The large Roberts Family were seventhday adventists and very religious. His father attend meetings all summer. Discussing immigration but remained ambivalent about his sons attending central until his governors actions made a matter of principle. If theyed parents pressured some of to attend central. Responded nobody urged me to go. The school board asked about wanted to go, i thought if i got in, some of the other children would be able to go and have more opportunities. 27 27,er the 25th, Terry Roberts, the other eight members of the little rock nine in the world will return to little rock to remember commemorate the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of little rock Central High School. I had the privilege of helping coordinate the 40th ceremony in 1997. Among the many things associated with that commemoration, i accompanied Terry Roberts when he saw central tigers played basketball for the first time. Was at central, the African American not only could not play sports, but they could not even attend the games. As many in this room are ready no, Central High School is a special place to our family. All of our children graduated there and i have spent many years questioning why at a school in little rock, arkansas did america face its most challenging constitutional crisis since the civil war. Powerful,ok is a compelling, and at times heartbreaking story of what did happen and most importantly, why it happened. To me, the most revealing part of her book is on page 228, when she writes the lengthening chronicle of harassment of the nine lead New York Times reporter Gertrude Samuels to suggest the mob had moved inside the school. The book takes us inside Central High School in a way no one had ever done before. When you read this very well researched and documented account, you will witness the depth of the abuse and how some in authority actually tolerated. It does not rich, shy away from controversy. The challenges conventional wisdom, it makes some people uncomfortable. It causes people to think, to react and engage in this muchneeded and continuing dialogue. Were still many people who get to come to grips with the story and dont yet understand it. Betsy grew up in little rock, graduated from the university of arkansas, earned her phd in history at the university of north carolina. She lives in newport where her husband is an attorney and where they have raised their family. She has taught at the university of florida and at lyon college, where she and i now serve together on the board of trustees. Rutherford, a past president of the Little Rock School board and now dean of the university of Arkansas Clinton School of public service. Ladies and gentlemen, the author of turn away thy son,. [applause] betsy thank you for that wonderful introduction. I want to think Patrick Kennedy and nick for all of their work to make this happen. I want to thank the students were inviting me to be a tonight and i want to thank all of my dear friends that are sitting in the audience to hear to share with me this exciting story. I want to share my findings with. He world this is been like my third child. Ive nurtured this for 30 years and ive been very paranoid about having other people steal my thunder, so i havent talked about it and now my baby is out there in the world for everyone to appraise. Its a little scary. Standardow the textbook treatment of what happened in little rock in 1957. A thumbnail sketch in every High School Ted textbook is that the opportunistic governor of arkansas battled orville fathers, cap the for his own advantage, for his own political gain. If it not been for him supporting his story, the schools would have been integrated without difficulty and little rock was certainly prepared and that should of all gone off without a hitch. Thats been my experience few people in little rock are or elsewhere know anything much beyond that story. That little thumbnail sketch. There is very little depth of understanding of what happened here and once i began to probe and ask questions, i began to realize that everyone was kind of embarrassed area they somehow thought everyone else knew more. What i have found is that the real story of what happened in little rock was consciously suppressed at the time. The story was distorted consciously and thats why we dont know what happened here because it was a conscious effort on the number of people to keep the truth. One of the distorted ors desk distorters was Harry Ashmore. Gazette one prizes for its coverage. Harry was one of the creators courageous figures who stood up. How liberal can i possibly say that. The other source of distortion in little rock was the fbi. Fbieptember of 1957, the was sent in to little rock to investigate what was happening. Harry ashmore had the people in the Justice Department what he was telling everybody, this was a manufactured crisis. The editorial you wrote was i really believe, although i dont write this because i dont have support, but i think they wanted to arrest orville. They were trying to catch him in these lies when the fbi came in and did 500 interviews between september 4 and september 14. 