Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Arkansas: The Lost Year with Bethanie Garcia

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

In this episode, Sharon tells the story of the Little Rock Nine to her friend and successful blogger and podcast host, Bethanie Garcia. At the end of the 1950s, following the Brown v. Board of Education decision to integrate schools, the town of Little Rock was nothing short of tumultuous, when nine black students integrated the public high school. Sharon details the complex and outrageous occurrences that happened in Little Rock during those years, including the arrival of the National Guard to block the Little Rock Nine from entering, followed by the governor’s order to close all Little Rock schools rather than integrate. Sharon takes Bethanie along a wild, heartbreaking and frustrating ride through what is now known as “the lost year” in civil rights history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are here again, and I am so glad that you are. This is an episode called The Lost Year, and it is a story that I think is gonna bowl you over. You probably will have heard of a few events that happened, but all of the other things are definitely not normally taught in history classrooms. These are the kind of things that you are going to feel like,

dang, I did not know that. And I cannot imagine that happening today. Chatting with my friend, Bethany Garcia, who runs a fascinating Instagram account called the Garcia Diaries. Let's just dive in. Let's get into the lost year. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. This is my friend, Bethany Garcia, everybody. Bethany, what do you do? I have a lot of children. We have an infield. So I have five kids. I'm a blogger and I'm located in Arizona and we share real raw motherhood and family and marriage and anything you can think of unfiltered. That's what we do. I love it. It's such a needed breath of fresh air to not just pretend that your life

is airbrushed and that your children behave themselves 100% of the time and that you always have high heels on and hard pants, you know, like who lives that way? Well, okay. I have a story that I want to tell you. This would blow your mind. The fact that this actually happened is still mind blowing. But if you think about it happening today, it's literally like, I cannot imagine this happening. All right. So you know what an executive order is.

You've probably been following me for a while. You know what that is. I want to talk today about executive order 10730. Do you have that one memorized? No, I'm not that one. Oh, 10,730. Oh, I only memorized up to 9,999. I don't know that one. Okay. Have you heard of the Supreme Court case, Brown versus Board of Education? Yes. Quick refresher for everybody who is not familiar. That was a Supreme Court case that said schools must be integrated. We cannot have separate schools for separate races. Schools must be integrated. That happened in 1954. separate races. Schools must be integrated. That happened in 1954. And as you can imagine,

there were some areas in the country that weren't jumping up and down about integrating schools in 1954, right? As one can imagine, there were several locations around the country that were like, no, that is not happening here. It's not for us. That's not, that's not what the voters want. Yeah. Right. This is a great example of how, what voters want is not always the right thing. The defining characteristic cannot be, well, the voters want it. So we have to do it. Sometimes voters want things that are immoral. Yes. So just keep that in mind. Okay. So schools then, as a result of the Supreme Court decision, schools have to create a plan to integrate. They had had all of these separate schools, especially all over the South. So the NAACP, which is, you know, an organization that fights for racial justice, filed a lawsuit saying, hmm, this is not in accordance with the Supreme Court decision that said we need

to integrate schools. What you're doing is gerrymandering attendance boundaries and making it so the schools stay segregated. They're integrated on paper only, right? So they decide that they're going to begin working for racial integration of schools. They select nine students to attend a predominantly white school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they became very famous and they were known as the Little Rock Nine. So a lot of people heard that name. You'd be like Little Rock Nine, like civil rights something.

But like, what does that mean? Yes. I'll read their names because they really were pioneers in this matter. Jefferson, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Lanier, Minnie Jean Brown, Gloria Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Patio Beals. They decide, the nine of us, we're going to stick together. We're going to go to this predominantly white school. We are going to have racial integration in our public schools. The governor who was a segregationist, his name was Orval Faubus. Orval, okay. Orval Faubus says, I don't know how this is going to go down. There could be riots. There could be violence. Let's call out the National Guard. We're just going to

preserve the peace. We're going to make sure that everything goes smoothly. He said that there was imminent danger of tumult, riot, and breach of peace. In reality, what the National Guard was there to do was block the entrances to the school and not allow the nine students to get in. Oh my God. Can you imagine using our National Guard to defy a Supreme Court decision? And block children from going to school. That's correct. Block children from attending a school that they had a legal right to attend. So one of the students, Elizabeth Eckford, she has a very, very famous picture that if you Google Little Rock Nine, you'll see this poised young woman wearing sunglasses trying to walk into the school. And she was surrounded by a crowd of around a thousand people. Oh, my gosh.

