LITTLE ROCK — At the entrance of the new Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Visitor Center exhibit area, sounds of a jeering crowd and the cadence of marching soldiers fill the air as images from the 1957 desegregation flash across three television screens.
The new visitor center, which opens to the public Monday after a 10 a.m. dedication ceremony, features interactive audiovisual displays throughout a 3,000-square-foot exhibit space six times the size of the current center, across Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive in a restored Mobilgas station. The current center will remain open this week and then will be converted into an education center.
"It [the new center] allows us to tell much more of the story," said Michael Madell, superintendent of the site.
The new exhibits, which were based in part on public input, include more about the events at Central surrounding its desegregation, details about key people and events, and other individuals who sought to expand civil rights, said Laura Miller, chief of interpretation of the site.
"Hopefully, by the time that visitors get to the end of theexhibits, they'll see something of themselves," Miller said. "No matter who they are, no matter where they come from, they'll understand that civil rights is for everyone and it's about all of us and it's about all of our rights."
The $6 million federally funded project includes environmentally friendly features such as drought-tolerant plants that require less maintenance, a ground-source heat pump system to reduce energy consumption, and natural light.
But before construction began, 372 tons of contaminated soil were removed from the site. The contamination occurred when commercial greenhouses once located at the site burned, and pesticides and herbicides leaked into the ground, Madell said.
The new visitor center will allow larger groups to tour the facility, he said. Some 45,000 visitors toured the center last year.
"That was elbow-to-elbow on many days," Madell said.
He expects that attendance will grow to 60,000 annually when programs at the new center are fully developed.
Several of the new center's interactive exhibits include video clips from interviews with the Little Rock Nine, other former Central students, parents and members of the Women's Emergency Committee.
The effort to record oral histories from those who were involved in the Central High integration crisis began in 2002 with an $80,000 grant from the National Park Service. Historians compiled questions for those who were to be interviewed, said Johanna Miller Lewis, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor of history who works with the Central historic site.
Project collaborators, which include the National Park Service, UALR's history department and its School of Mass Communications, have recorded about 40 interviews over the past five years.
During the next year they plan to interview others involved in the desegregation of Central High, including Pat House, a member of the Women's Emergency Committee which worked to reopen Little Rock high schools when they were closed for the 1958-59 school year.
They also plan to interview attorney Christopher Mercer Jr. who advised Daisy Bates, a mentor to the Little Rock Nine, during the 1957 crisis, Lewis said.
Clips of the interviews were compiled to create short films on Jim Crow-era segregation and media coverage of the crisis, which play at various displays in the exhibit area. Visitors may view in-depth audiovisual explanations of specific events atlistening stations.
The compilations of oral history interviews cover topics such as Gov. Orval Faubus' announcement that he was sending members of the Arkansas National Guard to Central, the attempts by the Little Rock Nine to enter the school, bomb drills and student interactions.
Visitors can listen to the oral histories and look south through an expansive window to view the high school as well as Park Street where many of the events took place.
Eventually, transcriptions of all oral history recordings will be available for research purposes at the center. Plans also call for posting clips of the recordings on the Web, Lewis said.
In addition to telling the story of Central's desegregation, the exhibits give an overview of civil rights in the United States, starting with the Constitution. One interactive exhibit asks, "Were you included in 'We the People'?" It explains the extent of rights granted to various groups, including white men, American Indians, freed blacks and others.
Other exhibits explain Jim Crow-era segregation, efforts to address segregation in the courts and resistance to integration. Additional exhibits cite school integration difficulties elsewhere and individuals' efforts to address civil rights.
Although administrators of the historic site collected public input on the proposed design and exhibits in the new visitor center, not all suggestions were incorporated.
Ralph Brodie, who was student body president of Central for the 1957-58 school year, has not seen the completed center but has said that some exhibits should be dedicated to Central's 1957-58 faculty and students as well as the Little Rock School Board of that time. The "whole story" about Central's history should be in one place, Brodie said in an e-mail.
"Many believe, as I do, that the preservation and exhibition of Central High's entire history is vital to the understanding and advancement of civil rights," Brodie said in the e-mail. "Hopefully, at some point in the future, there will be an opportunity for thatentire story to be told in [the] new museum's exhibits along side the history of the Little Rock Nine and civil rights; but apparently now is not that time."
Madell said that in order to tell the story of the white students' experiences at Central, those individuals must tell their stories to those conducting oral history interviews. About a halfdozen white former students have participated in the oral history project.
"We would very much like to do more [oral histories]," Madell said. "We're hoping that through this next week as folks are into town, we can enlist some other folks to do oral histories, be they white students or former cafeteria workers, additional soldiers, whatever."
Brodie said he will probably participate in the oral history project.
Tickets for Monday's dedication ceremony are no longer available. The new visitor center is expected to open at approximately noon.
The new center's hours will be extended until 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. It will open Tuesday after the 10 a.m. commemoration ceremony at Central.
On Wednesday, it will return to regular hours, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It is closed three days a year - New Year's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is no admission charge.
Arkansas, Pages 19, 23 on 09/23/2007