Alex Wilson, editor of the Memphis-based Tri-State Defender, and Moses Newson, on assignment for the Baltimore Afro-American, led the way, inching toward the rowdy crowd to cover the scene. They were followed by James L. Hicks, editor of the Amsterdam News in New York, and Earl Davy, a freelance photographer who often took photos for the newspaper owned by Mr. and Mrs. Bates. Two white men began following them.
“Go home, you son of a bitch nigger!” one of them yelled.
A few more white men leapt in front of the journalists with outstretched hands to block their path.
“We are newspapermen,” Wilson retorted.
“We only want to do our jobs,” Hicks added.
But the taunting only continued. The crowd quickly swelled, and mayhem broke out. Someone threatened a lynching. Others lunged into the black journalists, kicking, punching, and spitting at them. The attackers slammed Davy’s Graflex camera to the concrete sidewalk and chased him, while another group attacked Newson and Hicks until they were finally able to escape. But Wilson, a veteran journalist and former war correspondent, stood his ground. He had seen this kind of hatred up close as he traveled throughout the South covering civil rights, including the Emmett Till trial in the fall of 1955. As Wilson picked up his wide-brimmed hat and straightened himself, one of the ringleaders ordered him to run. But Wilson, a lanky ex-marine who stood six feet four inches tall, refused. Incensed by this man’s proud composure, the mob grew more virulent in their attack. Finally, one of them delivered a crushing blow to the back of Wilson’s head with a heavy object believed to have been a brick. The tall black man tumbled to the ground. In his own account of the incident, Wilson later wrote that a vision of Elizabeth Eckford “as she with dignity strode through a jeering, hooting gauntlet of segregationists” had flashed in his mind and given him the courage to face the mob on his feet. But Wilson never fully recovered from the beating. He developed a nervous condition widely reported as Parkinson’s disease and died three years later at age fifty-one.
I was horrified when I saw the attack on the evening news. As leery as I was of the press, I felt a kind of kinship with the black reporters who were risking their own lives to tell our collective story. They were accomplished professionals, but in the wooded hamlets and Klan territory throughout Mississippi, Alabama, and on this day Little Rock, they were as reviled as the subjects they traveled miles to cover. But they kept coming and kept writing, long before the mainstream press jumped on board. Mother read her black newspapers and magazines with a kind of religious devotion. That’s how she kept up with what was going on with our people, she said. When I read the news accounts of the attack on Mr. Wilson and his colleagues over the following days, I realized that the four of them had unwittingly become decoys for the nine of us. There was much speculation then about whether there was some kind of agreement for those four men to distract the crowd while the nine of us entered the building, but Wilson and his colleagues all denied it. I was never told of any such deal, either. Of course, as a fourteen-year-old, I likely wouldn’t have been privy to such information anyhow, but I’ve never believed that those four journalists were doing anything in that moment other than their jobs.
Eventually that morning, someone in the crowd recognized that while the journalists were being savagely beaten, the nine of us were entering the school building. The hysteria immediately shifted our way. By then, though, the doors already had shut behind us. Benjamin Fine, the New York Times reporter who had catapulted our story to the front page of his newspaper weeks earlier, gave this account:
“They’ve gone in,” a man shouted.
“Oh, God,” said a woman, “the niggers are in school.”
A group of six girls, dressed in skirts and sweaters, hair in ponytails, started to shriek and wail.
“The niggers are in our school,” they howled hysterically.
One of them jumped up and down on the sidewalk, waving her arms toward her classmates in the school who were looking out of the windows, and screamed over and over again:
“Come on out, come on out.”
Tears flowed down her face, her body shook in uncontrollable spasms.
Three of her classmates grew hysterical, and threw their arms around each other. They began dancing up and down.
“The niggers are in,” they shrieked, “come on out of the school. Don’t stay there with the niggers. Come on out … come on …”
Unable to get to us, the crowd began turning on the white journalists covering the scene. Among those attacked were a Life magazine reporter and two of its photographers, whose equipment was yanked and smashed. As that sickening spate of violence unfolded, I was likely stepping into my first class of the day, Mrs. Huckaby’s English class, where I was oblivious to the commotion outside. Because Mrs. Huckaby was a vice principal, her class was just down the hall from the main office, not far from where I had ended up after first entering the school. I just followed her down the hall, and as soon as I walked into her classroom, she directed me to a desk in the first row, two seats from the door. She didn’t smile readily, and she wasn’t particularly warm. I would come to understand that it had nothing to do with me; she treated everyone the same. But I could tell from the outset that she was fair. She didn’t tolerate any name-calling, and at the first sight of any snickering or taunts, she shut it down immediately. She also kept her eyes on a small group of boys in the back who were most likely to cause trouble. She wouldn’t hesitate to file a disciplinary report, she warned, and since she was an administrator, her threat carried weight. In the weeks and months ahead, her sense of fair play would cause trouble for her among the segregationists, who considered her too sympathetic to us, and thus, the enemy.
