LITTLE ROCK — The Little Rock Nine made the kind of trouble that changed American life for the better, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil-rights icon and the keynote speaker at Monday's dedication ceremony for the new visitor center at the Central High School National Historic Site.
For generations, Lewis said, many blacks told their children not to challenge segregation in order to avoid retribution.
"But you, in 1957, got in the way. You got in trouble. It was good trouble. It was necessary trouble," said Lewis, his voice rising above the sustained applause of an audience of several hundred people seated in sweltering humidity under skies threatening rain. "You inspired all of us to get in trouble."
Lewis spoke near the end of 1 about a 1/2-hour ceremony marking the opening of the 10,000-square-foot center at 2125 DaisyL. Gatson Bates Drive. It has six times the exhibit space of the former center in a restored Mobil gas station across the street.
At the beginning of the event, 101st Airborne Division paratroopers escorted each of the Little Rock Nine from the new center to a dais at Park Street and Daisy Bates Drive.
One of the Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, thanked the division for its support during the crisis but said she was disappointed that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette refers to the students attending Central High that year as being "under federal protection."
"The troops followed 11 paces behind. In most cases they did not interfere, but they reported" any violence, Eckford said. School administrators often ignored those reports, she said.
Eckford also took issue with a story in Sunday's Democrat-Gazette on a gathering of former white students who told the newspaper that the Little Rock Nine were welcomed by most of the students and only a small group of troublemakers harassed them.
"I was very dismayed when I read in yesterday's paper that the student body welcomed us. I didn't feel it. Each of us was followed from class to class by an organized group who assaulted us daily. Harassment is a very, very mild term. I'll tell you what it was to me. It was being scalded in the shower. It was being bodyslammed against the wall lockers every day," she said.
The purpose of the center, through its exhibits and documents, is to ensure that what theLittle Rock Nine experienced lives on, said Mary A. Bomar, director of the National Park Service.
The center will "help make sure that the dark time of segregation will never return again," Bomar said.
Learning about the past can lead to a brighter future, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said.
"Fifty years from now, when our grandchildren are gathered to commemorate the events of 1957, it is my hope that they will say that Little Rock is a great city," he said. "Not great despite the Central High School desegregation crisis but great because we understood the true lessons of time and honored the legacy left to us by these nine extraordinary and wonderful citizens."
Nikki Giovanni, a poet and professor at Virginia Tech, read a poem dedicated to Daisy Bates, a mentor and advocate for the Little Rock Nine.
"Absolutely we will miss the click of the heels on the sidewalk as they hurried off, proud, angry, determined, urging us on," Giovanni recited. "Always wondering why, questioning when, hoping now or at least soon."
Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which operates the National Park Service, drew on a biblical analogy to explain the significance of what happened in Little Rock five decades ago.
"Scripture tells us that in the kingdom of heaven, the first shall be last, the last shall be first. Sometimes it is also true on earth," he said. "These nine remarkable Americans on this stage today were treated as though they were last. They were scorned and cast upon in their youth for no other reason than the color of their skin.But today on the grounds of the very high school where they were spurned, they are first among us."
After the last speaker, the nine former students cut a big yellow ribbon stretched across the dais and were escorted by the soldiers into the visitor center.
Lingering at the edge of the crowd was Carl Leeks, 18, a senior at Central. He, like the rest of Central's students, had the day off from school, but he went to the event because he wanted to learn about what he said was often overlooked in his civics and social studies classes.
Central's Class of 2008 isn't all that much different from the one 50 years ago, he said.
"It's not really racist; it's different. But the white students hang out together, and the blacks hang out together. We don't mingle much."
Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/25/2007