to at least give them something? >> no, i think that you are is saturating heineman solomon's degree by about 10,000 degrees. i don't mean to -- i'm not being sarcastic. it's just that he was basically financed individual congressman and so forth. he was not a big finance year of low level of robert morris who had ships and contact and merchants working for him all over the world. he was a much more modest dhaka that he was a very enthusiastic patriarch. there was no place to go that anybody could find and that is the reason why the whole crisis erupted. >> listened this has been a wonderful discussion and i enjoy it so much. [applause] ..

>> on september 4th, 1957, a stoic young black girl elizabeth eckford, a member of the little rock 9 was met by an angry mob during her first days to segregate a high school.

behind her was a little girl with narrowed eyes and clenched teeth. this is one of the most recognizable photos of the civil rights era. it reflects the hate and fury of a young girl and a timid demeanor of another. it circulated around the state, the nation and all around the world. do you remember how seeing this photo for the first time made you feel? who knew that the photo of these two young girls, one black, one white both 15 years old, born less than four months apart, living within miles of one another and both beginning the 11th grade would be so powerful and symbolizing the race relations in america. even more powerful was the poster david margolick saw of the two women. this time the women were smiling and embracing one another. two women, one black, one white.

but this time they were no longer entering the 11th grade. they were grown and this was a poster of reconciliation. david came across the poster during a trip to little rock for the past -- let's try that again. david came across a poster during a trip to little rock and for the past 12 years with other jobs under his belt, he has investigated what lies within that historic image for his new book "elizabeth, hazel, two women of little rock." through countless interviews he's created a dual biography so that we are able to gain an understanding of the emotion behind the two women bound together by one single photograph. david margolick was a long time contributing editor for "vanity fair." he joined their team in 1995. prior to that, he held similar positions at "newsweek" and portfolio. before "vanity fair" he worked

from 1988 to 1995 as a legal affairs reporter for the "new york post" he contributed to a column at the bar covering trials of oj simpson, lorena bobbitt and william kennedy smith, just to name is few. a graduate of the university of michigan and stanford law school, david has written pieces including a long form article entitled a predator priest about bringing a predator priest to their hometown. he's the author of several books beyond glory and strange fruit. david says of his new book, it's an honest acknowledgement of racial sensitivities that exist in this country. and how when it comes to race relations in america, it can be very complex and an ongoing process. the relationship between elizabeth and hazel is like a metaphor for our history. a reflection of how much more

this country, blacks and whites, have to do. everyone, introducing david margolick. [applause] >> >> well, thank you. i just want to make one correction in your very nice introduction which is that i was a reporter for many years for the "new york times," not "the new york post." [laughter] >> that may not mean so much to people down here. but in new york, there's a big distinction between the two. i also want to say that skip mentioned that -- about elizabeth's birthday and you might think that it's just a great coincidence that we're

having the pub date of my book happens to overlaps over elizabeth's birthday but that's really not the cases. we deliberately wanted to commemorate elizabeth's birthday by publishing on it as a fitting tribute to her and just sort of -- we just thought it would be good karma actually. and so that explains the noncoincidence. i've already been here once before. some of you recidivists in the audience know -- i recognize some of you already. and i want to thank skip for having me back when my work is further along, considerably further along than it was the last time. it's always nice to have a second -- a second bite at the apple.

and just looking out i see a lot of familiar faces here including a lot of the people that i interviewed, and that's also very gratifying. it's always gratifying to see a pile of books over there and some extra chairs that unfolding at the last minute, which an author always likes to see. nikolai sent me a list of the people who had signed up for this afternoon's program. and on my blackberry i could only get the first half of them but i looked down the list and i saw jayhawks brantley, wiley branton, ralph brody, betsy jakeaway and that's only up through the l's and these are all people who helped me and talked to me and whom i'm grateful. and i'm sure there are a lot more of you. i mean, there are a lot of more of you out here. and i'm -- so it's a chance for me to thank all of you as well.

one of the questions that i'm often asked in interviews about this book is when i first saw the famous picture of elizabeth and hazel. and my answer is always the same. i have no idea when i first saw it. who can say when you first saw a picture like this. this is the kind of picture that just seeps into your consciousness. it doesn't happen in any particular time. for any sensitive person it's the kind of picture that you grow up with. notice at the very early age and it's just engraved in your mind. you never forget it. it's one of those pictures. it's like the picture with the little boy with the cap with his hands up in the warsaw ghetto. it's one of the pictures you see once and it sticks with you. the capture -- it's a picture -- i mean, there are many famous pictures of the civil rights movement. we all know the images of the

fire hoses and the german shepherds and heartbreaking images of sitting in at lunch counters having ketchup and coffee poured on their heads or freedom riders being beaten. but this picture is different. there's something different about this picture. and what is it? what is it about this picture that stands out in our minds? i think there's a lot of things about it but it's particularly the face. it's the face of hazel that sets it apart. i say in the book that the book is about elizabeth and hazel but the picture is really more of hazel than elizabeth. if you look carefully at the picture, will counts' picture, hazel -- elizabeth is already sort of walking out of the frame. elizabeth is out of focus a little bit. it's hazel -- it's hazel to which -- whom your eyes are

