Lanierone

Transcription

in 1954 the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in the Brown versus Board of Education case which ushered in the desegregation of public schools around the country even though in its follow-up Brown 2 case a year later the court ordered all schools in the country to desegregate with quote "all deliberate speed" the initial pace of change was very slow thus, in 1957 three years after the brown decision Little Rock Central High School arguably the best high school in Arkansas and among the top in the nation was still reserved for white students only even though substantial proportion of the population in that city was african-american that year at age 14 Carlotta Walls LaNier became the youngest member of the little rock nine, the first group of nine african-american students to enroll in Central High School some people choose to make history they do so by running for political office or by consciously choosing to take bold and historic action but I think if you ask miss LaNier she would tell you that was not what she her classmates and their families sought to do they were not trying to make history they were simply trying to do what all the parents in this arena seek for their children and what all of you who are embarking on teaching careers hope to do that is to create the best educational opportunity for their children and for all children regardless of their the race or ethnicity and that is what miss LaNier and her classmates were trying to do get the best education available to them in the city of Little Rock which they believed would be at Central High School but their path was not easy as I know miss LaNier will share with you in a few minutes let me provide you with just one brief example that I have taken from her memoir A Mighty Long Way My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School as she describes her first days in that school. The band of white boys in the black leather jackets with the worst offenders they made a sport of spitting on me if you've ever been hit by a nasty gob you know how disgusting it is, how humiliating, how infuriating. The first time the wet slime just came flying out of nowhere landing on the bottom left side of my face My military escort usually walked on my right I was trying to work my way through the crowded halls between classes on my second day inside when without warning I felt something wet hit my face. Who had done it? Was it one of the black leather boys or did it come from one of their ponytail female cohorts in either case there was nothing I could do to respond I had already been warned against retaliation. Now president Eisenhower had to call in the army's one hundred and first Airborne Division to protect miss LaNier and her classmates after the Little Rock police in the Arkansas National Guard failed to do their jobs there is much more to the story but I will let miss Lanier tell you herself. After graduating from Central in 1960 she attended Michigan State University where she spent two years before leaving for Colorado after moving there she enrolled in the University of Northern Colorado where she graduated and later embarked on a successful career as a real estate broker in the Denver area today fifty seven years after first enrolling in central high school she is still working as a real estate broker in the Denver area in addition to a business career she's also the president of the Little Rock Nine foundation and is the recipient honorary degrees from four universities in 1999 she and her fellow members the Little Rock Nine received the Congressional Gold Medal the nation's highest civilian honour from President Bill Clinton as Michigan State is in the midst about our year-long celebration up the 60th anniversary year the brown decision in the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 I can think of no more fitting person to help us commemorate these milestones than Carlotta Walls LaNier please join me in welcoming her back to Michigan State University thank you good afternoon fellow Spartans. First I must say a special thank you to Dean Heller up for inviting me to speak on this special occasion allow me also to thank president Simon and the Board of Trustees for welcoming me back to Michigan State and to the faculties, staff, and family members for your important roles in getting these young people to this day and most especially to the honorees the Department of Education's Class of 2014 congratulations I applaud I salute you. Your graduation says much about your determination to reach your goal but this is just the beginning with the full weight of a Michigan State University education propelling you into your futures you start out of the gate ahead of the pack I feel honored to be here to share with you some of what I've learned during my journey it is so fitting that I am here during your Project 60/50 Commemoration of two landmark historical events. The 60th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court decision of Brown versus Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act both had such a huge impact on my life and I appreciate the office of Inclusion Intercultural Initiatives for coordinating this project pushing us to look at who we were as a nation, who we are today and who we can become. This is indeed a full-circle moment for me. Michigan State University opened its doors and its arms to me in 1960 when I was a shell-shocked 17-year-old girl who had just going through the most difficult time of my life as one of the first nine black students to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas it had all played out under the intense glare of the media the city of my birth bitterly divided over school integration so divided in fact that September 25th, 1957 President Dwight Eisenhower had to dispatch the US military to protect my 8 comrades and me from mobs of armed an angry white segregationists the president also had to show the governor of Arkansas who had tried to block our entrance to the school that he was not above the law the US supreme court had outlawed school segregation just three years earlier and president Eisenhower's intervention in Little Rock marked the first time a US President had turned to the military to enforce a school desegregation order I hadn't been trying to do anything monumental when I signed my name to the list black students who volunteered to go to Central I was just a 14-year-old high school sophomore trying to do what the US Supreme Court had said in the Brown decision that I had a right to do. Attend my neighborhood school without regard of the color of my skin. My dream was to become a doctor and Central was not only one of America's most beautiful schools but it was also one of the best academically I figured that there would be some who didn't want me there but I kept hoping that everything would be different once the students and faculty got a chance to know me. But the difference I'd been hoping for never came And for the entire first year, the situation was so dangerous that the nine of us had to be driven to and from school and escorted by individual soldiers to and from our classes. Still fellow students found ways to spit on us, push us into lockers, and down stairs threaten and call us derogatory names but the harder the segregationist ought to drive me out the more firmly I planted my feet to stand what I knew was right I found strength that I didn't even know I had and persevered. Graduates, you already possess the smarts you need to achieve your dreams, but life's most challenging moments can if you let them build strength, character, and fortitude and if you let them life's most trying times can push you to be even greater than you ever imagined some of life's greatest thinkers, teachers, innovators just first crashed into the proverbial brick wall before finding new ways to get over or through it. The world, and not the world at large, but the world around you most especially in the field of education needs great thinkers, teachers, and innovators. We need people who can look at the same old problems with fresh insight and figure out how to elevate the American education system once again to its top rank in the world but we also need people who are willing to be guided at times by their hearts I often think