87 of those interviews talk about rumors of violence or threats of violence that the interviewee had heard about. Because the interviews did not reveal what the fbi was hoping to find, that report was never released. It was suppressed. Sat on the judges bench during one of the key trials and there had been a lot of media hype with that. That fbi report was going to prove. He never alluded to the report. I think its because he knew that if he did use it, he would have to make it available to the lawyers on the other side. That report was suppressed. Thank you goodness tony friar used the freedom of information act to get it. Just one year before the 25 year statute of limitations would have caused it to be lost. We have it. Who studiesanyone the constitution to go out to uli are and look at it. It is huge and ill keep and poorly organized. It is really inaccessible and i think thats on purpose because the fbi didnt want people reading it. You have to read it all the way through. To really understand it make sense out of it. Got my juicy i stuff. I also want to suggest and i do in my book that not only is the ry that has the story been i want to tell you why the standard mythology is wrong. I want to back up for a minute and tell you where i came from in all this. As i say in the book, i was 13 when the crisis broke, i was totally mindless. We lived up in the heights in a culture that encouraged little said to be cute and my dad frequently little girls arent supposed to think about unhappy things. So i didnt. Know anybody in Central High School. We didnt have a television, i didnt see those images and somehow that whole thing just went by me. I knew was happening but i had no idea what the issues were. What is even more astonishing to me now as i look back on it, my family was closely related to several of the major players. And yete in and outs none of this was ever discussed. Conspiratorial about that. I think the idea was that the little girls and the women werent supposed to think about those things. Finally went to graduate school and came into the real world and only went because my dad made me go, at that point i was a good girl. I always was. He forced me to go, insisted that i go and i went. On thevered to my horror reconstruction, all of the time kinds of things that white people had done to black people in the south. That i had never heard of. That i did know anything about. At first i was unbelieving. This cant be true. Me, it began to dawn on lived through one of the major , thes of American History little rock crisis, and i never asked any questions about it. And i know all of these people. I wonder if maybe i could go home and write about this. Went home and told my dad i would like just write about the little rock crisis. He said no youre not. He was still practicing law. Thank goodness i found another topic that was great and im making is much too long, but the bottom line is when i finally did come around to studying the crisis, i knew little about it. Almost nothing. Largely for the same reason that most people dont know much about it, there was not much out there that was really useful. I had been working under George Kendall at chapel hill and i learned to be a historian with my district station with my dissertation. That was much easier. Had stressed that the way to write history is not to go out and read what everyone else has read about the topic and you dont do that because if you do that, you are simply going to adopt their point of view, youre going to adopt their conclusions and ask their questions. He said what you do is you go read in the primary sources, you go and you read peoples papers, you read their diaries. You read the public documents. Thats messy. It takes a lot of time. You really dont know much about them, you dont know about what he was involved in. You start reading his mail. It is getting interesting, but you dont know what you are collecting. Youve a general idea of where you want to go with this or you start taking notes and questions begin to come into your mind about the material you are gathering. Sure enough, you begin to form your on ideas and conclusions about whats happening here. 1976 going all the way around the country reading other peoples mail and i had a wonderful time doing it. I guess 10 years ago that i started reading the secondary literature. Everybody knew i was writing about the little rock kleist debt crisis and i was terrified someone would pin me down about soandso said such and such and i didnt want to give this speech about why dont read the material. By the time i got to all the secondary material, i renew. It was a much better strategy. Kendall, he had a death in his 10 commandments for the muse, number nine is now shall not past judgment on mankind or any manner woman for anything. You may seek the reason for error but neither the excuse nor the blame. Vengeance is mines a is the saith then just is mine, sayeth the news. I wanted to form my own conclusions and i was not in the business of passing judgment. Some people have criticized me for not being harder on the segregationists or not being not praising the good guys and damning the bad guys, i dont think thats what my job is. My job is to gather the material in a full, balanced and fair way. It is up to you as an intelligence intelligent reader to draw your conclusions. Let me tell you what did happen here. The story is very complicated and it can be confusing, so pay attention. [laughter] betsy this is, im going to try to compress in to 10 minutes what it has taken me 30 years to sort out. So lets have a romp through this stuff. All right. You know the brown decision was handed down in 1954 that said separate and equal didnt work. You had to have integration. But the brown decision did not say integrate immediately. They said were going to send this material back to the local, to the states, and were going to let them submit arguments about