Elizabeth Eckford

Elizabeth Eckford is depicted in this photograph taken by Will Counts in 1957. It is one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th century, according to the Associated Press. Hazel Massery is the white girl seen yelling at Eckford as Eckford attempted to enter the school on her first day.
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Elizabeth Eckford (born October 4, 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is one of the African American students known as the Little Rock Nine. On September 4, 1957, she and eight other African American students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School, which had previously only accepted white students. They were stopped at the door by Arkansas National Guard troops called up by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. They tried again without success to attend Central High on September 23, 1957. The next day, September 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to accompany the Little Rock Nine to school for protection.

In 1958 Elizabeth Eckford moved to St. Louis where she achieved the necessary qualifications to study for a B.A. in history. After graduating she became the first African American in St. Louis to work in a bank in a non-janitorial position. Eckford returned to Little Rock in the 1960s and was employed by the First Division, Pulaski County Circuit Court in Little Rock. In 1996, seven of the Little Rock Nine, including Elizabeth Eckford, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. They came face to face with a few of the white students who tormented them as well as one student who befriended them. A reunion in Little Rock in 1997 provided an opportunity for acts of reconciliation, as noted in this editorial from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on the first day of 1998:

One of the fascinating stories to come out of the reunion was the apology that Hazel Bryan Massery made to Elizabeth Eckford for a terrible moment caught forever by the camera. That 40-year-old picture of hate assailing grace — which had gnawed at Ms. Hazel Massery for decades — can now be wiped clean, and replaced by a snapshot of two friends. The apology came from the real Hazel Bryan Massery, the decent woman who had been hidden all those years by a fleeting image. And the graceful acceptance of that apology was but another act of dignity in the life of Elizabeth Eckford.

Excerpt from 50 year anniversary program;

On the morning of September 4, 1957 and wearing a new dress, Elizabeth Eckford walked down Little Rock’s Park Street and into history as the lone teenage girl in the sunglasses who braved the screaming, segregationist mob and inquisitive press corps in her quest to attend Little Rock Central High School. Her life would never be the same.

Born in late 1941, Little Rock native Elizabeth is one of six children in the family of Oscar and Birdie Eckford. Her father worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad as a nighttime dining car maintenance man, and her mother taught African-American students at the segregated school for the blind and deaf how to do their own laundry.

Elizabeth received her elementary education in Little Rock and graduated from Dunbar Junior High School before starting high school at Horace Mann. Near the end of her 10th grade year, Elizabeth became interested in attending, and helping desegregate, Central High in the fall of 1957.

That September, Elizabeth and Hazel Bryan Massery, a white Central High student, were captured in the now-iconic Arkansas Democrat photo that became the single most recognizable image of the 1957 crisis. Photographer Will Counts snapped the picture of Hazel at the head of an angry white mob screaming at Elizabeth as she walked to school.

The two did not actually meet until 1997 when they reunited for a second, very different, picture taken by the same photographer who captured the black-and-white image 40 years earlier.

During the 1958-59 year when Governor Orval Faubus closed the public high schools in Little Rock rather than continue with court-ordered desegregation, Elizabeth took correspondence courses, summer school and received tutoring from the NAACP which allowed her to gather enough academic credit to begin work on her bachelor’s degree at Knox College in 1960.

In 1997, Elizabeth shared the Father Joseph Blitz Award (presented by the Arkansas Chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice) with Hazel Bryan Massery. Elizabeth lives in Little Rock and has two sons.

Death in the family

On the morning of January 1, 2003, Elizabeth Eckford's son Erin Eckford, 26, was shot and killed by police in Little Rock. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the police officers had unsuccessfully tried to disarm him with a beanbag round after he had fired several shots from his military style rifle. When Eckford pointed his rifle towards them, the police officers shot him. His mother feared that his death was "suicide by police". Erin, she said, had suffered from mental illness but had been off his prescribed medication for several years. On June 18, 2003, the newspaper reported that prosecutors investigating the fatal shooting had decided that the police officers concerned were justified in shooting Eckford.

Sources

• [1]"Through a Lens, Darkly," by David Margolick. Vanity Fair, Sept. 24, 2007.
• Facing History and Ourselves
• "Civil Rights", Kids Discover, Volume 16, Issue 1, ISSN 1054-2868, January 2006.
• US Information Agency article on Eckford

References

• Alternate photograph from a different angle by Will Counts.