People were that mad. They were that pressed about Black students coming to their white school, that they needed to gather en masse to be able to try to block them from coming into school. And she described later in an interview, she said, the people moved closer and closer and somebody started yelling. I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd, someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face. But when I looked at her again, she spat on me. Oh my God. So old women, old women are spitting on children who are just trying to attend school. Can you imagine that happening today? I cannot imagine this happening in this day and age. Like there would be riots for the riots.

You know what I mean? That's right. So September 9th, that's when, you know, this is all going down. The Little Rock school board openly denounced the governor's decision to call out the National Guard. Like, what are you doing? So this becomes such huge national news. This was not like a little local story. This was national news. That's why all these pictures were taken of the Little Rock Nine. School integration was a very hot topic. President Eisenhower got involved. That is what big news this was. He called up the governor Orval Faubus, called him up and was like, I want you to come see me. I'm here at my vacation house in Rhode Island. I want you to come see me. And we're going to talk about this scenario because even though Eisenhower was not openly pro-civil rights, you know, he's a military man.

We had just finished World War II. He was not one of those people who was out there banging the drums for school integration. But yet he felt like what Orval Faubus was doing was being insubordinate. He didn't take kindly to that as a military person. And he was also making the United States look bad on the world stage. What are you doing? This is ridiculous. And of course, this is the Cold War. And we are very, very, very concerned about our image on the world stage. We cannot have riots around children trying to attend school. That makes us look weak. So a lot of historians would agree that that was part of Eisenhower's

motivation was we can't have this insubordination. We cannot be looking weak. So Fabas agrees, okay, fine. We will go ahead and let the students attend school. He gets back to Little Rock. He calls off the National Guard. He's like, fine, you guys just go ahead and go home then. It's fine. It's what we agreed on. But he knew that dispersing the National Guard was not going to disperse the thousand people surrounding this high school.

So he just left it up to the local police who were completely overwhelmed, completely unable to control thousands of angry people at a school. So the mayor of Little Rock then called President Eisenhower and is like, something has to happen to get this situation under control. Like people are going to get hurt. This is not working. He calls up President Eisenhower and says, could you deploy the military to allow these schools to be integrated? And so Eisenhower is now extra mad at Faubus who said, yeah, okay, I'll go ahead and do it. And then went home and didn't do it. So Eisenhower wrote an executive order, Executive Order 10730, federalizing the Arkansas National Guard, saying, y'all are no longer under control of the governor.

You are now under my control. Additionally, we're going to send the 101st Airborne Division to protect these nine students so they can attend school. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your

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Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Oh my gosh. He then had to get on national television, Eisenhower, to talk about the seriousness of this issue. This is what he said in his televised address. Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our nation. Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of the courts. If the president goes on TV to talk about one thing that's happening in the country, that shows you how serious this was, how big of a deal this was. The school itself has

been basically under attack. Like almost no school has been happening because kids can't even get there safely. So we're now to the end of September. We're now like at September 25th, at the end of 1957. And slowly over time, like the students did finally get into the school building. And then slowly over time, the 101st Airborne begins to draw down the number of troops they have surrounding the school while the Arkansas National Guard remains in place, trying to keep things at this school under control. It was not like the students got in the building and then it was all good. It wasn't like the students inside the building were nice to them. One of the Little Rock Nine Melba Beals said, the first day I was able to enter Central High School, what I felt inside was a stark, raving fear. Terrible, wrenching, awful fear. There are no words for how I felt inside. I had known no pain like that because I did not know what I had done wrong. She said, you see, when you're 15 years old and someone's going to hit you or hurt you, you want to know

what you did wrong. Although I knew the differences between black and white, I didn't know the penalties one paid for being black at that time. Oh my gosh. So the NAACP feels like these students are not being adequately protected. You know, like there's not enough going on inside the school building or even outside the school building to keep them safe. They bravely continued to attend school despite the way they were being treated, despite the way they were being villainized by the media. I mean, I don't know that a lot of students would be willing to do that today. I wouldn't want to go to school under those circumstances. There was one famous story too, where Minnie Jean Brown had been just continually taunted and harassed and she had had enough. And one day in the cafeteria, she dropped her bowl of chili

on a couple of boys who had been relentlessly taunting her. She was suspended for six days. When she returned, some boys spilled some soup on her, like in retaliation, and they only got two days of suspension. And then the following day, a group of girls took a purse that they had, filled it with combination locks, and threw this purse full of combination locks at her so just blatant racism from the school absolutely it was not like we'll silently tolerate you no the girls who threw the purse full of locks at her she was mad as one would be and she called them white trash and then minijeen was suspended for the rest of the school year and not allowed to attend school for the rest of the school year. Are you kidding? This is mind blowing and devastating.