how we should go about integrating. So virgil blossom was new superintendent of schools in little rock. He had just integrated in fayetteville. They only had six black kids up there, so he thought piece of cake. I can go to little rock, show them how to do it. He was a school man who was on top of the decisions that were coming down through the supreme court, through the court system, and he knew intergration was coming. The very week the brown decision was handed down, blossom called together his school board and he told them, we are going to have to do this. We are going to have to integrate, so we might as well just step out front and do it voluntarily. He had some strong segregationists on that school board who didnt run the next time. And they had some concerns about it, but strongwilled man, he persuaded those people that they needed to issue a Public Statement in may of 1954 that they were going to comply. So they did. Blossom went all over. First of all, he had meetings with all kinds of public groups trying to sell the idea and gather information for how they should proceed in little rock. His first thought was that they should integrate at the first grade, but he immediately found that the parents were most concerned about letting little bitty kids integrate when they hadnt already formed their racist views. They wanted to maintain racial purity, this separation of the races, so they persuaded blossom that he should start at the High School Level where these views had already been formed. So he, blossom, gives about 200 speeches around the community, and he thinks he has prepared the community. All the signs are that the community is willing to accept integration. In the summer of 1956, segregationist firebrand jim johnson ran against orval faubus. Johnsons whole campaign was about maintaining segregation. Faubus was a populist, a progressive, a liberal, his father was an old mountain socialist, his made dl name was middle name was eugene, he was named for eugene v debs, socialist candidate for president way back. Faubus had no history of racism, didnt even see black people until he was 23 years old. But he was a politician, could see which way the wind was blowing. The stronger jim johnson talked, his racist line, the more faubus got pushed to the right. By the end of the campaign, faubus heard himself saying, to his own horror, no School System will be forced to integrate against its will as long as im governor. There he made the promise. In the fall, although jim johnson was soundly defeated, only carried 7 counties out of 75, and that seemed to be to everybody just a clear endorsement of integration, that this was going to proceed, still johnson had a very strong following, and he got an amendment to the constitution, to the arkansas constitution on the ballot in november of 1957 1956, in which he said, i mean he said it was so strong it knee high. E what the amendment said it was , called the interposition amendment, it said that the governor should have the power to interpose the power of the state between the citizen and the power of the federal government. And that in case, in the case, in the event that integration was demanded, the governor could actually resist. Now, this was only going to work if johnson was governor, because he would have resisted, but this won by huge margins in the election in november. And faubus took note that that is what the people want. The people do want to resist integration. In the winter of 1957, the legislature was in session, and four laws got passed by the legislature that called for ways to preserve segregation. Faubus knew the laws were not going to stand up. He knew that federal lawsuit precedes state law, but he was a politician, and he knew that since those laws are on the book, and since he as governor is sworn to uphold the laws of the state of arkansas, he has to have a court test of those laws and have them declared unconstitutional before he can say to the people, you know, i did everything i could, but i cant defy the law. As long as those laws are on the books and theyre untested, hes in trouble. So faubus knew this whole integration issue was dangerous, didnt want to have figure to do have anything to do with it. So when blossom begins to panic in the summer of 1957, when the capital citizens council, the strong segregationist group really starts a Huge Campaign in the summer of 1957, and starts badgering faubus in the news, the school board panics, and especially virgil blossom panics. They knew each a long time, worked in education together in northwest arkansas. Blossom starts going to see faubus every day, calls him six times. Faubus says he badgered him, shadowed me, became a nuisance because he was always there saying what are you going do . Are you going to help us if there are difficulties, if there is violence in the fall . Will you call out the National Guard to enforce integration . Faubus says no, im going to im not going to enforce integration. This is your plan, virgil, this isnt my plan. I dont want to have anything to do with it. My view has always been hands off. My view has always been if a Community Wants to integrate, thats fine, they can integrate, im not going to stop it. But if they dont want to integrate, i just said in the election last summer, no city will be forced to integrate against its will. So many things happened through the summer to increase blossoms panic. He takes a bullet through his kitchen. He takes a bullet through his car door. His wife picks up the phone and her life