Little Rock, 50 Years Later

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the day the "Little Rock Nine" integrated the city's best public high school. Elizabeth Eckford, the black woman pictured above, now works as a parole officer in Little Rock. I've always wondered what became of Hazel Bryan (now Massery), the sneering white girl in the famous photo. Google spit out this nice story from 1998 in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Hazel Massery drove Elizabeth Eckford home from Central High School in Little Rock on Sunday afternoon. It was no big deal, because the two women have become good friends since September 1997 -- as unlikely as that might seem four decades after their teen-age faces were frozen in a famous photograph epitomizing racial hatred.

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The British TV crew also interviewed Indiana University journalism Professor Emeritus Will Counts. He took the 1957 Arkansas Democrat photo of an expressionless Eckford walking away from Central, hounded by a crowd of whites that included Massery (then Hazel Bryan) shouting, her face twisted in anger.

Counts arranged the Sept. 22, 1997, meeting of Eckford and Massery. His photograph of the two women smiling together ran on the front page of the next day's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. It came to symbolize the spirit of racial reconciliation that the 40th-anniversary Central desegregation commemoration was trying to project.

"It was the farthest thing from my mind that the photo shoot I set up would lead to a lasting friendship between Elizabeth and Hazel," Counts said Sunday. "I'd had a very difficult time persuading Elizabeth to even be photographed."

Massery, who lives in a rural area of east Pulaski County, said the relationship "wasn't something I ever expected to develop the way it has. I had called Elizabeth in 1962 and apologized for my hateful action. But that was the only contact we'd had until Will got us together."

The two women met for lunch in October 1997 and have seen each other regularly since then. They enrolled jointly in a 12-week course on race relations and have maintained contact with others who took part in that workshop.

"Both of us being mothers, it turned out we have a lot to talk about," Massery says. "We've gotten very comfortable with each other. Elizabeth doesn't have a car, so I'm her chauffeur when we go to things together."

MORE: Better, longer, more recent Vanity Fair article on the photo here.  Apparently, the two did reconcile, then drifted apart again after a series of public spats, and haven't spoken in years.  Not quite the redemptive story it first appeared to be.