From Little Rock Nine pioneer, a gift to Smithsonian museum
(Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture/ Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture ) - This photograph depicts seven of the Little Rock Nine as they read and study from school books. Carlotta is seated, second from the left.
Only three of the Nine graduated and LaNier, who was the only woman to graduate, calls the third artifact, her diploma, a “vindication.” Faubus, who capitalized on segregationist sentiment to win a rare third term as governor, shut down the three Little Rock high schools during the 1958-59 school year rather than continue desegregation. While segregationists opened their own whites-only school, some students simply sat out, while the families of LaNier and others scraped together money for correspondence courses and textbooks until the courts forced the high schools to reopen the following year.
LaNier’s home was bombed while she, her mother and little sisters were inside. After police officials first accused her father, a childhood friend who she believes was innocent, was jailed for the crime. Her diploma meant that “I accomplished what I started,” LaNier says. And it belongs to everyone who helped her along the way.
(Courtesy Museum of African American History and Culture) - The dress worn by 14-year-old Carlotta Walls, the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine.
Senior curator Bill Pretzer says the museum, scheduled to open in 2015, is planning its inaugural exhibitions. “The Little Rock Nine was an absolutely critical event in the civil rights era, and we absolutely wanted to represent it in some fashion.” LaNier is the only one of the Little Rock Nine to donate memorabilia, although others are considering it, Pretzer says. In addition to the three items, she’s donating 15 boxes of material: programs from commemorations, and letters, including missives from President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 and President Bill Clinton in 1999, when the Little Rock Nine were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. At the 100th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine’s first day at Central High, “someone will be looking back and say how did they think about that” 50 years later. It’s rare to have so much material, but LaNier “acted like her own historian, and curator of the history she had made,” Pretzer says.
LaNier credits her mother with keeping the dress, and she says that with all her Little Rock Nine items, I always “felt like somewhere down the line, it needs to go somewhere. That it’s going to be of some use.” After high school, LaNier’s family relocated, eventually settling in Denver. LaNier, who graduated from what is now the University of Northern Colorado, worked for the YWCA before founding her own real estate brokerage firm. Her memoir, “A Mighty Long Way, My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School,” was published in 2009 and she speaks to student groups around the country about the importance of personal responsibility and about the most painful parts of the American story. “We need to be open-minded and need to discuss issues without being adversarial,” she says, and hopes she can help with that. She’d always thought history was about dead people. But “I’m standing before you, and yes, I’ve finally accepted the fact that I’m a part of history.”
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