LITTLE ROCK — The author of a forthcoming book related to Little Rock’s 1957 integration crisis said Monday that the 10-year effort has been more about self-examination than judging the hearts of others.
“It’s really been a prolonged exercise in trying to figure out what I would have done had I been in Little Rock in 1957,” author David Margolick said during a speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
The book, set to be published early next year, is titled Elizabeth and Hazel. It was born out of the iconic photograph of Little Rock Nine member Elizabeth Eckford as she was followed by a mob including then-Central High School student Hazel Bryan Massery.
Arkansas Democrat photographer Will Counts took the photograph as the shouting Massery shot insults at the stoic Eckford after she was turned away from Central High School on Sept. 4, 1957.
Margolick’s book tells the story of the photograph and traces the lives of Eckford and Massery, including their reconciliation and subsequent estrangement. It builds off a 2007 article he wrote for Vanity Fair called Through a Lens, Darkly.
Margolick called Counts’ photograph “powerful” - an image that “changed people’slives.”
He recounted a story of a white Central High student who recalled her father discussing the image at the dinner table in 1957.
“He said, ‘I don’t want those niggers in school either, but they didn’t treat that black girl right. They didn’t treat that little girl right,’” Margolick recounted. “It was another sign of that picture’s unique power to influence people.”
Margolick said he began working on the book in 1999 after he first saw another Counts image of Eckford and Massery posing in front of Central High. That photo ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Sept. 23, 1997.
Since then, he’s been to Little Rock for research at least 10 times and interviewed dozens of people.
The interview subjects include both Eckford and Massery; previously unknown individuals featured in the 1957 photograph’s background; a soldier who helped protect Eckford that day; and some of the high school’s former teachers and students.
Part of the reason he spoke in Little Rock on Monday was to solicit interviews. Margolick said he’s had limited success getting Eckford’s former classmates to share.
“It’s been a source of frustration for me that I haven’t gotten more cooperation,” he said. “I think the story would be better and fairer and more nuanced and richer.”
Tom Tullos, a Little Rockresident whose father opposed integrating Central High, said after the speech that “nothing good will come” from Margolick’s book.
Tullos said the story of the integration crisis already has been retold and analyzed at length by historians. The constant rehashing at anniversary celebrations and special events prevents Little Rock from “moving on,” he said.
“[Margolick’s book] just continues to reinforce the negativity,” he said. “It’s not going to do anything to help Arkansas.”
Spirit Trickey, daughter of Minnijean Brown-Trickey of the Little Rock Nine, said after the talk that Margolick’s effort is important.
Trickey, a park ranger at the Central High National Historic Site, said she often meets visitors who know little of the integration crisis.
Margolick’s reporting unearths information below the surface, she said. His Vanity Fair article revealed facets of the story that were new to her, Trickey said.
“People might think the story is exhausted,” Trickey said, “But it’s really not.”
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 03/16/2010