Read Online Freedom's Children by Ellen S. Levine - Free Book Online

steam up the room and snap wet towels at us. It was a daily ritual. You just dreaded having to go to phys. ed.
    You’d be crazy not to have fear. You kept fear in the back of your mind at all times, a fear that somebody was going to come over and physically harm you, and that nobody would come to your rescue. But we had to be nonviolent. Our nonviolence was an act of logic. We were nine students out of a couple of thousand.
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    The girls got it the most. There were six girls, three boys: Minniejean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Carlotta Walls, Ernest Green, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas. With a couple of the girls, people took their femininity as a weakness and attempted to take advantage of that. The segregationists, the Citizens Council, were trying to figure which one of us they could break.
    Then they really took after Minnie. The incident with Minnie and the chili happened in the student line in the cafeteria. This was right before Christmas. We were all looking forward to the holidays because this was tough duty. We just wanted to get a break.
    A small band of students had really raised the level of harassment with Minnie. I’ll never forget this kid. He was like a small dog snapping at Minnie with a steady stream of verbal abuse. He had figured out how many ways he could say “nigger.” This kid just touched Minnie’s last nerve. He was in front of her on the cafeteria line. I was behind her and I could see it coming. Before I could say “Minnie, don’t do it. Forget him...” she had taken her bowl of chili and dumped it on his head. The chili just rolled down his face.
    The cafeteria help in Central was black. They all broke into applause. The school board used the incident to suspend Minnie [but not the ones who harassed her], and then finally to expel her. And so coming back from Christmas, we were eight students. It was southern justice. They did what you’d expect them to do. In school, some students passed out little cards: “One down, eight to go.”
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    Initially there were some white kids who attempted to be friendly with us, but they were pressured. The roughest period was after we came back for the second semester and the troops were withdrawn. The more avid racists really turned up the heat on other whites. If any of them were seen talking to us, they would get phone calls. They were called “nigger lover.”
    I remember doing a couple of radio programs with white kids interested in presenting a different point of view. Right after they appeared on the show, they received a great deal of hate mail and calls and pressure. I appreciated them trying to step forward, but we didn’t have any sustained social relationship with them.
    After the Christmas break, there was a great deal of pressure by the school authorities and business community to “normalize” conditions inside the school. There were still troops outside the school, but not in the halls and corridors. Well, of course, as the troops were withdrawn, the hostility increased. While the school authorities always talked about “normalizing” conditions, that year they just were never going to be normal.
    I decided after the segregationists started coming back that I was going to make it through that year. Short of being shot, I could outlast anything they could give. I think it was a combination of the family support at home and the relationship that grew between the nine of us.
    We each had different strengths and helped each other. I was probably the most stoic. As Terrence said, I only had to do it for one year. But I also thought that victory really was within our grasp. I thought we were probably driving them crazier than they were driving us. This really was a war of nerves, endurance. If we kept all that in front of us, we could win. Our personalities tended to complement each other. We were nine different people, nine