One of the men closest to me swung at me with a large tree branch but missed. I felt even more panic rise up in my throat. If he hit me hard enough to knock me over, I would be at his mercy. I could hear Grandma India’s voice saying, God is always with you, even when things seem awful. I felt a surge of strength and a new wind. As I turned the corner, our car came into sight. I ran hard—faster than ever before—unlocked the door, and jumped in.
Mother was struggling, barely able to keep ahead of her attackers. I could see them turning the corner close on her heels, moving fast toward us. I swung open the passenger door for Mother and revved the engine. Barely waiting for her to shut the door, I shoved the gearshift into reverse and backed down the street with more speed than I’d ever driven forward. I slowed to back around the corner. One of the men caught up and pounded his fists on the hood of our car, while another threw a brick at the windshield.
Turning left, we gained speed as we drove through a hail of shouts and stones and glaring faces. But I knew I would make it because the car was moving fast and Mama was with me.
6
WE sped away from Central High School’s neighborhood and into more familiar streets where we should have felt safe. Mother directed me not to drive straight home but to circle around until we knew for certain that the men from the mob weren’t chasing us. Even though I didn’t have a license and had only practiced driving in the parking lot, she wouldn’t allow me to stop so we could switch places. Her face was drained and her eyes haunted by a kind of fear I had not seen in her before.
Again and again, she urged me to keep moving while she frantically searched the radio dial for word of Elizabeth. We tried desperately to think of whom we could call to rescue her. We couldn’t call the police. We couldn’t call her parents; they didn’t have a telephone. And Mrs. Bates and the NAACP folks were at Central High waiting with my friends.
As I drove, I couldn’t help noticing that the streets were clogged with cars and people that did not belong in our neighborhood. There were dust-covered trucks full of tobacco-chewing white men, their naked arms and shoulders sporting tattoos. When we pulled into our backyard, Grandmother India was waiting for us with an anxious expression. “Thank God, you made it home,” she gasped.
“What about Elizabeth and the others? Have you heard anything?”
“Yes, yes, but let’s get inside.”
“We’ve got to call the ministers at the church,” Mother said, scrambling up the back stairs.
“Morning,” hollered our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Conyers, over the backyard fence. “Morning, child. I heard about you on the radio. I think you’all better back off them white people and stay home before we all get hurt.”
“Hurry, child. Hurry.” Grandma India ushered us through the back door. In her face I saw reason to be even more frightened. There were no smiles, only a furrowed brow and terrified eyes. As we entered the house, I saw that she had locked all the doors and windows and pulled all of the shades. As soon as we were safely inside, she piled chairs against the locked back door.
“So what about Elizabeth?” I said.
“I think she’s safe. A white woman and man sat with her on the bus bench, protecting her from those awful people clawing at her. Then they got on the bus with her and rode away, so she’s okay.”
“That’s a real miracle,” Mother said.
“And the others—Terry and Ernie and those guys?”
“The soldiers turned them away from that school just like they did Elizabeth. They’re safe. They didn’t catch as much trouble, because they were in a large group with Mrs. Bates and some of those ministers. But still they didn’t have no Sunday picnic; they had to get out of there real fast.”
Even though Mother looked exhausted, nothing would do for her but to get dressed and go to work. “We’ve got to lead as normal a life as possible,” she argued as we described to Grandma what had happened to us.
“One report said those troops were armed with rifles, nightsticks, and bayonets. Did you see any of that, Melba?”
“Uh, yes, ma’am. I think I saw guns.”
“Maybe things got mixed up. Perhaps the governor had them there to keep peace, and they mixed up their orders,” Grandma mused.
“Seems to me they had ample opportunity to keep peace by protecting Elizabeth.” Mother Lois sounded very angry. “I think this situation is different than what we bargained for. We’d better let things cool off a bit. You can go back to Horace Mann for now.”
Grandma squared her shoulders and said, “I don’t see how that will solve anything. Pretty soon, white folks will think it’s as okay to enslave us as it is to use soldiers to keep our kids out of school.”
Mother stood in silence, pondering Grandma’s words for a long moment. Her expression reflected the painful realization that maybe what Grandma said was true. And then suddenly she said, “I had almost forgotten; I have to speak to you, Melba, and I want you to listen closely to every word and obey. Under no circumstances must you ever mention to anyone what happened to us this morning. Even if you have to tell a white lie and say we didn’t go to Central, we have to keep this our secret.”
Telling a white lie was something she’d never before given me permission to do. She swore me to absolute silence, saying above all else those men must not connect us with their ugly deed. If we told the story and they found out who they were chasing, they might come after us to finish the job. As she spoke, her voice quivered and her hands shook. I had never seen her so uncontrolled. She looked the way I felt, battered and weary. Finally, she instructed, “Melba, don’t you dare go outside, girl. I want to know where you are every moment.” She pulled on her jacket, peeked through the glass in the front door, then hurried out onto the porch, almost running around the house to the car.