drawn immediately. and it's all -- the way that it fell together, it's all just perfect staging in a way. the lighting is perfect. the lighting is coming from the side. it's early in the morning. it's bright. it sets her face apart. she's in perfect focus. she's sort of set apart from everybody else in the picture. she just stands out. and then the expression on the face and what -- you know what is that impression? it captures -- i mean, what picture better captures what the attitude -- the attitude of the south towards what was going on. the attitude of the south towards segregation in 1957. the absolute rage, the indignation. indignation that southerners felt. the contempt -- the utter contempt for black people that's captured in that picture. the use of a more modern notion, there's also a notion that's

generally applied now to modern warfare. there's the asymmetry of the picture. the fact that the forces, the powers in the picture are so disproportionate. there's only one black face in the picture, just elizabeth. and she's surrounded by all of these white faces. and all of the power and the -- the force and the influence and everything at all gathered in the white community. elizabeth is very much alone. so elizabeth's face -- as i say is the only black face in the picture. there were -- at the point that she showed up that day, she was the first black. i say in the book we all talk about the little rock 9. at that moment she was the little rock 1. and it took me a while until the picture -- until i actually got a good print of the picture.

elizabeth is very hard to read in a read behind those sunglasses that she was wearing. it's kind of hard to know what she was feeling at that moment. she's described it on many occasions, but it's hard to see it. unless you study the picture very carefully, which requires a good print of it, and like any good picture you're always discovering something new every time you see it, and i notice that if you look behind those sunglasses, you can see -- you can see -- you can see into elizabeth's eyes. you can see several things. you can see the sadness in her eyes, you can see the fear, of course. you can see a certain kind of resignation as if -- as if she almost expected something like this to happen. you can see heartbreak. study that picture sometime and you'll see all of those things in her eyes.

so that was -- that's my answer to the question of when i saw the picture the first time. the second time yana just described to, i was in little rock to do a story, a clinton-related story, a story truth be told about paula jones, if you remember her, and i guess it was -- i had limited enthusiasm about doing the story to begin with. and i think it was probably my good fortune that she wouldn't speak with me. and so the story never happened. and that may be just as well. but, of course, as an amateur student of american history, i knew all about central high school, and i knew about the picture. and so i made a pilgrimage over to the old mobile station which was then the visitors center. and that was when i saw the poster of elizabeth and hazel.

i was just amazed to see this poster. i didn't know anything about the two of them ever getting together again. i guess the story was a local story and i had missed it. i hadn't read it in the papers where i was. and the idea that these two -- these two people, these sort of archetypal antagonists had come together and there they were smiling and seemingly comfortable with one another, standing in front of central, i thought now there is a story. there is a real story. so it was at that point that i started to make some phone calls. i don't remember, honestly, whether it was that visit or another visit but i think -- i'm pretty sure that i saw the two of them very quickly -- the two of them were still speaking at that point. and i arranged to visit with the two of them. it was memorable for me because we all went out to a diner.

hazel -- hazel's husband, elizabeth and i went to this barbecue place. i think it was a barbecue place outside of little rock. it wasn't sims. [laughter] >> i discovered sims later. and i became a repeat customer. but it wasn't sims that time. and it was a historic occasion because i remember that elizabeth insisted on treating us all for lunch that day. it was the first time that elizabeth had just gotten her first credit card and she had this piece of plastic and she wasn't sure that it actually worked. that you could actually walk out of a restaurant without actually handing over some cash and she wanted make sure the damn thing worked, and it did. elizabeth treated us to lunch. i didn't realize -- that at that point, this was in 1999, that

the two of them -- that the -- all of the optimism that had been generated by that reconciliation poster -- the relationship had already started to fray. i guess if i had been paying careful attention i might have noticed it, but to me they presented -- they were both very polite with me and they seemed to be getting along and presented a united front. and maybe i was just oblivious. i mean, i remember -- i asked hazel about how they were getting along and she said, let's just put it anyway. the honeymoon is over and now we're taking out the garbage. and i suppose that should have been a flag for me but it wasn't. but it quickly became apparent that if i were to do a book -- the path to the book would be a little bit rocky.

and that -- it turned out that day, hazel felt that elizabeth and i were sort of in cahoots. i had, i guess, probably the naive assumption -- i think that a lot of us, particularly a lot of white people, are really naive about race. and i had just -- i had just assumed that, you know, in talking to a white woman and a black woman and trying to win them over and win their confidence and get them to agree to talk to me for what was then just a magazine story, not a book, that whites would sort of natural allies and it would be the black woman who would be more skeptical and wary of me. and it was actually quite the opposite. i think that hazel -- hazel quickly felt that -- hazel had done her homework. hazel was an interesting woman and a self-taught woman. hazel never graduated from high school. she dropped out to have a family

when she was 17 years old. but she had done her reading in the civil rights movement, and she had -- she had learned that when the naacp was founded -- i think it was 1909. i may have that wrong but i think it was about 1909 that there were jews who were active in the establishment of the naacp and there had been this historic association between jews and blacks and she felt that, you know, a jewish writer and a black woman were going to be sort of naturally allies and weren't necessarily -- that i might not necessarily be impartial in all of this. and so at that point, elizabeth steps out of the picture and for the next seven years, i never spoke to her again. she would -- she would never meet me -- if i said elizabeth. hazel.

