And Why the Apathetic Masses are Just as Bad as Hate Speech/Acts

As I was perusing today's news for article ideas, I came across a story regarding the "Little Rock Nine."

This story is a "Where is She Now" commentary on Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine black students who was supposed to attend Central High after the desegregation laws nearly 50 years ago (next month). The picture is infamous in our nation's history: a young black woman in a white dress, clutching her school books amidst a sea of white kids shouting angrily at her or smirking to their friends. Or just staring and doing nothing.



It has been deemed "the long, lonely walk" by some journalists. While the rest of the Little Rock Nine had planned to integrate the school as a group, Eckford's family had no phone. Thus, she was left to attempt to enter the school alone.


The picture itself evokes powerful emotions for me, I certainly can not even imagine what it must evoke in a black person.

While some students who attended Central High have claimed that not everyone was like this. Or the majority wasn't so hateful towards the black students "yet the world focused on 'problem students—25 maybe, a minuscule percentage,'" the pictures in the news depict more.

For, I know well the tendency of mass crowds in situations like this to be "I just don't want to get involved." Yet, they sit idly by on the sidelines watching innocent Others get hurt. This is otherwise known as the "bystander effect." (ie- the more bystanders there are, the less likely they are to take any personal responsibility for stopping the injustice). I don't know about other people in this country, but I learned in 5th grace that this was wrong.

The black students involved in the Little Rock Nine certainly don't remember "25 maybe" students spouting their hate. What they remember are the hundreds more white kids who simply stood by and said nothing.

"The tone was set by a couple of hundred students engaged in this reign of terror," says Ernest Green, one of the Nine and an executive with Lehman Brothers. "The silence was deafening. We would have appreciated some of them speaking out when all of this harassment was going on."

While we certainly shouldn't dwell on the past when so much progress has been made with racial inequities in the U.S., I also feel that we (white people) also find them too easy to forget. For, if we don't remember things like this, that happened only 50 years ago, then we are doomed to repeat ourselves (Jena 6).

Let's give Elizabeth Eckford a reason to believe her struggle is/was not in vain.