The Battle for Our Schools... Our Children... And the Future of Our Nation

Controlling the Narrative of History

Elizabeth Eckford on her first day of school at Little Rock's Central High School, 6th September 1957. Part of our nation’s history.

I look back at my school years with great fondness, even though it was an age of struggle and fear - the Great Depression, followed by World War, and the aftermath of that epochal struggle, an emerging Cold War. We weren’t shielded from these wider events. Our poor, working class neighborhood in the then-still-medium-sized-city of Houston, Texas was hit hard by the economic devastation of the time, and it sent off many men to war who never returned. But school was an oasis for me, a place of comfort, growth, exploration, and learning. 

The public school system and the women and men - mostly women of course - who nurtured me, prodded me, challenged me, comforted me, and yes, sometimes reprimanded me, are more responsible for what I was able to become than anyone aside from my parents. In recent years I have had occasion to return to both my grade school and high school. I was filled with pride as I sat in classrooms and walked the halls. And yes, there were many moments when my eyes misted with thoughts of distant years and faces of friends long gone. 

I now also look back at that time with more clarity, from the vantage point of what I have learned, where I have gone, and how the world has changed. I now understand all that was missing from my schooling. For one, Black students. Even though Houston had in my youth a sizable Black population, the racist order of society, codified in law, separated us at schools as it did on buses, lunch counters, and the stands of the baseball stadium. Separate and far from equal. I think often of all the dreams denied by systemic injustice.