is threatened. He is threatened daily on the telephone that his daughters will be killed. That his house will be bombed. Any one of us would panic. And he was a big guy who was used to pushing and getting his way, and he thought if he just pushed orval faubus hard enough he could make that man yield to him. Well, in all these exchanges between faubus and blossom during the summer, blossom began to develop an understanding of faubus position and why he didnt want to be involved, why it would be political suicide for faubus to get involved. And he realized that what what faubus needed was a delay so that these, so a court test could be launched to test these four arkansas laws. So they start scratching each others back trying to figure out how we can make this work. Enter at this point, wayne upton. He lived across street. He was a lawyer who went to ft. Smith to meet with john miller and pulled him aside and said if a case is brought adam not saying there will be, but if, a case is brought to your court in which a case has been successfully tried in a state court, granting an injunction against the school board for integration in little rock this fall, would you uphold that injunction . And john miller, completely unethically, says, yes, i would. And in fact discusses with him how this case might be drawn. So upton comes back to little rock, tells blossom this. Blossom says oh, my gosh, this is wonderful. I mean i had no idea. Blossom and upton go out to see faubus, tell him about this, and they all kind of get in this together. Faubusssom persuades about on the plaintiff for the case. I told you this was confusion. It is. This is very complicated, and you really have to sort it out. But what we have going on here in a nutshell is that the school board or part of the school board is now engaging in a plan to sabotage its own plan of integration. For all kinds of reasons that i talk about in the book, they didnt want to just come out in the open and say, were afraid of violence, and we therefore want to go to the federal judge and ask for a delay. But that is in essence what was going on. They were terrified of violence. They talked about it all the time. They told faubus about it all the time. They called bill smith over to blossoms house. Bill smith was faubus lawyer, showed him a drawer full of knives taken away from students in the lockers, and this was all in preparation in case integration happened. So everybody is getting panicky here. I said 10 minutes, and i think i might be already over that. They do get a case worked up. Murray reid was chance sorry, judge, a faubus appointee. They come up with a plaintiff to file a suit for an injunction in state court to sue the school board and get an injunction against them to stop integration. This goes before murray reid. Blossom goes out to the mansion the night before and says please, orval, testify. Orval has been subpoenaed, but at this time a governor doesnt have to respond to a subpoena. So orval thinks hes doing virgil a favor, and he thinks hes doing the school board a favor, so he says ok, i will testify. The next day he comes in to court, a little late, seats himself over on the side and virgil blossom is giving his testimony. And the lawyer for the school board, archie house says mr. Blossom, are you concerned about violence in little rock in the fall, in september . And blossom, who has been out to the mansion every single night, telling faubus about all these rumors and dangers of violence, says, i never gave it a thought. And orval faubus is sitting there saying, what . You know, this is a change in strategy. Just havent told me about this. They will explain this to me. Gets on the stand and tells about all his concerns about violence. Sure enough the judge issued the injunction because the governor says there is such a danger of violence. At that point, archie house is prepared for this contingency from thelks straight courthouse over to the federal building, he goes into the federal judge, who you remember was mostly john miller and was supposed to uphold this injunction. Heardn as john miller that murray reid had handed down this injunction, he recused himself. So we all of a sudden have a new judge in the courthouse, judge Ronald Davies who had been in town for three days. Dakota. Rom north he didnt have black people in his constituency. You never thought much about the problems of integration. He was nervous about the whole situation. This was one of his first assignments and he drew a big one. Some people have said why would judge miller recuse . There are a lot of explanations. I think its interesting that was on friday and on sunday was announced that senator mcclellan had introduced a bill that would expand the eighth Circuit Court of appeals and add another judge and the lawyer they were suggesting should be added was john miller. So he knew he didnt want to hurt his chances of that. Orval goes into a panic. He is now twisting in the wind. Been betrayed by virgil blossom and by the Little Rock School board. He feels is been betrayed by the federal judge because he has also had a fishing trip with john miller is the same commitment. He has called the Justice Department three times asking for help and finally they have sent Arthur Caldwell down here, who was in arkansas native to talk to him. Caldwell was totally unsympathetic and told him there was nothing the government could do. There is a long story behind that. Out tos his state police do investigations over the weekend and find out just how much danger