Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock

With the goal of becoming a lawyer, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was selected as one of nine black students to integrate the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957.  On the first day of classes the eight other students were advised to arrive at school as a group escorted by local ministers, but without a telephone Elizabeth never received word about this plan.  As she stoically approached the campus by herself, she was mobbed by adult segregationists who hurled the most hateful and violent racial epithets at her.  An iconic photograph captured white student Hazel Bryan, also fifteen, spewing venom at Elizabeth.  Years later Hazel contacted Elizabeth to apologize, and for a time, the two women formed a friendship.