Class offered little solace, though. A whole new set of defense mechanisms was required there. The most common pranks usually involved my desk. A time or two, I plopped down in a puddle of spit or glue, only to look up and find several of my classmates doubled over with laughter. Humiliated, I just did what I could to wipe the stain from my clothes. But from then on, I quickly inspected my seat with my eyes or ran my hand across it before sitting down. Some incidents I couldn’t prevent, like the flying spitballs, tiny bits of paper rolled with spit and blown out, usually through a short straw. They stung my face and my neck repeatedly, but it was more annoying than painful, and I refused to acknowledge it. At times I’d hear the sudden flick of a fountain pen, and before I could lean out of the way, a spurt of ink would ruin my clothes. I just added a change of clothes to the stuff at risk in my locker. After the repeated break-ins of my locker, I kept the change of clothes in the office of Mrs. Huckaby, the vice principal.
The daily incidents of harassment kept me on guard everywhere I went in the school. When my class went to the auditorium for assemblies, my assigned seat was next to the teacher. The auditorium was quite a spectacle, grander than any I had ever seen before, except in New York. It was a bright, cavernous space with theater-style seating for two thousand students, professional lighting, and a stage that was 60 feet deep and 160 feet wide. The stage doubled as the gymnasium and basketball court. With so many students together at once in the auditorium for assemblies, I was always on edge. I rarely saw the other black students during those times. The only time I saw any of the other eight during the school day was at lunch. There were two lunch shifts, and every day I sat with the other black students who shared my lunch period. The usual crew included Jeff, Thelma, Ernie, and Elizabeth, but that sometimes varied. We always sat in the same spot, though, at the second table on the far right. I chose a seat with my back to the rear of the cafeteria, which allowed me to face the greater part of the dining room and the doorway to the hall. I always brought my lunch from home, too, so that I could avoid the cafeteria line. None of the white kids ever invited me to join them at their tables, and the truth be told, I never even thought much about it. I looked forward to seeing my friends. It was the only time of the school day that I felt at ease enough to laugh.
By the end of each school day, all nine of us were exhausted. When we climbed into the car to head to the Bateses’ home together, it was the first time of the day that all nine of us were together again, and we were happy to see one another. Some of the others shared stories about what had happened to them that day, and being teenagers, we usually found a way to laugh about it. I laughed with my comrades, but I rarely chimed in on the storytelling. I just didn’t want to relive any of it. Every ounce of energy I had left, I needed for homework. Sometimes, when one of us had experienced a particularly tough day, the car would fall silent. We’d notice a pair of watery eyes, and we knew. Every one of us just knew. Once we arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bates, we’d file in through the carport door (hardly anyone ever used the front entrance) and grab a snack from the stash she kept for us in the kitchen—chips, cookies, cold drinks. We’d often find Mr. Bates there, stretched out in his lounge chair in the small adjacent family room in front of the television. He had a calming presence that seemed to add a bit of levity to our days. The nine of us usually headed down to the basement for a casual debriefing with Mrs. Bates. Each of us found a comfortable spot on the sofa, a chair, or the floor to answer Mrs. Bates’s questions. She would ask each of us about our day—who did what, when, where, whether we reported the trouble, whether anyone witnessed it, and who, if anyone, responded. At first, I dutifully told her all that I had experienced. But day after day, nothing seemed to change. I know she would have fixed it if she could have, but it seemed to me that she was about as helpless to fix things as we were. So I stopped sharing. For some, those sessions may have been cathartic. For me, it was wasted breath, wasted energy, having to go through the trauma all over again. When my turn to share rolled around, I’d just say, “My day was all right,” or, “Things went okay.” At home, I’d respond the same way when my parents or younger sisters asked about my day. I just didn’t want to worry them any more than I already had.
Some things improved slightly after the first month in school, like the noise in the hallways. I began noticing more teachers monitoring the halls, and they clamped down on much of the hooting and hollering and general rowdiness. Still, much of the kicking, punching, spitting, shoving, and shoulder bumping continued, but the troublemakers got better at hiding their dirty deeds. At least, though, I could hear myself think as I moved through the halls.