at that point hazel leaves the picture. refuses to speak with me despite -- i write her letters and she's not interested in speaking with me and i realize now that it was part of her larger sort of disillusionment of everything that had happened and so for the first seven years of my research, and i had yana suggest to you before that i wasn't working full time on this for 12 years. i mean, i was gainfully employed for all that time, too. but for the first seven years, i concentrated my work on elizabeth. and it started -- there's a little nice little victorian bed and breakfast place not far from here in a pink house and elizabeth came over and we sat in the study and got to know each other a little bit and that's when the interview started to -- that's when the interviews began. and there was a lot to talk about. i had to learn about elizabeth's family. i learned about the influence of her mother and particularly of

her grandfather. her experiences in the segregated schools of little rock and what it was like to grow up black in little rock in the early 1950s. i talked a lot, of course, about her year at central. and the horrible experiences that she had there. you know, of course, there's this assumption that's grown up in recent years that a lot of this stuff is exaggerated. and i urge -- if anybody who thinks that it's exaggerated should take the trip up to fayetteville the way that i did. it turns out to be a very long drive. much longer -- and these states are big out here. [laughter] >> the very long drive up to fayetteville where mrs. huckabee's papers are, and mrs. huckabee was mrs. huckabee the vice principal for girls at central high school. was quite a packrat and she

saved all the disciplinary cards from that year, from the 1957-1958 school year and there are a lot of them. and there are a lot of them listing the various complaints the little rock 9 had about objects being thrown at them and being scalded in the shower and being thrown down the stairs and being -- having their lockers broken into and being harassed in gym class and having stones thrown at them and all of that. and it's all there in contemporaneous documents in mrs. huckabee's files in fayetteville. it was very useful to go there. so i had a long time to interview elizabeth. and it was -- it was -- it was a very satisfying experience. elizabeth is an extremely intelligent woman and sophisticated woman with a great

appreciation for history in which i admire her for enormously. she understood what i was doing and she never interfered with it. she didn't try to lobby me or prop -- prop grandize me. i showed elizabeth and hazel my book before it was cast in stone, before the publisher pushed the button, when it was -- it was still malleable enough to change and i remember -- i even saved it. i think i still have it on my answering machine that -- i was very curious to see wheelchair reactions would be. and one day i came back home and there was a message from elizabeth that i listened to with some apprehensiveness. david, this is elizabeth and my heart kind of dropped because i knew she had read the book and she said, there are -- david, there are factual errors on page 16, page 32, page 83, page 95.

and she listed about eight or nine different mistakes that i had made, you know, that the street lights didn't go into her neighborhood until a certain year or the oil didn't go on before election day until such and such a time and i had misspelled mr. christophe's name at dunbar or whatever it was. these were the mistakes. elizabeth never -- never tried to spin me or change my conclusions or my attitudes on anything substantive. she was just concerned that i had the facts right. and it heightened my already-enormous respect for her. there were things i was afraid to ask elizabeth about. there were some sensitive things about the many years that elizabeth spent sort of in the wilderness before she went back to work for judge humphrey. i don't know if judge humphrey is here.

but i hope he is. and particularly about the death of her son, which i was really very much afraid to ask elizabeth about. a lot of you will remember that and the tragic circumstances there. but i did eventually ask her about all of that. it's all in the book, and she really answered all of these things unflinchingly. which is enormously courageous. finally after seven or eight years of research, a version of my story came out in "vanity fair," on the website of "vanity fair." it was never actually in the magazine. and then something quite miraculous happened. hazel read the article. and at that point she could see that i had no animus towards her. that i wasn't yet another yankee

do-gooder second-guesser coming down there to take potshots at her. that i was trying to -- even though she wasn't speaking with me, i had tried to understand her as best i could and that i didn't have it in for her. and so -- and also i think she was heartened by some of the things that elizabeth had said about her. they hadn't spoken to one another at this point for several years. in fact, as i point out in the book the last time they spoke was on september 11, the september 11 of 2001 when hazel was in massachusetts and gotten scared and who did she call for elizabeth of support and substance and were in communicado and i started to speak with hazel to make up for last time.

