Sunday, April 3, 2011

Bucket List/ Little Rock

For me, it's all about the "bucket list." Lots of battlefields to scratch off  before I'm face-to-face with Warren, Duryea, Collis & Hawkins. I gotta have my questions ready. If an American soldier spilled blood there, I want to visit. It may be a parking lot, as it was at Franklin. It may be an undisturbed and pristine piece of property, as was the case at Monroe's Cross Roads. Then there are the places I want to revisit such as Sanders Field, the "Vortex of Hell" and Fredericksburg's "Slaughter Pen." The reasons here are obvious.

Pete Zuhars, Stamp Guys' unofficial travel agent, has put together a package which will shorten my list greatly. The itinerary is amazing! He has procliamed it the "Civil Wargasm Tour"  and I understand why. WOW! I have never visited a Trans-MS battlefield and the heavyweights -- Pea Ridge, Wilson's Creek & Prairie Grove -- headline a card worthy of pay-per-view prices. If we only visited the Big 3, the trip would be spectacular. But Pete has also included the Arkansas portion of the Red River Campaign, known to history as the Camden Expedition. I'm guessing not many people, outside of Arkansas, visit Jenkins' Ferry, Marks' Mill, Poison Spring, Prairie De'Ann or Okolona/Elkins' Ferry. Time allowing, we will visit them all, except Prairie De'Ann which is entirely in private hands. Then there is also Fort Smith, Arkansas Post, Corydon (the only battlefield of Morgan's Indiana/Ohio Raid which I haven't walked) and Vincennes. Did I already say WOW!?

All this said, the highlight of the tour for me will be Little Rock's Central High School, now part of the National Park System. After reading this, my friends are tilting their heads like the RCA dog. Where is Mike and what have you done with him pal? When it comes to history, I'm all about campaign studies, regimentals & bios. I have very little use for the political, socio-economic side of things. Now I'm OK with that being your bag. It's just not mine. But this is different.

Most of you know the story of the "Little Rock 9," who intergrated Central High School on 24 Septemer 1957. This was 3 years after the U. S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which ruled segregated schools unconstituional.  Nine students, 3 boys and 6 girls, were registered to attend Little Rock Central High. On 4 September 1957, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the entrances. Do not allow the 9 to enter! Woodrow Mann, the mayor of Little Rock asked President Eisenhoher to intervene. Let's see the bet was the Arkansas National Guard. Ike raised, ordered the 101st Airborne to Little Rock and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. Faubus folded and the "Little Rock 9" started school 25 Sepember 1957.

Attached to the 101st Airborne, for this mission, was a group of US Air Force Air Policemen, now called Security Police, the equivalent to the Army MPs and the Navy SPs. My father was one of the APs at Little Rock.

Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the 9, wrote the following in "Warriors Don't Cry:"

"Principal Jess Mathews greeted us with a forced smile on his face and directed us to our classrooms. It was then that I saw the other group of soldiers. They were wearing a different uniform from the combat soldiers outside, but they carried the same hardware and had the same placid expressions. As the nine of us turned to go our separate ways, one by one a soldier followed each of us."

My father, like most soldiers, talked very little about his work, sometimes only a post-traumatic outburst. Re: Little Rock he told my mother about a young girl and how he didn't understand the insults hurled her way. "All she wanted was an education," was all he said.

Was he talking about Melba? Or was it Elizabeth, Gloria, Carlotta, Minnijean or Thelma? I may never know. But I gotta walk those grounds ....