Carlotta Walls LaNier - A Mighty Long Way (Adapted for Young Readers): My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School

All that week, I managed to stay calm.

Through the touching speeches by politicians and civil rights leaders. Through the fancy meals at the Arkansas Governors Mansion. Through a play that told the story of the Little Rock Nine. Even when I saw the new visitors center for the high school, where the real-life drama had taken place fifty years ago.

Screens played black-and-white television footage from that daySeptember 25, 1957. But something wouldnt let me linger. I didnt want to see the fourteen-year-old black girl climbing those steps in her new, store-bought outfit. I didnt want to see her surrounded by armed military men who had been ordered by the president to guard her from the spitting, clawing white mob. I didnt want to know her fear again.

Then, on the last day of the events celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, President Bill Clinton cracked my armor. As I sat near the very steps that I had climbed five decades earlier, the former presidents words took me back. He was talking about courage, gratitude, and the responsibility that each of us has to contribute to the world, to do something more than talk, even when stepping up comes at a cost. He turned slightly away from the podium and looked sideways at us, the men and women seated behind him.

These nine people didnt just have an opinion, he said. They didnt just say, Wouldnt it be nice if someone did something to change things. These nine people and their families stepped up and said, Here am I, Lord, send me.

My lips started to quiver. Instinctively, my hands went up to cover them, as though they were a shield, as though they could keep back all the memories and pain. I thought about Mother sitting out there in the audience, still beautiful and elegant at eighty-two. And I remembered watching her soft, jet-black hair turn gray during that tumultuous and uncertain school year.

I thought about Daddy, a devoted family man and World War II veteran who didnt live long enough to see this day. And I remembered the chilling fear that crept into my soul late one night when the FBI took him away for questioning after our home was mysteriously bombed during my senior year. I thought, too, about Herbert, my childhood friend and neighbor, who was convicted by an all-white jury for the bombing and served nearly two years in a maximum-security prison for a crime that I believe wholeheartedly he did not commit. I looked to my left and right on the stage and caught glimpses of my eight comrades, my dear friends, some of whom are now grandparents. Wed come a mighty long way, and all nine of us were still here. By now, nothing could keep back the tears.

Here am I, Lord, send me.

The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered American schools to desegregate in its 1954