I resigned myself to the fact that Grandma wouldn’t allow me to visit Thelma or Minnijean or any other friends who lived nearby. I wanted to call them for more news of what happened to them, but before I could pick up the receiver, the phone began to ring off the hook.
“Don’t you dare answer,” Grandma shouted to me from the kitchen.
I plopped down at the dining room table and watched her hop up and down for what seemed like a thousand times to answer the phone. It didn’t stop all morning. First, it was the call from the NAACP, then the ministers. There were our frightened neighbors and friends who said they really cared about me but insisted they have answers to a string of their nosy questions. And then there were more hecklers threatening death. Our family minister called and promised to send menfolk to protect us. Grandma said one of the would-be protectors had already phoned saying he wasn’t certain whether he wanted to be seen at our house at the cost of endangering his own family and job.
By noon, I was saturated with all the news reports and anxious to have some word from the others. I felt restless, trapped. I had helped Grandma with all the chores she’d allow, and I offered to help her with those she insisted she’d do alone. I had played all my Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis records for romantic daydreaming. I had read through the latest issue of Seventeen magazine and sneaked through the pages of my secret copy of True Romance; I was so bored I thought I’d keel over.
“I think I want to go back to Horace Mann,” I told my grandmother. “At least I’ll have assignments and friends and all sorts of wonderful first school day things to do.”
“One little setback—and you want out,” she said. “Naw, you’re not a quitter.”
In my diary I wrote:
I was disappointed not to see what is inside Central High School. I don’t understand why the governor sent grown-up soldiers to keep us out.
I don’t know if I should go back.
But Grandma is right, if I don’t go back, they will think they have won. They will think they can use soldiers to frighten us, and we’ll always have to obey them. They’ll always be in charge if I don’t go back to Central and make the integration happen.
By late afternoon
the ringing phone, the hot weather, and my confinement were driving me nuts, so when the phone rang, I grabbed for it.
“Where were you?” I could hear annoyance in Minnijean’s voice.
“I was there,” I said. “Across the street. I saw Elizabeth being chased by those ugly people. Why was she alone?”
“Remember, she doesn’t have a phone, so she didn’t get that midnight call. She didn’t know where or when to meet us.”
“Mama and I barely made it out of there!” I said, being cautious not to tell all.
“We got outta there as fast as we could. First we went to the superintendent’s office. We waited there for an hour, sitting on those hard benches. Then Mrs. Bates dragged us on to the United States Attorney’s office, to see a Mr. Cobb.”
“Why?”
“She said since Judge Davies made a federal order, we should go there, but Cobb sent us on to the FBI office. That was kind of secret and fun. Those guys look just the way they do on television, like they know something but they won’t tell.”
“Yeah, but what did they do?”
“Asked a lot of questions and wrote the answers down.”
“Questions?”
“Yeah, all about where we stood and who did what to us. Took hours and I was sweating so bad I thought I would die.”
“Well, are they gonna do anything?”
“Investigate, they said they’d investigate.”
“Sure, by that time we could be dead.”
“You ain’t kidding. That mob was outright nasty. I gotta go now, but can you meet me in fifteen minutes and we’ll go to the Community Center?”
“The Community Center,” I whispered. It seemed like forever since I’d had an ordinary afternoon there listening to records and talking to friends who didn’t use the word “integration.” I thought about the wonderful times Minnijean and I had shared—times when our greatest concern was saving enough allowance to buy a new record or praying to be asked to walk to the cafeteria with the right boy. Maybe our lives could be that way again. I tiptoed past Grandma, peacefully snoozing in her rocking chair. Suddenly she was awake. “Just where do you think you’re going, Missy?”
“Uh, to the Community Center. I didn’t want to disturb you. I thought you were sleeping.”
“Uh, huh. Have a seat. The best you can do is let up a window. But you ain’t going to no Community Center.”
I couldn’t stop the rush of tears. I ran to my room and fell onto the bed, burying my face in the pillow to hide the sobs that wrenched my insides. All my disappointment over not getting into Central High and the mob chase as well as the big sudden changes in my life over the past few weeks came crashing in on me.
Then I heard Grandma India padding across the room and felt the weight of her body shift the plane of the mattress as she sat down.
“You had a good cry, girl?” Her voice was sympathetic but also one sliver away from being angry.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ll make this your last cry. You’re a warrior on the battlefield for your Lord. God’s warriors don’t cry, ’cause they trust that he’s always by their side. The women of this family don’t break down in the face of trouble. We act with courage, and with God’s help, we ship trouble right on out.”