of violence there is. At the same time, the segregationist led by jim johnson mount a Telephone Campaign and badger him all weekend with threats of violence. They tell him that caravans are headed to little rock with armed men and all kinds of stuff, most of which was not true. From his investigation and from rumors he was hearing, bill smith came in and told bill smith he lived a good life, that and he felt so strongly that integration was wrong that if it proceeded the as planned, he planned to take his son to Central High School and kill as many of those black kids is a good before they got him. Story faubus was hearing over the weekend. On sunday afternoon, bill smith came into his office and he said ive decided to use the National Guard. Ive decided im going to stop integration and i wanted to prepare orders. Bill smith try to talk about it and say this is a bad decision. You need to wait until there is some violence of their before you make take action like this. He said you are canceling the course of a moral weakling. Just think how i would feel if years down the road, and mother came and sat across the desk and said you said you were worried ,bout the danger of violence was that really a concern of theirs . I would have to say yes and she said if you hadnt acted, my child would if you would acted, to prevent that violence, would still be alive. Hes as i can live with that. Im not going to pursue that course. Some in the group and certainly beyond that have said you cant believe him. That is something he manufactured, that kind of excuse. But bill smith also tell that same story in his interview with the Eisenhower Administration project and ive felt like it was probably dealing with an element of truth. So he called out the National Guard, surrounded Central High School, the guard had no written orders on my first day. The first day they were not order to keep the black children out of Central High School. They were reported to keep the peace. Was smartly faubus enough to not put something in writing that would get them in trouble, that would be open defiance of the federal government. Thatd not issued an order integration should not proceed, just that the piece should be maintained. Stanceht, he change that and he did issue written orders to the guard. My thinking about it is that faubus was hoping after all this situation of getting backed into a corner, he was hoping that he would take this stance of defiance by calling out the wouldand that eisenhower immediately federalize the guard. Thats probably what eisenhower should have done. If eisenhower had signaled simply federalize the guard, obviously there would be problems with whether or not those arkansas boys wouldve obeyed, but i think eisenhower made a tremendous strategic ditches and when he sent the army in here. Conjured up visions of reconstruction. It was far find two people to have troops in an American City and around an American School and that action hardened the segregationist sentiment so much that it became a tremendous political liability for eisenhower. Been much would have wiser to simply federalize the guard. That wouldve let faubus off the hook. They wouldve had to be above i thinks of plans, but it certainly wouldve been a much better solution. Im already over. Let me say two things. Harry ashmore, why am i saying he was a part of the problem when obviously he was so much a part of the solution . He adjust written his Maggie Malone press, hed written the book hed wanted to write for years. Month of june, 1957, he sat in his office and put the finishing touches on a book he called an epitaph for dixie in isch he argued that change inevitable in the south, we have all these forces working for. Hange industrialization, mechanization of agriculture, urban invasion, movement of black population out of the rural south, all of this is going to lead to integration. Its going to lead to a change in the southern culture and its inevitable this is going to happen. We are not going to have violence in the south because the souths businessmen arent going to allow it. The businessmen know the hope for the south is to attract northern industry down here and they know if they have problems in the streets, rioting, that they wont be able to attract the industry. Ashmore wrote the book and send it off to the press, eight of the months vacation and when he came back to little rock, his city editor was out because his wife was dying and she died. In august, Harry Ashmore had responsibilities to the news. Not tuned simply was in. He had been out of the states the year before working for adlai stevenson. He admits that whole Summer Campaign between jim johnson and fathers. Faubus. His ego was on the line at that point, he just written this book that made what would become a false claim. That,uriated him faubus who had been ashmore possible way up to that point now wouldnt follow his lead and do what he told them to do. Had a deep love for the Democratic Party and described it somewhere as his own true love. He really believe that what faubus was about was a thirdparty vote like the ats in 1948. Aat faubus would lead movement that only hurt the democrats. Ashmore was trying to strongarm him by writing editorials. When he knew some of the inside story about some of these maneuvers with the federal judge. He knew about the school board going wobbly. Badgerill was trying to faubus. If you dealt with them what they like her hand, the story couldve ended up very differently. That is one of the reasons i give him a hard