A Mighty Long Way

by Carlotta Walls Lanier

  But on that day in May 1960, as the judge pronounced Herbert’s jail sentence, I could see only as far as my graduation from Central. It was just two weeks away, and all I wanted was to get that diploma in my hand and get out of Little Rock—for good.

  CHAPTER 12

  Graduation and Good-bye

  When spring rolled around, the last thing on my mind was the prom. I heard the white girls in my classes excitedly discussing their dresses and dates. But I still wasn’t allowed to participate in extracurricular activities at school, so attending the prom at Central was not even an option. By then, I didn’t have even an ounce of energy to worry about it, so I blocked such thoughts from my mind. I was tired. Plus, the bombing had altered my perspective about the things in life that really mattered. The prom just wasn’t important. I was counting down to graduation, and anything else seemed like a distraction.

  My parents saw things differently, though. From their vantage point in life, they could see much farther down the road than I, and what they saw made them sad. They saw a daughter who someday would have nothing but horrid high school memories, a daughter who would have missed out on some sentimental milestones of growing up, like the prom. They set out to change what little they could. They already had taken me downtown to a local jeweler to choose a class ring. By prom time, I was wearing the one I’d selected—a small, more feminine version in traditional yellow gold, with the school’s name encircling a mother-of-pearl center. Then Mother and Daddy started dropping hints about the prom at Horace Mann. I should find out when it would be held, they hinted. I could invite that nice college boy who had taken me out a few times. They even promised to buy me a new dress.

  I agreed. True to her word, Mother took me shopping at some of our favorite stores, and we found a cute baby blue nylon dress with layers of lace from the waist to the floor. Underneath, I wore a crinoline slip with lots of netting that gave my dress the traditional southern belle flair. Arthur “Nick” Winstead, the college guy, was my date. He picked me up, and we spent a few hours at the prom, dancing and mingling with some of my old friends. It was a nice evening, and I’m glad I had the experience. But I can’t say I truly felt like a part of the festivities. While I knew many of the students there through community connections and Dunbar, I didn’t go to school with them anymore. I didn’t feel a connection to their school, and I didn’t feel particularly sentimental. Afterward, I went back to sleepwalking through the days and counting down the time left at Central.

  As graduation drew nearer, school officials gave each graduate six tickets for family members to attend. I was excited just to hold the tickets. They were a tangible sign that this was really happening. I would graduate from Central High School. But with such a large extended family, I had to decide how to distribute the tickets. Mother, Daddy, Loujuana, and Tina would be there without question. It didn’t take long for me to decide to give the remaining two tickets to the patriarch on each side of my family—Big Daddy and Grandpa Cullins. They had provided a fortress for my family during the heaviest battles at Central, and I wanted them there to celebrate our victory. My graduation was indeed a victory for all of us.

  But as excited as I was, I couldn’t shake the feeling of uneasiness. The attack on my home had left me feeling vulnerable. I believed the real bomber was still out there, and I couldn’t help wondering whether my graduation might provide the perfect opportunity to strike again. The segregationists had been suspiciously quiet all spring, but I knew better than to believe they had just conceded defeat. School officials apparently felt confident, though, that the level of security required for Ernie’s graduation was not necessary this time around. The entire Little Rock police force had been called to duty for the 1958 ceremony, but security would be much more low-key this time. I didn’t worry about the details. I was determined to walk across that stage and get my diploma no matter what. Nothing could stop me now.

  My anticipation only heightened when I began receiving cards and letters of congratulations from extended family, friends, and even strangers. On May 24, this kind note arrived from my maternal grandmother, Erma, who still lived in St. Louis:

  “I am so glad for you to get it over with. I hope you will not have to go through with this anymore during your school times.”

  I also heard from Grace Lorch, the compassionate white woman who had helped get Elizabeth safely to the bus on that first day when she had been separated from the rest of us and surrounded by the white mob. The Lorches, who lived across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Bates, had been branded Communists and harassed mercilessly over the years for sympathizing with us. I hadn’t heard from or seen them in a long while.

  “Very exciting news is coming from all over the South these days,” Mrs. Lorch wrote, “but you and the other children in Little Rock were pioneers.”

  Many of those who wrote called me a trailblazer and thanked me for my courage. Their letters reminded me how much strength I had drawn from them over the years, those distant friends and family, as well as strangers, who took the time to let me know that they were with me in spirit. Their words had fueled my own spirit, especially when it felt as if all of white Little Rock stood against my comrades and me.

  The last days of May rolled by, and finally, it was May 30, 1960. I was getting dressed for my graduation ceremony that afternoon when the telephone rang. It was Mother’s brother-in-law, Uncle J.W., calling her with some disappointing news. He had stopped by Grandpa Cullins’s house and found him in no shape to attend the graduation. Grandpa was drunk—so drunk that he had passed out in the middle of the floor. Mother gave a deep sigh. She would not allow his ticket to go to waste. She dialed her aunt Henrietta, Grandpa’s oldest sister and the matriarch of the Cullins family, and explained what happened. Without hesitation, Aunt Henrietta stepped up to represent the Cullins side of the family.