There were also other changes in that first month. I read in the newspaper on October 15 that the first cutback of the military troops in Little Rock had been ordered. Federal officials said they were pleased with the “general orderly situation” and were returning five hundred troopers from the 101st Airborne—about half of the unit in Little Rock—to their base in Kentucky. Also, about eighty-five hundred soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard were being released from federal control. The remaining eighteen hundred guardsmen would stay under Commander Walker’s direction to keep the streets calm. From my vantage point, everything continued operating much the same. My eight comrades and I still had a military escort throughout the day at Central, and there was still a constant military presence in and around the school. The military continued to meet us at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bates and drive us to school every day until late October, when a few of the parents who were home during the day took on that responsibility.
At the end of the first grading period in late October, a reporter for a national newspaper called Mrs. Huckaby to ask how the nine of us were faring academically. It seemed the whole world was waiting to see if we could keep up with the white students. That was confidential information, Mrs. Huckaby responded, but added that the reporter should check the following Sunday’s newspaper, when the Arkansas Gazette listed the students who had made the honor roll. My name was on the list. Despite all of the distractions, I somehow had managed to focus enough on my studies to make the honor roll.
Things at Central were still pretty turbulent in mid-November when the Gazette assigned a team of reporters to find out more about daily life at the school. The resulting story didn’t even come close to capturing the truth. Much of it was based on rumors and factual inaccuracies, including a teacher who reported to her class that the nine of us would be leaving at Thanksgiving. The comments and actions of the teachers described in the story were quite worrisome. One teacher told a reporter that when she first learned the school would integrate, she thought: Well, it had to be. But she acknowledged having second thoughts. The story also described an unnamed black girl jostling in the hall with a white girl, who then spat on the black student—all of which was witnessed by a teacher, who looked away.
But I was most furious when I read this ridiculous attack: “The Negro girls come in for criticism on another matter of less than earth-shattering significance,” one white girl complained. “They dress sloppy. … They wear colored socks. No white girl would think of wearing anything but white socks.”
With all that was going on, it might have been easy to lose sight of the fact that the nine of us were, after all, just teenagers. What we wore to school mattered to us, as did what others thought of what we wore. My mother made most of my clothes, and even now, when I look back at photographs of those days, I have this completely objective opinion of myself: I looked good. My clothes were neat and stylish. In fact, all nine of us were well-groomed—our clothes always clean, perfectly pressed, and fashionable. Years later, when I saw myself in an Eyes on the Prize video clip, I thought back to the comment about my socks and realized it was too true. I was indeed wearing colored socks, and they matched my dress!
The Gazette story summarized the first three months of integration at Central this way: “not entirely calm, by any means, but not in turmoil either.” Perhaps t
hat was the view from the outside peeking in, but from the center of the drama, it sure felt like turmoil to me.
Meanwhile, as the days passed, Governor Faubus continued running off at the mouth, grabbing the headlines any way he could. First, he speculated publicly that he might not take back the eighty-five hundred guardsmen who had been under federal control—a threat that went nowhere. Then, in mid-November, he was quoted in the Gazette as saying the only way to break the “desegregation deadlock” was for the black students to make a “voluntary withdrawal” from Central. When I read that, I thought: What deadlock? The deadlock had been broken when President Eisenhower stepped in and ordered the U.S. military to walk us up the front steps into Central. And there was no way any of us was going to quit now. But the governor’s comments reminded me that the segregationists on the outside from the statehouse on down were still fighting hard to regain whatever ground they believed they’d lost when the Little Rock Nine made it into Central.
