Little Rock Central High School

Those kids were Democrats, those white kids screaming at those black kids that were the first black kids to be integrated into.

at Little Rock High School, those white kids were radical Democrats hurling the N-word at black Republicans, the Little Rock Nine, thank you very much, someone in the live chat.

You go and look at, they were Democrats, the white kids were Democrats screaming the N-word and God knows what else at those young black high school students who were Republicans who were being integrated into their school.

And you know, we could do this all day with the Democrats.

And so I would write little short stories and other things, not for any reason, not because anybody told me to, I just kind of enjoyed the process of it.

And when 11th grade rolled around and people started talking about college, I went to Little Rock Central High.

The idea was, what am I gonna do? You know, at that point in the mid-90s, independent cinema, especially American independent cinema, was kind of having a moment.

I remember going to Park Plaza Mall and seeing Pulp Fiction in a mall.

These buildings, these structures, they don't belong in our timeline at all.

At the same exact time as all of these other structures, they're also in charge of the Little Rock Central High School.

And I remember when my town had plans to just go build palace high schools in two years.

Those were the days.

There have been some recent publications about her that have really just been like, you know, she was a very polarizing figure for some of the reasons we would assume because of her advocacy for school integration.

But also for some of the ways that she moved, you know? And I remember reading a book, it might even be like 15 years now, called Elizabeth and Hazel, Two Women of Little Rock, that was about that very famous picture where Elizabeth, Elizabeth Eckford is trying to integrate Little Rock Central High School, and there's that horrible white mob behind her, right? And she was the only one of the nine who went by herself.

Her family didn't have a telephone, so she didn't know the plan to all meet at Daisy Bates' house.

And the white girl in the picture is 16-year-old Hazel Massery.

actually.

So you chose, you volunteered to be among the first black students ever to attend Central High School in Little Rock in 1957, the first school year that the Little Rock schools were desegregated.

Why did you choose to do that?

Well, as I saw it, the 1954 decision, Brown v.

So you knew that there would be a physical risk to your person or even your life if if you did this, what did you do in advance of September 1957 to prepare or steel yourself for that possibility?

Well, I didn't really do any special planning because we, all seven kids, learned what the reality was like.

And being attacked up at Central High School was not the first time that I had been attacked by white people in Lunarong.

So we had a history already of understanding the nature of the violence that we might be confronted with.