When I was 15, my main concerns were things like how to get my Mom to buy me some more Guess jeans, getting my French homework done and signing up for Driver’s Ed so I could get my license on my 16th birthday. When Melba Pattillo was 15, she was trying to get her homework done, worrying about lynch mobs on the way home from school and whether or not she would live to see the end of each school day. Melba was one of the “Little Rock 9″ – the very courageous African American teenagers who integrated Central High School.
In July we stopped in Little Rock on our way up to Chicago. Robert wanted to get photos of the state capitol building. While I was waiting for him I saw the familiar brown signs pointing to a nearby National Park or Historic Site. I quickly looked up Central High, since I didn’t know what it was. Forgive me. I’m only 32 and it was a blip in high school history class, not something I lived through like my parents. My Mom knew what Central High was as soon as I mentioned it. Once I read what it was, I knew we should go, but I thought it would just be a quick, boring stop. See the building, get a stamp in our National Parks Passport and move on. Wow. I was wrong.
The interpretive Center across the street has very vivid displays featuring photographs of the integration process in 1957. You see the 9 African American students being escorted by armed guards, huge crowds with fists raised and hatred written all over their faces. And throughout it all, there are these 9 children, standing tall, not hiding or flinching, just trying to go to high school. I cannot even imagine taking that weight upon my shoulders at the age of 15.
After looking at the school, I picked up a book in the gift shop – the autobiography of Melba Pattillo Beals, called “Warriors Don’t Cry” – written from notes in her personal diary during that time in her life. The book is intense. It makes my heart pound in fear as the students have to face the angry mobs to get out of the school. Pattillo Beals is a good writer to be sure, but the intense part is that this is something real. Something that actually happened in an American public school.The visitor’s center brought the history alive very well. So well in fact, that I felt quite ashamed of the behavior of many of those white people in Little Rock in 1957. And I secretly wondered what I would have done.
A visit to Central High is a vivid reminder of why it is important to learn from the mistakes we have made in history and to make sure they are not repeated.
