Correspondent photos / Sean Barron Sojourn to the Past students ascended the steps at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, last week in a manner reminiscent of how nine black students entered after having successfully integrated the school in September 1957. Nine Youngstown City School students embarked on the one-week traveling American history immersion project.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – An iconic history maker’s simple and straightforward yet profound message left its imprint on Mya Phifer’s mind.

“It moved me when she said we could save people’s lives. I had a lot on my mind before this trip, and to hear her soothed me and calmed me down,” Phifer, 18, an East High School senior, said.

She was speaking about Elizabeth Eckford, one of nine black students who integrated the 2-square-block, all-white Central High School in September 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas. She and the other eight black students paid a high price for their history-making efforts, which included continual harassment, bullying, physical attacks and, some say, terrorist acts.

Phifer had an opportunity to hear Eckford’s presentation last week in the school library to more than 120 high school students, educators, parents and law-enforcement personnel who had embarked on a one-week Sojourn to the Past traveling American history project to key civil rights locations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.

Phifer, along with several adults and eight other Youngstown City Schools students, returned Thursday.

Thanks to Eckford’s presentation and the example she exudes, Phifer intends to “change my mindset more to help people not be silent witnesses” to injustices and wrongs, she added.

Eckford, who has post-traumatic stress disorder that dates back to her first day at Central High on Sept. 4, 1957, when she walked alone and was accosted by a vicious white mob along Park Street, often calls the traumatic experience her “longest walk.”

“As I was walking, I heard a man say, ‘Let’s hang her; let’s take her over to that tree and hang her,'” Eckford, 83, told her audience last week, adding that the angry mob also threatened a white man who had tried to come to her aid.

Eckford and Hazel Bryan, one of those in the mob who walked behind her while yelling epithets, were caught in what became an iconic photograph that Will Counts of the Arkansas Democrat snapped.

After she reached the bus stop, the racists continued to harass and threaten the 15-year-old Eckford, who was wearing a dress she made for her first day of school but never again wore because people spit on it. She then tried to seek refuge in a corner store, but the owner locked her out, so she waited again until her bus arrived. Beforehand, Arkansas National Guard troops armed with bayonets turned her away from entering the school on three occasions.

Eckford, who served five years in the U.S. Army, was traumatized not only by her first day, but by constant harassment in school, where the nine black students were assigned National Guard members from the Fort Campbell, Kentucky-based 101st Airborne Division to protect them in the halls after they had first entered three weeks after the start of the school year.

However, she still was scalded when her tormentors flushed all the commodes while she was taking a shower after gym class. At other times, some students placed broken glass in the area where she showered and, in January 1958, tossed rock-filled snowballs at her.

Despite the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision, Arkansas Gov. Orval E. Faubus defied a federal judge and fought against integration largely for political gain, saying, “No school district will be forced to mix the races as long as I am governor of Arkansas.”

Nevertheless, a 1958 Gallup poll named Faubus one of the “Ten most admired men in the United States.”

As the crisis grew, President Dwight D. Eisenhower confronted Faubus, who, instead of following the ruling, closed the public schools for the 1958-59 school year, greatly impacting especially the city’s black population. Beforehand, as part of his integration plan, schools Superintendent Virgil T. Blossom initially accepted 17 students, though eight applications were withdrawn, leaving the nine blacks, who became known as the “Little Rock Nine.”

Eckford, who has made considerable emotional progress in recent years and finds it easier to share her story, told the Sojourn audience it’s vital to end hatred toward certain types of people. In addition, simple but courageous acts of advocacy and compassion can make a tremendous difference to those who are suffering from bullying.

“Support someone being bullied merely by a kind word or gesture and showing you aren’t a hater,” Eckford advised, adding that it’s imperative also to seek treatment for mental health problems as well as to invest in oneself.

It took Eckford more than two decades to seek professional help for her trauma.

FINAL DAY IN MEMPHIS

After returning to Memphis, Tennessee, from Little Rock, the large group entered the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, which had been closed for a few days because of flooding from heavy storms.

The museum is set up to educate people about the history of the civil rights movement and its influences on human rights efforts worldwide via collections, research and educational programs and exhibits that include the Jim Crow era and the city’s sanitation workers’ strike that began Feb. 12, 1968, and brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis to advocate and support the men.

Also included is a space from which visitors can look out onto the spot on the balcony where King was felled by a single shot April 4, 1968, as well as into Room 306 where he stayed.

While there, they also hear gospel singer Mahalia Jackson’s rendition of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” which was King’s favorite song.

The museum tour begins with exposing visitors to a culture of slavery from 1619 to 1861 in which at least 12 generations of black people were captives after the first slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Slavery, which existed in all 13 colonies by the start of the Revolutionary War, was an economic boon to the young country via working long, exhausting hours to produce cotton, gin, rum, rice, tobacco, sugar, indigo and other products.

By the start of the Civil War, the cost of a single enslaved laborer averaged $750 (about $130,000 today); also, the country had nearly 4 million slaves worth more than $3 billion, according to the museum.

During the journey’s final activity before everyone headed home, the group stood in a circle, joined hands and sang a series of freedom songs, including “We Shall Overcome,” the mantra of the civil rights era.

In addition, Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine students, handed all of the participants small rocks on which was inscribed the Mahatma Gandhi quote, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”