A Mighty Long Way

by Carlotta Walls Lanier

  What a diff’rence a day made

  Twenty-four little hours …

  Talk about Hollywood—Dinah took me there that night.

  It wasn’t the last time Sue and George helped me witness what would become legendary Chicago music history. Later that summer when I saw billboards advertising the first ever Playboy Jazz Festival, I gave Sue the $3.70 or so I’d saved by walking, instead of riding the bus to school, to buy my ticket. The event was being sponsored by Hugh Hefner and his then five-year-old Playboy magazine, so I’m sure I had no business there. But even as a teenager, I’d become something of a jazz aficionado. My parents were jazz lovers. They traveled with other couples to St. Louis for a spring musical revue, called the Y Circus, which featured a number of jazz artists. Mother and Daddy would bring home the music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Pearl Bailey, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Earl “Fatha” Hines, all the popular jazz artists of the day. One of them was always riffing in the background of our lives at home. So how was I supposed to resist when I saw on the billboard that practically all of my favorite jazz artists would be at the Playboy Jazz Festival August 7–9 in Chicago Stadium?

  Sue and George again helped cover for me and told me how to take the bus to the west side for one of the best days of my life. When I got to the stadium, I struck up a conversation with a police officer and palmed him my ticket in the nosebleed section, and he let me slip onto the floor for an unbelievable view. I could hardly believe my luck as I stood there, soaking up the best music I’d ever heard in my life: Count Basie, Joe Williams, and a group that I had seen the summer before in New York, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Joe was the featured singer for Basie, and the trio came out as a backup on a couple of numbers. Now, that was real music. Near the end of the show, out comes a guy with his hat cocked a certain way, singing “Angel Eyes” just like Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. He brought down the house. Everybody thought the man was Frank Sinatra. As it turned out, he was an imitator, a heck of a good one, though. Anyway, the show was a real thrill. It made my summer.

  As the summer wound down, my parents told me that the federal courts ruled the high school closings had been illegal. The high schools in Little Rock could reopen. Suddenly, there was no more time to lose, and school officials were rushing to start the new school year early. The opening of the 1959–1960 session—my senior year—was set to begin August 12, three weeks earlier than the traditional school opening after Labor Day. Unfortunately, summer school wouldn’t end until the third week in August, and I would miss the grand reopening of Central.

  I stayed in close touch with my parents and Mrs. Bates, who told me that Gloria would remain in Kansas City to finish her senior year. By then, Minnie and Terrence had graduated from the high schools they had attended in other cities, Melba was preparing to take courses at San Francisco State University, and Elizabeth and Thelma had completed their senior year mostly through correspondence courses. Of the original Little Rock Nine, just two were left to return to Central: Jefferson and I.

  I was quite surprised to learn that even after two years of racial unrest over school integration in Little Rock, sixty black students had applied to go to white high schools when they reopened. School officials accepted only eight—three at the formerly all-white Hall High School and five at Central. The five students to go to Central included Sybil Jordan, Frank Henderson, Sandra Johnson, Jefferson, and I.

  If anyone had any illusions that things would be different in the upcoming school year or that the segregationists had finally given up their fight, those thoughts surely must have evaporated on the first day of school. I was finishing up summer school in Chicago on the morning of August 12 when back home in Little Rock, a caravan of segregationists from all over the state and elsewhere in the South descended on the Arkansas State Capitol grounds to hear Faubus make a speech. Family members told me how the governor fired up the crowd with his anti-integration rhetoric and how the streets filled afterward with an angry mob headed for Central. I could just imagine them singing their own resistance anthem, as they had two years before:

  In Arkansas, in the state of cotton

  Federal courts are good and rotten

  Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.

