#OnThisDay in 1957, Elizabeth Eckford, one of nine Black students, attempted to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Unlike the other eight, she had never received the message to stay away from the school.
As she walked toward the school, a mob hurled racist slurs at her and threatened to lynch her, she said. The 15-year-old student maintained her cool, even as a white girl named Hazel Bryan began screaming at her. The torment continued after she and other Black students began to attend the school.
A 15-year-old teenager in Liverpool named Paul McCartney saw the images of what was happening in Arkansas and later wrote the song, “Blackbird.” McCartney said he wrote the song to support an imagined Black woman in her civil rights fight “to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.”
On his 2016 concert tour, he met Eckford and Thelma Mothershed Wair of the Little Rock Nine. He posted a picture with them on social media, calling them “pioneers of the civil rights movement and inspiration for Blackbird.”
Eckford told her story about her experience at Central High in her memoir, “The Worst First Day: Bullied While Desegregating Little Rock Central High.” She said she believed that racial reconciliation was possible “if we have honestly acknowledged our painful but shared past.” mississippitoday.org/2024/09/04/195…
#ElizabrthEckford #LittleRockNine #Desegregation