On January 11 a white girl was also suspended for pushing Elizabeth Eckford down a flight of stairs before a genuine adult witness—a teacher. She was punished, but the others who pushed us down stairs were not. Headlines in the newspapers told of some of the other perils we faced over the next few days:
January 15: GUARD PLATOON SENT TO SCHOOL AFTER THREATS OF BOMBING
January 17: ANOTHER RACIAL CLASH REPORTED AT CENTRAL HIGH
January 21: DYNAMITE FOUND AT CHS—BLOSSOM SEES CAMPAIGN TO TRY AND CLOSE SCHOOL
January 22: ANOTHER BOMB SCARE DISRUPTS CHS ROUTINE—BLOSSOM APPEALS FOR THE END OF THREATENING CALLS
January 23: CHS PLAGUED BY MORE BOMB SCARES
January 24: NEW BOMB SCARE AT CENTRAL HIGH PROVES FALSE
January 27: ANOTHER BOMB TOSSED AT LC BATES HOUSE
The segregationists were becoming even more vocal, urging the students to harass us at every opportunity. The Central High Mothers’ League announced a nighttime rally with the Reverend Westley Pruden, president of the Citizens’ Council, speaking on “What Race Mixers Are Planning for Us.” They issued a special invitation to Central High students. We heard that almost two hundred hard-core segregationist students protested our presence by being absent from school on the day of that rally.
In addition to all the other indignities and physical pain we endured, we were now taunted by large groups of students who picked certain days simply to stare at us. They came to be known as “stare days.” Large, boisterous groups of hecklers stared intensely and harassed the living daylights out of us. On several occasions, seventy or so students showed up at school wearing all black to protest our presence. Those were known as “black days.”
The segregationists organized a systematic process for phoning our homes at all hours of the night to harass us. They also phoned our parents at their places of work and any other relatives or friends they could annoy. One day, Terrence’s mother rushed into the principal’s office, having been called and told her son was seriously injured, only to find the call had been a hoax. Repeated bomb threats were telephoned to our homes.
Somebody was also calling in reports to the news media that Minnijean had done outrageous things like running nude in the school’s hallway. Time after time, she was devastated by reporters’ inquiries about some bizarre thing she was said to have done in school and gotten away with. Those stories, when printed, only served to agitate students who had already made it their life’s work to get her out of school permanently.
Late one afternoon, Minnijean was waiting outside school for her ride home when she was kicked so hard she couldn’t sit down for two days. That incident was embarrassingly painful to her in many ways. Her bottom was discussed in the newspaper and by people as though it were an object without attachment to her body, and that hurt her feelings. That incident made her the victim of ridicule. Whenever we spent time together, I could tell she was growing more and more weary. I feared she couldn’t take much more of the constant mental and physical pounding. And yet school officials seemed unwilling or unable to stop the war being waged against her.
I remember a moment near the end of January when I was struck by the fact that all the school officials were increasingly nervous and behaving as though things had gotten out of control. Even the soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard seemed fearful of what could happen in the hallways of Central. Their presence had always only added to our problems; now we saw mirrored in their faces a reflection of the danger that surrounded us.
I could also see the fear in Mrs. Huckaby’s eyes. Somehow in the course of time, she had become our liaison to the other school officials. Even though she was the vice-principal of girls, she was the one person we all, both male and female, reported our problems to. Not that she could do anything about them, but she would usually listen. We had also come to trust her at least to be as fair as she could under the circumstances. I thought that she, too, must be under a lot of pressure. During those late January days, we had kept the door to her office swinging. We would meet each other coming in and going out with our complaints, sometimes teary-eyed, sometimes smoldering with anger.
On January 27, I wrote in my diary:
The National Veterans Organization has awarded us the Americanism Award. They think we are heroines and heroes. Why are we only Niggers to beat up on to the students at Central High. I don’t know if I can make it now. It’s really really hard. Why should life be so hard, when will it ever be fun to live again?
We had real evidence that school officials weren’t certain of their ability to protect us, when, on the day of a pep rally, Mrs. Huckaby suggested that Thelma, Minnijean, Elizabeth, and I sit in her office rather than be exposed to the hostility and physical abuse that certainly awaited us.
We were having more frequent meetings with Mrs. Bates and other NAACP officials about our problems. Despite our conversations and all the public declarations that school officials could protect us, the truth was, things were getting worse by the moment. When it came to Minnijean’s suspension, segregationists were like sharks who tasted a drop of blood in the water. Their determination to have their kill—to see her gone—brought us to an impasse. If some resolution were not found, it seemed certain all of us would be forced to leave school within the week.
