During the historic 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, 26-year-old journalist Will Counts took a photograph that gave an iconic face to the passions at the center of the civil-rights movement—two faces, actually: those of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford on her first day of school, and her most recognizable tormentor, Hazel Bryan. The story of how these two women struggled to reconcile and move on from the event is a remarkable journey through the last half-century of race relations in America. Hazel, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, her teeth clenched as if about to bite, shrieked: “Go home, nigger! Go back to Africa!” Click. Will Counts had his picture.
Study any great photograph, and you will always find more things to see, and learn. For instance, there are the bystanders—out of focus, perhaps, but clear enough to reveal their indifference to or pleasure in another person’s pain. But the picture belongs to Elizabeth and Hazel, and for them it set off a drama that has never really ended. Bound together in fame and misfortune, they have tried, separately and together, to escape the frame.
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