the book got a certain kind of symmetry. i wanted the book to be elizabeth and hazel. i didn't want it to be just elizabeth and so i caught up with hazel and she soon learned -- i soon subjected her to the same incessant kind of questioning to which i had already subjected elizabeth. elizabeth was always amazed that i kept having more questions for her. and whenever i said to her, this may be it. she would laugh. she came to know at a certain point that she knew there would be more so then hazel got subjected to the same treatment as elizabeth, and i learned her story going back to redfield. took me to redfield where she grew up, to bitle shop, do i have that right, the neighborhood in little rock, where she lived when she first moved here. i learned -- i learned about her background, her sort of racial

attitudes. a little bit about -- about the day of the picture and how -- in a way how typical the picture was of somebody of her background, you know, reflecting the racial attitudes that she had grown up with but also in a sense atypical, in an important sense atypical because she was kind of an apolitical girl. she really didn't care about politics and didn't think much about politics. she was into boys and dancing, which is why she was sort of dressed the way she was that day. i mean, steve show managed much more to her than brown versus board of education. and she'd be the first to admit that and so there was a lot of -- a lot of acting out that day. i mean, she just -- you know, she was somebody kind of a performer and she wanted to outperform the other girls that day. and that's what she did. and that's -- and that was the

moment that will counts happened to capture in his picture. she was just sort of acting out. and she was also 15 years old. i think that's an important factor. she looks much older than that in that picture. and i think people judge her as somebody much older than that rather than as some 15-year-old girl who was just out to sort of impress her friends. so i followed hazel's story up through that very dramatic moment that we mentioned before in 1962 or 1963. it's even significant that hazel didn't remember precisely when it happened, but she'd seen these disturbing images on television. she was living in a trailer outside of little rock. she had two young kids. and she was seeing these images of the civil rights movement and these images of brutality and she realized that she had -- she had made her own unique

contribution to that. and that i think it dawned on her slowly that her children were going to realize that's their mother and she had an account to settle and so she picked up the phone one day -- this is one of those things where people have different memories of the same thing. it's unclear whether she reached elizabeth directly or whether elizabeth's grandfather answered the phone and took a message but one way or the other, at some point elizabeth and hazel actually spoke and elizabeth and -- hazel said to elizabeth. i'm the girl in the picture and i just want you to know how sorry i am for what i did. there's really not much more to say about the conversation. it was a very short conversation. i think that there really wasn't that much more for either of them to say and that was it.

but it was to me an enormously significant moment in the story 'cause every author wants to like -- it's easier to like the people that you're writing about. for whatever reason, you want to like them. and you want to trust them. and i thought this was -- it was very significant that in 1962, you know, when there was no oprah on television and there were no television cameras around and nobody was watching and nobody was recording it and not every -- you know, not every moment was considered fodder for tabloid television, you know, in the privacy of a trailer in the outskirts of little rock, hazel made that phone call. and so that -- that to me put into a different light everything that hazel did subsequently. said to me that her heart was in the right place.

so we fast forward -- i mean, i don't fast forward -- i don't do anything fast. [laughter] >> when i'm writing, but we fast forward now in the book i describe elizabeth goes into the army. elizabeth gets out of the army. elizabeth tries to find herself. elizabeth has many years sort of in the wilderness. elizabeth has two children. hazel raises her family. she has three kids and she quickly has grandchildren and get involved in a number of -- a number of sort of hobby belly dancy, various new age kinds of things but also tries to get involved with the black community in certain ways. she starts working with unwed mothers and mothers with children in foster care. she works with underprivileged kids and takes them on field trips. again, the only cameras that are there are, you know, point-and-shoots that people

happen to bring with them. there's no press coverage of any of this. her husband sort of makes fun of her for -- you know, for trying to -- still trying to atone for the picture but this is how she wants to live her life and she wants to be a role model for her children. and she's bothered by the fact that the picture keeps appearing with increasing frequency. every anniversary the picture appears and it's in all the history books and the fifth anniversary and the tenth anniversary and all of that. and no one ever bothers finding out whatever happened to her. and, you know, she thinks -- she knows she's evolved but no one else knows that. and she's not press savvy so it doesn't occur her to call anybody up and plant the story anywhere. and it really takes the 40th anniversary to sort of bring out her story. and i would imagine that many people here remember the 40th anniversary and how she comes forward and how will counts, the original photographer, comes

back to town and takes -- and takes a second picture that becomes the poster that sort of gets all of little rock's folks up. that skip rutherford decides to put in the poster still being sold in the visitors center apparently. people still want to believe in the message of the picture and it says reconciliation and everybody remembers how excited everyone was and the idea was that if these two people could make up, well, then perhaps little rock would shed -- which has lived in shame for all these years and, you know, was an embarrassment to its citizens and laughingstock around the world, maybe little rock had finally turned the corner and there was great hope placed in the relationship between elizabeth and hazel and their reconciliation. on the one hand, of course, we know in retrospect that this was

naive to expect that two people could bridge a gap so significant but on the other hand, it was prophetic. i mean, what i describe in the book is a story that's really quite extraordinary about how the two of them developed a relationship with one another, again, when people weren't looking. they made presentations together. they spoke to high schools and college kids and grade school kids together. they became a road show and talked about their respective experiences. that part of it was also public but they started to hang out privately too. they went on field trips together. they would go for flower shows together. they would go to thrift shops together. they would go to hot springs together. and they actually discovered

they had a lot in common and became -- they became friends, quite an extraordinary degree. and i mentioned, you know, any motorist? little rock who happened to pass them in a car and saw this white woman and black women sitting in the car next to them at the intersection, the white woman driving because elizabeth never got her license and so hazel was always the driver -- to think those were the two women who were in the famous picture and here they were just driving around together -- whoever -- would have come to that realization would have driven off the road. so there was this bond. but as i say by the time i came along in 1999, it was already starting to fray. and i -- i described this in the book. i describe the causes of it. i think, you know, from elizabeth's standpoint, as i say, elizabeth is a student of

