The Grace Lorch Story

The Grace Lorch Story
from The New York Times, 1957
from Choosing to Participate Study Guide

[1] When fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford reached Central High that first day, she found herself surrounded by an angry crowd. She tried to enter the building only to be turned away by soldiers armed with bayonets. Unsure of what to do and terrified by the mob, Eckford quickly headed for a bus stop even as the crowd continued to spit and scream, taunt and jeer. As she sat on a bench with tears streaming down her face, Benjamin Fine of The New York Times tried to comfort her. Then a white woman, Grace Lorch, suddenly confronted the mob. Fine reported:

"She’s scared," Mrs. Lorch said. "She’s just a little girl." She appealed to the men and women around her.

"Why don’t you calm down?" she asked. "I’m not here to fight with you. Six months from now you’ll be ashamed at what you’re doing."

"Go home, you’re just one of them," Mrs. Lorch was told.

She escorted the Negro student to the other side of the street, but the crowd followed.

"Won’t somebody please call a taxi?" she pleaded. She was met with hoot calls and jeers.

Finally, after being jostled by the crowd, she worked her way to the street corner, and the two boarded a bus.

Seven other Negro students tried to get into the school. They came together, accompanied by four white ministers. Dunbar Ogden, president of the Greater Little Rock Ministerial Association, acted as spokes man for the group.

"Sorry, we cannot admit Negro students," the officers told them. The crowd dispersed slowly. Many of the students who had waited outside the school building to see whether the Negroes would enter, started to go into school. They had said that if the Negroes went in, they would go out.