On the other side, Mrs. Bates and the NAACP were just as determined to spin the story the other way—that integration was working perfectly well, which was less than the truth. All nine of us felt compelled to send out that unified message—that integration was succeeding. I know I certainly did. I had heard all of my life both at home and at school that I was a representative not just of my family, but of the entire race. White folks would forever judge the race by what each of us said and did, my parents and teachers had told me. Likewise, Mrs. Bates said, white folks would judge how well integration was working by what the nine of us said and did. So I did what I believed was expected. I played down my suffering. I handled it all with as much grace as I could, as if the nine of us bore all of the responsibility for the success or failure of integration. The message that Mrs. Bates drilled in us rang constantly in my ears:
“This is important. It is history. You are helping to change the way America thinks about our race.”
The rational part of me understood the huge significance of that. But at times, the other part—the fourteen-year-old girl who just wanted to go to school without all the histrionics—felt used. That was the part of me that came to resent the interruption of my days to suit the media. The reporters were omnipresent, and I never knew when I would be asked to do an interview. Because I was the youngest, I was usually among the last ones Mrs. Bates called on to make a statement. But there were times when we were all asked to participate. Thanksgiving was one of those times. The national media wanted to check in on how the integration process was going, so Mrs. Bates staged a Thanksgiving dinner. She moved out her living room furniture and set up her dining room table there with a leaf that extended it long enough to accommodate all nine of us and the two of them. The spread was elaborate—a huge golden brown turkey with dressing, cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, and other southern favorites. We were all uprooted from our homes and individual Thanksgiving celebrations, dressed in our Sunday best, and driven to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bates to participate in the made-for-television event. The cameras rolled as the nine of us and the Bateses dined together, all smiles, as though we all lived under the same roof and had no parents or other family members. Then, of course, several of us reassured television viewers that we lived in a great country and that all was well at Central. If some viewers also saw for the first time that on Thanksgiving colored folks ate baked turkey and dressing on fine china with perfectly pressed table linens, spoke articulately, and demonstrated impeccable table manners, then we had well served our dual purpose.
While the nine of us tried to put the best face on integration for the public, it got even more difficult as the months passed to keep from fighting back. One particular redhead made restraint especially difficult for me. Before I even saw her face, I felt the scrape of her hard leather penny loafers against the backs of my heels.
I got caught up in the crush of the hallway crowd between classes one day, which slowed my stride. With so many people around me in every direction, it didn’t seem unusual at first that someone was walking so closely behind me, directly in my tracks. Then all of a sudden a shoe crunched down hard on the back of my right heel. A sharp pain shot up the back of my leg. The person behind me must have been in a rush, I first thought. I walked faster. The person behind me sped up, too. And then, crunch—it happened again. And again. I heard laughter behind me. This was deliberate. I could see the red hair in my peripheral vision, and she was purposely walking on my heels. This time, the pain was intense, like a big razor blade dragged from the back of my lower ankle down to my heel. I wanted to cry out, but I sucked it in and just tried to move faster. Eventually, she shot from behind me to head to her class, and I saw her—a slightly built girl, a bit shorter than me at about five feet seven inches tall, with milky skin and straight, shoulder-length red hair pulled into a ponytail. I didn’t recognize her from any of my classes. I kept walking, trying to block from my mind what had just happened as I continued to my next class. The back of my ankle and heel felt raw rubbing against my sock and shoe. It wasn’t until later that afternoon in gym class that I was able to inspect my heel without drawing attention to myself or showing that I was hurt. While changing into my uniform in the dressing room, I leaned over and peeled back my sock. Spots of blood had soaked through. I felt the tears rising from my throat, but I choked them back, pulled up my sock, and headed out to the gym. I’d have to remember to bring Band-Aids next time.
The redhead became one of my regular tormentors in the halls. She’d wait for me almost every day, usually after lunch, and before I knew it, she was on my heels. I walked as fast as I could in those crowded halls. If she was going to rip the skin off my heels, I’d make her work for it. I told Mrs. Bates about it. Nothing changed. Then, one day in one of my low moments, instinct kicked in. The same girl skirted up behind me to start her routine, and instead of speeding up, I stopped dead in my tracks. She slammed into me. I whipped around to face her. I could tell that she was surprised. Suddenly, the mouthy redhead who’d acted so fierce was silent. Completely silent. I wanted to sock her but thought better of it. I just stared her down and let my eyes do the talking. Other students stared and walked around us. She hissed and scampered away. That turned out to be a rather good day.
