It’s one thing to walk through a place where history was actually made, but having a tour guide who personally experienced part of it is pretty special. The Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site is the only national park with an active, fully functioning high school on site. So when you do the tour, you follow a ranger (wearing the same uniform and hat that they wear on the forest trails) through the halls of a school as scores of students stream past. It’s a little odd to say the least. The Central High students seem to take it in stride, because they’re probably used to it, but our students seemed a bit unsure about how to deal with it.
Jody Morris, born and raised in Little Rock, was our tour guide. She was a child (1st grade I think) when the schools were integrated, and she experienced the ostracism of having parents supportive of integration. Ms. Morris was able to speak with the emotion and authority of someone who lived through troubling times. I’m not sure that we could have had a better tour without having one of the Little Rock Nine there with us.
Much of what we saw is in the history books and the documentaries. On the tour you climb the same front steps in the iconic pictures of the students being escorted up the steps of the school (see above); you sit in the same cafeteria where Minnijean Brown was hazed; you can walk the same long blocks that Elizabeth Eckford did in front of the jeering crowd. The current students walking the halls, immunized to the weight of history by long experience, make it easier to identify with what it might have been.