HOT SPRINGS — Elizabeth Eckford, a member of the Little Rock Nine who was photographed being harassed in front of Little Rock Central High School, considers herself a “footnote to history.” said during a panel discussion on the event at the 32nd Annual General Meeting. The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival will be held on Tuesday.
The panel, part of the festival’s Filmmakers Forum, was moderated by Noland Walker, ITVS vice president of content, and featured Eckford, documentary director Sharon La Cruz, and UALR Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Curriculum.・The Vice Dean of Student Success and others took the stage. And education.
“I consider myself a footnote in history,” Eckford said. “And I’m very grateful for people who are thinkers and look at things from a long-term perspective. I’m remembered because of the riot scene photos.”
Walker responded that Eckford made a good point.
“I’ve been in the presence of Andrew Young many times, interviewed him and spoken to him many times, and one of the things he says often – over and over again – is ‘Photographs don’t lie.’ . I lie now, but I didn’t lie back then,” he said of the civil rights leader.
“I think that’s a very important point,” Lewis said. “And why is AI scaring historians away?”
Lewis was on the committee that worked on the exhibit for the 40th anniversary of the event in 1997 when longtime journalist Randy Preddy, who was teaching at Baylor University at the time, brought her photos of the incident.
“He brought me a treasure trove of photographs taken by children who worked on the school newspaper,” she said.
“And all of a sudden, we started seeing all these pictures that the news outlets didn’t have.
“And the one picture where my socks fell off was so weird that I actually had to show it to Elizabeth and say, ‘Do you remember this?’ It was when she first sat alone on the bus bench that the first person who came to sit with her was not Grace Roach, but Daisy Bates’ husband, LC Bates. did.”
When Lewis showed the photo to other members of the Little Rock Nine, they actually thought it had been digitally manipulated.
“So those images can change history, especially for you, the filmmakers,” she said. “So keep investigating and keep trying to find strange film clips. I spent many hours in Washington, D.C. looking through Army Signal Corps film that recorded what happened at Central. So, yes, please do your best.”
La Cruz, who directed the film “Daisy Bates: Little Rock’s First Lady,” said she decided to tell her story after learning about Bates at a photo exhibit and starting reading about her.
“I have a confession to make: When I first came to Arkansas in 2004, I came looking for saints,” she said. “I was looking for the next Rosa Parks, which no one outside of Arkansas knew about. And when I got here, I found out…people loved the idea of telling Daisy Bates’ story. She was really excited. There were very few people who didn’t like her.”
During the making of the film, La Cruz spent a considerable amount of time with Eckford and “wooed” her into giving interviews.
“We had lunch. We went to her house. One time, I took her to the hardware store to go shopping. I spent a lot of time. I really loved her. I wanted her to be in the movie, but she made it very clear to me not to do too many TV interviews,” La Cruz said.
“She didn’t do interviews for a long time because some of those experiences were traumatic. So she stopped doing any TV interviews. She worked in print more than anything. The moment I had her sit in that chair was the greatest honor for me. ”
At the end of the session, an audience member asked Eckford if she had ever received the treatment she needed for the trauma she experienced as a 15-year-old girl.
“They didn’t realize I needed aftercare,” she said, noting that she wasn’t diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder until 1981. “I was in the military for five years. If they knew I had any problems, I wouldn’t have been able to join.”
Walker asked Eckford what she thought would be impossible to capture on film as she has appeared in documentaries.
“People expect there to be progress,” she says. “America’s journey toward equality has been long, difficult, and uneven, and it hasn’t always been central.”
as panel chair Noland Walker and fellow panelists Sharon La Cruz and Joanna Miller Lewis listen during a panel discussion as part of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival’s Filmmakers Forum on Tuesday. Elizabeth Eckford, second from left, talks about her experience as a member of the Little Rock Nine. . – Photo by James Leigh for The Sentinel-Record