Yes, family. It’s historically significant, we will not likely be in Little Rock again, and that’s that. Plus, I’m driving.
And, since my husband literally thought that the Little Rock Nine was a minor league baseball team, I felt that this was a must-do.
The Little Rock Nine were not a baseball team, but in fact a brave group of black boys and girls that were the first to integrate Central High School in 1957. This was met with such vehement opposition that the 101st Airborne had to be called out to escort these children to school. White parents would spit at these nine young kids and call them names and threaten and harass them, yet this small band of students stood up to all that hate and kept going to school, fighting for an equal education. I felt that this was an important part of US history for my family to know on a more personal level.
The National Park Service runs the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, and Central High School is a working high school still today. The visitor center is across the street and catty-corner from the high school, and for us, was about a 30-minute experience. Banks of TV screens showed various bits of footage and newsreels from the time of the conflict and there were also smaller, more personal listening stations as well. There were plenty of photographs and paper artifacts that visitors could look at to get still more perspective. Some of the audio was from interviews with members of the Nine, both from 1957 and more recently.
For families planning a visit, The Visitor Center’s exhibits held the attention of my 12 year-old for about 15 minutes, judging by the amount of time that passed before she began asking me if we could leave yet. It actually held the attention of my 6 year-old a little longer – mostly because there were screens with buttons to push and phones that you could lift off receivers.
After about a half-hour, we left the Visitor Center and walked over to the high school itself. I just felt it necessary to give my girls a sense of the place. They did not want to, there were certainly more fun things to in their mind – namely, a hotel pool, but I really wanted them to absorb just a little bit from actually being there. When they learn about the Little Rock Nine in school, I am hoping that they have a little more gravitas from having been to the actual site.
Fifty State Family 