It absolutely is. She eventually felt like I can't even stay here in Little Rock. And she went and stayed with family friends in New York city and went to school in New York city for the rest of the school year because she was that traumatized. Wow. So for the rest of the school year because she was that traumatized. Wow. So for the rest of the school year from, you know, December to May, after the 101st Airborne had left, the Arkansas National Guard remained in place. They protected the school on the outside to keep, you know, mobs from coming inside. Can you imagine the National Guard surrounding your children's school for an entire school year? No. Like that today seems ridiculous. That is how serious the issue was. For an entire school year, the National Guard had to surround the children's schools. So when school ended, the school board

was like, what are we going to do? We cannot have another school year like this. What are we going to do? So they requested a delay in integration. They said like, we cannot get the situation under control. Basically, can we do this later? And a federal judge said, yeah, you know what? You guys can do this later. You don't have to integrate until January of 1961. So two and a half years later, because of how volatile the situation was. And everyone will change in two years and it'll just be better then. Our racism will have diminished. Yeah. It'll be the 60s. It'll be fine. unfinished yeah it'll be the 60s it'll be fine so of course as a result of this ruling the NAACP sued again and appealed immediately to the supreme court and the supreme court was like listen here i don't know how much more clear we can make it school segregation is unconstitutional

and we're not going to have unconstitutional activity for two and a half more years. Integrate now. That was what the Supreme Court said. No delay till January 1961. Integrate now. So as one can imagine, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, wasn't pleased about that. He was like, well, I don't like the words coming out of your mouth. I don't like what you have to say. Here is what he decided to do. This blows my mind. This blows my mind. He said, fine, you say we have to integrate right now. I'm just going to close all the Little Rock high schools for the entire school year. Oh my God.

This guy. Can you imagine? Just the schools are closed for the year. The elementary kids, you guys haven't integrated anyway. That's fine. High schools, you're closed for the entire year, except for football. You can continue playing football. So you can continue playing football.

I mean, I can almost kind of see this happening somewhere now. Like school is closed, but you can keep playing football because, you know, that makes us look good. It makes us money, you know? Oh my gosh. Can you imagine the governor of Arizona closing all Phoenix area high schools for the entire year because he doesn't like something the Supreme Court said? And literally because they hate Black people that much.

I just, I cannot even fathom that kind of behavior. These are children, right? They decided we would prefer not to educate 3,665 high school students of all colors. We would prefer not to educate you than to allow you to attend integrated schools. That was what he was saying. That year in, you know, like civil rights history is referred to as the lost year when Little Rock high schools were closed for a year. So of course, as a result, a bunch of private schools started opening because parents were not super happy that their students, parents of all races, not super happy that their students had no education for the year. So this law, by the way, this law of no school for you this year,

he wanted it to be voted on by the voters. And so he made a referendum where voters get to vote yes or no, should we have this be a law? And voters overwhelmingly said, yes, we should close the schools. By a three to one margin, voters chose to keep schools closed. Unimaginable. There's a lot of evidence about how they chose to conduct the election where they had it on a Saturday morning. The ballots were worded in such a way that it made it easier for white parents to say yes. They didn't just have like a regular Tuesday election. It was like a special election. Everybody come vote. Here's the question.

What do you think? Three to one margin. They all voted yes. Once again, demonstrating that voters are not always right. Voters don't always want what is the morally right thing to do. As you can imagine, when you have thousands of teenagers who are now out on the streets, essentially, because they have nowhere to go during the day, hate crime increased. A lot of people were incredibly resentful that these nine students had in their view had made it. So none of us could go

to school. Like you wrecked it for everybody. Teachers were still expected to go to school though. They still had a contract. They were still expected to be there every day. For a short period of time, they experimented with like, what if we just teach lessons on TV channels? And that didn't go over well. Didn't go over well in the fifties. And still, even in 2020, 2021, a lot of parents were not pleased about students having to do distance learning. I was going to say, it sounds a little similar to pandemic learning. Like schools are closed.

