A Word on Words; 4023; David Margolick

and now from nashville public television's do a celebrated authors literature and ideas for more than three decades and this is a word on words jobs and johnson are welcome once again jordan words my guest today is david margolick well respected journalist contributing editor to vanity fair here today to share his new book elizabeth and hazel two women a little rock it tells the remarkable story and while the most iconic photographs of the civil rights movement was taken during the desegregation was through nineteen fifty seven the book traces the lives of these two complicated women one white one black and how their stories played out over the next fifty years welcome to the door is i gotta say that the find would interrupt you right off of that to sit with honors to be heroes among many of my friends thank you it's great to see you in the end the portable for another book and of course iowa and the

picture is not a cliche of pitchers worth and the pictures were freed of pages and more of hair and vote their lines these two young women on buses begin by reciting the story of that day and in the battle is with the firm that literally walking alone which i had not remembered that the news beit said let them come out as opposed to in a group with their parents say she came by herself what the parents have been told not to come that scientists simply because the thinking was that we're they're black adults in that crowd outside of central high school they would more likely be an agitation and protest than it would've arouse the crowd even more so the plan was to get all the black students together and mrs bates his house

and to come on los with them flanked by an interracial group of ministers some black ministers plus a few white ministers the only white ministers they could find to accompany the group and the story it's open to some debate but the story is that mrs bates couldn't get a hold of elizabeth the night before because the actors elizabeth's parents did not have a telephone so she didn't get the word that the group was assembling a says she came by herself as she was the first to show up about eight o'clock that morning in the mob was already outside that morning and they spotted her and they were just ready for a fight and she walked right into it she went she tried on three separate occasions to get into the school and is she thought when she saw the soldiers there she said that the soldiers were there to protect her no way they would keep her out no no and there's no soldiers were figures of authority as a man

band she had no idea that the meaning of the word are going out from governor faubus that these kids were not to be admitted under any circumstances but she very naive way thought that you know they were there to protect her and she was just she was just going to go into the school i mean there's a very touching to me very touching scene and at the very beginning of the book of elizabeth ironing her homemade skirts man putting on her clothes having her hair fixed it was the first day of school for her yeah i know you talk about the ykk dress and the nice thing about the way he's in the store first you see that picture on the cover of its roots fifteen years or fifteen years old and you know you gotta be taught the fear and they all the people your relatives hate and boys is that hatred in that in that first and write but you do such a great job of

juxtaposing one young woman dressing to go to that first though the other young woman dressing to go that day and and then suddenly bring together right within that they dressed how i began that way because they dressed with entirely separate different expectations of their own priorities elizabeth was ironing this homemade skirt and blouse with the expectation really of a of a new adventure going to little rock central high school going to the best high school in the state she was a very serious student and she was going to learn and hazel on the other hand the white girl was dressed sort of to look more sophisticated underwear grown up to look sexy to attract the boys just to have a good time she didn't go in fact with any great expectation of raising a fosse she wasn't particularly political she just wanted to make a scene and she wanted she was kind of a performer and she wanted to make has seen more than her friends did and

so she set of fell into two with whatever they were doing and started yelling louder and yet and yelling more brutal epithets than everybody else and it just so happened that will tells the photographer for the arkansas democrat who was a young man himself and had been a central high school just a few years earlier was in precisely the right position and took the picture and froze that moment in time in the sixteenth of a second and that picture has as a dog the two of them ever since and will to the end than anyone around the world around the world around the world people were looking at he drew an engine and asia becomes a symbol of american white racist southern white roses never had any idea right she was worse came from the i mean i mean you would know better than anyone is there any pitcher that's so encapsulates that sentiment is this when i can't i cannot event and there was not you know even those photographs

of guard dog snarling a writer children of fire hoses turned an omen were upside down the street this picture captures the hatred that existed more than anything i'm saying yeah i think that's right and putting it together i mean it is a story of two separate law and they merged before that moment right then they were inextricably tied together from that moment that now people you tell how and hazel after a relatively short time calls on the phone ringing you know three four years i think that's kind of an extraordinary moments online and i'm very unusual very unusual in the south in particular and protected for younger only have done only about eighteen or so yes that's right she just you know she the irony is that hazel was so was so anxious to keep elizabeth out of central high school

