Torn from the pages
El Dorado residents still dream of equality
Rosie Hicks is still dreaming with Martin Luther King, Jr. to have a society where she is judged on the content of her character rather than the color of her skin.
Hicks attended and graduated from the last segregated and final class at Booker T. Washington High School (now Washington Middle School) in 1969. She said she remembers the days where water fountains and bathrooms were racially separated — those days aren't that far removed.
"Still today there are relics from the pre-integration," Hicks said. "However, you know, I believe some of Dr. King's dreams have come to pass, I do believe that. … There's been a lot of things changed and a lot of things happened; however, there's still enough room for improvement."
In August 1963, King marched with hundreds of thousands of people to the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington D.C. and delivered the historical "I Have a Dream" speech. The march and speech pressured President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration to push for civil rights laws.
Hicks said growing up, there were places she and her friends could not go.
At Old Fashion, a now-closed diner once located on West Avenue (not to be confused with the current Betty's Old Fashion), black patrons could not order through the front area, nor eat inside the building. They had to go to the side door.
"One time they had a place where you could go in and sit and eat it. One black person went in there, they closed it up," Hicks said. "They said no blacks would be going in there anymore to eat."
"One hundred years later the Negro is still languished on the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land."
She said in 2018 she and her niece went to go fishing at public location near Moro Bay State Park and saw a sign that said "N ***** s Keep Out" with a noose hanging from a tree.
They immediately turned around and have not returned.
"You've got to realize that the civil rights movement does not change people, it only changed the conditions," Hicks said. "What's still in that person's heart, it's still there. You cannot remove prejudice out of people, only God can do that."
El Dorado Councilmember Willie McGhee said he remembers being a child and having to eat in the back of the kitchen while his adopted mom Eartha Mae McGhee worked.
He said he also remembers having to pick up food from the side or back doors of establishments.
"You've got to remember, things changed slower in the South," McGhee said. "Laws that were passed up north, it took a decade of trinkle. … In the [late '60s to '70s], we were still dealing with severe racism, openly racism. On the job, schools, neighborhoods. You still had to be in your place."
For a long time, too, black and white students went to separate schools and learned different lessons.
Hicks said she and her family moved to El Dorado from Junction City in 1961. She was in the eighth grade.
She said she remembers driving to school that first day and passing a school that had multiple classrooms only to arrive at hers with two rooms. The rooms had one teacher each. One taught first through fourth grade and the other fifth through eighth. She said there were about 70 kids total in the school.
The students never received new books, she said, only books that were considered no longer good enough for white children. However, even with those struggles, her teachers still taught her valuable lessons.
"They still did work, all that work, hard work, for less pay than their white counterparts and was expected to do much more — much, much more. And you know what? They did," Hicks said.
She said her teachers taught her and her classmates the facts of life and survival skills.
Hicks said her teachers taught them what to expect so they wouldn't be disappointed when they were turned away.
One of the sayings that stuck with her was if she wanted to be gold, she had to be silver first.
"That means whatever we did had to be above the standards. If you wanted to make a 100, you had to be above that. …We had to strive harder, work harder, doing what we need to do, keep our grades up," Hicks said. "It was scary. It scared us because you don't know what to expect."
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal and in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution at the conclusion of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Two years later, the Arkansas state legislature passed an amendment to the state constitution that instructed the Arkansas General Assembly to oppose "in every Constitutional manner the Unconstitutional desegregation decisions" in Brown.
A year later, the first nine black students were turned away by armed Arkansas National Guardsman at Little Rock's Central High School.
In 1967, the first four black students graduated from El Dorado High School after voluntarily enrolling at the school for a trial period. They were Carolyn Ann Bailey, Beatrice Ford, Dorsey Kemp and Earnestine Wiley, according to the EHS '67 yearbook.
Hicks said she and her classmates heard stories from those who chose to attend EHS.
"They were treated horrible," Hicks said. "They called them the n-word, this, that and everything else. They told them to, 'get out, go back, don't come here.' 'Go back where you came from.' All sorts of those slangs."
Among the black students at EHS was Cynthia Scott, who also graduated in 1969.