  I wasn’t surprised that Grandpa had chosen such a momentous occasion to overindulge, and at the time, I tried to pretend that it didn’t matter. But I was really hurt. I wanted him to attend my graduation. It was my way of thanking him for all he had done to help make that day possible. I wanted him to see that I had been listening all those years when he talked about the importance of taking advantage of opportunities, even when it was clear that he hadn’t always done so himself. I wanted to look at him and see that he was proud of me for choosing Central and sticking it out. He’d never said it. That just wasn’t his way. His presence would have said enough.

  My family joined the crowd in Quigley Stadium that Monday night without Grandpa. When Jefferson and I marched into the packed stadium with the 423 graduates in the Class of 1960, there wasn’t even a chance that I would spot my six relatives in the crowd. But just knowing they were there filled me with pride. I wanted to walk tall for them. As I sat through the ceremony, I thought about those tough early days at Central—the sneering white mobs, the hallway battles, the exhausting days and sleepless nights. I thought about the bombing, Herbert and Maceo, and I wondered what would become of them. I thought about Michigan State. How eager I was to start anew, to leave behind Little Rock and every sorrowful memory I had accumulated there.

  I snapped out of my daze when I heard Jefferson’s name and watched him take his dignified walk across the stage. We had been true comrades from the beginning, and here we were together at the end of this leg of our journey. I was proud of him. And then …

  Carlotta Walls …

  Relief washed over me like a cooling rain when I heard my name. It was all over: the isolation, the harassment, the death threats, the terror. I’d come a mighty long way to get to this day. I pushed back my shoulders and held my head high as I walked across the stage. I thought about my comrades—Melba, Minnie, Terry, Gloria, Elizabeth, and Thelma—who had started this journey with me three years earlier but never got to take this victorious walk. I was walking for them, too. We had risked it all and made it through.

  I thought about Rosa Parks, that gracious woman whose courage I had tried
to emulate on my toughest days at Central. I thought about Emmett Till, the teenager whose battered body had shown me the raw evil of the Jim Crow South. I was no longer the naive fourteen-year-old girl who had been shocked by the hatred and fear of my white classmates and their parents. Central had forced me to grow up, to learn some adult lessons about courage, perseverance, and justice. I was ready for whatever lay ahead.

  The air in the stadium was quiet as I accepted the makeshift diploma and shook Principal Matthews’s hand. But I imagined my family cheering, the way they had done so many times in my life. I must have floated to my seat.

  Afterward, I found Mother and Daddy and the rest of my group, and they all greeted me with hugs. The other graduates and their families seemed too excited even to notice me, and for a final, brief moment things felt normal. I needed to return my cap and gown and pick up my report card, so Big Daddy and I had agreed to meet at 14th and Jones streets, where he would be waiting with the box for my items. I cut across the field and walked down 14th toward our meeting spot. The street was pitch black and eerily quiet because most of the crowds were exiting the stadium on the opposite end, closer to where the festivities had taken place. Halfway down the road, it occurred to me that Big Daddy and I were in a potentially dangerous situation. It was a risk we would not have even dared to take at another time, but we’d gotten caught up in the excitement of graduation and in planning a meeting spot to avoid the crowds. Fortunately, we made it to the corner where the robes were being collected. I handed over my robe and mortarboard, accepted my report card and diploma, and with that, my days at Central High School came to an end.

  Later that night, Jefferson and I celebrated with our friends and families at a graduation party held in our honor at a hall on 9th Street. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so free. We danced all night long to the rock-and-roll and R&B sounds that over the years had added soul to our suffering. A new Jackie Wilson song was a big hit with the crowd that night. Mr. Excitement was singing to a woman, but the irony of some of the lyrics struck me as a kind of farewell ode to Central High:

  You better stop, yeah, doggin’ me around.

  If you don’t stop, yeah, I’m gonna put you down …

  For all the celebration, Jefferson and I still had one more thing to complete before we were truly done with Central High School. The previous year of correspondence courses and summer school had left both of us short one unit required to graduate. The closing of the high schools in the 1958–59 school year had cost us all so much. But school officials had decided to let us participate in the graduation ceremony and make up the missing unit over the summer. Elizabeth and Thelma, who had finished all their other required courses, needed to make up a single unit, too. All of us arranged to attend Beaumont High School in St. Louis. The principal at Central wrote a letter of recommendation for Jefferson and me to the Beaumont principal. I found it somewhat amusing, because in it he described us both as “desirable students,” a sentiment he had managed to suppress our entire time at Central.

  The morning after my graduation, my parents and sisters drove me to the train station downtown, and I took the first train out of Little Rock. There were no long, sad good-byes. I hugged my sisters and parents, who reminded me that they would see me at the end of summer. I had been anticipating this moment all year. As my train rolled out of Little Rock, I knew that was the end of my time there. I’d never return to live. I had little desire to return even for a visit. My mind was fastened on the future. There was no time for looking back.