Parents, you have to figure it out. And teachers are still expected to work every single day, even though there's no students. And let's teach on TV. A bunch of private schools start opening, like Catholic school, two Baptist schools opened just for white students, though. The two Baptist schools and the one Catholic school didn't admit any students of color. It was just for the white students. Black students, many of them moved in with relatives who lived in the surrounding communities, like outside the Little Rock city limits where their

schools were still open. Overall, 93% of white students at some point during the year found alternative schooling. 50% of black students found alternative schooling. So that means half of Black students, 7% of white students, were not educated for the year at all. Wow. So teachers are still required to go to school. And the school board had a secret meeting where only half of the school board was present. And they said, we only need three out of the six of us to do official business. And these were the three members of the six of us to do official business. And these were the

three members of the school board who did not believe in integration. They were segregationists and they passed a resolution saying that all of the teachers in the district needed to immediately submit paperwork. Give us a list of every organization you belong to. You're on the membership list of you pay dues to you attend meetings of we want a list. Teachers were not told what this list was for. They were looking for teachers who were members of the NAACP. They were looking for teachers who would want to integrate schools and would not support segregation. And they fired all of the teachers who belonged to the NAACP. They fired 44 teachers for their membership in that organization. There were a lot of organizations that formed, you know, like small grassroots organizations that formed to try to get schools integrated. And then organizations that formed on the other side too, that were like, keep our schools segregated. So lawsuits were

filed. And in June of 1959, schools have now been closed the entire school year. In June of 1959, courts found that the school closures were unconstitutional and you guys need to reopen. Re-open. Imagine that. Didn't see that coming. Yeah. You're not allowed to close permanently. It's, it is, it's shocking. It truly is. School reopened in August, 1959, continued to be surrounded by mobs. A woman who was a white student at the school at the time later gave an interview. Her name was Marsha Webb. This is what she said. I remember the picture in the newspaper of Elizabeth Eckford.

That's the girl I told you about with the sunglasses. With the cheering white faces behind her. And at that moment, I thought, Marcy, you were there. And you never once thought about what was going on with Elizabeth Eckford. You were glad there weren't any violent demonstrations. You were glad no one was hurt physically. But then I realized what hurt can come from words, from silence, just from being ignored. And when I think about it now, I think about it with regret. I'm sorry to say now, looking back, that what was happening didn't have more significance and that I did not

take a more active role. So the students began attending high school in August of 1959. Several of them graduated from that high school, despite going through torment the rest of their school year. Several of them went on to do amazing things like work in presidential administrations. They become college professors. You know, they've had, some of them have honorary doctorates. They were awarded congressional gold medals. Several of them have appeared on Oprah. And there was actually an Oprah episode in which seven of the Little Rock Nine came on her show and they actually spoke to white students who were there and talked about what was, what was happening at that time. And you know, that quote from her kind of just goes to show like how,

how much impact your parents and your surroundings have on you that you don't even realize what's going on. And then once you wake up, you're like, oh my gosh. And like she said, filled with regret and all you can do is change those things moving forward. She was the woman that I just quoted, Marsha Webb. She was probably doing what she was taught. Yeah. Right. You know, like she was, that was probably what she learned at home. Probably her parents taught her don't get involved. Just keep your head down. Just do your own thing. Just ignore it. To my knowledge, she wasn't one of the people who was out there, like throwing soup and locks at people, but you can see in her statement how she was like,

I ignored it and I should have done more. Isn't that a crazy story? That is mind blowing, crazy, sad, devastating. Like I felt every emotion. Think about that in terms of today, a city just shutting down their schools because they disagree and don't want school integration. Fine. We'll just be closed. I always see your posts about everyone's like, everything is imploding and the world is ending because of the election and our politics are so crazy. And it's like, oh my God, politics are so crazy. And it's like, oh my God, go look at Little Rock. I mean, they didn't like the laws that were in place. So they just said, nevermind, we're not doing this. We're not a part of this. Shut down. That's such a great point. We think it's bad today. And we're having lots

of fights about what's appropriate to teach children in school. And, you know, I do get those messages regularly. Like, is this the worst it's ever been? Well, actually can students attend school, even if it is at home because of a pandemic, is anyone being kept from school because of their race? So do we still have tons of work to do? We absolutely do. We absolutely do. But have things been worse? Also, yes.

Also, yes. Things have absolutely been worse. I just have so much admiration for those students who were willing to be photographed, have their pictures be in newspapers, have their pictures be on the nightly news, have presidents get involved

to attend a school that they weren't welcomed at. Well, that's it. Thank you so much. Everybody, where they can find you? You can find me on Instagram, at the Garcia Diaries. Well, thank you so much, Bethany. This has been fantastic.

I would love to have you back again has been fantastic. I would love to have you back again. Thank you. I'd love to be back. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon says so podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor, would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or review, or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon says so podcast.