NBC Roundtable Discussion with Central High School Students
Moderated by Jorunn Ricketts, 1957
from Choosing to Participate Study Guide
In reflecting on what he learned from the crisis, the Reverend Colber Cartwright observed, "The lesson is that people themselves had to take responsibility for what they wanted their community to be. To do so. they had to talk about the issues that divided them." Many Americans in the 1950s had never spoken at length to people from other ethnic and racial groups. Sociologist David Schoem has called that kind of isolation a "human and national tragedy"—one that encourages a "heavy reliance on stereotypes, gossip, rumor, and fear" to shape one's lack of knowledge. How do people then (or now) break that isolation and learn to walk even briefly in someone else's shoes?
That was a question few people in Little Rock or elsewhere asked in the 1950s. As a result, black and white students at Central High had few opportunities to express their fears, hopes, or concerns. They received dozens of memos from school officials urging them to be "good citizens." But their teachers avoided any discussion of what it meant to be a good citizen in Little Rock in 1957. In class, teachers followed the curriculum. They avoided talking about the mob outside the building or the harassment of the "Little Rock Nine" within.
The most famous photograph taken at Central High that year showed a white student screaming at Elizabeth Eckford on the day she confronted the mob. Elizabeth Huckaby, the vice-principal at Central High, said of the photo:
No one seemed to be able to identify the girl—and small wonder. We were not used to seeing our students look like that. But by noon on Firday, I discovered she was someone I knew, and I sent for her in the afternoon. When she readily admitted she was the screaming girl I told her how distressed I was to hear it since hatred destroys the people who hate. She shrugged. Well, that was the way she felt, she said. Undeterred by her shrug, I said that I hoped I'd never see her pretty face so distorted again, that I never would have recognized the ugly face in the picture as her's. Wasted breath.A few weeks later, NBC invited students at Central High to participate in a roundtable discussion moderated by Jorunn Ricketts. It was to be aired nationally. A close friend of the girl that Elizabeth Huckaby called into her office took part in that discussion. Her name was Sammy Dean Parker. The excerpt that follows focuses on Sammy’s comments as well as those made by three other white students-Kay Bacon, Robin Woods, and Joe Fox-and two black students-Ernest Green and Minnijean Brown.
MRS RICKETS: Do you think it is possible to start working this out on a more sensible basis than violent demonstration?
SAMMY: No. I don’t because the South has always been against racial mixing and I think they will fight this thing to the end. . . . We fight for our freedom—that’s one thing. And we don’t have any freedom anymore.
ERNEST: Sammy, you say you don’t have any freedom. I wonder what you mean by it—that you don’t have any freedom? You are guaranteed your freedom in the Bill of Rights and your Constitution. You have the freedom of speech—l noticed that has been exercised a whole lot in Little Rock. The freedom of petition, the freedom of religion and the other freedoms are guaranteed to you. As far as freedom, I think that if anybody should kick about freedoms, it should be us. Because I think we have been given a pretty bad side on this thing as far as freedom.
SAMMY: Do you call those troops freedom? I don’t. And I also do not call it free when you are being escorted into the school every morning.
ERNEST: You say why did the troops come here? It is because our government—our state government—went against the federal law. Our country is set up so that we have 48 states and no one state has the ability to overrule our nation’s government. I thought that was what our country was built around. I mean, that is why we fight. We fought in World War II together—the fellows that I know died in World War II, they died in the Korean War. I mean, why should my friends go out there and die for a cause called "democracy" when I can’t exercise my rights-tell me that.
JOE: Well, Sammy, I don’t know what freedom has been taken away from you because the truth there-l know as a senior myself—the troops haven’t kept me from going to my classes or participating in any school activity. I mean, they’re there just to keep order in case—l might use the term "hot-heads"—get riled up. But I think as long as-if parents would just stay out of it and let the children of the school at Central High figure it out for themselves, I think it would be a whole lot better. I think the students are mature enough to figure it out for themselves. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll lay the whole blame of this trouble in Governor Faubus’s lap.
SAMMY: I think we knew before this ever started that someday we were going to have to integrate the schools. And I think our Governor was trying to protect all of us when he called out the National Guard-and he was trying to prepare us, I think.
ERNEST: . . . Well, I have to disagree I know a student that’s over there with us, Elizabeth [Eckford], and that young lady, she walked two blocks, I guess—as you all know—and the mob was behind her. Did the troops break up the mob?
ROBIN: And when Elizabeth had to walk down in front of the school I was there and I saw that. And may I say, I was very ashamed—l felt like crying—because she was so brave when she did that. And we just weren’t behaving ourselves—just jeering her. I think if we had had any sort of decency, we wouldn’t have acted that way. But I think if everybody would just obey the Golden Rule—do unto others as you have others do unto you—that might be the solution. How would you like to have to walk down the street with everybody yelling behind you like they yelled behind Elizabeth?
MRS. RICKETTS: Sammy, why do these children not want to go to school with Negroes?
SAMMY: Well, I think it is mostly race mixing.
MRS. RICKETTS: Race mixing? What do you mean?
SAMMY: Well, marrying each other.
MINNIJEAN: Hold your hand up. I’m brown, you are white. What’s the differences. We are all of the same thoughts. You’re thinking about your boy—he’s going to the Navy. I’m thinking about mine—he’s in the Air Force. We think about the same thing.
SAMMY: I’ll have to agree with you
MINNIJEAN: Kay, Joe and Robin—do you know anything about me, or is it just that your mother has told you about Negroes?
MRS. RICKETTS: . . . Have you ever really made an effort to find out what they’re like?
KAY: Not until today.
SAMMY: Not until today.
MRS. RICKETTS: And what do you think about it after today?
KAY: Well, you know that my parents and a lot of the other students and their parents thank the Negroes aren’t equal to us. But—l don’t know. It seems like they are, to me.
SAMMY: These people are-we’ll have to admit that.
ERNEST: I think, like we’re doing today, discussing our different views. If the people of Little Rock would get together I believe they would find out a different story-—and try to discuss the thing instead of getting out in the street and kicking people around and calling names-and that sort of thing. If people got together it would be smoothed over.
KAY: I think that if our friends had been getting in this discussion today, I think that maybe some of them—not all of them—in time, they would change their mend. But probably some of them would change their mind today.
After the roundtable discussion, life at Central High went on much as it had before. A small group of white students continued to harass the "Little Rock Nine," while the majority looked the other way. Still there were a few signs of change. Terrence Roberts, one of the "Little Rock Nine," was assigned to Robin Woods’s algebra class. Realizing he didn’t have a math book, she made "a gut-level decision" and pulled her desk over to his so they could share her book. There was "a gasp of disbelief." For the rest of the year, segregationists harassed Woods and her family.