67 pages • 2 hours read
Carlotta Walls LaNier, Lisa Frazier PageA Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and the American Civil Rights Movement
While the Fourteenth Amendment declared that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” (“Fourteenth Amendment.” Constitution of the United States. Congress.gov), this was rarely true in practice. After the Civil War, the South passed a series of “Black Codes” to block Black Americans from voting, owning land, conducting business, and existing in public spaces. These developed into “Jim Crow laws,” which codified white supremacy into legislation.
Between the 1950s and 1970s, activists, civilians, and politicians worked to abolish segregation, racial disenfranchisement, and other aspects of systemic racism that upheld ideologies of white supremacy. This Civil Rights Movement was filled with high points—such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the emergence of the Black Power Movement—and low points—such as the assassinations of Medgar Evers and President Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, and Fred Hampton in 1969.
One landmark Supreme Court Ruling in the Civil Rights Movement was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. In 1951, the local Topeka school system refused to enroll Oliver Brown’s daughter because she was Black, requiring her to bus to a further away, all-Black school. The Browns and 12 other families brought the school board to court, which overturned their plea based on the precedent set by 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld segregation on the basis that segregated offerings should be “separate but equal.” With the help of the NAACP and attorney Thurgood Marshall, the families appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 9-0 that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (“History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment.” United States Courts. USCourts.gov). As a result, schools nationwide were ordered to integrate.
In the South, many schools were segregated de jure, by legal mandate. Even in the North, schools were segregated de facto, without a legal mandate. With legacies of enslavement still informing the legislation and social structures of the United States, educational integration was not smooth. Southern states, in particular, stalled integration, using military force against Black students and ceasing public education altogether to prevent integration. United States public schools were not fully integrated until 2016, when Mississippi’s Cleveland High School was finally legally ordered to desegregate (Domonoske, Camila. “After 50-Year Legal Struggle, Mississippi School District Ordered To Desegregate.” NPR. 17 May 2016).
Historical Context: The Little Rock Nine
The change Brown v. Board promised did not come right away. Integration largely stalled until 1957, when pressure from the NAACP finally forced the school board in Little Rock, Arkansas, to develop a plan for integration. They would invite a select number of Black students to attend the formerly all-white Little Rock Central High School, known as Central. They would build an all-Black high school and a new all-white school to keep the rest of the high schoolers segregated while they tested integration with this small group. Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls LaNier were the nine students chosen to attend Central. Over the year, they would gain international attention and become known collectively as “the Little Rock Nine.”
The nine faced virulent opposition. On the first day of school, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the armed Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine out of Central. A group of white segregationists formed a violent mob outside of the school. Though some of the nine arrived together, some arrived alone, like Elizabeth, who was attacked and harassed. In the school, the nine were abused physically, verbally, and emotionally. Melba had acid thrown on her face and was held down by white girls and burned with fire. Elizabeth was scalded with hot water in the showers. Jefferson was retaliated against by a racist teacher, who docked his grades. All of them were subject to daily torments like tripping, pushing, elbowing, and racial slurs. Throughout the year, several of the nine would leave or be expelled due to the racism they faced.
Ernest became the first Black student to graduate from Central in 1958. LaNier and Jefferson graduated in 1960. The others transferred and graduated elsewhere. They fell out of touch until they were invited back to Little Rock by the NAACP on the 30th anniversary of their first year at Central. After that, the nine stayed in touch. In 2010, Jefferson Thomas passed away from pancreatic cancer; as of 2023, he is the only member of the nine to pass.
Authorial Context: Carlotta Walls LaNier
Carlotta Walls LaNier is the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine and the first Black woman to graduate from Central. Her parents were Cartelyou, who worked as a brick mason, and Juanita, a secretary. As such, LaNier lived in a racially mixed middle-class section of Little Rock, though she was much more familiar with her Black neighbors than her white ones. She has two younger sisters, Loujuana and Tina.
LaNier did extremely well in school and has a passion for education. She received high grades throughout primary and secondary school, which was part of the reason she was selected to attend Central. Despite the vitriol she faced from her peers, she also made honor roll at Central. Although LaNier did not face the intense physical abuse that her female peers Elizabeth and Melba faced from white segregationists, her home was bombed in her senior year. The police crafted a narrative that three Black men, including her father, committed the bombing to get insurance money. The FBI tortured the three men into giving coerced confessions, and only LaNier’s father withstood the abuse. One man’s sentence was overturned by the higher courts because of the coerced confession, while the remaining man, Herbert Odell Monts, was given the maximum sentence. Part of LaNier’s mission is to bring Herbert’s innocence to light.
After graduating from Central, LaNier struggled academically but finally graduated from Colorado State College. She entered the real estate market and founded her own real estate company in 1977. Over the years, LaNier quietly advocated for marginalized groups by working with organizations such as the NAACP and the Colorado AIDS Project.
In 1997, LaNier organized a meeting with her fellow Little Rock Nine members and proposed that they take back their narrative by creating the Little Rock Nine Foundation. Though they all contributed portions of speaking fees and shared fundraising duties to start the foundation, LaNier served as its president. Her eight comrades call her the “mother hen” of the group.
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