  But a new police chief was in charge—Eugene G. Smith. I remembered Chief Smith from the 1957 school year because, as assistant chief then, he was the one who had ordered his officers to get us out of Central the day the mob took control. Smith, who was considered a moderate, apparently had determined there would be no repeat of that day this time around. According to news reports, he had both the police and fire departments on alert. He used a megaphone to order the crowd to disperse, but the protesters paid him no mind. His officers even had to use nightsticks to defend themselves against the crowd. When the crowd got more unruly, Smith ordered firemen to open their hoses, unleashing a torrent of water streaming onto the crowd at half blast. When Eugene “Bull” O’Connor would apply that same controversial tactic years later on civil rights marchers in Birmingham, many of whom were children, he ordered the hoses turned to full blast, powerful enough to strip bark from trees. Before the Little Rock officers were able to restore calm, about two dozen troublemakers were arrested. Smith’s actions that day would linger in the minds of segregationists, who bumped him even higher on their list of most hated public enemies. Such hatred would raise suspicions evermore in Little Rock’s black community in the days ahead, when Smith’s career as a law enforcement officer would come to an astonishing and mysterious end.

  About an hour after the mob quieted, Jeff walked up the steps of Central to begin his senior year. He was accompanied by one who knew better than anyone else what it was like to stand alone in the midst of a hateful mob: our comrade Elizabeth Eckford. Elizabeth had finished her high school coursework through correspondence courses, but she knew I was still out of town and did not want Jeff to face the mob alone. That decision was nothing short of brave and heroic. It touches me still.

  Finally, summer school was over, and it was time for me to leave Chicago. Aunt M.E. and Uncle Elmer bought me an airline ticket so that I could make it back to Little Rock in a hurry. They even upgraded the ticket so that I could get a meal on the plane. I was excited to be headed home to see my family after five long months away.

  But even more, I looked forward to returning to Central. There was something I needed to finish.

  CHAPTER 9

  First-Semester Senior

  When I made it home from Chicago, a letter from the new superintendent of schools, Terrell E. Powell, awaited me:

  Welcome to Little Rock Public Schools for the 1959–60 school year. We are anticipating a fine year in every way. An identification card is enclosed for your use. Please sign it and have it with you at all times since you will be asked to present it for entrance to your high school.

  School ID cards were practically unheard of in the 1950s South, as was the notion that anyone might try to enter a school with evil intent. But the segregationist mobs had forced school officials to change their way of thinking. On the morning of August 24, 1959, twelve days after school opened, I clutched my new ID card and headed to Central to start my senior year. When I arrived, I was surprised to find that the streets were quiet. The segregationists, who had returned to the sidewalks with their signs and chants for opening day, were long gone by the time I arrived. I could feel the tension just roll off my shoulders. I felt normal again, like just another student showing up for school. There were no glaring eyes on me—at least none that I noticed. And there were no sideline taunts. I savored the feeling. As I climbed the front steps, the air was unusually quiet and peaceful. Even in the halls, my white peers seemed almost resigned to my presence. They weren’t particularly friendly, but at least I wasn’t harassed at every turn. The long year off had left us all weary of the politics, I suppose. And we were just relieved to be back in school. Maybe, I hoped, we would find a way to coexist this year.r />
  Like many students, I entered the school year with some academic shortcomings. I was nervous about taking the second half of courses, such as algebra and Spanish, after a long year away from those subjects. I also began chemistry with some trepidation because I had not taken Algebra II, which wasn’t offered through correspondence classes. But the greatest source of my fear about chemistry was the teacher, whom I’d heard did not want any black students in his class. I’d learn soon enough that those fears were warranted. He was a young guy fresh out of college, and he tried hard to buddy with the roughnecks. I constantly had to watch my back in his class because the troublemakers felt comfortable enough with the teacher to pull their old tricks—glue in my chair, spitballs, flying ink. The teacher just turned the other way. I considered myself in survival mode and just lay low, kept my nose in the books, kept my mouth shut, and managed to get the grades I deserved in the class, mostly B’s. But Jefferson, who had the same teacher at a different time, struggled mightily with him. Jeff was a whiz in math and science, and when an answer or explanation didn’t seem quite right to him, he questioned the teacher. The teacher seemed to bristle at even the notion that a black kid had the audacity to question him, and Jeff’s grades suffered for it.

