Courage Behind Dark Lenses

On September 4, 1957, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford put on the black-and-white dress her mother had sewn, slipped on a pair of sunglasses, and walked toward Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. She never received word that the other eight Black students planned to arrive together. Elizabeth went alone.

A mob of some four hundred white segregationists surrounded her, screaming threats and slurs. Arkansas National Guard soldiers, ordered there by Governor Orval Faubus to block integration, refused her entry. Elizabeth walked the length of the guard line searching for an opening. There was none. The crowd pressed closer.

She did not scream back. She did not run. Behind those dark lenses, tears rolled down her cheeks, but the mob never saw them. She walked with a composure that stunned onlookers until she reached a city bus bench, where New York Times reporter Benjamin Fine sat beside her and offered quiet comfort.

Paul wrote to Timothy, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." Elizabeth carried all three that morning — power in her refusal to flee, love for the cause of justice, and a sound mind that chose dignity when everything around her demanded surrender.