“But I . . .” I tried to explain.
“But nothing. Now, you get yourself together, read the Twenty-Third Psalm, and don’t ever let me see you behave this way again.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The anger in her voice hurt my feelings, but her warm hand patted my arm to reassure me of her love. From then on, I knew I could only cry when no one would hear me.
I BECAME very anxious as I watched the curtain of dusk shadow the sun. Although I relished the protective veil of night, I feared the men who had chased us earlier might use the cover of darkness to hurt us. For much of the early evening, my family hovered in the living room reading newspapers, listening to the radio, and watching the news. There were the ever-present phone calls to frighten us. Sometimes they even entertained us, as when we heard Grandma give them her call-to-worship, reading Bible verses and asking them if they had found the Lord.
“Whew, that was quite a workout,” she said, fanning herself with a folded newspaper and settling down into her favorite chair. “White ministers have their work cut out for them.”
Turning away from the television, Mother said, “Yeah, but I’m not certain those ministers will get their work done before we’re driven out of our minds by the phone calls. I think we’ll have to get another telephone number. We can’t go on this way.”
“Give it a few more days,” Grandma said. “Surely . . . surely they’ll get tired and go away.”
“You know the effort they made to integrate over in North Little Rock failed dismally,” Mother Lois said. She went on to explain to us how the attempt to integrate North Little Rock’s white high school had also been met with a violent and angry crowd.
And then she told us of a frightening talk she had had with one of the administrators at the school where she taught seventh-grade English.
“He started the conversation innocently enough, but then he asked me why I would subject my daughter to being the first to integrate. I told him if nobody takes responsibility for being the first, it will never get done. On and on he went, asking questions and describing the worst possible outcomes. Then he warned that some North Little Rock white school officials might take it personally that I allowed Melba to go to Central.”
“I think this might be a time when we have to keep our business close to our chests,” Mother cautioned. “I didn’t give him any details of our encounter this morning. He asked me point-blank if I would take you out of school, and I said we’d have to see how things worked out.”
“Sounds as though they are threatening you a little.” Grandma’s face showed anguish as she spoke.
The thought of Mother not having that teaching job upset me. Before she was hired, we had little food on the table, and Grandma had to make most of my dresses from bleached flour sacks. Mother had worked so hard for it. Besides, she was now our sole support. Daddy gave us money only now and then. I decided I had to change the thoughts running through my mind. They frightened me too much. I was ready to see something other than integration on the news, so I began flipping channels, looking for Lucy, Sid Caesar, or The Hit Parade.
Just then Grandma India raised the newspaper to show me headlines: RING OF TROOPS BLOCK INTEGRATION HERE. NO INCIDENTS REPORTED, OFFICIALS HUDDLE. The article said that the Arkansas National Guardsmen were indeed armed with rifles, bayonets, and nightsticks to keep us out of the school, and that troopers from the Arkansas State Police had joined them. The official total was 270 guards posted to fend us off, but folks who had driven around the school said it was more like five hundred.
I took heart from another headline: IKE ORDERS BROWNELL TO LOOK INTO FAUBUS ACT. Then I spotted another story farther down the page that said Wiley Branton, legal counsel for the local NAACP, had officially announced that our parents would not allow us to return to school. We breathed a sigh of relief. The question of what I would do the following morning had definitely been settled.
Our usual household routine was stalled, however, as we dealt with threats from callers. No matter how many times we vowed we’d have a normal evening, somehow we always ended up turning back to the news to keep up with what was going on. Radio reports said the crowd gathered outside Central earlier had broken into splinter groups and now roamed the city terrorizing our people wherever they found them.
The news reports were all the same:
Gangs of gun-toting renegades are reportedly arriving from surrounding states to join segregationists’ fight to halt integration.
Meanwhile, Governor Faubus continues to predict blood will run in the streets if the federal order to integrate schools is enforced.
“I don’t see why we should allow these silly white people to frighten us into giving up our lives. I’ll start dinner, and I
expect you’all to help.” Grandma gathered up the paper and headed for the kitchen.
The shrill ring of the telephone upset me even more now that I had seen my enemies. I imagined the callers to resemble those men who had chased me. It felt as though they were entering my home each time they called. I could tell Mother felt the same way. With each ring, her expression turned grimmer.
“I’ll get it.” Conrad’s voice was less enthusiastic than usual, but still he made his chase for the phone until he was ordered to halt. Grandma had interrupted her cooking to hurry to the phone.
She called to me from the hallway. “Sounds like maybe that boy Vince. You know, the polite one from church that we usually see at the wrestling matches.” Grandma beckoned me to take the receiver.
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