time. The result of this is that the story has been repressed. I was at the 40th anniversary, is on a committee to plan all the events at Central High School and i thought naively thinking im a historian, while information. There were so many agendas around that table, i cannot believe it. Everybody wanted to make sure they had something and was cast in a good light and of the story got told the way they wanted to be told. Ofhink the agenda of a lot people in little rock has been its a lot easier to put all the muck blame for the little rock crisis on one evil man. And thererval faubus we can say we wouldve done it , littlehis intervention rock was prepared and moving ahead. Thats a lot easier to do than to examine a racist culture and to assume responsibility for the changes that had to be made in peoples hearts before we can approach anything resembling equity in our society. [applause] i told you the book was rich and that she did not shy away. We have cspans book tv filming this and we will open for questioning. , to letou ask questions the microphone come to you. Dont ask a question until you get the microphone. Around where everybody is. Youve got one, bob . There is a question right over here. With all the research youve done in the past in bringing out what happened and living here how are wer today compared to then . In some ways we are better. Largely a thing because many bought white people have examined their conscience in their hearts and decided the suppression we lived under wouldnt do. On the other hand, ive not sure weve come all that far. Resegregating, we have white flight in this community. We have major problems in some of our School Systems. Thatnk that the source of is that continues to infect the hearts of many white people. My question is that you selected the subject of your book, it has a biblical reference. Could you explain that is question number one, how did that and the proverbs. The second one is that now we going through another have we learned anything from when we were trying to understand africanamericans and european americans in arkansas . You ask such easy questions. The title of my book is drawn from deuteronomy seven, which is a biblical injunction. They are talking about racial difference religious differences, my editor thought we could use a little literary license and talk about racial differences. The reason i wanted to highlight that is because i was astonished as i conducted my research at every stage of the process, what i found over and over again are articulated fears of what they call race mixing. Southerners black and white have always been so mannerly that we dont talk about sexual concerns openly for the most part. In the heat of the civil rights movement, these sexual concerns rose to the level of verbal discourse and in speeches and adds in the newspaper, in letters, it is clearly articulated that what integration will lead to is intermarriage. The irony here, white men had always had access to black women. For 300 years. What the segregationists were really talking about was the danger of giving black men access to white women. That that was going to lead to the destruction of white civilization. And white culture. This certainly is not new to me. You study southern history you will find at almost every p , what is atisode the heart of discussions with Race Relations is the sexual element and i was sensitized to that in my graduate study. I was surprised when i began to read materials about little rock and found it so clearly spelled out. Lets get the microphone back here. My name is meredith ross. I had a very different perspective than you are sharing. People likefear was the ku klux klan. I couldnt understand why people could be so unaware, so of other people. It just seemed very hard to me. We had Daniel Schorr in our house. As a nine year old i was back in the hallway listening to him interviewing people in our living room and i was a little and yet theite discussion was very open in our home and among friends that i had. , we all hadthis different experiences. The signs that said white people and black people for the bathrooms were horrifying to me as a child and that was the heart that i experienced and that my family talked about. We looked at other examples in history of discrimination. Both of your parents were very involved on the side of Racial Justice from the start. I think he needs to be said the you are jewish and that gave you a different perspective. It hadht recently, it just been 10 years as the holocaust at that time and it had to be terrifying to see these kinds of attitudes being expressed towards black people. That is absolutely right and in response, i guess i feel that whether its hispanic or whatever, it seems very hard for me to keep thinking why is it so hard to get it . Im just sharing this background gave me some insight or perspective that was different, but it just seems like i was one of the hardest things to comprehend. Talk into the microphone. Did you find any reason to had done thisbus because he was getting ready to run for a third term . He had been considered a liberal as we all know, but all of a sudden he was interested in. Unning for a third term with the eastern arkansas people who are much more concerned about this than southwest arkansas or northwestern arkansas. Did you find any evidence of the fact that it might have just been a political maneuver and got out of hand . Sure. Had talked about the possibilities of running for a third term and there had been political cartoons in