but the hazel herself dropped out only if a week or so after the picture was taken her parents took her away the notoriety it scared them and they took root of mothers who moved her to another school where she promptly met the man that she was to marry and she got pregnant and drop out it's got married a pregnant dropped out of school never graduated from high all but she was you know she was the curious incident intellectually adventurous one was is she was and she was sort of an auto didactic me she studied as she was watching television and she was seemed very images that you describe the images of the guard dogs the german shepherds jumping on black protesters bull connor really birmingham the fire hoses she was seeing martin luther king and she came to realize you know i that i'm complicit in this and i have these little children running around and they're going to grow up to realize that that girl in that picture is their mother and i better i have to set things straight before that happens

before that can happen so she looked at oxford in the phone book and connected with elizabeth and there was a very short conversation and how much that a black or a little white girl in the south in that year after say to one another and typically those particularly those two and she said she introduced herself and she said i'm the girl in the picture and i just what even though that i apologize how sorry i feel about it and that was i mean again there was no we're so accustomed to oprah winfrey moments now when these interviews are a public reconciliations are a big deal no one was watching when this happened hasan was living in a trailer outside of little rock amr husband was off at work you didn't even discuss it with her husband beforehand and she just made the call and that to me was a very very important test of her character in sincerity and it made me judge her completely differently it's very easy to think that oh girl with a face like that in a picture like that is

irredeemable and a lot of people think that it's absolutely impossible for her to have changed and some people even have a vested interest in not acknowledging you know i remembered when usually there was another photograph of them coming together in from a central iran to read your book is to find out for me to find out for the first time about that phone call right and i've thought about that since the road was more than any other scene what letter to do it she still part of that raises worries audie the hatred is still there and so many people have somehow she understands as you just said and in july i came with my children not understand that abdullah makes song step and so he makes an echo and so when forty years later they have this very public reconciliation on the fortieth anniversary of the

desegregation a lot of the people particularly a lot of blacks were very skeptical of her and they thought what's in it for her where she'd been all these years it must be a bucket for her she wants to know if she was that somebody just had made a movie about the ernest green story ordinary is a non them another member of the little rock nine maybe she wants to have a movie made of her and all of this and i always had a different perspective on her because i knew about that phone call thirty five years earlier that she had made this you know and so that put her in a very different light from me yelling going in different directions and that's marion elizabeth has a relatively tough time finding herself sings to me starts to college drops out goes into the army very early you know in terms of women in the military comes out finishes college

and gets a job teaching but boy as a tough as a very rough time he had first she had the ordeal of this day which is the kind of thing that doesn't that stays with you then she had her year in central high school which i describe it greatly needed the abuses to which these kids were subjected you know being scolded in the shower having their lockers destroyed being shoved against the wall the soldiers were in their very intermittently incarnate inattentive and the town that the troops that eisenhower sent in he was under great pressure to really withdraw the very last your of that elevator with that mouth wide open screaming out that i mean that really reflects what was going on inside us it was why yes right that's right hazel wasn't a part of it but there are a hundred or two hundred segregationist kids who were really allowed to run amuck that year as the administration was

afraid that the school administration was afraid to take them on basically because in that many elements in the tower behind these kids and so elizabeth had a terrible ordeal they are almost dropped out but persevered blasted the year was later diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder i am not just out of this but there was a predisposition or family to depression so as you say she went to college graduate it with great difficulty tried to kill herself a couple yards long and then went into it a decades long funk when she was on disability had two children without getting married and spent years really clinically depressed and dysfunctional until the mid nineties until the early nineties when she started to turn her life around as she was starting to turn her life around around the time of the anniversary when the two of them were brought together again by that by the man who took the original picture will counts he's of course was very anxious to have that picture

