The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine

Author:Kristin Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

After Tuesday afternoons with Liz, I started spending Friday afternoons with Betty Jean. It started when she baked me an extra-special triple-layer chocolate cake to say thank you for helping with Curtis. Then I did the ironing for her one week to say thank you for the cake, and she baked me a strawberry rhubarb pie to thank me for the ironing. After that, I said why don’t we just help each other out each Friday, and she thought that was a great idea.

Betty Jean taught me a lot, starting with the NAACP. That stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They filed lawsuits and stuff to help Negroes get more rights. They’d even been part of the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that had started this whole integration issue. I told her about the WEC and what we were doing with the election and how there weren’t any Negroes in the group.

Betty Jean nodded. “Heard about that from Mrs. Daisy Bates.”

Mrs. Bates was what Betty Jean called an activist. Her husband owned a newspaper, and she’d spent a lot of time helping the Little Rock Nine last year.

“I can’t say we’re thrilled about the ‘No Negroes’ policy, but Mrs. Bates says Mrs. Terry is a good woman.”

What I learned most from talking to Betty Jean was that things were complicated. Take starting a private high school for the Negroes, for example. The whites had done it with T. J. Raney. At first it sounded like a good idea to me, but Betty Jean said the NAACP had asked the colored community in Little Rock not to do so.

“Why not?”

“It would be doing what the segregationists wanted—setting up separate schools. Not to mention that it would be betraying the nine Negro students at Central who suffered through last year.”

“What happened to them?” I asked. “I mean, I know Ernest Green graduated and Minnijean Brown was expelled, but what about the rest of them?”

“Minnijean is still in New York,” said Betty Jean, “at the school she was invited to attend when she was expelled from Central last year. Carlotta, Melba, Thelma, Elizabeth and Jefferson are taking correspondence courses. Terrence moved to Los Angeles to live with relatives and go to school there, and Gloria went to Kansas City to do the same.

“You keep working with that WEC, Marlee,” Betty Jean said. “We want to move forward so that Curtis and your friend Liz will have the same opportunities you do. Without having to leave town.”

Yeah, I thought. That sounded pretty good to me.

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