It might’ve been fifty years since nine African-American teenagers broke the color barrier and, with the assistance of the National Guard, integrated the public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, but racism still runs rampant in these United States…and I’m just as guilty as anyone. I’d like to tell you I’m not – in fact, I’d prefer to tell you I’m not – but here’s why I’d be lying if I claimed otherwise: while watching “Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later,” the HBO special which revisits Little Rock Central High School to see how much has changed (and how much has stayed the same) since 1957, there was a moment when several teenage African-American girls are dancing around the room to a song on the radio…and when I realized that the song was “Stacy’s Mom,” by Fountains of Wayne, my first thought was, “Wow, really?”
I’d love to tell you it was simply the exclamation of a power-pop fan being pleased to hear a song by one of his favorite artists in such context, but, no, that was secondary at best. The harsh truth of the matter is that I reacted that way because it just seemed incongruous to see African-American teenagers dancing to Fountains of Wayne…and, really, it shouldn’t be that way.
But it is. And while watching “Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later,” you’re constantly reminded how little has changed in the half-century since the groundbreaking occurrence at that high school.
You see how the whites and the black have, in all this time, done almost no integrating; sure, they’re sharing the same classrooms, but there’s still a major disconnect between the them. A picture is painted of how there are almost no African-Americans in the accelerated classes, and how the socio-economic climate in Little Rock is such that the two races tend rarely to interact outside of the schools, which leads to a lack of interaction within the schools as well. And the teachers, for all their attempts to get the students to do their best, are finding that quite a few of them simply don’t care, don’t want to listen, and don’t have much in the way of a positive parental influence to inspire them at home. One of the African-American students suggests that the education level for blacks was higher before desegregation because, back then, they had something to prove; now, they don’t, and as a result, they’re not trying as hard. You want to argue with him, but, frighteningly, you can see what he’s talking about, especially when you hear one of the seniors admit that his father hasn’t looked at his report card since 9th grade.
Filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud, themselves Little Rock natives, do an admirable job at showing as many different sides of the situation as possible. We see the teachers trying their best to teach these students, and we do see them succeeding; we also see that, although they’re in the minority, there are indeed African-American students at Little Rock Central who are intellectual and thriving. But in the end, when we see Minnijean Brown, one of the original “Little Rock 9,” speaking before one of the classes at the school and pointing out that, 50 years later, the whites are still on one side of the class and the blacks are on the other, we realize how far we’ve yet to go.
Alas, there’s no trailer for this doc, so I instead present you with a segment from the documentary, “Eyes on the Prize,” which provides you with an idea as to what happened 50 years ago…and will remind you – as it reminded me – that 50 years seems like a lifetime ago.
