Democratic Narrative, History, and Memory

The Role of Forgetting in Remembering

142 democratic narrative, history, and memory The Role of Forgetting in Remembering The Desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas Cathy J. Collins I graduated from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, twenty-five years afterErnestGreen.Ididnotknowthisuntilnearlyfifteenyearslater,whenIbecame part of the official memory-making process by serving on the Planning Committee of the Central High Museum Visitor Center and the Advisory Committee to the Little Rock Central High Anniversary Commission. Indeed, my 1983 yearbook states, on a full-page picture of Central High School, “What amazed Mr. [Harry] Reasoner [of CBS News] and the other reporters was the fact that today’s students at Central ‘know very little or nothing at all’ about the 1957 crisis.”1 Despite the fact thattherewasanever-presentmonumenttothedesegregationcrisisof CentralHigh School—Central High School itself—Little Rock spent much effort in actively not remembering the events that had transpired. It was as if forgetting equaled having moved beyond the racial strife of the past. Iona Irwin-Zarecka and Judith Miller, whose work examined the Holocaust, provideaframeworkforunderstandingLittleRock’smemory-makingprocessconcerning that event as historical amnesia and purposeful forgetting. Irwin-Zarecka establishesfourcriteriaforneutralizingmemory:blamingthevictim,seeingoneself as the victim, distancing the problem, and universalizing the problem.2 Miller explainsthatmemoryisculturallysuppressedthroughdenial ,shiftingof blame,rationalization , and relativization.3 After reviewing the historical and memory-making context in Little Rock, I will integrate Irwin-Zarecka’s and Miller’s approaches to examine the Little Rock collective memory process in terms of universalizing the problem, relativization, denial, rationalization, blaming the victim, seeing oneself as the victim, and distancing the problem. The events surrounding the desegregation of Central High School contain the elementsof agoodnovel—politicalintrigue,clandestinemeetings,violence,sex(at 142 The Role of Forgetting in Remembering 143 leasttheimaginingof it),twistsandturns.LittleRockhadthereputationof beinga progressive city regarding matters of race.4 Indeed, five days after the historic 1954 Brownv.Boardof Educationof Topekadecision,theLittleRockSchoolBoardaffirmed thatitwouldupholdtheruling.5 However,theplansthatSuperintendentVirgilBlossomenvisionedfortheprocessof desegregatingtheschoolsshiftedseveraltimesas reaction from parents and the Brown II decision injected different boundaries and requirements for fulfilling the law. By the time the Blossom Plan was enacted, only one high school was slated for minimal desegregation: Central High School.6 The prolonged maelstrom of legal activity and resistance on all sides that followed was unexpected and contributed to the community trauma that erupted. Themoreorganizedresistancetodesegregationmobilizedamongthefundamentalist clergy and in the Capitol Citizens’ Council and the Mothers’ League, a group of whitesegregationistmotherswhosechildrenattendedCentralHighSchool.7 The Arkansas Council on Human Relations worked to establish an environment open to desegregation, including training students slated to desegregate the schools to reactnonviolentlytosuchresistance.8 Theselectionof blackstudentstodesegregate Central High School began in the spring of 1957. More than 117 students initially signed up, of whom approximately 75 were selected, based on their academic and disciplinary records, to meet with Superintendent Blossom. By the time those students understood the limits of the plan—such as being banned from extracurricular activities, including band and sports—and the extent of the growing vocal resistance, only nine students—Melba Pattillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carolotta Walls LaNier, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey, and Thelma Mothershed Wair—remained committed to desegregating Central High School.9 The Labor Day weekend before the schools were to open, a petition by a member of the Mother’s League to block the desegregation of Central High School was granted by the state, then denied by a federal court. At 10:15 on the evening before schoolwastoopen,GovernorFaubusannouncedthattheArkansasNationalGuard was already present at Central High School. The first day of school started without the nine black students. At least five hundred people had gathered to protest the desegregation of the school.10 Plans for the nine black students to attend school the next day continued to shift well into the night. Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine black students, did not have a phone and did not receive word of the final arrangements . She arrived alone the next day to face an angry mob. The guards were not her protectors as she had imagined they would be; she met the hate and anger of the mob alone. The other eight black students were likewise turned away by the National Guard.11 Two and a half weeks would pass before the students—known as the Little Rock Nine—would return to Central. During this time, the crowds at Central did 144 democratic narrative, history, and memory not dissipate; nor did the legal activity.12 On Monday, September 23, the city police replaced the National Guard...