As I slid into my chair in her class that morning, I could feel all eyes fastened on me. That was one of the things I hated most—being the center of attention. My insides knotted with dread. I wished to be invisible. I stared at my desktop, the worn hardwood floors, Mrs. Huckaby’s face, anywhere to avoid the hot gaze of my classmates. Mrs. Huckaby didn’t miss a beat, trying to go on with class as though this were a regular day. But there was nothing regular about this. I tried mightily, but I couldn’t concentrate. Why wouldn’t they stop staring at me? This was not at all how I had imagined feeling on the first day inside my new school.
Finally, the bell rang, but momentary relief turned quickly to even more serious dread. Hundreds of students spilled from their classes into the halls. The noise level was louder than the loudest football game I’d ever attended. Every face in the crowd was white, and they all seemed to be staring at me, sneering at me. A group of slick-haired boys with their black leather jackets and white T-shirts with cigarettes rolled in them—poor imitations of James Dean and Elvis Presley—purposely walked too close, bumped me hard with their shoulders, and swaggered off, laughing at “that nigger.” The word was slung at me so often that day that my heart turned almost numb. I tried to tune out their words, their stares, and their finger-pointing, but to no avail. A few students looked my way sympathetically, almost as though they were ashamed of their schoolmates’ behavior. But they also seemed afraid to smile, afraid to say hello, afraid to be seen showing even minimal empathy. Their sympathetic eyes quickly looked away as soon as they met mine. I yearned to see a kind face, something or someone familiar. Where were the other black students? I saw no sign of them anywhere. I felt so completely alone. Somehow, I made it to my second-and third-period classes and each time was assigned to the first row, a couple of seats from the door. By third period, my nerves were starting to settle a bit. This was geometry, the class I most feared, and I knew I didn’t have another moment to waste. My teacher, Margaret Reiman, was a strict disciplinarian who, like Mrs. Huckaby, didn’t tolerate any nonsense. Her stern face and voice set the tone. She would put up with no disruptions, she announced firmly. We had much work to do, and she moved quickly into the business of class. The atmosphere was calm for about the first twenty minutes. Then came a knock on the door. I w
as close enough to see a uniformed officer standing on the other side. Mrs. Reiman walked to the door and stuck her head out. I kept my eyes on the two of them as they talked briefly. As my teacher stepped back into the class, I searched her face for clues. Was something wrong? But her face was blank as she announced:
“Carlotta Walls, get your books and follow the gentleman outside.”
Get my books? My heart sank. I knew I was leaving again for the day.
“Follow me,” the officer said, turning quickly and stepping speedily down the hall.
This time, the hallway was empty and quiet, except for the officer’s heavy footsteps. As I tried to keep pace with him, my mind turned back to geometry. I couldn’t afford to miss another math class. This was my weakest subject. I didn’t know anyone yet, so how would I be able to make up the next day’s assignment? I’d missed far too much already. The thoughts and questions in my mind made the trek to the office seem short. Once I stepped inside, though, all thoughts about geometry ceased. I could tell right away that something was seriously wrong. My eight comrades were already gathered there with their books. They looked frightened and confused. Before I could ask any questions, another officer commanded: “This way!”
Even with my long legs, I almost had to trot to keep up. I had no idea where we were going or why, but we were in a hurry. It was a labyrinthine descent—around a corner and down some steps several times until we arrived in the mechanics classroom three floors below on the ground level. The classroom was an enclosed garage. Two police cars sat parked inside the garage on a ramp. An officer waiting there instructed us to get in quickly. Then, someone handed us several blankets and told us to lie low and hide.
“Put your foot to the floor,” my driver was told. “And don’t stop for anything.”
Now, I was terrified. We were on the run from something, but what? As I lay crouched on the backseat, I lifted my head from under the blanket. I had to see what was going on. If I was going to die, I wanted to see it coming. I heard a loud grinding noise and realized that the garage doors were opening. Streaks of light gradually filled the garage. Then, suddenly, the two police cars shot out of the garage into the light and sped down a gravel drive, past the Campus Inn, the on-site diner where the white students hung out for burgers and Cokes at lunch. I prayed no one was crossing the sidewalk there, or they surely would have been killed. As we whizzed down 16th Street, past the stadium, away from the school, I craned my neck but couldn’t see anything more than the back of the school. The four of us in the back were too frightened even to speak. The officer sped down streets and whipped around corners until he had dropped the other three students in the car with me at their homes. I was the last one to be dropped off. By the time he rounded the corner and pulled to a stop in front of my house, my heart was sprinting.
“Thank you,” I said politely as I hopped out and headed up the front steps.
Mother met me at the door. This time, she didn’t even try to hide her fear. Her face was as pale as a sheet of paper, and her eyes were red. I’m certain that her jet black hair started graying that day. She threw her arms around me.
“Are you okay?” she asked repeatedly.