history. elizabeth is very demanding. demanding of herself and demanding of other people. and very precise. speaks precisely. she demands precision from other people. and she thought that hazel -- she couldn't believe that some of the things that hazel couldn't explain were sort of ununconsciou ununconsciou ununconsciou ununconscious -- unconscious of omission and elizabeth was tough on hazel and demanding on hazel. and she couldn't believe, for instance, that a photograph -- a scene that horrible -- something as horrible as what happened on september 4th of '57 could have been undertaken so lightly. there had to have been more of a story to it. hazel to have remembered more about it than she did. and the fact that she didn't remember more piand that she was as casual about it as she was had to have been a conscious

attempt at desembling and there were many things that elizabeth took issue in hazel's story and that was -- that was one thing that was happening. from hazel's standpoint, i mean, hazel felt this kind of tension coming from elizabeth. hazel also felt a kind of antagonism coming from other members of the plaque community and other members of the little rock 9 who resented her presence at various events, who thought she was out to cash in. where had she been all these years. you know, she was clearly out to make a buck. she couldn't possibly be here. and, of course, hazel knew better than that and hazel knew that all of these years she had been working -- working for racial amieliation. but she couldn't convince other people -- she couldn't convince other people of that. and then there was the flak that she took in the white community.

for abroprobation she got there were a lot of people who felt that hazel was a great embarrassment to the white community. that she had become the symbol of white little rock. that all of the good kids at central high school had been tarred by her brush. and the world had come to think that everybody at central high school was like hazel that year. in fact, hazel hadn't even been in central that year. her parents pulled her out within a week of the time the picture was taken, and she wasn't even a student at that part of the year. they wanted hazel to go away and they found hazel to be an embarrassment and so hazel found she was getting flak from that community as well. and there's a story in the book about hazel going to one of her class reunions. it's absolutely striking to me that somebody in hazel's position would have the serve and the cuts in a way to go to a class reunion but she did go.

and everybody sort of ignored her and/or sort of snickerd at her. she heard people snickering, you know, that's the girl in the picture. and she told me one of the girls in the -- one of the girls who was snickering at her was one of the same kids who had jumped out of the second floor window at central the day the black kids actually arrived. so hazel felt she didn't need this. you know, she didn't need this kind of disapproval. and she started to withdraw. and has continued to withdraw ever since. and so, you know, among -- among all of the people i talk to in this book and i see a lot of you in the audience, hazel is not here. hazel has said she hoped -- she expected that the interviews that she gave to me would be the last that she would ever give.

in publicizing my book, hazel will not go. hazel is out of town and i spoke to her the other day. she's out of town. it's probably a preplanned vacation but it's also a little bit convenient and i don't see that disparagingly. she doesn't want to be around for any of this. i left out that they even got flak from oprah winfrey. the two of them went on oprah winfrey together and oprah seemed to resent their reconciliation and relationship. oprah was very skeptical and very harsh and quick with both of them. there was an oprah was discussing the most important pictures of the 20th century and elizabeth and hazel were on them and she got them on and off the

program very quickly and even though elizabeth and hazel were sort of coming apart at that point, their relationship was growing more distant they had both agree they were ill treated that day and felt very bad about it afterward. i always lose track of time. i hope i'm reasonably on time here. as i say the last conversation was on september 11th of 2001 and they've not spoken since. in looking around, i want to talk a little bit about how little rock has treated me in working on this book. i have to say that -- i was self-conscious about coming down here in the course of doing my work, i was very conscious of,

as i say of placing myself in a position -- in the convenience of the 21st century of judging people very easily to take potshots at people in different era and not to have -- not to have been here at the time and not to have known how i would have behaved, there was a quote i came across -- i'm not going to read anything from my book tonight but i just want to read one quote that i came across in the course of my research that i thought captured my attitude towards my work so beautifully that it's the epigraph of the book. it's from frederick douglass who says, my interest in any man is objectively in his manhood and subjectively in my own manhood. and that's the way i feel about this project. that, you know, this was really -- it was really a chance for me to try to assess where i

would have been and what i would have been done in 1957 if i had been here, you know, a white guy, a student at central high school or a citizen of little rock and whatever and how -- whether i would have stood up and how well i would have stood up. and that's -- that's the attitude with which i tried to write all of this. i tried to let the facts speak for themselves. i tried not to be any more judgmental than i needed to be. and not to take the easy shots. a lot of people in little rock -- most people in little rock were very nice to me. i got help from all kinds of people at various research libraries. i placed ads in the little rock paper for people's recollections. i had many -- many interesting experiences, some very moving experiences and some surprising experiences. i mean, history is always more complicated and the complications and surprises of

history are what make it so enriching and satisfying to do. i mean, i remember -- i remember in particular in response to one ad that i placed in the democratic gazette for people who remembered the picture. i wanted to find the picture who were in the picture and i wanted to find people who were at central with elizabeth and i wanted to retrieve as many stories as i could. and i remember -- i thought that was somebody heckling before over there but i don't think it is. i remember one woman calling me -- i didn't get -- i didn't get many responses to these ads. but i remember there was one woman who called me, you know, my father was a sellgrationist. a white woman calling me. my father was a segregationist. but he came home -- he came home the night that that picture of

