By Annette Hinkle
On September 4, 1957, a 15-year-old girl from Arkansas named Elizabeth Eckford made her way from a bus stop toward Little Rock Central High School on the first day of school. She was one of the Little Rock Nine, a select group of African-American students who were chosen that year to integrate all-white Central.
While the rest of the black students had been told to rendezvous a few blocks away and approach the school as a group, Elizabeth had not gotten the message and was forced to endure a gauntlet of white protesters alone as they spewed messages of hatred at her.
There to capture the scene for Arkansas Democrat was photographer Will Counts whose image that day would come to define the civil rights era. As Elizabeth walks stoically toward the school, she is surrounded by a mob of dour white faces — and at the center of that mob, right behind Elizabeth, is Hazel Bryan, her mouth open in an angry sneer as she hurtles an insult at the young girl.
If the photo turned out to be an important one from a historical perspective, it had an even more profound impact on the lives of the two women who are at its center. In his new book “Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock” Sag Harbor author David Margolick revisits the events of 1957 and also follows what has happened to the women since — including an apology, an unlikely friendship and eventual parting of ways.
For Margolick, the story of Hazel and Elizabeth was one that began after another failed to pan out.
“I was in Little Rock to work on the Bill Clinton and Paula Jones story for Vanity Fair,” explains Margolick. “It wasn’t a story for which I had much enthusiasm. Paula Jones obviously didn’t either, because she wouldn’t talk to me.”
So Margolick poked around Little Rock and soon discovered the Little Rock Central High School Museum Visitor Center. The museum, which is housed in an old gas station across from Central High School (now a National Historic Site), documents the Little Rock Nine and desegregation battles at the school. There, Margolick saw the 1957 photo of Elizabeth and Hazel. It was an image Margolick knew very well.
“I was strongly influenced by the civil rights movement and it was very much part of my consciousness as a kid,” says Margolick . “At some point I came across the photo, and once you do, you never forget it. It’s just engraved in the your mind.”
But it was not the famous photo that captured Margolick’s attention, but rather another, much later shot of the adult Elizabeth and Hazel together.
“They were smiling in front of Central High School and the picture had the word ‘reconciliation’ on it,” he recalls. “I was instantly curious. How could they bury the hatchet? It was more interesting than Bill and Paula.”
So Margolick went to find out. Hazel and Elizabeth were close friends at the time and frequently appeared at public events together, so they were happy to meet with him. At first, Margolick was simply looking to write a piece for Vanity Fair (which he did). But as he got to know his subjects, he realized there was far more to say.
“They were both instantly real people to me and it took off in an interesting and surprising direction and it kept going,” says Margolick of the book which became a 12 year project. Though it is now on the shelves, he notes the final chapter in the story of Hazel and Elizabeth, in many ways, has yet to be written.
“How often does a reporter come across a story where there’s been this dramatic development — reconciliation?” asks Margolick. “But it’s only part of the story and it takes another turn after that, a profound twist where they decouple and stop talking to one another.”
Margolick notes that part of the stress on the friendship came from the perceptions that have persisted since that day in 1957. Though she appears as a fashionably dressed adult in the photo, Hazel, like Elizabeth, was a 15-year-old student at the time. For that, and many other reasons, Hazel has largely continued to be viewed as an unrepentant racist beyond redemption while Elizabeth, notes Margolick, is seen as “some kind of saintly character who just suffers silently.”
In fact, Margolick learned that the truth was not so simple.
As an adult, Hazel worked tirelessly to improve the lives of African-Americans in Little Rock and Elizabeth, for all her intelligence and insight, had lived a largely solitary existence and could be prickly and abrasive with those who grew close to her. In the end, it was largely the fallibilities of their own distinct personalities, not some overarching philosophical difference, that made them part ways.
One of the big issues, notes Margolick, was the “apology.” Though in the early 1960s, just a few years after the photo was taken, Hazel apologized privately to Elizabeth for her behavior, the event was not documented by the media. Many years later as anniversaries of the Little Rock Nine began gaining attention, Hazel apologized to Elizabeth again — this time the media witnessed it, and this time, the general assumption was that Hazel did so simply to garner publicity.
For Hazel, the difficulty came in that in the eyes of the public and the media – she would always be defined by that image, no matter how much good she had done to atone for that sine in the years since.
Fearing that Margolick would side with Elizabeth in the book, she stopped talking to him and for seven years, remained silent while he continued to work exclusively with Elizabeth. Hazel also withdrew from Elizabeth, feeling she was overcritical and unwilling to accept the fact that she had truly changed.
“Hazel felt people preferred her in this ferocious pose and it was more convenient. No one wanted to think she had changed and grown,” says Margolick. “It was reassuring she had made that call [to apologize] in 1962 or 1963 – that to me was a seminal moment in the book and it changed my understanding and confidence in Hazel. Anyone who would do that when no one was looking had to be a person of incredible character and insight. She knew she had done something wrong and knew she needed to fix it.”
“I was happy about that,” he adds. “Not only does an author prefer to like the characters he’s writing about —I knew Hazel was likeable and sympathetic — but it also made her a more interesting character and the book more interesting. If she had been a unregenerate racist, there’s not much more to say about her.”
Just last week, on October 4, Margolick was in Little Rock again to speak about his book at the Clinton School on the occasion of Elizabeth’s 70th birthday (C-Span recorded the event). Though Elizabeth was in the front row (a big step for a woman who Margolick notes was once painfully shy of such attention), Hazel was not there at all. Though Margolick does speak to Hazel now (after the Vanity Fair piece ran Margolick said she realized he was fair with her — and she even phoned to see how he was faring in Sag Harbor during the recent hurricane), she and Elizabeth have not reconciled.
“I had fantasies about reconciling them,” he confides. “But I tried hard not to artificially do or stage anything. I didn’t feel it was my role. So I don’t know whether or not the story is over.”
“Someone at the event told me that when I started talking about Hazel and the bond that sill exists, Elizabeth started choking up,” he says. “I think these people still care about one another — but there’s no happy ending yet.”
David Margolick will be at Canio’s Books, 290 Main Street, Sag Harbor on Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 6 p.m. to read from “Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock.” For more information, call 725-4926.
