Schooled in faith

LITTLE ROCK — The black teenagers who braved frenzied mobs and hostile classmates to desegregate Little Rock Central High School were all faithful churchgoers.

So were many of their white tormentors.

The conflict half a century ago had a lasting impact on the religious views of the Little Rock Nine. Many found solace and support within their churches as they endured death threats and frequent abuse. But some also came to question their beliefs.

Eight of the nine, all now in their 60s, agreed to talk to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about how the tumult of the 1957-58 school year shaped their spiritual lives.

THE POWER OF PRAYER

When he first began attending Central, Jefferson Thomas said he prayed each night before bed and each morning when he woke that the school's white students would like him.

"I asked God to show me what I had done wrong, where I had failed, that the white kids didn't like me," he said. "Every day, I thought it's going to be better: God's going to answer my prayers. But every day I would go there and it was another day of the same hatred and violence."

Thomas attended Arch Street Baptist Church in Little Rock, which has since moved and changed its name to Greater Archview Baptist Church. After the sermon one Sunday, he heard the choir sing "Lord, Don't Move My Mountain, Just Give Me the Strength to Climb."

That gospel anthem inspired him to change what he prayed for. Instead of beseeching God for his classmates' acceptance, he decided to ask for the strength to withstand whatever bullying happened the next day.

"It seemed that overnight, things stopped being so bad," he said. "The same things were happening, but they didn't hurt me as much. I didn't feel like I was a failure. I felt victorious because I made it through the day."

Even when students shoved, tripped and hit him, Thomas said, he was determined to go each day to school as long as he could walk. He graduated from Central in 1960.

Thomas also credited prayer with keeping him safe a decade later when he was drafted into the U.S. Army toserve in Vietnam. In the seething, bullet-torn jungle, he said he felt far more imperiled than he ever did at Central High. But a friend in California told him that she prayed he would return without a scratch.

"That happened," Thomas said. "Not only did I not have a scratch on me, but during the periods of the monsoons when guys were getting picked up and taken back into base camp ... with jungle rot, my skin was just smooth and pretty like a baby's."

Today, Thomas - a retired accountant for the U.S. Department of Defense - attends First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio.

He attests to his continued faith in the inscription he chose for his statue on the grounds of the state Capitol: "As a youth, God blessed me with the courage of men. As a man, he gave me the spirit of youth."

"SO-CALLED CHRISTIANITY"

Minnijean Brown Trickey's pastor was among the group of ministers who escorted her and other black students on their first attempt to enter Central High on Sept. 4, 1957, when the Arkansas National Guard turned them away.

Brown Trickey had grown up attending Union African Methodist Episcopal Church and never doubted her congregation supported her.

But she said she never considered herself particularly religious, and, if anything, her experiences that school year further challenged her faith. Ultimately, she abandoned church membership altogether.

"It seemed the whole opposition to desegregation really had a lot of so-called Christianity embedded in it," Brown Trickey said. "I was horrified. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and it affected me in a very, very negative way."

Most of the city's black ministers, like Brown Trickey's pastor, the Rev. Z.Z. Driver, supported the nine students' efforts and the broader cause of integration. But the issue divided the city's white churches.

Some championed integration, like the Rev. Dunbar Ogden Jr., the leader of the city's interracial ministerial alliance who also accompanied the students that first day.

Still, other ministers actively campaigned against "the mixing of races" in their sermons and even in newspaper ads.

"They took teachings of peace and kindness and used those tenets against me," Brown Trickey said. "The pulpits were full of anti-integration fire, and I was a kid."

Churches still fail to help the poor and defend the vulnerable, she said. So while she believes in God, Brown Trickey does not believe in church. Instead, she said she prefers to express her spirituality by doing "good works."

Brown Trickey has spent most of her adult life as an activist for peace, environmental issues and civil rights, particularly for North American Indians.

"I have had amazing experiences with people of all faiths and found out that everybody believes that it's about the same thing," she said. "It's theoretically about how we treat each other, and I just think we forget most of that all of the time."

Brown Trickey quotes Gandhi on her statue at the Capitol: "We have to be the change we want to see in the world."

MIXED SIGNALS

Like Brown Trickey, Terrence Roberts would often think about the many people in the jeering mob who had spent the previous Sunday in church.

Yet, he said the religious fervor against integration did not shake his faith; he even understood it. For many of the city's white residents, black students attending Central violated "something sacred," he said.

But Little Rock residents didn't just respond with outright antagonism or unwavering encouragement. Sometimes, there was ambivalence too.

"One [black] minister in Little Rock told me I had no business being at Central, but as long as I was up there I might as well stay," he said. "That was a very interesting message. I didn't know what to make of it. I still don't, really."

Members of Roberts' congregation at Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church in Little Rock also had their doubts. Many blacks in the city feared the ongoing racial tensions would cost them their livelihoods.

Despite these experiences, Roberts - like most of the Little Rock Nine - said the crisis fortified his faith in God.

Today, Roberts is a psychology professor at Antioch University in Los Angeles, and he said spirituality remains a priority.