taken hazel that had worked with the underprivileged black kids in little rock it worked with on wet mothers had the boat had become almost a social worker had studied black history and that's her side of the story out her side of the story is out there and it's so different than i would've expected us just waiting to be rediscovered and she was waiting for somebody to do a story on her but she was suddenly we both know of no publicist calling you and planting stories and she you know she didn't have a publicist she didn't know about publicity and so she was waiting for somebody to discover that she had grown and she was of a girl that was in that was in that picture and then in nineteen ninety seven it finally happens and will counts the photographer brings the two of them together and something very interesting happens it really happens on two different levels the whole town of little rock rejoices here are these two people one would think are absolutely irreconcilable coming together and little rock is drawing audible that's right or one that's right and this is the

perfect symbol that they have the past is buried and the little rock which has been a laughing stock around the world and a place of ridicule all you have to do it mentioned that you're from little rock and people anywhere have one association with it and all of a sudden the two of them are posing in front of the high school smiling is on the front page of the democrat is at the local level where little rock paper the next morning and the city fathers are exultant about this they make a poster out of it they sell it at the vet the at the museum and there's a lot of pr a lot of pr is made out of and in some ways i mean it was a very artificial kind of reconciliation and who would think that it would ever take necessarily these two women they have every reason to be very angry in a particular elizabeth has every reason to be dubious of hazel and what a day it's a big fuss anyway what the next stage is that the two of them start to make appearances together they speak to high school groups they speak to students they speak to civic

groups and they discovered that they actually like each other this is the extraordinary part of the story they actually identify with one another they spend a lot of time together they have certain commonalities they're both kind of loner isn't the way they don't have a lot of support from their families they're both intellectually curious they both love flowers and they put a flower shows together they go to hot springs together where elizabeth has never been able to one of the resorts and elizabeth had been the hot springs but never to one of the resorts they go they're together i'm sure those resorts were segregated when i was growing up and they discover this bland and disaffection and it last for a couple of years and then fisheries develop tensions developed wider the tensions developed because elizabeth was a very intelligent and discerning woman and she thinks that he is also not fully coming clean elizabeth has very high standards for everyone elizabeth criticizes daisy

bates did elizabeth dr criticizes the white woman who sat next to her and tried to help or that morning and at the bus stop you know so together on the bus away from the mob even those people who tried to help elizabeth elizabeth is skeptical of them and so elizabeth has every reason to be skeptical of hazel and their elements in hazel story that don't satisfy her i mean for instance he can't believe that a girl wearing such hatred on her face could've done this thought leslie spontaneously you know without planning your eye the idea that hazel was just sort of going down there to make them make a ruckus and it wasn't particularly political it wasn't barely thought about brown vs board of education never read the newspapers the whole idea that hazel could have done this so thoughtless sleep is inconceivable to elizabeth and then there is a goat farmer and elizabeth doesn't ever feel is or adequately acknowledges the racism that's right exists nsa's old hazel

opposite it was hazel to implicate her parents and that's a hard thing for a woman to do you know hazels his allowance her father hazels father was a disabled war veteran he's always pays off father was really more diesels mother and his mother was because his mother had to go to work so jesus father was the one that really raised her away and his was not prepared to say these things about her father and so these tensions developed i come into the story around them because this is when i first interviewed them and i didn't detect the tensions between them but there was a line that hazel user ask how the two of them are getting along and she said well let's just say that the honeymoon is over and we're taking out the garbage well i guess i must have been pretty dense not to realize what she was trying to tell me what the two of them were getting to be they were they were done the rock yet but they were approaching the rocks and very shortly

after i interviewed the two of them together he's all thought i don't need this anymore and getting flack from elizabeth and getting flack from the black community which doesn't believe me i'm getting flack from the little rock nine they resent me they think i should have no business being in any of their events one of them says were the little rock nine what were not the little rock and what she doing there she's also getting got from the white community because the white community has never forgiven her she's a symbol of little rock and particularly for the kids who were essential that year they felt with a segregationist kids were never apologized and they were embarrassed that their visa was coming forward and apologizing and the vast majority of the kids who were essential that year who never raised a fuss of only looked the other way felt we never did anything wrong we were normal high school kids we were good kids and you know we're being saddled by her why doesn't she just goal way and now here she is coming forward and publicly apologizing