about how much easier my survival central would have been if more my classmates had stood up for me when I was suffering in those halls my fellow students fell into one of three categories. Number 1: the tormentors. The small but loud group of people who spent most of their days trying to make my life a living hell Number 2: the silent. By far the largest group those who said nothing, looked the other way, or offered a kind smile or gesture in secret fearful of what would happen to themselves their sympathy were discovered. and the number 3: the brave. the smallest group of all those teachers and students who openly kind who were openly kind, looked beyond my skin color saw just another human being, a fellow student, eager to learn, and treated me as such as future educators you will have greater direct influence on the minds and hearts generations to come than your colleagues in perhaps any other field that is both a great privilege and a great responsibility please handle with care. Be first good examples. Be open tolerant, loving, and kind and teach your students the lessons of our history about Brown versus Board of Education, the Little Rock Nine, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and all of the heroes and sheroes who fought and died and pushed this country to live up to the ideals upon which it was founded. Teach them about who we were as a people and who we are when we lean toward intolerance, bigotry, and hatred. Show them how to be among the brave By the time I got to MSU in 1960 I was exhausted I was weary of the spotlight and wanted nothing more than to be anonymous just another freshman in the crowd and on this sprawling campus more than 20,000 students at the time I found just what I needed. MSU was then as it is today practically a city unto itself full of people of all races and cultures from all over the world and it became my haven I felt truly welcome and I was finally able to roam freely without fear for my life. I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the stands at Spartan Stadium and cheering for our beloved football team I vividly remember hanging out with some other football and basketball greats my era and mingling in the student union between and after classes and of course there were the fraternity parties on the weekends now all of this was extra exciting to me because at Central the nine black students that I was one of had been forbidden from participating in extracurricular activities and even attending sporting events MSU offered me the college experience my dreams but for the first time in my life I began to struggle academically. I'd always been a top student but in what what should have been my junior year of high school the governor of Arkansas, still fighting to have his way, had shutdown every high school in Little Rock for the entire school year rather than to be forced to continue with integration that left 3,800 students of every race scrambling to get an education the best way they could though I took correspondence courses and spent some time studying out-of-state I had lost an entire school year at the most crucial time in my academic life and I'd been unable to take the high level math and science courses they were necessary to be successful in the pre-med program at MSU. In my freshman year here, a University counselor was blunt in his assessment of my chances of making it in the program catching up would have required more mental and physical energy and focus than I had I hung in there another year but when my dream of becoming a doctor began to die so did my focus and I ultimately left Michigan State without a degree. You may learn someday that life can be frightening frustrating and devastating when your plans and dreams are driven off course but if you remember nothing else remember this I am a living witness that you can make mid-course corrections alter your map a little or a lot or draft an entirely new one to those who are driven and determined there's never just one way to your destination and I was not raised to be a quitter so I moved to Denver, returned to college part-time while working and graduated from Colorado State College which is now University of Northern Colorado I got married had two children and eventually built my own real estate brokerage business I didn't become a doctor but I was still able to achieve the success I desired and live a fulfilling life I am so grateful today that I've been able to share so much of my journey with my mother Juanita Walls who is alive and well and lives near me in Denver. She and my father, Cartelyou Walls who died in 1976, always have been my heroes but when I became a parent myself i truly understood the level of courage and faith that they possess to be able to send me off into such danger each day they understood the greater good and accepted the personal risk so I take every opportunity that I can to honor them Likewise graduates, I urge you to take the time to show your gratitude to the family and friends who have shared this journey with you most especially your parents no matter how high you climb or how deep you may fall, they are the ones most likely to be there loving you through it all. To this day I still miss my father I saw what he endured because my decision to attend Central and for many years I felt tremendous guilt. He was a brick mason, in construction, but he couldn't find jobs in Little Rock once the word got out that his daughter was one of those nine some the other parents face similar troubles then in february of 1960, I returned to Little Rock Central High School as a senior determined to finish what I had begun. My family's home was bombed. None us was injured but my father who had always been upstanding citizen and family man was questioned as a suspect in the bombing he was detained for a few days without us knowing where or what was happening to him it was a grave injustice that grieves me still even worse my childhood friend and neighbor who like me was just a naive teenager was arrested and convicted by an all-white jury for the bombing he served nearly two years of five-year sentence for the crime which I've always known in my soul that he did not commit he too had to find peace with Little Rock and he now lives not far from here in Michigan and let me say something about peace. For 30 years after I left Little Rock I wanted nothing to do with the memories of what happened to me there. People who know the history called what we had done there heroic but for me personally the wounds were too deep and the pain too great for me to think of it all. So I didn't say a word about my past not to my husband, not to my neighbor's, in Denver, not to my children until they were old enough to start reading about history and asking questions it was if by keeping all of their hurt rolled up inside I thought that I could keep it blocked and locked away forever but a surprising thing happen when I finally started to let it out, to share my story. I not only made peace with my past, I found passion and purpose. I joined my other 8 comrades: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, fellow Michigan State Spartan Ernest Green, and the late Jefferson Thomas in forming the Little Rock Nine Foundation. We've raise money and awarded scholarships to deserving young people mentored them and tried to leave a legacy that will outlive each one of us. I also wrote my memoir a few years ago and contributed some personal items including the dress that I wore on that historic day in Little Rock to the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture scheduled for completion in the nation's capital next year When passion and purpose unite there truly is no limit to the good that can arise I never imagined when I left this university all those years ago feeling like that I had failed myself and my family that life would circle back and land me here in this place of honor, standing before you as your commencement speaker I am humbled and so honored it is your turn now. You have been given the best possible start. Your future awaits And in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, "if you can't fly, then run and if you can't run, then walk and if you can't walk then crawl but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward," congratulations and go green!