I wish I could say that was the end of the heel walking, but the redhead was soon back at it. Sometimes others followed suit. Occasionally, I reported the incidents. On December 3, I reported that a female student I didn’t know tried to trip me as I entered the cafeteria. A week later, two boys outside of school purposely bumped into me hard enough to spin me around. Mostly, I just did what I could to avoid them, stay out of trouble and on guard. One day, my defensive posture had a surprising result. As I headed to class, I noticed five or six of the black leather clan in my path ahead. I knew that one of them would slink next to me and throw out an elbow as I passed. I came up with a quick plan: I’d throw out my own elbow to block it. I’d have to time it just right. Inching closer, I carefully moved my books to the right, next to the guard, to free my left arm. On cue, one of the boys stepped out of the group and took a couple of steps next to me. This time, I was ready. I threw out my elbow to protect myself before feeling his blow. For some reason, though, his elbow hadn’t moved, and to his astonishment—and mine—he felt the sharp point of my elbow jab hard into his arm. He jumped back, red-faced.
“You see what that nigger did to me!” he yelled.
I kept walking, hoping that the teachers monitoring the halls at that moment were as blind as they had been all the times I’d been tortured in the same halls. Fortunately, I never heard anything about it. But one of my comrades wouldn’t be so lucky.
It was December 17, the day before Christmas break. When I walked up to the lunch table, I noticed that Ernie had just gotten there, too. He looked more frustrated than usual and threw his books and lunch sack on the table. Minnijean was in trouble, he said. She’d dumped a big bowl of chili on the head of a boy who had been hassling her repeatedly in the lunch line. He an
d Melba had seen it all when a group of boys called Minnie names and blocked her path as she tried to make her way to her table with her lunch, Ernie said. Before he could encourage her to ignore them, he said, he watched the chili slide from Minnie’s tilted tray onto the boy’s head. The entire cafeteria came to a standstill for a moment, and spontaneously, the black cafeteria staff erupted in applause. An administrator then appeared on the scene and whisked Minnie to the main office. Ernie said he hadn’t seen Minnie since. The word was she’d been suspended. I felt bad for Minnie. She had been pushed to the breaking point, and I knew that it easily could have been any one of us. We were all tired of life in the pressure cooker, and at one time or another, every one of us had felt just one notch away from blowing. I nibbled on my sandwich for the rest of lunch; none of us felt much like talking. We were worried about what this would mean for Minnie, what it would mean for us all.
I learned later that Minnie indeed had been suspended and would have to reapply for admission when we returned from Christmas break in January. By the end of the fall semester, 4 students had been expelled from Central for causing trouble. Another 153 students withdrew, likely to avoid integration. About two dozen of them enrolled at Hall High School, the all-white school in a ritzier section of Little Rock, and a few of them eventually returned to Central.
The news about Minnie’s suspension put a damper on the beginning of the two-week break from school, but I looked forward to the time off. Finally, I would be able to let down my guard, laugh freely, and enjoy my family and friends. Two days before Christmas, I did just that when the nine of us and our parents gathered at the Dunbar Community Center for a huge holiday celebration in our honor. The party was sponsored by the Washington, D.C.–based headquarters of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., a national service-oriented group of professional women and college students. The large upstairs room sparkled with red and white, from the festive lights and decorations to the dozens of women dressed in the colors of their sorority. I wore red and white, too, a taffeta dress in a polka-dot print. It was especially nice to see Mother and Daddy dressed in their holiday finery, enjoying themselves like old times. Before Central, they often got all spruced up for a night on the town, but much of the fun in their lives as a young couple seemed to have dried up. I missed the laughter that had been ever present in our home.
A Mighty Long Way Page 12