ruining our reunions you know a morning mass implicating us in all of this and she gets you know she goes she makes the mistake of going to one of the reunions a recession and she's you know she's brushed off you know she says she hears snake during in the background is that's the girl and the famous picture you know one of the girls who stickers outer happens to be the same girl one of the girls who jump out the windows or to win the black kids finally got him as she just thought you know i have x number of year i'm in my fifties i wanna lead a good life my family is important to me i don't need to take this and you know if you withdraw that he is getting it from both sides both sides it's not just elizabeth but everybody knows a little bit and it's not just the two girls walking the weather that day it's everybody everybody who has an out my guess is those who are in that school at that time and thereafter those white kids who went to central she had really sort of blackened imaging

wrought by reflecting what the attitudes of all of the students were the right that's right and so she just decides she actually you remember i so impressed they're not careful you've read the books that absolutely amazing she draws up a list she has a yellow legal pad and he draws up a list why i should continue to make appearances with elizabeth and why shouldn't and everything was on the why i shouldn't side of the ledger and she decides a knuckle make appearances anymore elizabeth was rude to her a couple of occasions should just think seventy this anymore so she starts making the appearances and that in effect is the schism that develops between the two of them it means they don't see each other anymore even socially anymore but the bond between them persists so that on september eleventh of two thousand and one the september eleventh hazel was in massachusetts hazel has never been just barely been out of arkansas

before she's never been in new england before why she knew english isn't new england because there's a program there on some kind of self improvement program that had been endorsed by corona scott king yeah and she thinks maybe if i meet mrs king and tell her my story she can bring elisabeth in and then i gather again she can reconcile loss and that sense and she's going to be the director of the program on september eleventh and september eleventh comes amidst the september eleventh hazel is a lot in a strange place without her husband and who does she call for support and reassurance even though they're no longer talking to one another she calls elizabeth so to me this is a very this is as clear a sign as any that the two of them develop this really very very strong a very complicated that persist to this day so that when i was doing the book the two of them were not talking to one

another ah but they're both talking to me and it was very clear that whatever i brought up one with the other they would get choked up and when this book this book was published on october fourth elizabeth seventieth birthday this has chosen i chose this deliberately to commemorate elizabeth says your birthday we gave a talk in little rock at the clinton school and hazel of course was scarce diesel was hazel had conveniently arrange to be out of town but elizabeth was sitting in the front row and i didn't see this because you know i was speaking i was preoccupied with what i was saying but you know i defended his a little less of his presence i felt that i had so it's part of my story and into me hate that to me they're both heroic characters and and elizabeth i was told choked up as i started to speak about hazel and and back to me shows that the story may not be over yet now i get it i thought about navy when no what is looking the two of them you know the two of them will somehow communicate in some fashion

or other you know i i've thought about it as i went through the rowing events and as you relate to you come to that moment when you suddenly realize just how badly wounded lows of applause and somewhere hazel found a sense of security yes that's right pepper known as head of the family and had a very loyal husband the loving husband she's been married for fifty something years now she has children and grandchildren her whole life revolves around her family elizabeth on the other hand never got married had two sons but never married either of the father's one of her sons is killed in a ghastly episode with the little rock police anne elisabeth and this is i think one of the reasons why elizabeth and hazel body he's always kind of healer

type almost a social worker in a different in a different life you would have been a social worker and hazel wanted to bring elisabeth out of her shell and to help prepare her and maybe after an end and made then and then made a very serious effort to do it so we are more about what i had done this i have hoped so the picture of them usually in front of school i hope and believe that this is a story with a happy ending here and then you write a new phone out so well stories on over borders of the point there is no i mean this is not the help not all you know this is not that mrs nonfiction this is not a disney story this is racial reality has reflected in the end

the experiences of two iconic figures and i didn't want to sugarcoat anything i hope there's a happy ending it in one stage it you know i didn't want to bring them together or artificially of but i know there's a very profound bond between the two of them and with any luck the story's not over yet and you know it reminds us fifty years after freedom lot of problems a result of in this country i mean we have a president but the issue still in there just they're right under the surface and you don't have to scratch very far what about thank you for coming to such a pleasure john burdett pleasure thank you for having me and thanks all of you they give watching and johnson and all over word on words it's really nice