the paper in the summer laying that out. Others that hed thought a lot about it. He really wasnt sure he wanted to run for a third time. When he really wanted was the fulbright seat in the senate. Fulbright wasnt good to be up until 62 and so he was trying to figure out how to fill that gap and he was considering a whole bunch of things. Lots of people argue on this, but i think i satisfied myself that he didnt really settle on running for a third term until after the little rock crisis, when he saw jim johnson and said ive decided im going to run. Jim had thought he would be the heir apparent. When i read this book, when i finish the book i in about 34 questions. School,t on inside the the mob inside the school was really worse than the story has been told. There are some who say the white kids at central in 1957 were heroes because they didnt do anything, they didnt shovel or push, they didnt hit and in fact somewhat say we didnt even know this was going on. Your story says things were happening that either the principal didnt discipline fairly. Were the white kids you did nothing were heroes . You are really putting me on the spot. Not destined i think you have to keep in mind it is back to that business of the culture we were living in and where little girls were not supposed to think that kind of thing. Rememberd for us to the kids who were much more under control then than they are now and more responsible to their parents wishes and i know my parents made it very clear not about the little rock crisis, but all kinds of things that i was not to get into any trouble or call attention to myself and that i was to be a good girl and ive heard from lots of white kids at central that they were told to stay out of everything. Early on, some of the white kids did try to befriend the blacks and they began to be badgered by these bugs. And they backed off. Very true, central is a big school and things can happen in corners and under stair wells dont get seen. I think most of the harassment of the nine happened in gym class. It and is did see think a lot more people saw things and talked about it at home then we have known about. I have to say that this was a part of the strategy of the school board. To be governor. That successfully integrating the high schools in little rock would make that happen. He just was not going to give up on that idea and that hope. He made it real clear to his atff and to the school board central, they were not to talk about what happened inside at school. Would bemoan the fact he didnt make any of this public. When ashmore and his reporters did know some of what was going on inside which was just around us and it was daily. I do know how those kids turned out to be normal, lovely human beings and they all are. A part of the reason it hasnt been talked about and no one knew about it was blossom suppressed it. The next question here. You have spoken about the historical and cultural circumstances in which this took place. Certainly it can be brought to little rock in the south. Wasnt there a larger, cultural setting in the United States which certainly contributed to the dynamics of what happened and continues today . We talk about segregated schools in little rock, we have segregated schools in new york, chicago, isnt that an important thing . Im interested to hear you say that with a northern accent, but its true that this is not a southern problem. Stems from the racism in the heart of white americans. Who has not asked a question . I am two questions. As a historian, you described how you were raised and where you were raised in the height. To becomeult is it objective, read the primary sources, even though as you ignorant. You were it is hard for me to believe you didnt hear from friends, segregationist views, whatever, or opinions of this civic leader versus that. That an historian, is issue, do you have to fight it consciously . My second question, you talked about im curious if you would share how that group has responded. What group . The ones in which you were raised. The girls who were seen and not heard and you didnt know all of this is going on. , two goodst question questions. The first question raises the issue every historian has to be aware of, objectivity. Is there such a thing . Arent we all prejudice and bias . Dont we all have a run preconceptions . There are difficulties to being an outsider. Youre not sensitized to certain things and certainly difficulties with being an insider. You have preconceived notions of who are the people to listen to and who are the important people. That is the main reason i chose oved the story forward chronologically but it is chapter ive try to look through the eyes of a different after. And that my hope was that i would distance myself somewhat from the narrative by letting each major participant that i chose, and i chose them based on the sources available to me, way, if i gave it a good faith effort to present each person fairly, to present each person in terms they would endorse, then, i would overcome my own. Thats just my personal bias about how the world works. I really dont believe in heroes and villains. I dont know any. Im sure there are psychopaths out there. I dont think i know any. Areiew is that all of us frail, flawed human beings doing the best we can. And i think that is what was tru e in little rock in 1957. The reaction of my friends has been total amazement. You know, well, i never understood this. And yes, you are right. We were, were we we were in a bubble. Now i see why i did not