MRS. BATES SAYS 9 NEGROES WON’T QUIT DESPITE TROUBLE
—Arkansas Gazette, Wednesday, January 29, 1958
AS determined as everyone else was to have me remain at Central, with each passing day I began to doubt that I was strong enough to tough it out. Even as I watched the others weaken, I could feel myself growing weary and nervous. When I had a long period of time alone on a Saturday, I leafed through the pages of my diary. I had not been fully aware of how deeply the turmoil at school was affecting me. I was stunned to see what I had written.
“I wish I were dead.” That was the entry for several days running, in late January. “God, please let me be dead until the end of the year.” I was willing to bargain and plead with God. I revised my request; I just wanted to become invisible for a month or two. I clutched the diary to my chest and wept for a long time. “No,” I whispered aloud, “I do wish I were dead.” Then all the pain and hurt would be over. I fell to my knees and prayed about it. That’s when I knew I should go and talk to Grandma India. I told her about my wish to be dead.
“Good idea,” she said. She didn’t even look up at me as though she were alarmed after I whimpered out my confession. Instead, she continued dusting the dining room table. My feelings were hurt. And then she looked me in the eye and said it again. “Good idea! How did you plan going about it?”
“Ma’am?” I wasn’t certain I’d heard her. “I said I wish I were dead—did you hear me?”
“And I said, good idea.” Her voice was louder as she peered at me with a mischievous expression. “The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll make the segregationists real happy. They’ll love broadcasting the headlines across the world.” She braced the palm of one hand on the table to balance herself as she paused for a long moment to think. “I’ve got it. The headlines will read, ‘Little Rock heroine gives in to segregationists—kills herself.’”
“What do you mean?” I gasped. I felt really angry that she talked as though she didn’t care. She kept on creating new headlines about my death.
“Or maybe they could write: ‘Melba Pattillo died by her own hand because she was afraid of facing God’s assignment for her.’”
“Oh, no, ma’am.” I slumped down into a chair.
She wouldn’t let up. “Then, of course, there would be the celebration all the segregationists would plan. Let’s see now, I’ll bet they would rent the Robinson Auditorium for their party. It would be kinda like the wrestling matches, you know, loud, with all the cheering, singing, and dancing.” She looked back down at the scratches on the table and continued dusting. “So do as you please, but I’d also think about that moment at which you’d have to face the Lord and explain your decision to him.
” She ignored me, humming her hymn, “I’m on the Battlefield for My Lord.” I stood there for a moment watching her.
That did it. I realized dying wasn’t a good idea. I was almost certain God wouldn’t allow people to die for only a short while and come back. After that, Grandma arranged for a daily time when I had to come to her room, get down on my knees, and pray with her. Then she and I would talk about what was troubling me and what I would like. We would play Yahtzee or read pages from some fun novel I would choose. Sometimes we’d read through the newspaper together, but only the good things like the launching of an American satellite into orbit that circled the earth in 116 minutes.
During those days I felt so close to her, and I knew I had been silly for wanting to give up. Several times she looked at me and said, “Don’t you know, child, how much I love you, how much your mama loves you? Whenever you think about going away from this earth, think about how you’d break my heart and your brother’s heart. You might as well take your mother with you because she’d be beside herself.”
She made me get a project I really liked and encouraged me to keep on top of it. I chose the blast-off of the Explorer, the satellite that put our country into the space race. I had always been interested in rockets and space. Once I had run away to the Strategic Air Command Base in a nearby town to see if they would allow me to become a pilot. Grandma studied up on the topic, and we talked for hours while she taught me how to do the quilting for Mother’s birthday present.
Meanwhile, Mother Lois urged me to give Vince a standing invitation to Sunday supper. I couldn’t understand why she was being so nice. I think Grandma talked to her about our conversation, and she was trying to cheer me up. Sometimes Vince came even when I didn’t want him to. There were times when I just wanted to stay in my room and think, because I had no energy or desire to do anything else. Everything in me was devoted to being a full-time warrior. When I wasn’t actually on the battlefield, surviving, I was thinking about how to do it or worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it.
Every day, Grandma and I prayed hard for Minnijean to have strength and peace of mind and for all of us to be able to feel God’s love for us, even in the face of those who spewed so much hatred our way.
For the second time, on Thursday, February 6, Minnijean was attacked by the boy who dumped soup on her. During the ruckus that followed, there was a great deal of confusion. The identity of who attacked and who fought back was not clear. Her attackers accused her of retaliation. “White trash” were the words they reported her to have said. In addition, they accused her of throwing a purse at a girl.
When she was sent home without receiving a suspension notice, I breathed a sigh of relief. But at the end of the day, Mrs. Huckaby gave Carlotta a sealed envelope to be delivered to Minnijean.
23
“THEY BOTHER YOU ALL THE TIME,”
OUSTED NEGRO STUDENT CONTENDS
—Arkansas Democrat, Thursday, February 13, 1958
IN the article that followed, Minnijean explained the pressure she had been under at school. She said she had only had half a white friend at Central, a two-faced girl who ran hot and cold. Of the other students she said: “They throw rocks, they spill ink on your clothes, and they call you ‘nigger’—they bother you every minute.”