  I was bound for St. Louis, where Elizabeth, Thelma, and I stayed with Frankie Muse Freeman, a civil rights attorney who served as legal counsel to the NAACP. Ms. Freeman was a dynamic woman who, like Mrs. Bates, was treading in deep waters that had been the sole domain of men. Just two years out of Howard University’s law school in 1949, Ms. Freeman had become part of the NAACP team that filed a lawsuit against the St. Louis Board of Education. Since “separate but equal” was the law at the time, the suit was aimed at forcing the board to add an airplane mechanics program at the black technical high school, like one that existed at the white technical high school. She and the NAACP won the case, and the school board responded by killing the program. Five years later, Ms. Freeman was the lead attorney in the NAACP lawsuit that ended racial discrimination in public housing. She eventually would become the first woman appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights when President Lyndon Johnson selected her for the post in 1964. Later, she also became national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the professional women’s organization that had thrown the Christmas party for us nine shell-shocked teenagers in 1957.

  I loved Mrs. Freeman. I was excited for the opportunity again to live with and be influenced by a strong, professional black woman. She and her husband, Shelby, had a daughter, also named Shelby, who was a student at Washington University. The couple lived on Grand Boulevard, walking distance from Beaumont High School. Their house was right next door to Koontz Funeral Home.

  Within a week of my arrival in St. Louis, my parents mentioned during a conversation that Maceo Binns was on trial for bombing our home. I followed the case as closely as I could in the black press. Maceo was represented by attorney Will W. Shepherd, who immediately subpoenaed Governor Faubus to answer questions about some public comments he had made in the press about the case. Governor Faubus had told the Gazette that he had some inside information that police had been told that Maceo and “another Negro” were paid $50 to bomb the house. Governor Faubus even went a step further and opined that the bombing was a ruse to raise money for integration causes. Shepherd argued that the remarks prejudiced potential jurors and made it impossible for his client to receive a fair trial. The governor didn’t even bother to show up in court on June 7, the first day of the trial, to answer the subpoena. He claimed that as chief executive, he was not bound by such court orders.

  The case proceeded with the selection of an all-white jury. All three black residents in the jury pool were dismissed. One was let go because he was a member of the NAACP, another because he knew Shepherd, and no reason was given for the dismissal of the third person. The law permits prosecutors and defense attorneys to dismiss a certain number of jurors without explaining why. But there was no question in my mind that the juror was eliminated because of his race.

  Prosecutor Frank Holt, the same one who had argued the case against Herbert, called ten witnesses before resting his case. Mother was called to testify and was questioned about my father’s absence from our home at the time of the bombing. As was the case in Herbert’s trial, our neighbor Earzie Cunningham testified about seeing Maceo in the neighborhood near my house at the time of the bombing. Marion Davis, Herbert’s friend, testified that Maceo had been with him at my grandfather’s café and pool hall that night. The same detectives who testified at Herbert’s trial were called to answer questions about the confession Maceo had signed. But Shepherd aggressively cross-examined the detectives. According to media reports, Shepherd asked if they used “pressure as hypnosis” to get Maceo to talk. One detective said that “psychology” was used but that it was not considered “coercion.”

  Maceo took the stand and angrily denounced the confession. He said he signed it because he wasn’t permitted to get cigarettes, take a bath, talk to a lawyer, or call his family during two nonstop days of questioning. He said detectives told him that he would be released if he signed the confession and that he could just deny it later. Maceo also reported that one detective suggested that a “hosograph” should be used on him—a phony term that may have been a facetious reference to the late chief Eugene Smith’s decision to open the fire hoses on recalcitrant segregationists at the start of my senior year.

  Maceo grew flustered on the stand. He began talking so fast at one point that the judge had to ask him to slow down. When Maceo’s temper flashed again, Prosecutor Holt asked: “Why are you getting mad?”

  Maceo shot back: “Because you’re trying to sa
y I was someplace where I wasn’t.”

  Maceo didn’t stop there. He pointed his finger at Holt and exclaimed: “I don’t know who did it. … As far as I know, you could have done it, and I’m not being facetious.”

  Holt called ten witnesses before resting his case. Shepherd made a motion to dismiss the case, but it was overruled by Judge William J. Kirby, the same judge who had presided at Herbert’s trial. My father was called to testify for the defense. According to detectives, my father had procured the dynamite. Of course, Daddy testified that such claims were untrue and that he had nothing to do with the bombing. Maceo admitted to passing my house in his car the night of the bombing. He said he was on his way to the medical center to pick up a girlfriend and that he passed Herbert, who was on his way home from the pool hall. Additional defense witnesses backed up Maceo’s claim that he was parked at the medical center, waiting for a girlfriend, at the time the bomb exploded.

  Nevertheless, the all-white jury, made up of eleven men and one woman, took just thirty minutes the day after the trial began to find Maceo guilty. Like Herbert, Maceo was sentenced to the maximum five years in prison. However, Maceo remained free on bond while his case worked its way up to the state supreme court. Nine months later, on March 13, 1961, the state’s high court would overturn Maceo’s conviction in a 6–1 ruling that said confessions obtained after a fifty-seven-hour period of interrogation could not be introduced. Then, in an astonishing move, Judge Kirby and Prosecutor Holt decided to halt jury trials indefinitely for black defendants while the state fought a federal ruling against racial discrimination. The court had found that black defendants were too often tried by all-white juries.