News of the mob had been on the radio all morning, she said. Wild and erroneous reports about students being beaten and bloodied had even made it to the airwaves. Newscasters were saying the crowd had grown to more than one thousand people and that police could no longer control them. That’s when I realized why we had left in such a hurry. Relatives had been calling all day, and their message was unified: Get Carlotta out of that school!
I retreated to my room and took off my new dress. Maybe, I thought, the darn dress brought bad luck. I slipped on my “after-school” clothes, plopped down on the living room sofa, and stared out of the picture window at the dirt road in front of the house. My eyes fell on my church up the road. I wondered: Where was God in all of this? Was it He who had spared us from the wrath of that mob? What if they had gotten inside? Would they really have lynched us? I couldn’t understand their fury. All this because they didn’t want their children to sit next to me in school? I had heard white parents complain in television interviews that school integration could lead to race mixing and interracial marriage. Was this the source of their rage? If so, it seemed silly to me. I wasn’t even old enough to date yet. Would my first day at Central be my last? There was nothing left to do but wait.
While I waited for word about what would happen next, I had no idea that at 6:24 p.m., Little Rock mayor Woodrow Mann was sending a telegram to President Eisenhower—one that ultimately would help to influence the final outcome. The city and state police had tried valiantly to control the mob at Central, Mayor Mann wrote, but the situation ultimately was determined to be too unsafe for the nine of us to remain in school.
“In the final analysis it was deemed advisable by the officer on the ground and in charge to have the colored children removed to their homes for safety purposes,” he wrote.
News reports painted a picture of a city out of control with random mobs roaming the streets, terrorizing any black residents they could find. In black neighborhoods throughout the city, lights were off, curtains were drawn, and streets were still and quiet.
The same day, President Eisenhower released a statement:
I want to make several things very clear in connection with the disgraceful occurrences of today at Central High School in the city of Little Rock. They are:
The federal law and orders of a United States District Court, implementing that law, cannot be flouted with impunity by any individual, or any mob of extremists.
I will use the full power of the United States, including whatever force may be necessary to prevent any obstruction of the law and to carry out the orders of the Federal Court.
Of course, every right-thinking citizen will hope that the American sense of justice and fair play will prevail in this case. It will be a sad day for this country—both at home and abroad—if school children can safely attend their classes only under the protection of armed guards.
I repeat my expressed confidence that the citizens of Little Rock and of Arkansas will respect the law and will not countenance violations of law and order by extremists.
President Eisenhower also issued an emergency proclamation barring anyone from blocking the school and interfering with the federal court’s desegregation order. But the next morning, I awakened to news reports that the mob had again gathered outside Central—one thousand people strong. I spent the day indoors, glued to the television. The telephone rang constantly, but I no longer moved to try to answer it. At the first ring, Mother or Daddy would yell from wherever they were in the house, “I’ll get it,” and then dash to make it to the phone before my sisters or me. Sometimes they just stood there quietly for a few seconds and hung up without saying a word. But sometimes, I could see the anger on Daddy’s face as he slammed down the receiver. Neither of them ever said a word to me about those phone calls, but they didn’t have to. I knew what was going on. I knew it was those nasty men and women from the street, and I could only imagine the vile words they spat into the phone. I hated to see the worry I was causing Mother and Daddy. This was a particularly low day for me. When would it all end? Would we ever get inside and get to meet our classmates at Central without the circus atmosphere? Would they ever get to know us and realize that they had nothing to fear?
This time, Mayor Mann sent a more urgent telegram to President Eisenhower. At 9:16 a.m., he wrote:
“The immediate need for federal troops is urgent. The mob is much larger in numbers at 8 a.m. than at any time yesterday. People are converging on the scene from all directions. Mob is armed and engaging in fisticuffs and other acts of violence. Situation is out of control. …”
President Eisenhower followed up on his promise that his actions would be “quick, hard, and decisive” and signed an executive order to use military force to protect the nine of us. That night, I watched with my family as the presid
ent announced on television that he had called out the troops of the 101st Airborne Division to ensure that the federal school desegregation court order was carried out.
“To make this talk, I have come to the president’s office in the White House,” he began. “I could have spoken from Rhode Island, where I have been staying recently, but I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson, and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to take and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference.”
My spirits perked up. More than one thousand paratroopers were already on their way to Little Rock from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, President Eisenhower said. He also announced that he was placing the Arkansas National Guard under federal orders. The media called the move historic, the first time a U.S. president had called on the military to enforce a federal school desegregation order. But my first thought was: What took so long? The restless teenager I was then, I figured the federal government should have swooped in when Faubus first snubbed the orders of the nation’s highest court. I don’t feel much differently now, but I am tremendously grateful that President Eisenhower stepped in when he did. I strongly believe it was his military background—the general in him—that gave him the fortitude and forthrightness to stand up to a loudmouthed governor who ultimately would go to his grave arguing that his decision to use the National Guard to keep us out of Central was right. But that night, I listened carefully as President Eisenhower got to the heart of why he was using the U.S. military to enforce the law:
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