Safe Places SafeBlog

Remembering the Struggle for Civil Rights: Thoughts From a Birmingham Child / a Little Rock Grown Person

With Little Rock Central High within shouting distance of our office, it seems appropriate to be pensive about our collective history. Those of us who actually were children through the Civil Rights movement in this country, especially those of us who lived in the South, have both shared and individual memories of those years. Where we lived determined what specific image marked our psyche. These were images that left permanent and indelible marks. My personal mark, and my earliest one, involved dogs, bombs and firehouses, and a governor standing in front of the door of the University of Alabama.

I was a Birmingham Child, so my image is of four little girls killed in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing - an indelible mark, to be sure, for a sensitive child. The sensitive child that I was during that time grew up to be a sensitive adult, and so I have adopted another image from my city of residence.

Once a Birmingham Child, I am now a Little Rock Grown Person. One cannot live in Little Rock for almost 30 years, raising a child who was a student of Central High School, and not be marked by these names and the images their lives evoke:

Thelma Mothershed-Wair, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Jefferson Thomas, Dr. Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls Lanier, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Melba Pattillo Beals, and Minnijean Brown Trickey - The Little Rock Nine.

Between today and January 19-20 would be a good time take in a new image, and a beautiful one at that. One can do so by visiting Little Rock, where a magnificent sculpture of The Little Rock Nine reminds us how the nine children might have looked on their way into Central High. The memorial is located on the Arkansas State Capitol grounds on the north end of the building off Third Street - ironically, outside the office window of former Governor Faubus who tried to stop the students.

Every time I see these life-size cast bronze statues, I am deeply moved and grateful that I am a student of my history - all of my history, bad or good. When you stand among these statues - designed and sculpted by Little Rock artist John Deering, assisted by his artist wife Kathy - the experience will no doubt leave an imprint on you. I plan to visit the bronze Little Rock Nine this week to make a memory for myself, to mark a time in history for me. I plan to go because I want to remember that one day after we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this year, we will inaugurate Barack Obama as our President.

In case you can't join me on the grassy site where the statues stand, I share a photo by Gary Crallé posted on his blog (http://garyodyssey.blogspot.com/2007_09_23_archive.html).

Here's how Mr. Crallé described the experience of capturing this photo of Elizabeth Eckford:

I asked her to rest for a few minutes by leaning against the statue, saying she must be tired. “I was tired a long time ago”, she murmured. For a brief moment, Elizabeth’s thoughts were somewhere else. I clicked the shutter. She is a strong lady, and her fight continues as she now seeks to protect her son from discrimination.

Why all of this musing on civil rights?

Lots of reasons, I suppose, but for Safe Places SafeBlog it's mostly about what violence has done to us throughout our history. And it's also about the faces of violence we still see every single day . . . the face of inequality, prejudice, racism, hate, unequal power, the face of one person abusively controlling another.

Let's not do it anymore.

Just my thoughts for this moment in history - more later.

Kathy Findley at Safe Places SafeBlog