Books

Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock

David Margolick

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Oct 06, 2011
Category: Non Fiction

Steve Jobs (1955-2011): A few years ago, at the D Conference, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were interviewed together for first time in two decades. Afterward, I got to ask a question: If you had to choose a legacy, what would it be? Jobs replied, “I look at us as two of the luckiest guys on the planet. We found what we loved to do and we were at the right place at the right time and we’ve gotten to go to work every day with super bright people for 30 years and do what we love. It’s hard to be happier than that. You know, your family and that. What more can you ask for? And so I don’t think about legacy much. I just think about being able to get up every day and go in and hang around these great people and hopefully create something that other people will love as much as we do. If we can do that, that’s great.” He could. He did.

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The Biggest Show in Town: Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Huge but lighter than air. Heavy but joyous. Don’t miss it.

Just One Cookbook: If you could have only one, asks Amanda Hesser in the New York Times, what would you choose? She lists her old favorites: Bistro Cooking and Marcella Hazan and Julia Child. And some new ones: Heidi Swanson, among them. And then she anoints the Canal House books.

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American mass media and American politicians must surely believe we are credulous children, because they love to tell us bedtime stories.

Remember Jessica Lynch, the soldier who was captured in the Iraq war — and was then dramatically rescued? (The truth was less dramatic.)

Remember Pat Tillman, the football player killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan? (In fact, he was killed by an American bullet.)

Now consider Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan. Their names were yoked together in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when 15-year-old Elizabeth was one of nine African American students trying to integrate a high school and Hazel, a white girl standing right behind her, shrieked: "Go home, nigger! Go back to Africa!" At that exact moment, a photographer snapped their picture.

That instantly notorious photograph sent a dual message: the racism of Southern whites, the saintliness of those who stood up for equal rights and opportunities. (Two days later, President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High School.) But that photo wasn’t the end of this story — it was the beginning.

Fifty miles away, 11-year-old Bill Clinton was seeing the drama through Elizabeth Eckford’s eyes — and losing his racial prejudice. In l963, when Elizabeth was 21, a chastened and changed Hazel called her to apologize. They met. Appeared together on Oprah. Became poster girls for racial reconciliation.

Well, yes. And no.

In “Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock,” veteran journalist David Margolick gets extraordinary access to both women and, for the first time, tells a story that is almost novelistic in its complexity. It’s not about race, really. Or issues. This story is about two women who are as complex as we like to think we are — and how a split second did and didn’t define their lives. [To buy Elizabeth and Hazel” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Which woman tried to commit suicide? Who still lives in her childhood home? Who, twice, put her kids into foster care? Who sometimes slept for 16 hours a day?

Who bristled at the media coverage? Who doesn’t want to have yet another photo taken? And for these two women, the biggest question of all: who really moved on? And then a big one for us: How deep is the racial divide in this country — and in our hearts?

Someday “Elizabeth and Hazel” will be a textbook. Long before, on the civil rights bookshelf, it will be considered a classic.

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To read an excerpt, click here.