interviews tell of the fear and quaking they felt on the inside and the daily torment they experienced at Central High in 1957, but the photos show only determined steps toward change.
I watched my own teenagers reading the quotes, following the timeline, calling us over to see something shocking like a note passed through the school that says “Betray your own race, get an umbrella to the face.” Or a permit of sorts, copied and dropped throughout the school hallways that says “Bearer may kick rumps of each CHS negro once per day until above expiration date. Last chance boys. Do not use spiked shoes. 1 Down, 8 To Go.”
Our kids did not recognize this 1950s world; it seemed like mostly ancient days to them. They knew the broad strokes of Civil Rights: MLK, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X, but this historic site filled in the details of White Flight and White Privilege and told the stories of teenagers making choices both cruel and courageous.
We all wonder what we would have done in the face of such overt racism. Are we products of our time or are we born with some innate belief in equality?
Our kids have been raised to listen to multiple perspectives before making a judgement. They were raised on Bill Maher, Spike Lee, Cornel West, Matt Taibbi, Sojourner Truth, Henry David Thoreau, Charlie Chaplin, Morrissey, Thomas Paine, Andrew Jackson, James Baldwin, Crazy Horse, Michael Moore, and Rage Against the Machine all provocateurs that make us think and question everything. They were also raised on Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, George Custer, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Wayne, and Charles Stanley. We raised them to believe that just about everyone has something to teach us if we’re willing to listen.
But, an essential question for us and for them is, have we raised people willing to move beyond analysis and reflection? Have we raised people willing to take action? Have we raised humans willing to take to the streets, willing to be beaten for standing up for their beliefs, and willing to suffer personal harm for their futures and for others they will never know?
That’s what makes visiting Central High School and learning about the stories of those incredibly brave teenagers in 1957 all the more impressive. They were “just kids” but they took action. Their insistence on having their rights protected by any means necessary is still an example and an inspiration more than half a century later.