Consider CultureWatch's Four Gift Book Suggestions: Murder, Assassination, Racial Hatred and Ageism

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Margolick has written a profile of two women, Elizabeth and Hazel, who appeared in an iconic photograph taken during the desegregation attempt at Little Rock’s High School. How they have handled both friendship and distancing is a long and complex tale. In Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America author Gullette explores the causes and effects of a youth culture that makes growing old wrong in the eyes of many Americans. Assisted Dying, a mystery novel, provides a fast ride on the highways of Florida's Gold Coast and would make a terrific book group choice. Millard's Destiny of a Republic carefully lays out a sensitive, detailed account of President Garfield’s murder and is on our reviewer's highly recommended list.

Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
by David Margolick © 2011
Published by Yale University; Hardcover: 284 pp

Those of us who lived through the tumultuous days of the Civil Rights Movement will find much easily-remembered history in this book, but also much new territory to consider, written as it is from a 50-years-on perspective.

David Margolick has written a profile of two women who appeared in an iconic photograph, taken during the desegregation attempt at Little Rock’s Central High School in September of 1957. That photographer was focused on a 16-year-old black girl, Elizabeth Eckford, as she tried to get to school past the Arkansas National Guard, which had been ordered out by Governor Orville Faubus to keep Negroes out of the school. In the photograph, Elizabeth was being followed by a crowd of angry whites, most of them adults, who taunted her, shouting things like “push her!” and “drag her over to this tree.” Directly behind her, we can see a couple of white students. The one with a pretty face twisted into a snarling mask of anger, mouth open wide as she spewed racial insults, was Hazel Bryan, 15, and also a student at Central. That picture was picked up by the press, not only in America, but all over the world. What it said about the America of those days needed no translation in the foreign press. Picture taken by Will Counts

Back in 1954, following decision in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, it took just five days for the Little Rock School Board to announce its intention to comply with the decision that state laws mandating segregation of schools were illegal. It took another three years and extensive lobbying by the NAACP, however, for some brave people on the Board to decide to integrate Central High School … slowly. Nine black students were invited to enroll, based on their good school records and their teachers’ recommendations.

It is often forgotten that this attempt pre-dated the legislative mandate of 1964 by a good seven years. Those in Little Rock who took the first, tentative steps to end segregation were probably not aware of the precautions they needed to take as they began the transition. They were obviously unprepared for the inflammatory actions of Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas, who called out the Arkansas National Guard to block the black children from entrance to the school.

Faubus was end-played by the Mayor of Little Rock, who asked President Eisenhower to call in the 101st Airborne to provide safe passage for the nine black students. Eisenhower then federalized the Arkansas National Guard, so that they had to take orders from the President, not the governor. Faubus, however, continued to play legislative games, calling an Extra Session of the State Legislature to extend segregation.

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