  My other courses included speech, physical education, and English. Once again, I was the lone black student in all of my classes. That made for some long and lonely days. While a few white acquaintances now felt comfortable enough to smile at me, exchange a few words in the halls or lockers, or partner with me in class, I missed having friends to share the school day. I missed the laughter and fun I remembered from my days at Dunbar. I missed feeling like a real part of my school. During my first year at Central, I had been so focused on survival that I hadn’t spent much time thinking about all that I was missing. But this was my senior year, when I should have been looking forward to the sentimental milestones, like getting asked to the prom and filling a memory book with personal notes and photos to immortalize those special days. Instead, I was just ready for the year to end.

  My two best friends, Bunny and Peggy, were both away at school. I was accustomed to seeing Bunny just on holidays and in the summer because she had attended Palmer Memorial Institute, a college preparatory school in Sedalia, North Carolina, near Greensboro, since the beginning of high school. The school, now a historic site, was an early training ground for the children of many upper-echelon black men and women. Most of all, I missed Peggy, who was in college at Arkansas State in Pine Bluff about thirty miles away. When I started at Central, Peggy transferred to Mann and was the one who kept me up to date on what was going on with our black peers. I sometimes had attended school dances at Mann with her. With Peggy gone, so was my main link to Mann and any semblance of a normal high school social life. Because black students still were not allowed to participate in extracurricular activities at Central, I had no student government events, basketball practices, football games, or pep rallies to attend after school. But I occasionally went out on dates with a guy who was a year or two older and attended Arkansas State. I think Mother and Daddy felt sorry for me because they sometimes drove me to Pine Bluff for Arkansas State’s football and basketball games. My parents and I usually stayed overnight with my friend Jeannette Mazique and her family. Her father and Daddy were friends and fellow builders who had helped to construct the dorms at Arkansas State. Her parents owned a student lounge on campus called the Lion’s Den, a popular hangout for the college kids, especially on weekends after the games. I had the most fun of my senior year in the Lion’s Den.

  Other community groups also offered their support for the five black students at Central by inviting us to their social events. One such group, a prominent community of Quakers, called American Friends, contacted Mrs. Bates to invite us to a play. It was a bitterly cold afternoon when a young white man, probably in his mid-twenties, showed up at my door to pick me up for the event. Grandpa Cullins happened to stop by at the same moment. He took one look at the young man standing there, shivering in the freezing cold without a coat or hat, and chuckled.

  “He sure is one dumb sonofabitch,” Grandpa muttered, loud enough for all to hear.

  I was so embarrassed. But that’s how Grandpa Cullins was. He didn’t care what color you were. He said what was on his mind. The young man took it in good humor, which helped to lighten the moment. As the two of us left my house that evening, I didn’t think about the big risk we were taking just riding together. I’m pretty sure Mother and Daddy must have been frightened. They knew that the mere sight of a young white man and black girl together could enrage the segregationists. But my parents choked back their fear and bravely let me go.

  What social life I had usually centered on those occasional events. Most days, I just went to school and spent the evenings doing homework. I even lost interest in talking on the telephone. The hateful prank calls still came with such regularity that the telephone had become associated with that kind of negativity in my mind, and I had little desire even to go near it. Driving without an adult in the car was also out of the question. I’d been driving since I was twelve or thirteen, which was pretty common for young teens in the South. I had a driver’s license, but that didn’t matter much to Mother and Daddy because they weren’t taking any chances. A driver’s license couldn’t protect me from the segregationists. The bad guys probably knew our car, my parents figured, and anything could happen. I didn’t complain. It all would be over soon, I told myself. I just had to get through the next several months of school.

