A little subversion in LR

It sounds almost subversive in the context of the raging race-retro contemporary Arkansas political culture.

But there it was—American race history in living person, shared with Little Rock public school students in broad daylight in September 2023.

Bless those Little Rock Nine members for living long and prospering.

It might technically have been against Gov. Sarah Sanders’ new law. That would be the one against telling school kids about the nation’s troubled racial past.

But no one, to my knowledge, cried “indoctrination” or foul.

I’m certainly not objecting. I’m celebrating.

The event was enriching for the community. It was educational for the students.

If it scored a point or two against the ruling neo-right-wing madness that forbids school instruction in Arkansas on the African American experience, then all the better.

Goodness knows Arkansas did not need in 2023 to throw the Little Rock Nine or any member thereof in jail. That would have looked a tad backward, literally.

The Little Rock Nine were exceptional Black students chosen to enter and thus racially integrate Little Rock Central High School with federal troop escorts in 1957. That they would dare do such a thing ignited one of the earliest and uglier white-racist resistances in the American civil rights story.

Five of them presented a program at the Robinson Theater downtown. Four were on site and one participated remotely.

The audience consisted of Little Rock public high school seniors on a field trip, all with permission from their parents or guardians. The point was to mark and celebrate the 66th anniversary of those young Black children passing through those white-citadel doors.

The event was in part the work of the National Park Service, which operates a national historic site at Central High.

We suppose the governor could try to stop a federal agency from commemorating brave world history made locally. But that might start to look a little Orval Faubus-y, now wouldn’t it?

The Sanders administration has issued an executive order against “liberal indoctrination” in schools. It has placed similar wording in the LEARNS Act that undercuts public education for private-school and church-school vouchers.

Most recently, it declined to assign Advanced Placement credit for a nationally approved AP course in the African American experience. It has directed the few teachers of the course in Arkansas public high schools—including one at present-day Central High—to get prior approval for lesson plans.

A student asked about that in Q-and-A as history-makers Minnijean Brown Trickey, Melba Beals, Terrence Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford and Carlotta Walls Lanier appeared before the special field-trip assembly.

Trickey said edicts to restrict instruction in history amount to “profound intentional ignorance.”

That was perhaps understated compared to the words of Beals. She said today’s political leadership in Arkansas is “just repeating what was going on in the 1940s and ’30s … [and] standing in the same pool of ignorance” of 1957. She said today’s politicians were managing only to “energize a whole new generation of activism.”

“Thank you for energizing me” more than a half-century ago, Beals said.

If people want to repeat those errors, then “bring it, baby,” she said.

Carlotta Walls Lanier encouraged the students to go to thehistorymakers.org. That site describes itself as “the digital repository for the Black experience” and declares its mission as “Rescue. Preserve. Educate.”

The governor and state Education Department might need to open an inquiry into the site.

For example, it offered last week a home-page link to a podcast with the late Hank Aaron. He was a Black baseball player who in the mid-1970s broke Babe Ruth’s career home-run record.

While daring to outdo a legendary white man, he endured racist hate mail, racist taunts and racist threats on his life.

Being not at all clear on what “liberal indoctrination” is, I cannot say for sure that it is permitted anymore under Arkansas law to refer kids to materials suggesting bad behavior on race in America as recently as 50 years ago.

The neo-right-wing view, if I understand correctly, is that we’ve now fixed all that in America and don’t need to dredge it up after all these years to invite guilty thoughts in our innocent and impressionable white school children.

That’s a bit like saying it’s fine to have statues on the state Capitol grounds because they don’t talk.

But what if those statues come alive? What if their brains are still sharp? What if their brave hearts still pound?

What if they get near our kids?