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Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock. By David Margolick. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. 310. Illustrations, notes, acknowledgments, index. $26.00.)
David Margolick's Elizabeth and Hazel is less the story of two women of Little Rock than it is the story of two photographs of two women of Little Rock, one taken forty years after the other, each taken by the same photographer, Will Counts, and each taken outside of Little Rock's Central High School.
The first photograph of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan (as she was then) was taken on the scheduled first day of integrated classes at Central High School on September 4, 1957. Elizabeth Eckford was one of nine African-American students selected to attend the school. The night before, Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus had called out the National Guard to "preserve the peace." As Elizabeth quickly discovered the next morning, this meant using state soldiers to keep her out. Daisy Bates, president of the Arkansas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People State Conference of Branches, had informed African-American students to stay home that morning, but Elizabeth, whose family did not have a telephone, did not get the message. As a result, she faced a hostile mob of whites gathered at the school alone.
When National Guard soldiers refused to let her through their cordon, Elizabeth looked to make her exit. Followed by a baying mob, she headed for the nearest bus stop. As she was pursued, Arkansas Democrat photographer Counts snapped away with his Nikon S2 Rangefinder. One white student, Hazel Bryan, screamed at Elizabeth, "Go home, nigger! Go back to Africa!" In the midst of...