Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Symbolic courage
Remember LR Nine’s walk Guest writers
We’ve introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress to expand the boundaries of the Little Rock Central High School historic site, which would help save the historic area from the ravages of time. It’s passed the House of Representatives, but not yet the Senate.
So we encourage our colleagues in the upper chamber to act soon— because it’d be a fitting capstone to our celebration of today’s civil-rights anniversary.
It’s been 60 years since nine African American students tried to enroll in what was then an all-white Little Rock Central High School. Three years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional, but it wasn’t until that month that the students tried to act on it.
At first, then-Gov. Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block the students from entering the building. But a federal judge overruled the governor, and later that month, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the guard, along with the 101st Airborne, and ordered them to enforce the court’s ruling,
So on Sept. 25, the guardsmen escorted the students to school. Ask anybody who lived through the crisis, and they’ll tell you they remember it vividly: the angry mob, the stoic students, the troops with bayonets.
Perhaps one of the most moving images of that time is of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, who was then only 15 years old. She didn’t get word that the other students were going as a group, so she went alone, in a simple black-and-white dress she made just for the occasion. She walked down South Park Street, as the mob baited and cursed her—and a civil-rights icon was born.
In many of the pictures we have today of Elizabeth’s walk, you can see the exteriors of seven homes across the street from the school. These homes are also in many of the other pictures we have from that famous period. They’re also where the nine students would meet each day to face the mob scene together. The school itself and some of the surrounding area were made a national historic site in 1998, but these seven homes weren’t included.
Ever since then, there’s been a movement afoot to extend the site’s boundary so that future generations will be able to see Little Rock Central as it looked when the nine arrived for school. The Department of Interior recommended that the homes be included in its 2001 General Management Plan and 2004 Long-Range Interpretive Plan, but Congress has never acted on these recommendations. Until now.
Earlier this year, we, along with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., introduced a bill to solve this boundary issue once and for all. Our legislation would extend the boundary of the Little Rock Central historic site to include these seven homes, adding about an acre and a half to the park.
Giving these homes the historic-site designation would allow the homeowners and the National Park Service to work together through cooperative agreements to preserve them so future generations can see and learn from them.
Today is a solemn anniversary, but it is also a reminder of the courage shown by nine young students, who helped Arkansas and the nation overcome deep-seated prejudices by appealing to the better angels of our nature.
And there’d be no better way to mark this 60th anniversary than to preserve the South Park Street homes and Central High so that visitors can walk in the footsteps of the Nine for generations to come.
Tom Cotton is the junior U.S. senator for
the state of Arkansas. U.S. Rep. French Hill represents Arkansas’ 2nd District, which includes Little Rock.