I cried for an hour when word came that the envelope sent to Minnijean was a suspension notice. I was devastated when Superintendent Blossom said he would recommend her expulsion. But when the NAACP and her parents announced they would push to have a hearing, I kept a glimmer of hope.
Back at school, I didn’t have very much time to be sad. We were under siege, at the mercy of those who saw Minnijean’s expulsion as their victory and evidence they could immediately get rid of all of us. I was warned that since I had been Minnijean’s good friend and, like her, I was tall and not at all shy, I would become the next target for expulsion.
“One Nigger Down, Eight to Go” cards and signs flooded the school. We couldn’t turn around without somebody pushing a card in our faces or chanting awful verses at us like: “She was black but her name was brown, and now she ain’t around.” Attacks on us by hostile students increased.
I read in the paper that Thurgood Marshall said he didn’t know how much more unpleasant treatment we could take at Central High. That night I wrote in my diary:
I sometimes wish I could change myself into a psychiatrist to determine what makes me such a hated member of this school. Can they really be treating me this way simply because I am brown, that’s all.
“Ooooooo, no, no,” I heard myself shout as I was walking up the Fourteenth Street stairwell one morning. It wasn’t yet 8:40, and I was already the victim of a dousing with raw eggs from someone standing on the stairs above my head. The odor bothered me, but even more, it was the feel of that slimy substance oozing very slowly through my hair and onto my face, while at the same time raw egg slithered over the sweater Aunt Mae Dell had given me for Christmas. I stood still, wondering what to do and where to go. I felt so humiliated, I prayed that a huge dark hole would appear in the floor and swallow me up.
“The nigger’s come to have breakfast. I can tell, she’s wearing eggs,” one boy called. I never said a word back to the group hovering with their ugly catcalls. I knew they were just hoping I’d do or say something that would result in my expulsion. I backed down the stairs and out the door to go home.
“Well, this egg is wonderful for putting moisture in the hair,” Grandma said. “Some people use it for that, you know. Maybe we ought to start it on a regular basis.” She was trying to wipe out as much as she could; then I would have to bathe and wash my hair. “Hold still,” she continued. “After a nice long bath, you can hurry back to school, and this will have been just a refreshing break in your morning.”
“I’ve never been so embarrassed.”
“Oh, I’ll bet there’ve been other times and there’ll be more. Embarrassment is not a life-threatening problem. It can be washed away with a prayer and a smile, just like this egg is washed away with a little water.”
“I know, but it’s the same way I feel when they spit on me. I feel like they’ve taken away my dignity.”
“Dignity is a state of mind, just like freedom. These are both precious gifts from God that no one can take away unless you allow them to.” As Grandma spoke, she motioned me to turn my head to the other side.
“You could take charge of these mind games, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Take, for example, this egg in your hair. Suppose you’d have told the boys who did this, ‘Thank you,’ with a smile. Then you’ve changed the rules of the game. What they want is for you to be unhappy. That’s how they get pleasure.”
“Yeah, but that would be letting them win.”
“Not exactly. Maybe it would defeat their purpose. They win when you respond the way they expect you to. Change the rules of the game, girl, and they might not like it so much.”
“They’d think I was crazy.”
“They’d think you were no longer their victim.”
For the rest of the morning as I walked the halls, amid my hecklers, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to feel as though I were in charge of myself. I always believed Grandma India had the right answer, so I decided to take her advice.
As I tried to open a classroom door, two boys pushed it closed. At first I tried to pull it open, but then I remembered changing the rules of the game. I stood up straight, smiled politely, and said in a friendly voice, “Thank you. I’ve been needing exercise. You’ve done wonders for my arm muscles.” I chatted on and on as if they were my friends. They looked at me as though I were totally nuts, then they let go of the door. I felt great power surging up my spine like electricity. I left them standing there looking at each other.
During lunch, I learned Ernie and Terry had been the victims of yet another devilish deed. While Terry participated in gym class, someone took his school clothes and dumped them in
the shower. Ernie had so much trouble with students stealing his gym clothes that he bought his own, which he carried with him in a briefcase until someone wrested it away and stuffed his clothes into the toilet in the girls’ rest room.
ON February 14, Valentine’s Day, it snowed. That afternoon, as we stood in the snow waiting for our ride, we were attacked with snowballs filled with rocks. Mr. Eckford, Elizabeth’s father, bolted from the car to rescue us, but he, too, was bombarded. Little Rock’s finest police officers and members of the federalized National Guard stood by watching with their arms folded as we were hit time after time. Even when we pleaded for their assistance, they did nothing.
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