Scott, who is now a singer/songwriter/actress/playwright in New York, said she volunteered to go to EHS because there was much to gain from switching schools. There were more opportunities, like tennis, badminton, track and having lunch at the arboretum. She also joined an all-white band called The Funny Company with two other black students, Jeanette Malone and Carolyn McDuffie.
But she and her classmates from Washington weren't exactly welcomed in school.
"Discrimination was rampant — we were not wanted," Scott said. "Going to El Dorado High was very difficult. I stayed in the detention hall a lot because I was always defending myself."
Scott said a police officer tried to prevent her from attending class by going to her home and telling her father that her brother, who was driving her to school, was speeding in the parking lot.
She said her father told the officer they were just attempting to prevent her attendance and that she would be back the next day at the same time.
But again, it wasn't just at school.
The same year, Scott decided to, secretly, enter the Miss El Dorado pageant. The same day she entered, Bonnie Haynie, who is currently in charge of federal programs and special projects with the El Dorado School District, enrolled.
Haynie, who also graduated from EHS in '69, said she and Scott became good friends at school and she knew Scott was a good singer.
Scott, who later became one of The Raelettes, the group of women who provided backup vocals for Ray Charles, said she was sabotaged during the contest — the sound system went haywire as she was singing.
Band manager Bubba Hosford then went to the judges and demanded they allow Scott to perform again, and she did during intermission.
In the end, Scott received second runner-up, but Haynie, who was crowned Miss El Dorado, is the first to tell anyone that Scott was really the winner.
"In 1969, an African American wasn't going to win Miss El Dorado," Haynie said. "I think she was pretty brave and forward-thinking to even enter the contest."
After graduating, Haynie went to South Arkansas University and came back to teach.
She said in her experience, she never had a problem in class between students or in the hallways, although she knows problems happened.
However, she also said she recognizes that the school system itself was working against students — in the mid '70s, the school operated on a module system with 13 to 15 30-minute periods, 10th graders were bussed to the old Washington High School campus since the class was so large, and keeping track of all the students proved to be difficult. Soon after, the schedules changed.
During the same time, McGhee attended schools in Norphlet. He graduated from the high school in 1978.
He said he really got to understand racism during his time in school athletics since his mother formed a somewhat protected environment for him as he was growing up.
"When you go in the different areas, you could tell," McGhee said. "Especially if you were a good athlete and you had a good team."
That being said, he added that younger generations really helped embrace and bring about change.
"Students start interacting with everybody because of sports," he said. "You practice together, spend eight months out of the year together, or longer. … The younger generation kind of influenced the older generation, kind of thrust them together."
McGhee said El Dorado is still behind on equality — racial and otherwise — and that it's up to the upcoming generations to make the change.
He said people should look at each other's character, not judge them for things people couldn't choose, like race, gender or class.
"Martin Luther King said either we learn to live together as brethren or we will perish as fools. If you look at what's going around right now, it looks like we're doing the latter," McGhee said. "There's so much division and divisiveness in the most blessed country in the world, and I think God's not going to be pleased with that."
Scott said she thinks it can be difficult for people to embrace the truth because it's painful, but denying it doesn't do anyone any good.
She said people should seek the truth for themselves, even writing a song about it — "Hear It for Yourself" — for her upcoming album.
Haynie said things have gotten better, but there's still work to be done. She also said that any time you put a large number of people in one place, there will be people who are unhappy and will act out.
"I think there will always be a fair amount of learning. I would like to think the human race can learn from its past mistakes, but obviously they don't," she said. "Learning different things maybe, but there's always going to be something to learn."
Hicks said many opportunities have been afforded to her, her siblings, her children and classmates, and she's received opportunities she wouldn't have normally received.
She said she's thankful to King and his struggle for the civil rights movement, and that she doesn't hold the past against people, despite there still being places near town she feels she isn't welcome.
"I do not hold hostilities and feelings in my heart in the thing that happened in years past because that was then and this is now," Hicks said. "This is a new day, and in spite of how someone is treating me, I choose to show the world love. … Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Only love, and I choose to love."
"I have a dream ... one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." "Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood." "When we allow freedom to ring — when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, Free at last, Great God a'mighty, We are free at last.'"