elizabeth ran. it ran -- i hope i get this ran it ran in the democrat before the gazette because the gazette was the evening picture. will's picture was taken and there was a very similar picture by johnny jenkins that ran in the gazette the next morning. hazel was not identified in either picture which is interesting. i talked to many of the newspaper people who were covering the story. and one of the editors said things were so inflamed there was no need to -- no sense in identifying her. and besides, plus, she was just a generic white girl and there was no need to identify her. but anyway, this person contacted me after i -- after the ad ran and she said my father came home that night and we were sitting around the dinner table. and i'll always remember him

saying, i don't want my kids going to school with niggers either, but they didn't treat that little black girl right. and i thought that was so moving -- that is what he said and that she remembered it after all these years. that picture -- that picture scandalized and even embarrassed segregationists. the only fault that i would f d find -- hazel would tell you apologizing, coming forward was a mistake. for her it was a bad mistake that she made. it was ill-advised. she says that she's story that she did it. and that all of these -- all of these people on those pink slips in mrs. huckabee's file in fayetteville -- none of them ever came forward or very few of them ever did.

they went on to live their lives. nobody ever gave them any grief. i tried to call a few of them. and i didn't get very far with most of them. i remember calling up one person in particular whose name was all over the files. i think probably a name that many of you would recognize somebody in a position of some prominence in town and he hung up on me. he wouldn't talk to me about it. that was one way to do it which is to pretend that nothing happened. and so while i'm not judgmental about a lot of people, i am judgmental about the people who really ran amuck that year and were allowed to run amuck by the school authorities and really paid very little price for it and in later years never did come forward. and i think also that there's this -- there's this dangerous trend to pretend that things

were not all that bad. and, you know, that things have been exaggerated and that the little rock 9 has sort of created a cottage industry of sympathy. and that enough already with this and let's just move on and it's all exaggerated. and i would urge people to -- not just to read my book which, you know, is after all secondary history, you know, just go back and read some of the contemporaneous documents. go back into mrs. huckabee's files and read those reports. she had no ax to grind. she was just recording what was happening. and so i think that that kind of revisionism which surfaced on the 50th anniversary -- there was a story in the democrat gazette about -- in which many of the people who were at central in 1957 and '58 were saying that it was really just only a few bad kids and things had not really been that bad, that -- we have to guard against

that. and i think no one has been more vigilant about guarding about that than elizabeth. one of the -- one of the remarkable moments in the story is elizabeth -- elizabeth, a woman who once used to have to bring a waste basket lined with a plastic bag we are when she spoke in public for fear that she'd get sick while she was speaking. she was that scared of public speaking. elizabeth having become adept and passionate and articulate and confident enough to give a speech was the one who was chosen to give a speech at the commemoration of the visitor center the day after that article ran in the paper and, you know, she is an eyewitness news to this. no one was better suited to counter the -- this revisionist argument that things were not really all that bad and she gave -- she gave a very impassioned speech about that,

that was -- that was very moving. so this story has a very happy ending for me. i feel -- i feel very proud of this book. i feel privileged to have met both elizabeth and hazel. and as i said, i admire them both and that's -- that's a great treat for an author. i met a lot of interesting people doing this book and i've made ten visits to little rock and i enjoyed my trips here even when the town was smoke bound and completely paralyzed with maybe a half an inch of snow. [laughter] >> and i learned that little rock apparently has no snow trucks and i was grateful -- i was grateful that there was food in my hotel because there was nowhere to eat and everywhere was closed but the town was recognized to me and most of the people i interviewed were gracious -- gracious and patient with me and financing -- i hope

that they feel that my book is -- is fair. that's the most important thing. so it's a happy ending for me. you know, as -- as it stands, it's not a happy ending for elizabeth and hazel. i tried not to sugarcoat it. i tried not to influence it in any way. i didn't think that it was my role to try to bring them together. and, you know, when i would come down here, i would visit them separately. i would rarely talk one about the other until the very end. a reporter always puts off the hard questions till the end. but at a certain point i would have to say, you know -- elizabeth, hazel says such and such about you. is this true. hazel, elizabeth said such and such about you and just crisscross and go back and review what one of them said about the other. but one thing struck me -- and i don't know whether elizabeth would agree with this or not. but i was struck by how each of

them talked -- when they talk about one another, they each get choked up. i mean, it's very clear to me and maybe i'm just the outsider and the armchair psychologist but it's very clear to me there's still a very strong bond that exists between these two women and very profound connection between them. and, you know, it wasn't my place as i say to bring them together. i asked only at the very end when -- at the behest of my photographer, my photographer said, you know, we have to try to get a picture of them together. they owe it to history to pose one more time together. and i actually reluctantly did ask them both and i don't know if you could predict what their reactions would have been. after all the years i put into it, my reaction i think was a little bit naive still. but elizabeth was willing because as i say, elizabeth is a