Like Brown Trickey, he finds churches "problematic." But he said he and his wife take time each morning to worship. At the moment, the two are reading together a book by retired U.S. Senate Chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie as part of their daily devotions.

"One thing I have gleaned from the Scriptures is a promise from God that he will never put us humans through anything we can't handle," he said. "That's always been important for me to know."

FINDING SANCTUARY

At Central, Carlotta Walls La-Nier said, she and some of the other black students found a haven each morning in the school's chapel - then located in a basement classroom.

If she got to school before the first class started, she knew the chapel service would provide an environment that discouraged rancor.

But what sustained her most during that school year, she said, was the love and faith her parents gave her. Even as her mother's hair turned gray, she continued to assure her daughter that she would be OK, LaNier said.

"She had to have faith from somewhere," LaNier said, "and surely it was her faith in God that he would protect us and keep his arms around us."

LaNier paid tribute to her parents in the quote she chose for her state Capitol statue. "Hard work, determination, persistence and faith in God were lessons learned from my parents Cartelyou and Juanita Walls," it says, "I was only doing what was right."

LaNier grew up attending White Memorial Methodist Church in a now-demolished structure that had been builtby her great-grandfather. The Methodist Church was important to her family. So even after the Walls moved to Colorado because her father could not find work, the family accepted a white pastor's invitation to attend his nearby Methodist church.

In 1962, LaNier's family became the second black family to join what is today Denver's Park Hill United Methodist Church. LaNier, a semiretired owner of a real estate brokerage firm and president of the Little Rock Nine scholarship foundation, remains an active member of the congregation.

Like Roberts, LaNier said she believed that God never gave her more obstacles than she could bear.

"I would hear things at home about what's it going to be like when I grow up: 'Things are going to be so much better for you, and this is just what you go through to get there,'" LaNier said.

CHURCH SUPPORT

Three of the Little Rock Nine - Ernest Green, Melba Pattillo Beals and Gloria Ray Karlmark - were members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Little Rock.

The still-thriving church, which was established by blacks in 1863, is one of the many area houses of worship planning events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Central High's desegregation.

Green, who was the one senior in the group, credits the downtown congregation with bolstering his Christian beliefs during the crisis.

"I found support within the church, certainly the pastor and the leadership there," he said. "It served as a real anchor and assistance in getting me through that year."

Green, a senior managing director with the investing banking firm Lehman Brothers, remains committed to the A.M.E. tradition. He is a senior steward (that is, a lay church leader) at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington.

Likewise, Gloria Ray Karlmark said by e-mail that the Bethel congregation prayed for her and her family "throughout the entire ordeal."

Her experience that school year reinforced her belief in the Golden Rule and that she was a child of God, she said.

A patent lawyer who splits her time between the Netherlands and Sweden, Ray Karlmark continues to frequent two churches in Europe. They are Westerkerk, an interdenominational Protestant church in Amsterdam where Rembrandt is buried, and Kungsholm Baptist Church in Stockholm, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached during his visit to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

"The Christian message delivered in sermons at these churches on Sunday, together with the spiritual songs that are sung," she said, "keep me in touch with the 'old-time religion' of my African-American ancestors."

GLORIFYING GOD

In her memoir about the Little Rock crisis, Warriors Don't Cry, Pattillo Beals recorded that as a child she would often write letters to God asking for help and guidance, particularly in dealing with the city's racial discrimination.

Pattillo Beals, now a chairman of the communications department at Dominican University of California in San Rafael, said she still believes she can always "count on God."

"What Central High School gave me is a core feeling inside," she said. "It made me understandthat, wait a minute, you have no power. The power is vested in your beliefs; it's vested in how much faith you have and how much you trust in God."

Over the years, Pattillo Beals said she has explored a number of religious outlooks, and today she has woven a variety of traditions into what she describes as a tapestry of spirituality.

She participates mainly in two congregations - a nondenominational Protestant church and a Christian Science church. Once a month, she also takes her children to predominantly black churches so they can hear the music and preaching.

In addition, she attends services with extended family during the Jewish High Holy Days, in part to pay tribute to the Jews who supported Central High's integration.

"I don't care how you worship, just worship," she said. "Find your God, whoever that is or wherever that is."

Thelma Mothershed Wair puts the integration crisis's impact on her faith most succinctly at the foot of her state Capitol monument, which reads: "To God Be the Glory."

Wair grew up at Mount Sinai Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in North Little Rock. After she returned to Little Rock four years ago, the retired teacher joined Parkview Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Little Rock.

Like most of the nine, she said her church regularly prayed for her throughout her time at Central. She said her faith taught her to forgive those in high school who taunted and pushed her.

"They didn't know any better; they were taught differently," she said. "They thought they were right because they thought the schools belonged to them. But the public schools belong to anybody who pays taxes, and my parents paid taxes."

Ultimately, she said she is a better Christian today because of that school year.

"It gave me a stronger faith because nobody got killed," she said. "There were a lot of threats, but nothing horrible happened."

Information for this article was contributed by Charlotte Tubbs of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.