understand this. It is just out of mind. In six months, i may have bricks thrown at me, but so far it has been a positive we will protect you. Were used to getting bricks around here. Any other questions . Who has not asked a question . Was taken aback by your research and that the national federalized. Shocked by that, really, a because i was in that unit after that time period. It was totally white and totally i will not say totally racist, but lots of n jokes. I i cannot believe that group would have protected those black students. Like the army units eisenhower brought in. Im sure they would not have. You said it was a big mistake. I am going to look at it in a circumspect way and im concerned that position that you came up with after all this study worries me. Elizabeth i do not assume that position in the book. I do not argue either way in the book. What i was arguing about the 101st is that the use of the army was so polarizing, maybe im naive about the ability of those troops to overcome their prejudice and function as they were ordered to do, do you think they would not have . I know they would not have. Elizabeth eisenhower did not ask me. Hold on, you already asked a question. We have one right here, betsy is going to be signing books. Someone told me that there was a high school in little rock that at the same time as the Central High School was integrated quietly. Did you find that to be true or just a fable . Elizabeth Charleston High School was integrated and fayetteville. It was so quiet i never heard about it. I think im going to have to take a different view than the gentleman that just spoke. I was an intern at this time at the medical school and as you know the Medical College was integrated in 1948 and it was the first school in the south do that. In 1956 a new University Hospital was completely integrated, patients, staff, i was federalized by president eisenhower in a medical unit and we had no problems whatsoever about obeying the commanders and carrying out our duty. We lived in very different worlds and i lived in a world in 1956 that in my microcosm was integrated, and there were no problems. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all so much for coming. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. To join the conversation like us on facebook. Chester arthur pretty consistently ranks among the lesserknown president s. The only thing that most people remember about him is his very distinct a facial hair, his mutton chop sideburns. Tonight, journalist Scott Greenberger on his book the unexpected president , about the life and political career of chester arthur. He recognized he was not qualified for the job. The ticket by accident. Never imagined he would be president of the United States. Then, all of a sudden, he is on the threshold of office. Tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Sunday at 10 a. M. Eastern, former president bill clinton delivers the keynote address at a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the integration of little rock Central High School in arkansas. Also participating in the event, in the school auditorium, are 8 of the little rock nine, the first africanamerican students to attend the school in 1957. Here is a preview. Ansident clinton we face emotional question, question of the heart and a question of the mind today. Do you really believe in the legacy of the little rock nine . Are you really grateful . If youre a parent or a grandparent, cant you imagine how their parents felt, the first day they set out . The lasting memory i have of the believe it or not, is not that i was president. I was glad that the most important thing i had to do was to hold the door open. Thehat the world could see reality of what its symbolic message was because i was afraid i could not give a talk, because hillary and i had just taken chelsea to college. We literally had to be run out of the room, the dorm room. She was our only child. And i realize that when i got here, if their parents let them come here, terrified. Because of the promise that it offered. That i had just taken for granted. You can watch the entire ceremony with president clinton and the little rock nine sunday at 10 a. M. Eastern here on American History tv, only on cspan 3. Tuesday, we are live and trust in, west virginia, for the next up on the cspan bus 50 capitals tour. Governor jim justice and the Lieutenant Governor will be our guests on the bus during washington journal join us tuesday for the entire washington journal, starting at 7 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Ijinx themon is cat with a boston accent. Jinx the cat, used to go, i hate meeses to pieces. Crop, he does not have a plan. Japan has a plan. We do not have a plan. I have a book, i wrote a book, ok . Thats it. For the past 30 years, the free library is your resource for politics, congress and washington public affairs. Whether it happened 30 years ago or 30 minutes ago, find it in cspans Video Library at cspan. Org. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. Each week american artifacts takes you to museums and Historic Places to learn about American History. The house was built by christian heurich, a german immigrant who started a successful Brewing Company in 1872. Today we tore several rooms in that mansion, also called the brewmasters castle, to learn about the heurich family. This is the first of a twopart series. This is the home of christian heurich, washington, d. C. s most important brewer. He was a philanthropist, and he