student of history. and elizabeth realized that for better or for worse, these two people in perpetuity are going to be joined together and they had a certain obligation for the sake of history to let history see them as they turn 70. i'm not giving some secret there, elizabeth. [laughter] >> and so elizabeth was game to do it. she said i'm not sure what i would say to her but i would do it. and hazel said -- hazel didn't say no. hazel said i'm not ready yet. the operative word there is "yet" and i'm hopeful that sometime when we're all out of the way and nobody is looking and nobody is paying any attention to them, that the two of them do come back together again in some way. and that would indeed be a very

happy ending. so i just want to thank all of you for coming and for caring about this story and for caring about my book and i'm happy to take any questions you might have. >> thank you, david. [applause] >> we have time for some questions. so please raise your hands. ms. abrams? >> why am i not surprised that you're asking the first question. [laughter] >> you got to know me very well. >> and you were extremely helpful. i must have seen you on that list. i got the a's on that list. you must have been on there. you weren't on there. that's why. >> it shows up. >> she has -- >> david, i have great respect for you as a researcher of

history. but most historians also are profits. in light of the history that you did but not only little rock but for this country and at the time that we are now are a prophet of research and the divisiveness that is now present as we have an african-american president, what is your prediction of how far we have come in this country not just in little rock? >> well, my first comment that the words "history" and "prophet" when prophet is spelled with an f are rarely associated with one another. probably prophet with a p-h is not much more. i think that -- i think that this story has hopeful and both pessimistic and hopeful elements

to it. just extrapolating -- extrapolating from this story. and as i say, i think that on the one hand, you could read this with great despair, you know, that two people of good faith had the experience that they had. on the other hand, as i say, there's this -- i think that there's this very profound connection between the two of them and, let's face it, when you read -- there was just an amazing collection of material that i came across. i don't want take too much time i want to give people a chance to ask questions but i want to take one slight digression to say that there was an mit professor who came down there in 1957 to research what was going

on in little rock. and i went to look at his papers at mit. he died several years ago. and his papers were absolutely voluminous, 40 boxes of them, and there was everything in there but his stuff on little rock, heartbreaking. it turned out -- his son-in-law was a former "new york times" reporter and whom i knew. he said let's around. i spoke -- i spoke to his son. and his son said, you know, there's one more box of stuff in the back of my closet. let me just look in there and sure enough the little rock file was in there. and he spent several days down there interviewing the leading citizens of little rock, going to the arkansas club, the segregated club, the little rock rock, the little rock club. no jews or blacks allowed.

and he was -- the researcher was allowed in there because he was a guest of the people but he could never have joined as a jew. the world that these people describe -- i say in the book that it's something like -- i mean, all of these people are now dead. and it's like coon river antholo anthology, it's voices from the dead talking about 1957. and it was a pretty bleak place and racially it was in the neanderthal age. and, you know, you don't have to be pollyanna to know about the strides that have been made since then and to know, you know, even an event like this would have been unthinkable back then. you know, you fly into little rock -- i always think these are superficial things maybe but the first thing you see when you fly into little rock is the little rock airport commission. the photographs of those five or six people, you know, and i think there are two blacks and four whites or whatever.

or maybe it's three and three. i don't even know and you're reminded right off the bat of how much different things are here. at least on the surface. and so i mean, i think so much of the antagonism toward obama is racially oriented. and there remains very deep divisions in this country and real misunderstanding and real animosity and there's -- there's a hell of a lot of work left to do and i almost feel guilty tacking on look how far we've come because that's the pollyannish addendum but there's some truth to that, too. >> elizabeth? [inaudible] >> where things have happened

say that something happened here. i don't know much about it but something happened here. but it happens everywhere. it happens everywhere. and that is what made me start talking about those painful memories and that type of thing does continue. it happens everywhere. but some people go to the primary sources. [laughter] >> and there is a primary source. [applause] ..

more different than any elizabeth and. they are complete polar opposites. only united and how amazing each of them is, and it was a missed opportunity and i hope somebody else does her book. >> we've got a question right here. estimate is more as a complement. i had the pleasure to read this book the past month, and i -- if you don't have a copy, don't leave without it and a couple things i want to say. doug disk drives the dresses that the girls wore that day, and i was so -- i could identify with both of them because i had both of those dresses, so that is the kind of care he took in

telling the story because he made them very easy to identify with. the other thing i want to see is more often than not folks who come from out of town and try to write the story often make all of the white people villans in all of the black people the heros, and instead you gave to beautifully complex human beings and i really appreciate that. >> i'm grateful to you for saying that. i thank you for mentioning the dresses because i think that the story about elizabeth and her sister making her skirt for school is just so powerful to me in the fact that he elizabeth never wore that skirt again. you know, this skirt that was made with such hope for the first day of school and she put

it in the attic and it disintegrated and at some point was thrown away. and the abrams first of all had the right idea that that was eight dress that should have ended up in the smithsonian. that's where it belonged instead of disintegrated, and i am glad that you noticed that. and, you know, ralf brody is here and came to my last talk. he and i have different feelings about different parts of my story but i have great respect for him and i try to be fair to him, and i try to come as i say, i try to put myself in the shoes of anybody who is here then and not just for 00 around these easy generalizations about people. this is a complicated situation that was thrust upon little rock and, you know, i try to capture

it in as much complexity as i could. >> we have a question right there at the back. >> i am a second year clinton school student. i actually was with him on the 50th -- well, when the head the congressional gold medal ceremony earlier this year. i was the person responsible to be alongside her for the whole function, so several hours. so that was the insider's take. thank you so kindly for being so wonderful. my question to you is this. our latest stance of the national race the drama ends at the race in texas where there is a rock. on the rock was something derogatory and inflammatory.