  Most days, the five of us black students rode together to and from school. Our parents organized a carpool with one of them or a trusted relative assigned on a rotating basis to pick us up at our homes each morning and drop us off there each afternoon. With the legal case behind us and the protests by segregationists more sporadic, there was little need for the five of us to meet every day at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bates. We students already knew one another through family and community connections, but we got to bond as friends during those short rides in the car and the lunch periods when two or three of us sat together. Frank Henderson’s father was a Presbyterian minister whose flexible schedule allowed him to be one of our more regular drivers. Reverend Henderson would drop off his wife at Stephens Elementary, where she was a fifth-grade teacher, and then swing by my house to pick me up. His son, Frank, was a tall, big guy, built like an athlete, but he played no sports and was very studious. He had a gentle personality, was very friendly and well mannered. Like Frank, Sybil Jordan was superstudious. She was the brainy type who read voraciously, which gave her a maturity and worldliness beyond her years. She was deliberate in her speech and didn’t use any of the slang of our day. In some ways, Sandra Johnson was her opposite, the effervescent one, always bubbly and upbeat. There was a naïveté about her; she seemed surprised by the mistreatment from our white peers. But she often found a way to laugh about it. Sandra was a distant cousin of mine, and our fathers were fellow contractors who traveled together to Los Angeles to find work when the segregationists tried to punish them by shutting them out of jobs.

  Jefferson and I tried as best we could to help the three newcomers navigate Central, but I don’t think there was any way to prepare them realistically for what they would face. The atmosphere inside the school had improved somewhat, but the harassment continued. Many of the teachers seemed to take a more active role in reporting the troublemakers, who were then forced to do their dirty work less openly. Again, most of the students just treated us as though we were invisible. I’m sure that was as tough for the new black students as it was for me the first year. But after the drama of my sophomore year, just being left alone was good enough for me. Still, I knew better than to get too comfortable. I might enjoy a few peaceful days, and then out of the blue something frightening would happen—a threatening note left in one of our lockers, name-calling in the halls, or an attack on one of the boys—to remind me that I was still unwelcome at Central. Then came Labor Day weeken
d.

  I was sound asleep the night of September 7 when the red, city-owned station wagon used by Fire Chief Gann Nalley exploded and burst into flames in the driveway of his home. Thirty-three minutes later, firefighters were still battling the blaze at their leader’s home when a second explosion blew out the glass front of an office building eight miles away. The building housed Little Rock mayor Werner C. Knoop’s construction firm. Then, five minutes after that, a third explosion and fire heavily damaged the ground-floor administrative office of the school board. The blast was so powerful that it also blew out windows in a nearby monastery and shook fourteen nuns from their sleep. For forty minutes, the series of explosions and fires ripped through Little Rock and painted the dark night a fiery orange. Sirens and police cars wailed, crisscrossing downtown. As investigators combed through the smoke and ashes, they determined that arsonists had thrown fused sticks of dynamite into all three targets. All three had been empty, and no one was injured.

  I slept through it all. But when I read the newspapers the next day, I immediately suspected the segregationists. I watched from a distance as official Little Rock responded with disgust. Their city was under attack, and someone would have to pay. The bombings dominated the news for days. The Chamber of Commerce met quickly and called for a reward fund to help flush out the bombers. Donations poured in—coins, dollar bills, and personal checks that in just a few days amounted to more than $20,000.

  Police Chief Smith, a no-nonsense, law-and-order kind of guy, summoned all of his men to work the case, which became known as “the Labor Day bombings.” Officers were posted at the homes of shaken city officials and school board members. Chief Smith also turned to the Little Rock office of the FBI for help. Tips flowed freely into the police department. The nuns who had been awakened by the bombings in their convent near the school board office were able to provide a detailed description of the suspects’ car. Two days later, Chief Smith arrested two men: E. A. Lauderdale, Sr., the forty-eight-year-old owner of a lumber and roofing supply company, who had twice run unsuccessfully for the city manager board and was known around town as the leader of the segregationist Capital Citizens Council; and J. D. Sims, a thirty-five-year-old truck driver. Both men were charged with bombing a public building.