On September 4th, 1967, with blistering dignity, 15-year old Elizabeth Eckford, the first Black student to integrate a Southern high school, overrode what must have been terror, braving a gauntlet of hate-filled, taunting, screaming white Arkansans as she attempted to enter Little Rock's Central High School. She was prevented from doing to by National Guard soldiers, acting on orders from Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. As she fled, the mob threatened to lynch her. This photograph by Will Counts became one of the iconic images of the Civil Rights era. On January 10th, 2023, her very first day in office, Arkansas' newly-elected governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, introduced an Executive Order banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Ironically, the history behind this classic image of the desegregation battle could technically fall under her banned material guidelines—proving yet again that institutionalized bigotry in the hands of the powerful is where history goes to die.
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