how would you go about advising today's youth in the understanding of the history associated with that when so many are disconnected from that particular history and the word associated with that route? >> well, i think -- you know, first of all i am hopeful not just for my own selfish reasons that people read a book like this -- i mean, everybody is at high school at one time or another. and i think that this book's worth of frames the issue from the standpoint of to high school kids living through all these issues, and i think that, you know, it's sort of for people who don't know much about this year or these issues it is a good initiation into them. that's the first thing. the second thing is that i think that this has to be addressed with great candor, and i mean you absolutely no disrespect.

that rock said mic on it. they won't say it because they think it is better not to say the word with the full outrageousness of that episode can be captured only if you don't euphemized it or was it over or just of secure it. it needs to be articulated. i didn't hesitate. if that word came up in the course of my book i used it because there was a part of the language of 1957. now, the peery story illustrates that it's part of the language of 2012. i mean, it was -- or 2011 we know that it was painted over, and apparently it disappeared at some point, but the myth of a surface of the history of this country, there are a million episodes like this. it's everywhere. it's absolutely everywhere, and we do ourselves no favor not to

acknowledge it. and i am kind of pleased whenever haley barbour says something or when an episode like this happens or weaken each think of many other instances where race peaks up its ugly head. it needs to be discussed, it needs to be ventilated. it hasn't gone away and it is deeply embedded. i did is a good thing and it is instructive when it happens to read even when we discuss it as you and i are discussing it now, it needs to be discussed explosively. >> ladies and gentlemen? [applause]

>> what function does the media serve when there are disease outbreaks? >> with the disease outbreak the media has two functions. one, the media works as miss coverage on information to the public for the communities and at the same time the media provide a different information, diverse perspectives. but, during what time of the outbreak is important for the media to focus effective coverage instead of programming different interpretations. >> what constitutes an outbreak? >> outbreak is defined as a certain abnormal disease occurrence in a certain

community or region or group of people. so, in the case of, for example, the west mile virus nobody expected it would occur in the united states, but it happened in new york maybe not on a massive scale but it did occur in the defined outbreak. >> do you think that they live up to their responsibility on how they handled outbreaks or do you think that the need to work on that? >> it's kind of hard to say because the custom of how much coverage the news media should have or should not have, but according to my research, the news coverage is pretty much vanished. usually we say there are two distinct from works when the news media covers the outbreak. the first one is usually called the agnostic frame which focuses

on what is a risk and what happens, how many people die and take care of telling us about what are the causes, what do we do to prevent and should we do any action. my analysis shows media around new york count period fasano virus [inaudible] >> tell us a little about how you did your research and what you used the west my old virus as part of your case study. >> i was interested in the doctor will program. the first is how the media works and the second one is how the risk of an indication works in a

society. i didn't have any particular interest in the west nile virus. west nile virus wasn't there yet even, but at the time of planning that dissertation on was looking for specific topics and there was the west nile virus outbreak. it was merely coincidence. if it happened to be on my dissertation would have been about this. >> since then there has been the swine flu outbreak. have you noticed the media has changed the way they are reporting on health risks? >> well, not really. there was no substantial change in terms of covering the altar brick but i see there was a substantial change in terms of how people recognize a potential of the outbreak of the

communication. so, for example, in 2003, the who and the cdc came up with an interesting principal of the outbreak communication and this is very helpful for the health professionals and officials to deal with and also it helps degeneration, too. >> now that we have the 24-hour news cycle do you think the influence of media reporting on health issues has changed? >> yes, having the 24-hour news media cycle helps people to access to getting in valuable information. yes, definitely. >> what about social media now that we have facebook and twitter? >> yes, it is ample opportunity to give access to medical and scientific data among these outbreaks, so it has a lot of

potential and benefits for the audience but there is another side we have to see. usually when in this outbreak happens, scholars think there is a time for what they call psychosocial epidemics. psychosocial epidemics is a term referring to the crisis. while the scientific and medical community could not provide an in definite answer to this outbreak. so, for example west monreal virus occurred and 99, and it took several months before the scientists and the medical community's came up with an explanation on that. so during that time, the media are covering a lot of my stories and explanations and people are searching for answers to remedy

their fear and anxiety. so it is time for this psychosocial epidemic. psychosocial epidemics can appear in three different ways. the first one of the epidemic's this year. the fear is spreading out and that is the evidence of explanation. because the medical and scientific community does not provide an indefinite answer. there are so many levels of the explanations and people are consuming those. third, we live in an explanation of [inaudible] there are so many died once we cannot get scientific including waiting for the end of the world. so, these are