Little Rock Girl 1957: How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration (review)

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford's family didn't have a telephone, so Elizabeth wasn't informed of the plan for bringing all nine African-American students together to Little Rock Central High School on the morning of September 4, 1957. As a result, she arrived alone, was turned away alone, was escorted through crowds of angry white protesters alone, sat at the bus stop alone, and became the lone black face in reporter Will Counts' iconic photograph featuring a petite, pretty white student whose expression is distorted by jeering as Eckford walks stoically ahead. Tougas offers background on the efforts by segregationists to block the Little Rock Nine from attending the all-white high school and then discusses how the published images of the taunting crowd influenced national opinion. Perhaps most poignant, and ultimately a bit chilling, is the story of Eckford's eventual rapprochement, organized by Counts, with Hazel Bryan Massery, the white teen in the infamous photo: "The women's friends and family members thought the relationship was odd and perhaps forced. Some people accused Massery of seeking the media attention that Eckford had spent a lifetime avoiding. . . . The friendly relationship did not last." This slim volume, heavily illustrated and supplemented with a timeline, glossary, resources lists, notes, bibliography, and index, will be particularly accessible for students who are unwilling to tackle a longer work on the topic. It can also serve as supplemental reading for Levine's The Lions of Little Rock (reviewed above).